Gordon McLauchlan: My sybaritic self - but a bit thinner

COMMENT

I'm on a diet. Kind of. Lots of steamed vegetables and salads with fish and steak and no carbohydrate, except for an occasional plate of thick oatmeal porridge for breakfast, and every few days two slices of bread in a sandwich for lunch. Those indulgences are what I meant by "kind of".

An important component of this regime into which I was persuaded by the presence of a beer pot is no alcohol except for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

This programme was accompanied by the usual swimming and more than usual walking.

The results were spectacular. After getting into the swing of the thing I lost 4kg in 10 days. That was over a week ago. Since then, nothing.

So I have plateaued, perhaps reaching my natural, healthy weight. Except that the shadow of a beer pot remains. Not the Mt Tongariro it was (lying on my back) but a Mt Hobson sort of a thing.

If I look at the charts that decide whether one is overweight or not, I'm at the very top of the healthy weight for my height category. On the edge of danger.

What's my next move? Do I feel better physically? A little. Do I stay with the diet or reach for what I call abracadabra pills, those magical weight-loss things that make zillions not only for the large pharmaceutical companies but for the hundreds of companies that make phoney herbal remedies. I say phoney because these herbal pills are not subject to any reasonable scientific examination. When they are, they are exposed as scientifically worthless.

One of the largest selling (by the billions) slimming pills in the United States has been scientifically examined and found to contain a stimulant, a laxative and a diuretic. So you get a buzz of energy, go to the toilet and, of course, temporarily lose weight. The stimulant is caffeine, equivalent to drinking four cups of strong coffee.

The expertise behind these products has nothing much to with medical science and everything to do with a pernicious use of marketing science. But no action can be taken unless the manufacturers make "extravagant" claims on the label which, of course, they are careful to avoid.

I decided I didn't want to become one of those suckers born every minute so no to the pills. Then I had it confirmed by a television interview that the various forms of commercial diet are as phoney as the abracadabra pills.

I was watching Larry King Live on CNN. If he is alive - and he moves just enough to suggest he is - he's a living spoof of television current affairs. I understand he's had more face-lifts than the Auckland Town Hall and he's probably about the same age.

This night he was interviewing, using the word very loosely, the widow of Dr Robert Atkins, the diet wizard who died obese after exhorting his followers to turn down carbohydrates and rip into fatty foods.

His widow looked like a woman who lives on pickled onions, healthy enough but very pinched in at the mouth. She was accompanied by a right old motor-mouth, a young doctor trying to resuscitate the Atkins franchise from the bad news about the eponymous diet inventor's death as a fatty.

One caller mentioned a case where the diet might have caused serious harm. Motor-mouth dismissed the charge and King, who has the knack of turning current affairs into commercials, simply said, "So there's no credibility to that call". Motor-mouth waved the suggestion away.

Then came the moment of truth. I felt sorry for all of them, although to the callous it would have been hilarious. A caller said Atkins had said once that no one had died from a heart attack before 1912. Absurd? Well, they showed a tape of the good doctor saying just that. His widow confirmed it.

So here you have a guy who has so successfully lured people away from carbohydrates that he's seriously affected the bakery business and he was himself a fruitcake. And a fat fruitcake at that.

I've decided to stay with some of the diet I'm on but largely to resume my former sybaritic way of life. If I go back up a couple of kilograms I'll cut down again. Life's too short to get thin and miserable but it's even shorter if you get fat and lazy. That's the choice, I guess.

A few thoughts for the week:

* Why do Christians get so upset at gay marriages? They once became apoplectic at unwed couples who had children. They condemned the children to bastardy and visited upon them the most awful censure. Well, the burn-'em-in-hell Christians got used to that, so I guess they'll get used to this. If they are so sure God disapproves of gay marriage, then they should rest assured that he will have the last say.

* Should someone tell Lianne Dalziel that governments don't so much get beaten by others as get themselves out. Since the 1950s, Labour Governments particularly have tended to implode. One of the symptoms of this life-threatening condition is the sort of petulance Dalziel displays so regularly. You can tell she feels politics would be such fun if it weren't for disagreeable people and the damn media.

* Have all our MPs noticed that a flash superannuation scheme for MPs in Australia threatened to become an election issue until John Howard backed off? They probably don't care here because politicians of all stripes long ago agreed room should be made at the trough for all their snouts.