By radically reducing fast-to-digest carbohydrates, the Atkins diet (and the Velocity LDE) prevents you from getting on this insulin roller coaster.  Your hunger is stabilized, so you can simply eat less and not feel hungry for a long time.  Eat a lot less, and you'll shed the pounds. However (Isn't there always a "however"?), suspicions are rising that it is the glucose intolerant Type-3s who have the greatest difficulty sticking to the low-carb aspect of Atkins.

Atkins has proven without a doubt that his diet is fast and effective for quick weight loss.  Millions swear by it because they have successfully lost a lot of weight. And some significant percentage of those people have  been able to keep most of that weight off, say for five years or longer. But millions more have lost weight on the Atkins diet, only to find they CANNOT give up carbohydrates to the extent the diet demands. (The initial phase is much stricter than most people realize.)  And so, like me, they succeed for a while, but then relapse and regain their girth. The urge to splurge on carbs becomes irresistible.  According to Atkins, at six feet tall, to go from my 220 to 185 I can only eat 20 carbs a day. (I saw blueberry muffins for sale at the supermarket each one of which had 73 carbs!)  So what's a body to do?

We could switch to the less stringent South Beach diet.  This is a cleverly modified variation of Atkins' low carb diet.  It does not forbid carbohydrates to the same strict extent.  However, it does not allow consuming nearly as much fat as Atkins.  South Beach's Dr. Agatstson is a cardiologist, and he worries about the side effect all the saturated fat Atkins allows will have on the cardiovascular system. (Atkins claims that, in the absence of carbs, fat is harmless.)  The weight-loss mechanism is subtly different, too.  Agatstson believes that the real villain is how fast blood sugar level rises in your body to trigger an insulin response.

Agatstson looks at dieting the same way a diabetic does.  He believes if the eater can keep his blood sugar from rising too rapidly, the response of the pancreas in releasing insulin is dampened, and that alone will dampen the eater's appetite -- and (as with Atkins) he won't eat as much.  Less food means fewer calories.  Fewer calories with calorie-burning exercise means weight loss.  (And exercise doesn't just burn more calories; it enables the body to burn them more efficiently.)

Both diets assume that if you can learn to eat only enough of the correct food  to keep you from getting hungry (which will be fat, according to Atkins, and protein according to Agatstson) then you won't feel the need to eat so much and so often.  Eating a lot of carbohydrates satisfies quickly (indeed, you can get a pleasant "sugar high") but it can make you ravenously hungry later on -- and cause you feel the need to eat more carbohydrates just to put out the starvation fires.  Atkins relies on the fact that if you eat fat, you will feel satiated for a long time. Just a little bit of fat is so nourishing--and "stays with you" (is slow to digest) you essentially lose your hunger pangs for more food. And because fat is slow to digest, you don't get a hunger-producing insulin response.  You can push back from a half-eaten plate .  More importantly (I believe) when you eat fats regularly, you're not hungry when you sit down in the first place! Soon you could replace lunch with a fatty low-carb snack.

Because South Beach relies on protein to level out the blood sugar concentration, it is not as potent an appetite reducer.  Thus, the only thing that you can't do with South Beach is be a pig (Because South Beach has no ketosis to rapidly burn fat).  Eat his modified food selection and eat normal portions.  Stuff yourself, and you'll be shoving in too many calories to burn -- and you'll continue to get fat and fatter. If you get hungry in-between meals -- snack on something satisfying that is legal.  You won't need much to get you through the next hour or two until the next meal. As long as your snack is not a "bad" carbohydrate, you'll be fine. Eat a piece of beef jerky--not a delicious Snickers bar. (See below for snacks.)

Agatstson's central point is to eat those foods that slow the speed of digestion and thus slow the uptake of glucose.  Thus, he talks about "good carbs" and "bad carbs."  This is another term for the glycemic index, which measure just that -- a combination of how much glucose a food produces, and how fast it produces it. [For engineers, the glycemic index is Watts or power; how much glucose is produced is amps; speed of digestion (the inverse of minutes) is volts.]

