HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME!

Fifteen years ago I was a size 20. Okay, I was still squeezing into my size 18s, but I was asking a whole lot of them. I had the dreaded double-butt look -- you know, when the zipper on your pants presses into your gut so hard you look like you have an extra butt in front? Not a fashion statement I'd recommend.

I'd been a health food freak for 17 years by then, having gotten nutrition like most people get religion -- the blinding bolt from the blue that changes your life forevermore -- the summer I was nineteen. Back then I had read the old-school nutrition folks: Adelle Davis, J.I. Rodale and his Prevention magazine, and like that. They all said about the same thing: Eat plenty of protein, especially animal protein. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Eat plenty of healthy fats (though they were sadly espousing polyunsaturated vegetable oils at the time; everyone was.) Eat no white flour, eat no white sugar.

And it worked. I dropped weight, I felt wonderful, and being a kid I looked wonderful, even if I was eating plenty of whole grains. I was, after all, young. And while I ate plenty of carbs, I drank none of the liquid candy that permeates the American diet today. Nor did I eat the worst junk food -- no donuts or Pringles or Cap'n Crunch. No lunches of McNuggets, fries, and a coke. (Indeed, McNuggets hit the market after I "got" nutrition. I tried one bite of a friend's McNugget, and I spit it out. Truly foul.) No Fluffernutters on Wonderbread.

But as I hit my thirties, my weight started creeping up, despite plenty of exercise and an active job. Worse, my energy level was becoming fluky; I had horrible crashes, especially in the early evening. I was taking classes at Harry S Truman, one of the City of Chicago public colleges, and it took a whole lot of caffeine to get those As in chemistry, I'm telling you.

What had changed? I was aging, of course, but there was another change, too: The advent of low fat/high carb diet mania. The pundits were all warning us not only against fat, but also against protein -- too much of it was bad for you, they said. The best food was complex carbohydrates -- starches -- they said. Low fat, full of fiber, and sure to keep you energetic for hours, they said. I dutifully ate Cheerios or whole grain pancakes for breakfast, ate lunches of piles of salad with just a teeny bit of tuna and a smidge of low fat dressing. I kept baking potatoes in the office break room, a bag of California mix vegetables in the freezer, and a chunk of fat free cheddar cheese in the fridge, so I could make microwave baked potatoes with veggies and cheese. Well, cheese-oid substance. Something almost but not quite entirely unlike cheese. I ate suppers of whole wheat noodles with fat free sauce, or made into pasta salad with low fat mayo, or of lentil or bean soup with whole grain toast. My favorite summer supper was fresh tomatoes, air-popped popcorn, and beer.

And while I sometimes felt well, just as often I could barely slog through my days.

When I moved to Bloomington 18 years ago, I was still eating a low fat diet centering around starches. I don't know if it was due to no longer doing 15-20 massages per week, or to having a bigger kitchen to cook in, and therefore working on stuff like curried potatoes and peas, three-grain chicken pilaf with pineapple chutney, that sort of thing, but I gained 10 pounds in the first year I lived in town.

Flash forward a couple of years to the autumn of '94. We were getting married the following spring, and I wanted to lose weight for my wedding. We were also broke. So I figured I'd cut back even further on meat and fat, and eat even more starches, and I'd save money and lose weight, both. I took to things like cutting up one low-fat turkey smoked sausage in a huge casserole of potatoes, with a sauce made with low fat cottage cheese and skim milk.

I also joined a gym and started doing 5 step aerobics classes per week. Five.

Did I lose weight? Not so much. I actually gained a bit. I also started to feel a bit crazed about food. This wasn't new to a girl who'd stolen to support her sugar habit as a kid, but it was disconcerting as hell. One night, after a dinner of roasted chicken (without the skin), broccoli and brown rice, I forced myself to sit on the sofa and not get up to get anything else for fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes. And it was hard. I was hungry. I was craving. I needed food.

(Ironically, during this time I remember going to the library and looking through the diet books. I spotted Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution, and picked it up, hoping that crazy Atkins had come up with some new, healthy, low fat plan that could help me. I saw it was the same nutty-kooky-dangerous high fat stuff, and put the book back on the shelf.)

I went to my wedding a size eighteen, and had to buy new shorts for my honeymoon, because none of my shorts from the previous summer fit.

That was in May. By the end of the summer, the new shorts were too tight. Worse, my blood pressure, historically low, was hitting borderline high for the first time in my life. I was scared. I was doing everything the "authorities" told me should make me slim and energetic and healthy, and I was getting fatter and sicker and tireder by the day. What do you do when you're doing "everything right" and it's all coming out wrong?

But I'd picked up an old nutrition book by one of those old-school nutrition gurus, Gayelord Hauser. Just a few days before Labor Day, I was reading it, and one sentence jumped out at me: Obesity has nothing to do with how much you eat; it is instead a carbohydrate intolerance disorder.

