It's 4.05am on a Monday morning, the sun is slowly rising and I'm sitting in bed. Haven't been to sleep yet. I know it sounds ridiculous and before anyone jumps for joy at the fact my energy levels may have sky rocketed - It's only because I woke up at a shocking 2PM today (Sunday). On Saturday night I went to see a friend, was very strong, had no wine and she ate a Dominos in front of me! On the way up to her house I did think something like this might occur so I stocked up on pastrami, cheese strings and nuts.. I have read on a website that you shouldn't have nuts in the first two weeks but I really don't see why. I saw a few that I was shocked how many carbs were actually in them but I ended up with a packet of Brazil nuts. I have been told for years by my mum that I should eat a Brazil nut per day as they will give me my entire days intake of theanine.. Of course I have no idea what this is.. It must be good for you? It's also in tea..
So after I came home at about midnight I saw the absolute state of my bedroom and started to really really clean! I never ever have that kind of energy and considering this was 16 hours after I'd started work that day, I could not believe it. Is this because of the Atkins diet? Still not sure!! All I know is I cleaned for 4 hours straight and my room now looks lovely =) I woke up late but didn't want to get myself out of a food routine of some sort so I had my eggs and bacon when I woke up. Really enjoying having that breakfast every day you know!!
I'm actually starting to forget about food too - It's day 3 and I'm not constantly thinking about food. It's very empowering knowing that I seem to be filling up on protein. I've even started speaking to my friend, she had a baby 9 months ago and is still trying to lose some weight she gained during pregnancy - she might go on the diet with me and then we'll both go to the gym together.
I had an enormous headache today. I've never felt pain like that on the side of my head. It was the right side of my head, and to be honest, it's still there a little bit. It felt like something sharp was pressing down onto my skull, into my brain and down to my right eye. It only started when I left the house around 5PM to go up to my friends house. It was quite sunny but I had shades on so I'm sure it wasn't the light in my eyes. I'd already taken 2 paracetamol for period pain in the last hour so was pressing down on my head in an effort to reduce the pain. When I went inside and sat down for a while, it faded away. But it was horrible. Truly horrible. Is this the induction flu I've been hearing so much about? I also woke up this morning and thought I'd forgotten to brush my teeth last night. My breath wasn't awful, by any standards, so if this is the ketosis breath everybody talks about, it's really really not that bad. As soon as I brushed my teeth there was no trace of it. And it's been fine all day. My headache has worried me slightly. It wasn't like my other headaches, it felt like there was something wrong.
I've spent the whole evening feeling very strange. My moods and sleeping patterns have gotten better so far on the diet. But I came across something by accident on youtube that scared me - The Kimkins diet. It's actually disturbed me, which might be clouding my judgement this evening. For anybody who has never heard of Kimkins - It's a diet that was created by a woman named Kim, who posed an online diet plan, low fat, low carb, high protein diet. It costs $59.99 to join and you're entered into a diet plan with online support. On the homepage there was a beautiful woman on the screen, and this Kim (the creator). She also showed before photos and claimed to have lost somewhere in the region of 200lbs in 11 months by a diet she had created. The website also included many other testimonials and before and after pictures. It was even featured in Woman's Own magazine with one of the Kimkins success stories being featured. The lady that was featured had shed a major amount of weight in a very very short period of time. She soon felt bad for it. She started to lose her hair, she got dizzy spells and at one point had heart palpitations so badly she thought she may be having a heart attack. When she explained all of these symptoms to Kim (Who by this point had hired her as the spokesperson for Kimkins because of her success), Kim would state these were all normal and to persist with the diet. When she looked further into the diet she actually realised she was consuming under 500 calories a day some days and was also concerned because she'd never seen Kim in person. She raised all of the issues in an email to Kim, and the response she got was that she was fired. About a week later she received a shocking email with surveillance footage of the real Kim, as many other people had complaints about the diet.
It turns out, there was no Kim. Kim was actually Heidi Diaz. A 300lb overweight woman who was using a fake identity to create this website. She did show the before photo of herself and the after photo was a picture of a Russian model, found on a mail order bride website. Many of the photos were fake, the testimonials were also fake. And she had made just over 2 million dollars scamming people. She has no medical background and clearly no experience and is quite happy to watch vulnerable, overweight and obese women lose weight far too rapidly and deteriorate their health in order to fund her own overeating it would seem.
Despite all of this, and appearances on a few television programmes whereby medical professionals and nutritionists were urging people not to under any circumstances follow this diet or follow the website. They claimed to have put up on their website an explanation from Heidi Diaz aka Kim on why she has had no success with her own diet plan and the health implications and dangers of her diet or even why she used a fake identity. This was never on the website. The lady who thought she was having a heart attack also asked for her "success" story to be taken down - this wasn't done either. This is absolutely ludicrous yet I still found people on youtube claiming to be starting the diet recently or still follow it knowing these extreme extreme dangers. I even found myself so concerned I messaged one lady urging her to come off of this diet!!
I have no idea why this has affected me so badly. I know the reason why these women were so unhealthy was because they were basically starving themselves. They were constantly reassured as long as they had fat on their body they would not starve and to ignore the signs of anorexia and starvation and told to take laxatives regularly -another sign of anorexia. But there was also a lot of talk of ketosis and it being very bad for you. I personally don't believe this - I've done a lot of research on Atkins and Atkins helped an awful lot of people, he also managed to achieve a diet whereby you weren't hungry, lost weight and reduced your cholesterol - but still, it's all freaked me out a little bit. I'm not planning on coming off the Atkins at all, I'm still at this "I'll be the one person it won't work for" stage. But that's only because I'm in the first week I think, I'm trying to rationalize it.
I keep getting concerned about the implications of eating so much meat and it's a bit scary embarking on a diet you have no personal experience of. I'm hopeful, but this Kimkins thing has just freaked me out I think. I get very upset in general when I see manipulative scams or scam artists. It shocks me how people in the world can believe in this or follow this. I have to have more faith the Atkins will work, and I have to have more faith I'll be healthier for it too.
I notice I'm becoming carb obsessed - Which I expected anyway, but am starting to think long term - When I've lost all my weight and I want to stay on my optimum carb level which means I will eat a normal amount of carbs (I think - haven't read that part of the book yet!) that I'll still opt to not eat them - I don't want to develop an eating order - I just want to effectively lose weight.
Date/Time: Monday 7th June - 04:28AM
Weight Lost: Still in the first week - No weigh in.
Side Effects: Worst headache I've ever experienced. Lack of hunger today.
Mood: Very negative, scared, still hoping this will work for me.. On the other hand noticing my energy increasing. I think I'm just scared because my body is changing!
