The Hollando Diet

I live in San Francisco, a great place to eat and drink. Italian, French, Indian, even classic American, you name it we do it, and do it well.

San Francisco is also, however, a very image-conscious town.

Obviously, these two attributes can conflict, as the effects of the first influence the second. This has been a–pun very much intended–growing concern to me for much of this year. Finally, a little over two weeks ago I stepped on the ol’ bathroom scale and confronted a number only five pounds shy of my highest recorded weight ever, registered back in December 2001. It was time for South Beach. More on that presently.

I am six-feet tall in thick socks. I felt best freshman year, seven years ago, at the slightly underweight (I think) tonnage of 150 pounds. Of course, I was also training daily as a Division 1 varsity athlete and subsisting on college dining-hall food, which never gave anyone an appetite. These might have had something to do with it.

I quit the team and, later, moved off-campus, events that roughly correlated with the onset of the dreaded late-sophomore fifteen, just a little behind schedule. Since then my weight has fluctuated, but, net, mostly in the wrong direction: up.

Enter South Beach. It worked well for my parents, so I decided to give it a shot–slightly modified. I’m paying more attention to calories than is perhaps strictly necessary, but I’m not going dry. (Sorry, Dr Agatston, that’s just no fun.) I am, however, endeavoring to drink less. Cheers.

The biggest hang-up for me going in was my Italian heritage: bread, pasta, pizza, and wine are dearer to me than life. I should sooner go hungry than forsake these friends, or so I thought. But it transpires that the good doctor was absolutely right: the cravings, and the munchies, go away as one regularizes the swings in one’s blood sugar. I now swear by the Glycemic Index. Low-GI foods simply keep you full longer. Also helping was Dr Agatston’s constant praise of olive oil (a “good fat,” one of the category distinctions that separates South Beach from Atkins). So one could, after all, be Italian and on South Beach at the same time.

So far, I’m down 10 pounds from 185 at the outset to 175 this morning. That’s about where I was at the beginning of last week, when I should have finished Phase 1. But then I went on the road with the other blokes on this blog. Texas Barbecue and Irish Car Bombs are part of no reputable diet. Add back five pounds. Now with more diligent effort, and more time on Phase 1, I’ve taken those off again and the clothes are loosening up every day. The key will be to keep the net downward momentum going, although I imagine the graph will look something like the market during a recession: generally down, but with small spikes along the way. My new four food groups are dairy (eggs, cheese, and skim milk), salad, chicken, and the occasional Atkins wrap from Subway. Soon I will branch out into my mother’s more daring array of South Beach-compatible recipes.

What are my goals? Well, as college bulks so large (another dreadful pun, I know) in the story of my stature, I’ve chosen to frame them in terms of applications and admissions. I’d love to get back to 150. But as our bodies are arguably somewhat different at 25 than they were at 18, this is my “reach.” (The lowest I’ve been in the modern era was 156, two summers ago during a calorie-cutting and exercise jihad.) It will also, almost certainly, require me to go to the gym for which I registered. My “likely” or “target” goal is 160, and my “safety” is 165.

These days, however, admissions are so competitive that rarely is a safety truly “safe.” The same applies here. Ten more pounds will require discipline, 25 at least 2.5 times the discipline. I shall rely on your support, encouragement, and, doubtless, continual mockery to keep me motivated.

Oh, and if you want another cardiologist’s endorsement of the South Beach Diet, just ask my dad.