COLUMN: Fatkins – Diet gone wild

I’m a bad person, and I can’t outrun my past. There was a time in my young, impressionable life that I not only eschewed carbohydrates, I actually practiced carbohydrate loading in preparation for running marathons. Forgive me. I was just a crazy 5-foot-11, 150-pound kid who had not read all the science that supports the Fatkins diet and the bun-less burger campaign. If I were caught carbohydrate loading now I’d be stoned with day-old bagels by a throng of Fatkins diet druids.

You know that a diet has passed from fad to fantasy when McDonald’s, 7-11, Subway, Carl’s Jr. and Anheuser Busch have jumped onboard. Always remember, these people really care about your health.

I guess I’m just jealous that I didn’t think of it first. A diet of steaks, cheese and booze (It’s true! Pure alcohol has zero carbs!) has got to appeal to a lot of people out there. It’s appealing even to me, but then I wake up with a hangover and constipation, and I revert to my old flawed habits of moderation, exercise and regularity.

It’s not like the Fatkins diet is a new idea. Dr. Fatkins published the “Fatkins Revolution” in 1972 and somehow, like the Dead Sea Scrolls and Robert Johnson’s lost blues tunes, it is only being deciphered and appreciated much later. Of course the myth behind the man was enhanced when he died in 2003.

Is it possible that the martyred diet doctor did finally unlock the secret to svelte? Of course not; everybody knows that the answer to the girth of a nation starts with “L” ends in “Y” and has the abbreviation for the state of Arizona in the middle, but saying that is really bad for tabloid sales.

The Fatkins people have anticipated all our concerns. This is from their Web site:

Fallacy: The bad thing about Fatkins is that it makes you crave sweets.

Fact: Craving is a symptom of addiction, and the surefire cure for addiction is abstinence. Far from making you crave sweets, the first few days of Induction simply make you aware that [you] have been addicted to them.

Yes, I have been noticing that craving water is a surefire sign of my addiction to water. I’ve tried abstinence but I keep waking up in the hospital with an IV in my arm and a clinical psychologist hovering around the gurney.

I know I’m just cynical and brainwashed. The media is constantly misrepresenting the Fatkins diet because the media wants us all to be fat and unhealthy because, well, I don’t know. They just do because they are the evil liberal media. The media wants us to be fat so that we will do nothing but sit around and read newspapers and magazines all day.

To combat the evil plotting media the Fatkins Web site has a page where you can immediately report negative press. You may want to go there after reading this. The address is http://atkins.com/why/negative-press-alert.html. Be sure to note in your missive that I said “Fatkins” because I really do give an “F” about their diet.

Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday in The Statesman. Comments can be sent to dhinkamp@msn.com.