Let's say a potato and a scoop of vanilla ice cream both have 20 carbs.  The potato will convert its starch into glucose in 15 or 20 minutes, while the ice cream (because of its fat content) takes 45 minutes. Thus, the potato's  "glycemic power" is 20/20 or 1.0.  The ice cream is 20/45 or 0.44 -- fifty-six percent less than the potato in this made-up example. (A real example is Nestles "Quik": Mixed with water it has a glycemic index of 53. Mixed with 1.5% fat milk, the index drops to 41 because the milk fat slows absorption.)  

Look up glycemic index on the web to get a listing of the various glycemic indexes for the foods you like. http://diabetes.about.com/library/mendosagi/ngilists.htm   or http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes_food_diet/glycemic_index.php    Plan your second-phase diet around those. Subscribe to the free e-zine The Glycemic Index Newsletter  to keep up with the latest thinking on this diet-critical subject.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The section excerpted from: http://www.glycemicindex.com/ (and is provided for your information)

What is the Glycemic Index? Not all carbohydrate foods are created equal, in fact they behave quite differently in our bodies. The glycemic index or GI describes this difference by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. Choosing low GI carbs - the ones that produce only small fluctuations in our blood glucose and insulin levels - is the secret to long-term health reducing your risk of heart disease and diabetes and is the key to sustainable weight loss.

What are the Benefits of the Glycemic Index? Eating a lot of high GI foods can be detrimental to your health because it pushes your body to extremes. This is especially true if you are overweight and sedentary. Switching to eating mainly low GI carbs that slowly trickle glucose into your blood stream keeps your energy levels balanced and means you will feel fuller for longer between meals. Low GI diets help people lose and control weight Low GI diets increase the body's sensitivity to insulin Low GI carbs improve diabetes control Low GI carbs reduce the risk of heart disease Low GI carbs reduce blood cholesterol levels Low GI carbs can help you manage the symptoms of PCOS Low GI carbs reduce hunger and keep you fuller for longer Low GI carbs prolong physical endurance High GI carbs help re-fuel carbohydrate stores after exercise

How to Switch to a Low GI Diet The basic technique for eating the low GI way is simply a "this for that" approach - ie, swapping high GI carbs for low GI carbs. You don't need to count numbers or do any sort of mental arithmetic to make sure you are eating a healthy, low GI diet. Use breakfast cereals based on oats, barley and bran Use breads with whole grains, stone-ground flour, sour dough Reduce the amount of potatoes you eat Enjoy all other types of fruit and vegetables Use Basmati, Doongara or Japanese koshihikari rice Enjoy pasta, noodles, quinoa Eat plenty of salad vegetables with a vinaigrette dressing

 [End of http://www.glycemicindex.com/ excerpt.]

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However (There's always a 'however') at least one diabetes pioneer, Dr. Richard K. Bernstein, believes the good-car/bad-carb theory is a lot of hogwash. Test your own blood sugar after eating a good carb item and then--at another time, test it after eating a bad carb.  Dr. B says there will be little if any difference. So he is against ALL carbs when on his very aggressive diabetes diet. ("Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution, the complete guide to achieving normal blood sugars," revised and updated, 2003.) But, be aware, like so many radical diets, if you enjoy food, this diet is not for you .
 

(Velocity avoids this argument altogether by not get into any carb-counting, or even calorie-counting. Most older people are pretty much set in what they eat. Reduce your carb intake. That should be pretty easy to do. Everything else will take care of itself.) But, to continue...
 

Agatstson's diet makes a few items poisonous.  These are potatoes and beer. Nothing will put on weight faster, he claims, not even bacon fat -- because if you eat bacon fat, you get satiated and you won't get hungry for a long time -- maybe 6 hours.  If you eat a baked potato, you'll be starving in 2-3 hours -- and have to eat again to avoid collapsing (if you are glucose intolerant).

