Zooko points out that the phrase “Atkins diet” is number 9 among the top gaining Google queries (according to Google’s Zeitgeist page, which tracks which search phrases are the most popular).. Could it be all the praise it’s received in Cory’s and Doc Searls’ weblogs, an aftereffect of the New York Times article [free registration required] or has Dr. Atkins made a TV appearance recently?
Cory at BoingBoing points to the Future of Music Coalition’s report on the effects of radio consolidation of the music industry [PDF]. For the time- or attention span-challenged, there’s an executive summary of the report.
Equally interesting are the “fact sheet” released by the National Association of Broadcasters in anticipation of this report (“You’re wrong, radio’s great, people aren’t turning their radios off, everyone loves Clear Channel!”) and the Future of Music Coalition’s response.
I’ve pretty much given up on radio (with the possible exception of The Corpse) unless I’m in the car, and even then, I prefer to bring a pack of CDs with me. The limited playlists and repetition of the commercial stations are annoying, and university radio during the daytime is pretty much talk by people who badly need elocution lessons. Thankfully DMCA/CARP and its Big Content supporters haven’t been able to kill of Internet radio…yet.
Today at the grocery store, I saw a very cute woman with her three-year old daughter and thought to myself “Yummy mummy! I wonder if she’s a single mom.”
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m now a “mature gentleman”, but I think it’s just that my brain (or maybe it’s my hormones) is trying to kill me.
After seeing actual results from people I know — Cory, Doc, the older sister of my can’t-commit-to-a-damned-thing ex and Herb (a doctor friend who went to med school with my sister) and recommendations from my trainer Mike (who’s still missing in action) and my mom (who happens to be the Chief of Cardiology at St. Joseph’s Health Centre here in Accordion City), I have committed an act of nutritional sacrilege and hopped on the Atkins Diet.
The basic premise of the diet is that it’s not fat that makes you fat, but digestible carbohydrates. When you eat carbohydrates, your digestive system absorbs sugars from them, which get broken down into the basic sugar called glucose, which you use as fuel. Some of this fuel is used immediately, because your body is like an engine that runs all the time, even when you’re sleeping. Some of it is converted by your liver into glycogen and stored there and in your muscles for near-term use. The remainder gets converted into a form that packs lots of energy into a little space — fat — and gets put into long-term storage tanks on your belly, thighs, butt and eveywhere else that can get flabby.
The Atkins Diet takes this principle and applies this approach: if you cut out the carbs as completely as possible and limit your intake to just proteins and fats, you force your body to start tapping into those long-term storage tanks. As you drain these tanks, you get skinnier.
The Atkins Diet allows you to eat your fill of proteins and fat — steak and eggs, lobster broiled in butter, pork chops — and cut out all carbohydrates — potatoes, bread, foods with sugar, and worst of all, my beloved rice. The strange and counterintuitive approach — which turns the “Food Pyramid” upside-down — has been soundly condemned by the American Medical Association as a “bizarre regimen”; Dr. Atkins has even had to defend his diet at a congressional hearing. However, there’s been all kinds of evidence — anecdotal for years, and scientific — that seems to say that everything we knew about eating might actually be, as an article in the New York Times Magazine [free registration required] put it, “a big fat lie”.
The low-carbohydrate appraoch taken by Atkins seems to have other benefits as well — according to an article that appeared yesterday in Salon, it’s also good for controlling your cholestrol levels. There seems to be evidence that it’s also good for diabetics (very good for me — there’s diabetes on both sides of my family).
Since joining the gym earlier this year, I’ve lost ten pounds and fit in some of my old pants. The problem is that I haven’t been able to lose more than that over the past few months; it’s as if I were stuck. I’m giving Atkins a whirl and seeing what happens over the next three months.
I promise this won’t become some kind of diet-obsessed weblog. It’ll still be the same, fun-lovin’ Advertues of AccordionGuy that you’ve all come to know and love. The only real difference you should notice is that since beer is full of carbs, my drunken nights out will have to be fueled by rum, whiskey or vodka shots (which might make them even more interesting).
Now I just have to see if I can live without rice and beer…
Twelve essay questions, my answers to which they loved, and one very good interview later…
…I didn’t score the semi-final interview, the final interview (or the swimsuit competition, for that matter). It was “we love this guy” followed by “he’s not what we’re looking for.”
I don’t mind getting turned down so much as getting turned down after putting in all the work to answer those questions.
For the technical and the curious, I’ve posted in the questions in my other blog.
To all you drivers out there in Accordion City and other areas hit by last night’s snow storm:
SNOW IS SLIPPERY.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the white stuff falling from the sky is the same kind of snow that fell last year, the year before and all prior years. They haven’t improved or upgraded it with a higher-traction version. It plays havoc with traction (especially if you didn’t get your snow tires on yet), increases braking distances, and if you’re like the idiot in the silver Honda Accord who was a few hundred metres ahead of me, it will cause your car to spin like a top if you drive as if you were auditioning for Corvette Summer. The solution is to drive more slowly and leave considerably more braking room, especially when the snow’s falling.
Although Pat Buchanan’s use of the term “Soviet Canuckistan” to describe The People’s Republic of AccordionGuy (the country in which Accordion City is located), it’s been used before:
…and now, an ironic hipster-friendly T-shirt:
These were shown at a party held last night to raise awareness of WildCulture.com (there’s not much on the page right now), the on-line reincarnation of Wild Culture, a Toronto-based magazine devoted to ecology, sustainable development, community action and the like (the magazine isn’t around anymore, but they’ve just released this anthology). They’re going for 30 Canadian Roubles each, and I’m going to try and find out how you can order them. In the meantime, if you’re interested in one, drop me a line, and I’ll pass the message on to the t-shirt makers.