I think it was the high blood pressure that made me receptive. I was slightly panicky, and I remembered that when I was a kid everyone knew that if you wanted to lose weight you gave up potatoes, spaghetti, bread and sweets. I had to admit to myself that when I'd tried Atkins the first time it came around in the '70s I had lost weight. When my mother had taken me to see a diet doctor/hypnotist he'd told me to eat a low carb diet. And of course it had been dropping sugar and white flour that had changed my life so much for the better all those years ago. I thought, "What the heck do I have to lose?" and decided to give it a try.

But I had already invited people to a Labor Day barbecue. I had planned a menu and started cooking; I wasn't going to start over, and I couldn't afford to chuck all that food. I decided that the day after Labor Day would be the day I went low carb. Hence, my fifteen year anniversary on the day after Labor Day.

The rest is history, of course. In three days those shorts were loose. By ten days in my blood pressure was low normal again. Might have been sooner, that's just when I got to the blood pressure machine at the store. My energy level was soaring, I was losing weight effortlessly, and I was miraculously un-hungry.

Nobody was low carb back then, of course. Consciousness was just barely starting to build. I found an email support group, and that helped.

About three weeks into my low carb journey, when it was clear I had set my foot on a path from which there was no return, I had a disheartening experience: I walked into my kitchen and didn't have the slightest idea what to cook for supper. I'd had to throw out most of my recipes when I'd gone low carb, of course, and now I was clueless in the kitchen, maybe for the first time in my life.

I got mad. I took a vow that I was going to learn to cook this new way as well as I'd ever cooked low fat/high carb. This is where I have ended up, and boy, I can't think of a better place to be.

A lot has happened since then. We've been through the Low Carb Boom of '02-'03, and the Low Carb Bust of '04. We've seen low carb specialty stores popping up like mushrooms after the rain, only to die ignominiously a year later. (And really, it was predictable. Even at the height of low carb mania, you never saw specialty low fat stores, now did you?) We've seen every big food processor out there try to cash in by putting out "low carb" food, often only "low carb" if you did some very creative math. The worst was when I found the Atkins "A" on Entemann's coffee cakes, listing white flour, sugar, and corn syrup among their ingredients. I thought at the time "This almost makes me glad Dr. A is dead."

We've seen the media touting the wonders of low carb, only to turn around and tell us how crazy and dangerous it was, and how low carb was dead, and oh, wasn't it silly when we all were avoiding bread and pasta? We can all breathe easy and enjoy that lovely pasta supper, so long as it's whole grain.

Yet the research has continued apace, with a steady body of clinical knowledge demonstrating that Dr. Atkins was right; a low carb diet not only causes weight loss and suppresses hunger, it dramatically improves health. The media may still be pushing whole grains, but the grass roots are incredibly strong; when I tell people I'm low carb I regularly hear "My Dad lost fifty pounds that way, " or "Only thing that ever worked for me" or "Gosh, I ought to do that."

At least everyone is now on the same page about sugar, and especially fructose. Gluten-free diets are picking up steam, as are paleo/primal diets. Many people are coming to the same place by different roads.

It's been a wonderful journey. I have found my true work, a community that never fails to make me feel loved and supported, and that continually dazzles me with their support for one another. I have had the privilege of meeting many of my heroes, and the thrill of actually being able to call many of them "friend." I have had the ongoing opportunity to learn and grow and refine my understanding of nutrition, not to mention the luxury of being a stay-at-home dog mom, puttering around the kitchen. I have had a bully pulpit. And I have quite literally sat at my computer tearing up, as I read the wonderful, joyful, heartfelt emails of readers letting me know I've helped.

Here's one I received just recently that made my day:

Dana,

I have just recently come to terms with my carb addiction. I realize that some may find the term "carb addiction" a joke, however, I don't mean it lightly or in a joking manner. My addiction was just as real and just as destructive as smoking, drugs or alcohol. I would binge on carbs until I literally made myself sick. Once I started, I couldn't stop.
Well, after a night of lying on the floor waiting for my stomach to explode or sleep to kick in so I wasn't in so much pain, I finally said no more. I had to cut off carbs or I was going to be in real trouble. My fiance had been on low-carb diets before so he helped me start a meal plan. I, also, went on several websites to see what foods were appropriate to eat. I did very good for about a month, but as you state in your book, I got tired of eggs for breakfast and meat and veggies for dinner. I was ready to give up!

Finally, at the book store, reaching for anything to save myself before I caved, I found your cookbook. After thumbing through it for a few minutes I was sold! Your recipes are like a gift from heaven. I've had your cookbook for a week now and I have made a meal from it everyday. I no longer feel deprived and I no longer want to give in. I even made the Perfect Protein Pancakes for my family's Sunday breakfast. Everyone loved them.

I wanted to write and say "Thank you!" You have saved me. I look forward to buying more of your books.
Your newest fan,
Renee Berra

Just reading it again has me misting up. That's why I do it, folks. Right there. That's the point.

Well, that, and the fact that at almost 52 I'm sitting here with a belly full of butter-topped steak and salad with bacon and bacon dressing -- with no age-related health problems (which aren't always age related, if you ask me), and wearing a pair of size 10 shorts.

I'm all set for another fifteen. Y'all coming with me?