Critics of both diets grudgingly admit that they do work in the short term (Why grudgingly if they're not angry about something?) but claim they are bad for you in the long term--usually for ideological reasons.

Agatstson says if some one holds a gun to your head and you must eat a potato, at least eat it with things that will slow down the entire digestive process.  Add butter and sour cream to the potato -- anything to slow down the digestive process and slow the rapid rise in blood sugar .  If you must eat bread (another pure starch), eat whole grain bread or dip it in olive oil.  He also even suggests eating some psyllium (Metamucil) 15 minutes before eating any carbs, again, to slow down the digestion process. (Don't try this if you are already mildly constipated!)

Note: Recently, dieticians are discovering that even the glycemic index of any particular food is not a sufficient measure.  Rather, it is the combination of foods eaten at one time.   Some will have a low index and (especially fats) slow the others down from being absorbed. Thus if you poison yourself by eating a potato, you can add the antidote of slathering it in butter and cream which will reduce the overall Glycemic Index Meal.   This means it is the combination of all the foods eaten in one sitting that will determine the rapidity of conversion to blood glucose.  Since this metric does not yet exist, the only recourse is to try to start the meal with a low glycemic food before moving on the the high glycemic food.  But, don't think you can abuse this new discovery by pigging-out on white carbs washed down with a pat of butter. The very antidote to high-speed carbs--fat--adds lots of calories--which makes you fat. (But remember Dr. B. Don't use this theory to let you cheat on stuffing in a few more delicious carbs!!)

So, that's the chemistry of what happens when you eat fattening food; now, on to the Velocity Life-Long Diet. This is a low glycemic diet. But recognize this: What makes it so effective is that  the Velocity diet is not a fixed diet; rather, it is the direction you take your current diet. 

Cut your current diet back in the carbs department by just a little. Eventually give up all carbs at breakfast so you won’t feel the need to stuff yourself  with a mid-morning donut. (With no carbs to stimulate insulin, you won't get mid-morning hunger.)  Then, whatever you normally eat, become a little more picky about sugar and other carbs.  JUST CUT BACK A LITTLE on your carbohydrate intake. If you positively must have a mid-morning donut, just eat half a donut.  If you can’t even cut back just a little , forget about dieting and remain fat and unhappy for the rest of your life. 

But you WILL be able to cut back just a little because by lessening your white carb intake, you’ll feel less hungry during the day –and eat less without even thinking about it.  No, you won’t lose 20 lbs in 20 days; but you will stop gaining weight, and then maybe lose 5 lbs in 5 weeks. That’s pretty good if it costs you nothing.  And since it's only a slight modification of your current diet, you know you can easily keep it up for the rest of your life.  JUST DO IT!

Remember, The Velocity diet is not a specific diet, but the direction you take your current diet. Here are some suggestions on the direction to head:

Breakfast:

1-2 eggs any style. Agatstson says to use a pan spray, Atkins wants you to use butter to cook/fry the eggs. Eggs are still natures' most perfect food, and if you exercise and your cholesterol is reasonable, don't worry about eating eggs.  If you need cereal (try to switch to bacon & eggs), use bran flakes or oatmeal, but only the 5-minute version; the quicker-to-cook ones are more rapidly digested.  I started my South Beach variation and regular exercise at the same time. For breakfast I eat three eggs (scrambled in butter or fried in bacon fat )and 2 strips of bacon or sausage seven days a week, 365 days a year.  With this diet, here is the results of exercising religiously five days a week for 45 minutes a day for 4 months:

	Day zero	Day 120
Cholesterol	236	183
HDL	70	63
Basal Pulse	70	47

(Although my cholesterol on this high-fat diet dropped 22%, this exercise regime did nothing to lower my blood pressure--160/106. I now take 10mg of Lisinopril which brought it down to 124/70.)

Canadian bacon/smoked salmon/kippers/ or sausages.

