With the coming of the New Year, it seemed appropriate to kick off my last semester of columns with a piece of hard-hitting journalism on an international phenomenon. After minutes of careful deliberation, I decided to explore the world of dietary New Year?s resolutions by going on seven different diets over the course of one week.
Days 1-4: A Time of Meat, God, Tofu and Moderation
On the first day, I chose to follow a low-carb diet because such bread-free meal plans have come to define America?s weight loss scene for the past few years. There are a number of plans out there, but the Atkins Diet is the granddaddy of them all. After the publication of his book ?Dr. Atkins?
Diet Revolution? in 1972, Dr. Robert C. Atkins started a craze that made millions of Americans think carbohydrates were making them overweight, as well as causing Type II diabetes and a host of other problems. Atkins ? both the man and the diet ? took a good deal of flak from health professionals as a potential harbinger of heart disease and high cholesterol. Nevertheless, scores of Americans see the diet as a way to have their sugar-free cake and eat it, too.
The Atkins diet is composed of a number of stages, some of which allow the consumption of moderate levels of carbohydrates. However, the first stage, which is called induction, allows only 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. Because I was going for authenticity at this point in my experiment, I chose to begin with the first phase. I had a mushroom and cheese omelet for breakfast, a prosciutto-wrapped cheese and a spinach salad for lunch and steak for dinner.
My day on Atkins was tolerable, but watching a friend of mine enjoy a snack of olive tapenade spread generously atop a hunk of crusty bread made me pine for carbohydrates. I was tempted to snatch the half-eaten bread right off of his plate, but respect for my column compelled me to wait, so I walked sullenly over to the fridge, took out some celery and noisily munched while biding my time until tomorrow.
The second day of my experiment proved a little tricky; I had a friend visiting from out of town, and I had promised to take him to my favorite deli ? a little place called Cecil?s in St. Paul, Minnesota. Not wanting to limit myself to soups or salads at such a formidable institution, I decided I would keep kosher instead of crash dieting.
At first, I felt that my decision not to follow a weight-loss diet was a copout, but I managed to persuade myself otherwise. Not all New Year?s resolutions are related to health, and exercising religious discipline, even that of a religion I do not practice, seemed to be appropriate, given the nature of the experiment. Really, though, it was just an excuse to stuff my face with latkes without feeling bad about it.
Keeping strictly kosher is very difficult in this country. Few restaurants keep meat and dairy separate, and many foods (including UW?s own Babcock Hall ice cream) have derivatives of pork or shellfish. Because of these difficulties, I made a compromise. I decided I would follow the main tenets of the Jewish dietary code kashrut ? no mixing of meat and dairy, no pork and no shellfish ? while being less than vigilant in my inspection of restaurant facilities. This loose set of rules allowed for a wonderful day of eating lox and cream cheese, a bagel, potato salad and latkes at lunch, and a simple cheese pizza at dinner. My friend?s visit and my day of keeping kosher were both a great success.
The next day I followed a vegan diet, one of the more popular diets among college students. A variety of concerns ? the idea that eating meat fosters animal cruelty, dissatisfaction over the amount of arable land that it takes to raise cattle, a subjective distaste for meat and religious concerns, to name a few ? lead vegans to eat only plants, eschewing dairy, eggs, meat and all of their derivatives. Snack foods were my friends on my vegan day. A lack of motivation and a lack interest in vegan food led me to snack on dairy-free crackers and bowls of cereal and soymilk instead of eating regular meals. I only got remotely creative at dinnertime, when I made a teriyaki tofu stir-fry. While I did not starve on this day, the monotony of the food left me uninspired.
The easiest day of my week of dieting was the one on which I followed the 2005 ?Dietary Guidelines for Americans.? The government-sponsored website MyPyramid.gov gave me a personalized eating plan tailored to a man of my age, height and weight. The guidelines encouraged me to eat a variety of foods, and I did just that. I enjoyed my forced moderation, eating my usual breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, a small glass of beer at the Summit brewery tour, a late lunch of pasta at an Italian cafeteria in St. Paul and a dinner of roast chicken and salad at home.
Days 5-7: Hijacked by Hospitality, or a Writer?s Weakening Will?
The fifth day of my experiment began with good intentions and a bowl of oatmeal. As I gobbled down my mean, unsweetened porridge, I began to plan out my last three days of dieting. Because my friends in Milwaukee wanted to introduce me to a number of their local foods, I had to plan my experiment carefully. I decided the fifth day would be a control day, during which I would eat the same way I usually do. Days six and seven would be devoted to low-fat dining and lacto-ovo vegetarianism, which is a vegetarian diet with the addition of dairy and eggs. One of the people with whom I was staying was a vegetarian, so I was sure that at least one of my last two days would be easy.
The control day went along swimmingly and bore a striking resemblance to the day that I followed the 2005 ?Dietary Guidelines for Americans.? After my breakfast of fruit and oatmeal, I lunched on a club sandwich with chicken noodle soup and had a couple of slices of pizza for dinner. I went to bed satisfied and ready for two more days of dieting.
The next morning, my friend?s mother made us a traditional South Indian breakfast of steamed dumplings called idlis, crepe-like and savory dosas and potato-stuffed masala dosas. After having two of all three of these, as well as healthy portions of the accompanying lentil soup and coconut chutney, my stomach swelled, and I began to suspect that I was no longer dieting.
The rest of the weekend passed in a blur of lasagna, carrot cake, frozen custard, an Indian potato flatbread called aloo paratha, fried potato dumplings called vada, and a big plate of nachos while watching some of the NFL playoffs. Dinner invitations and spending time with friends knocked my diet plans off the rails.
All in all, my week of crash dieting was colossally unsuccessful. Eventually, I got so disaffected with the idea of following a strict diet that I gave up the project entirely. It is easy to blame others and say hospitality destroyed the experiment. An alternative explanation is that I was simply weak and could never follow any diet for very long. While there is some truth in both of these (especially the second one), I think the primary reason for my failure was that the diets I attempted to follow emphasized deprivation over moderation.
This is not to say that deprivation is entirely without merit. I enjoyed following the diets to the extent that they made me think about the food I was eating, but I disliked the fact that they made me think about the food I was not eating. For people following a diet for ethical or religious reasons, this can be a source of comfort and strength. I, however, had no ideological reason for eating the way I did, so the diets that emphasized deprivation were not sustainable for me.
The experiment has led me to adopt yet another belated New Year?s resolution. I have decided to follow the advice of Michael Pollan, author of ?The Omnivore?s Dilemma? and the new ?In Defense of Food: An Eater?s Manifesto?: ?Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.?
Jason Engelhart is a senior majoring in economics and history. If you?d like to discuss the pratfalls of dieting over a pint of H?agen-Dazs, e-mail him at [email protected].
