Brian Pierce

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Brian Pierce offers his slightly skewed view of low carbing and the world in general.

Some of you, my dedicated fans, know that I recently lost my job, and that I'm pretty bitter about it. After all, when I asked why I was being let go, I was told that I obviously didn't like working there, and that I didn't really want to continue at that company.

It finally happened. After 1 year, 10 months, and 17 days on Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution.... After countless cows, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and pigs (the tastiest and crispiest of God's creatures - truly blessed) and other types of livestock have given their lives to my ongoing weight loss.... After 148 pounds had been dropped.... I finally came to that wall that stops so many low carbers dead in their tracks every day.

This may just be the sleep deprivation talking, so bear with me. It's 2AM, and inspiration has struck me in the form of a red-haired muse. And that red-haired muse? Mrs. Garrett from "Facts of Life," of course!

Are you prepared for it? Are you ready to face the armies of jelly beans, marshmallow peeps, and chocolate bunnies that are about to be marching down your street and are in the aisles of every supermarket from coast to coast? Are you prepared to face the horror of the Ultimate Rational Cheat Day!?!?!

Now that the day of reckoning has come and gone, the tale can finally be told. It is a tale of ultimate torment and anguish. A tale of a hard-fought and harsh battle the likes of which only the most epic of novels could ever be written.

After so many years of following Atkins, "falling off the wagon" over and over again, but learning from my mistakes each time, and ultimately coming to a very Zen place with my acceptance of this diet and the food that I eat on a daily basis, I can't believe that all my hard work has been undone by a simple scheme of the Marketing Department.

I have been low carbing for approximately one and a half years now, and I have lost 127 pounds. The whole thing has become pretty much second nature to me now. In the beginning, it was very difficult to adjust to this way of life, but boy has it been worth it! My life has completely changed! And that's what this week's article is all about: change.

This is going to be my first winter handling life in the world of Atkins, and I'm pretty scared. There's usually a two-month long period of serious eating that starts on Halloween and doesn't stop until New Year's Day. It's a time where there's just one traditional excuse to pig out after another! How am I going to deal with this?

I went off my diet temporarily one Thursday this summer, and didn't stop being off until the following Monday morning! It all started innocently enough at a companywide lunch meeting. It was the last lunch meeting of the year that we'd be having outdoors, and my coworkers convinced me that I should go ahead and have a burger on a real bun with real ketchup, since this was the last time this year it would happen. And what good is a burger without potato salad and Fritos? Luckily, I was able to rationalize this cheat by remembering one of the golden rules of dieting: food eaten at an official company function doesn't count. So I figured I was safe, and vowed to start anew the next Friday.

Many of you have written me recently, asking all sorts of questions about a recent news item involving me and how my involvement in this bizarre episode has prevented me from writing more frequent articles for CarbSmart.