Coffee/tea w cream.  [Note: I compared a non-dairy creamer with real cream in two identical cups of coffee. In a strong cup of coffee, the real cream makes a big, positive difference in taste. However, you have to decide what is more important--perfection in the taste of java, or a diminishment of your bulging waistline.]  Both doctors advise against caffeinated beverages because, like alcohol, they increase hunger. We've shifted over to half-caf by mixing regular with decafe beans.  We went down to 25% caffeinated beans (mixed with 75% decaffeinated beans) but that took a while to get used to.  This allows us to make a nice strong-tasting brew, yet keeps the caffeine strength down--but still gives us a mild lift. Try the blue bag of Eight O'clock coffee--it's 50-50 decaffeinated and delicious. One of us is switching to green tea with mint. Even the decafe had too much vitamin pee.]    >

Even though I LOVE buttered toast, I quickly got over not eating it for breakfast because the eggs and bacon filled me up so well (I didn't get hungry until 1:30-2:). Also, when I added jelly toast to that breakfast, I got hungry by 11AM. Arnold does sell an Atkins loaf (6 carbs per slice--not tasty) if you must eat bread, and Smuckers sells a low carb jam. But together that means 12 carbs--too much for too little taste. If you must eat bread, forget the carb-rating and remember the glycemic index: choose a whole wheat or multigrain bread with some taste--but eat half a portion. By testing different breads, we split a Thomas' oat bran English muffin .  No increase in hunger pangs, even 'til 1-2PM after an 8AM breakfast.  Another trick--sprinkle cinnamon on your buttered half muffin--tasty and a good diabetic herb.

I have finally settled on the carb issue: When you must eat  too many carbs, do so only before you can exercise them off.  If you walk to work, eating one half of an  (Thomas') whole grain English muffin for breakfast is OK.  If you work out at mid-day, do so after lunch. Then, eating a small portion of rice or noodles will be be more apt to be burned off.  Eating carbs at dinner is particularly dangerous.  So is drinking wine because you've got the whole evening to suddenly get ravenously hungry due to a faulty insulin response. And the fridge is only steps away. 

Eat a solid breakfast with minimal carbs and you should be able to last until noon.  Eat a decent lunch--and whatever carbs you have to ingest now. (That gives you the rest of the day to burn them off.) Then, eat a low-carb dinner, because--(Velocity hypothesis)--any excess sugar in the bloodstream at night won't be burned off by TV-watching, and will thus be quickly added to that gas tank encircling your belly. The dinner meal is definitely the crux of cutting carbs for me. The fridge is SO CLOSE. I'm tired. I worked hard all day. I deserve something. Just one bite never hurt anyone, etc., etc., etc.

Lunch:

• All  meats such as pork chops flank steaks, etc.   Remember, you can tenderize lean meats (e.g., flank steaks) by pounding them flat with a rolling pin to break up the tough connective tissue.  (However, better a well-marbled steak and a salad than lean anything else with rice.) The Subway chain of fast sandwiches offers salads and wraps that are tasty and very healthy.  I order an Italian in a wrap--not one of their listed sandwiches--but they get so many requests for it, they'll make it up without batting an eye.
• If possible--NO SANDWICHES MADE WITH BREAD. Use a wrap instead, and pick off as much of the tortilla as possible as you munch. Or, take off the top piece of bread--thereby cutting the carb load in half.
• If you eat a delicious McBurger, throw away the top half of the bun.
• All the lettuce with as much oil & vinegar as you like--the more the better. (Real Roqueforte mixed with olive oil and mayonnaise make a fabulous dressing.)
• Salads with meat or cheese plus a real (not low-fat) dressing in them make great, healthy and filling low-carb lunches. (Note Low-fat items ALWAYS have more carbs than the full-fat versions. Compare the labels.)
• Full fat ("Plain") yoghurt but NOT FRUIT YOGHURTS. If you love fruit in your yoghurt, buy some fresh berries and add half of them to your yoghurt on day one, and the other half the next day. (BTW, a week of eating real yoghurt (especially Greek yoghurt) will do a lot to relieve you of an acidy stomach and is much better for you than dollar-a-day Prilosec.)
• Salad dressing, or make your own: wine vinegar (not balsamic) canola or olive oil and a bit of Grey Poupon mustard. Beat and pour over salad leaves. Yum.

·       Hamburgers are good because they fill you up. But avoid the bun (Start your diet by eating only half a bun). Dose hamburger meat with Worcestershire sauce before cooking to boost the flavor. [Some eateries will serve "bunless hamburgers" if you ask.]

·      Bit the bullet: Cut potatoes out completely of any kind. Period.  I know, you love Freedom Fries, you can't possibly give up baked potatoes. Or mashed potatoes. Or pomme de terre Dauphinoise.  But give it a try.  I'm a genetic potato-lover, and had no problem giving them up. Instead, I eat Broccoli dashed with mayonnaise.  I LOVE it.  Agatstson suggests mashing up cauliflower and cream to make simulated mashed potatoes.  It's not bad at all if you remember to steam the cauliflower to keep the water out.  (If you mix in a bit of real potato--it's really delicious!) [I wonder if one could add a bit of powdered potato to the mashed cauliflower to beef up the backbone of the dish.]   (All right, I admit it. I do eat potato once a week or so.)

       Hardly any sugar, ever. This means, no soda pop, very little maple syrup, no cake icing, no jam.  But, buy a box of the three types of fake sugars: Asperteme, Sweet & Low and Equal -- and mix them up to use as sugar. (This is an Atkins idea.) But it's strong so use half as much.

• Cut back a lot on rice .  Order sashimi rather than sushi. Wild rice (if you can find it) is supposed to be better (Whole Foods sells it.  It's expensive, but a little goes a long way, but it takes 60-minutes to cook.) 
• Very little bread.  Especially no delicious Freedom bread. White bread has the same glycemic load as pure cane sugar. If you must eat some bread, eat rye, whole grain, whole wheat or multi-grain breads in moderation. Or, best of all, black kernel-filled German pumpernickel.
• Practically no pastry. Forgettaboutit.  (And no sneaky rationalization that since cheese is OK--cheesecake can't be much worse, especially if you'll hardly eat any of the delicious graham crust. Krispy Kreams and real French/Italian white bread is the hardest thing to give up in my book.)
• Switch to diet sodas.   Diet Root beer and Diet Tonic Water are strong- enough tasting to cover-up the diet taste--and they're caffeine free. 

What I mostly eat for lunch is either smoked salmon and cream cheese on a RyCrisp cracker, or a cheeseburger with no bun & a salad.  Or Braunschweiger liverwurst on black pumpernickel. Plus a diet root beer (no caffeine). I buy two pounds of hamburger meat, form into patties and then freeze them. The store-bought ready-frozen hamburger patties are awful.  

Go easy on ice cream . You really should cut it out entirely. (I haven't been able to.) The Atkins version of vanilla ice cream is delicious: 5 egg yolks, 3 teaspoons of vanilla extract, 2 oz of water and 3 teaspoons of fake sugar substitute (use his three artificial sugars mix).  Mix the ingredients and then fold into 8 oz of lightly whipped cream.  Freeze for two hours.  Really tasty.  But I now eat the Breyers ice cream in moderation. Because of its high fat content, ice cream does not have a high glycemic index; the fat slows down the absorption of the sugar. But the only good stuff is fatty--a weight-loss no-no, but not harmful for nascent diabetics.  Low & No-fat ice creams have the opposite effect and, unless they are no-sugar, are to be avoided. (Somebody should market a high-fat, zero sugar ice cream.) [Somebody finally did--Breyers "Carb Smart." Their "Rocky Road:" 4 gm of carbs per 1/2 cup serving is actually pretty good. All the reduced-fat ice creams just taste lousy (and they're higher in carbs than regular ice cream!). There is definitely a "fat receptor" in the back of the mouth that tells you you are getting the real thing. Try a spoon-full of full-fat Greek yoghurt, and the non-fat version. In the first instant on the tongue, they both taste pretty much the same.  But after a few seconds, as the full-fat version glides past the back of your mouth--WOW! what a difference. Does that mean never eat fruit? of course not. Just take it easy, and avoid the big-portion fruits: melons, grapefruit, and grapes.

Dinner:

Same as above except on Friday & Saturday nite, you can have 2 glasses of red wine.  If you can control your drinking by abstaining completely during the week, but can't once you start to drink, realize that you still are on the verge of becoming "a problem binge drinker"-- no matter how "in control of your drinking" you think you are. (Dylan Thomas: "An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.")  One aid: Don't keep any booze in the house.  Just buy ONE BOTTLE when you need it, i.e., Friday evening. But forget the social problem: Why is booze such a dietary problem? Atkins says:

1) Alcohol reduces the cells' ability to take up glucose -- so it remains in the blood stream to be collected as fat for the belly.

2) Alcohol Makes you naturally hungry .  That is why red wine is so great with meals.  You drink it--and enjoy stuffing yourself.

3) Alcohol reduces your will-power to not gorge yourself because--after a half bottle of red--you'll suddenly realize that life is short and YOU DESERVE THAT BANANA CREAM PIE IN THE FRIDGE. (Of course giving in will just make life that much shorter.)

Beer: As a congenital beer drinker, I went from Becks and Pilsner Urquell to Becks lite to Amstel lite--probably the tastiest of the lite beers. Now I don't drink any beer--just red wine. Bernstein believes that modest amounts of alcohol essentially paralyzes the pancreas so it does not overshoot in its insulin response--an interesting theory.

·           Cheeses.   Yes! Have a cheese plate with pumpernickel bread. I gorge on cheeses--France's great gift to the world.  Try "Saga"--the most delicious creamy blue cheese spread, on a Rye-Crisp.  Stilton or Limburger for them what likes potency in their cheeses.  Fill in a stalk of celery and gorge.                     

Note: Carbo-lust never really went away from me. Thus, I keep an arsenal of substitutes munchies around the house--the items below.

For a 3-4PM snack, or a post bed-time snack to quench carbo-lust, consider:

• One or two slices of salami rolled around a dab of cream cheese
• A fistful of Macadamia nuts
• A forkful of Vita herring in sour cream
• A table spoonful or two of fresh (Delicatessen) salsa--or make your own
• A couple or three huge olives stuffed with anchovies or jalapenos
• A spoonful or two of Greek yoghurt, right out of the tub. Hmmmm
• A Polish dill pickle spear or two.  Put a couple of jalapeno slices in the pickle jar to spice them up
• A squirt of Reddi-Whip cream
• A celery stalk filled with cream cheese or other cheeses
• A spoonful of peanut butter
• Beef jerky
• A taste of sour cream--full fat version (i.e., "regular).

Just remember, if you have to decide between eating a bit too much fat or a bit too much starch ( carbohydrates), eat the fat.

 Here is my beginning diet, the diet I'm on now ("Half-way") and the target diet I'm shooting for:

Breakfast 7:30A
Beginning	Half-way	Final Target
3 Eggs	2 Eggs	1 Egg
2 Sausage patties	1 strip of bacon	1 strip of bacon
White toast w butter & jam	1/2 English muffin	1/2 oat bran English muffin
Coffee w cream	50% Decaf w cream	Green tea w mint
Get hungry at 11AM	Hungry at 12:30PM
Lunch 12:30
Beginning	Half-way	Final Target
Papa Gino's pizza & salad	Smoked salmon	1/2 smoked salmon
Or, Whopper w vanilla shake	w creamcheese on	w creamcheese on
	Rye-Crisp cracker	Rye-Crisp cracker
	Diet root beer	Diet root beer
Get hungry at 3:30-4:00	Hungry at 4:30
	Snack: 2 Spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt	Snack: Spoonful of Greek yoghurt
Dinner 7:00
Beginning	Half-way	Target
Steak	Steak	Chicken/fish/meat
Potatoes	Broccoli	1-2 vegetables
Veg	Petite peas	Salad
Salad	Salad	Diet root beer
Red wine (Half bottle)	Red wine (Half bottle)	Metformin*
Ice Cream	LowCarb Ice Cream	Greek yoghurt
Munchies by 8:30	Munchies by 8:30

Atkins is an absolute maniac about vitamins.  He can't possibly be right about needing the huge assortment of exotic vitamins he recommends.  How did our caveman ancestors obtain any of them--and none of them were fat? The Velocity supplement (because you're old and a Type-3) is:

• "Baby" aspirin (81 mgs) This is for people over 50 to aid the heart
• Salmon or fish oil for Omega-3 nutrients.  Ditto, above, although Omega 3 may just be another fad, like "oat bran," and all the others.
• Any one-a-day vitamin. The A to Z type is fine. (We use CVS "Spectravite." )
• Alpha Lypoic Acid, 200 mg with each meal. This is a suspect treatment, but claimed to be a prescription medication for diabetics in Europe. After much testing--taking it , not taking it, taking it again, it seems to work for me. It certainly gives me an energy (and a libido) boost.

*For those who find they cannot control their carbo-lust, see your doctor and ask if "Glucophage" (generic: Metformin) is right for you.   This drug helps suppress appetite and aids in the body's utilization of glucose. Unlike all of  Atkins' dietary supplements, metformin really works to control carbo-lust, although it may take a few weeks to kick in.  You start off taking 500mg with breakfast and supper meals, and work you way up to 1000 to 2000 mg per day.  At first you may suffer loose bowels.  Drink too much alcohol and you can get VERY bloated--and may very well get hit with explosive diarrhea.  However, as you adjust to this drug, it will significantly  reduce your desire to binge feed and drink, and the diarrhea will probably disappear. Possible other side effect: a slight diminishment of your sense of taste. For me, metformin nearly completely cut out the urge to drink red wine!  A side-effect worth promoting? (But the effect passed after a year or so.)

The Velocity Diet GREAT REWARD

But carbo-lust can nevertheless build up to intolerable levels--so defuse the situation.  Not by giving up the Velocity Diet, but by PIGGING-OUT Once A Month, by having a single meal in which you eat & drink anything you want.

If that meal is breakfast: Go with waffles & real maple syrup -- enough glucose load to kill an unregulated diabetic. Add a large dollop of melting butter, patty sausages and three fried eggs and a half-quart of coffee. (An iHop  and Denny's $4.99 special) (Except their maple syrup is fake.  Bring your own.)

OR:

For lunch, eat crisp beef  tacos (make your own) with grated cheddar cheese, lettuce, fresh salsa, jalapeno slices,  raw onion, avocado and sour cream filling.  Five or six of those beauties plus a couple of IPAs 'll stick to your ribs.

OR:

For dinner, a nice rare porterhouse steak with scalloped potatoes (or better yet, beef Wellington), a bottle of red wine (each) and Crêpes Suzette for dessert. Followed by Courvoisier.  Have somebody nice roll you home. (And DON'T FORGET the Alka-Seltzer.)

Hey -- I told you this is a great eating way of life.  And Oh, man, the fun of planning the Pig-Out Meal...
 

 Addendum

February 2007:  For perhaps the wisest words on eating healthy written in the past 50 years, read "Unhappy Meals" by Michael Pollan in the New York Times Sunday magazine section, January 28, 2007. Recognize that while Mr Pollan has surely found the secret to healthy eating, we are momentarily on a different spur: we want to lose weight. After you've done that, slowly incorporate Mr. Pollan's  advice. (Which is to eat less meat and more veg & grains.)

August 2007: Note: In spite of all the books written on diabetes, perhaps the most incisive piece yet was a major two-page spread by the N.Y. Times, 20 Aug 2007, Page A12-13. It highlights what a major attack on the entire body the incidence of diabetes portends.

(For trenchant business assistance, visit: www.velocityassociates.net )