Copyright CarbHealth Magazine (c) 2003 All rights reserved |
Angela Stark was born and raised in Culver City, California. She is 5' 2 inches tall and started the low carb way of life May 15th, 1998, weighing 196 pounds and wearing a size 22. "I'll never forget it," Angela said. "I had read Dr. Atkin's book and decided to set a date to start. Mother's Day was approaching, so that was the date I chose to begin the Atkins Diet." Today Angela weighs 103 pounds,which is three pounds under her goal weight of 106. She reached her goal in May of 1999 after just one year of low carb eating. She has maintained her weight loss, and her size is 2/4 figure, ever since. |
It took Angela a little over 10 years to get to her heaviest weight. "I guess it started after my son's motorcycle accident in 1987,"she said. "After a few years of brain trauma rehab, my son came home. My son's friends and staffing persons would come over and I would be cooking. We'd all eat together thinking this was good for my son's recovery. I was cooking and eating a lot - not only that, but eating what was left over too Being raised in an Italian family, at mealtime we were served a lot of bread and pasta. For many years, at every meal, my grandmother used to say to me, 'eat some bread so you'll get full.' Hello! I mean the pasta and the bread, delicious as they were, were not very healthy. They are what Dr. Atkins refers to as 'fluff and fillers'. Now, I just eat real foods. No fluffs and fillers are going into this body. I fill up on steak, chicken, salmion, broccoli, berries, and delicious salads. Yum! I eat only the good stuff!" |
Prior to the Atkins Diet, Angela tried the Beverly Hills Diet (mainly eating pineapple). "I lost 25 pounds," she told me, "but as soon as I was sick to death of pineapple, I gained |
it all back. I did it for the obvious reasons... I was big as a house and nothing else was working, certainly not calorie counting. Every time I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a storefront window or a mirror, I'd jump back from fright. I'm serious. I wasn't seeing 'me'. It was like I was looking at someone else. That couldn't be me! I wanted to lose weight so desperately. The Pineapple Diet had hardly any variety. My duration with it lasted for one or two months. |
February 2003 |
"My doctor had me on fen-phen (thediet drug) for a couple of months, then took me off as soon as concerns came out about it's safety. I had lost about 20 or so pouns in the two to three months I took it. I started to gain the weight back as soon as I stopped taking it. I felt fen-phen was awful! I didn't want to become dependant on the medication and it made me feel tense and irritable. It made me literally feel crazy! My heart would start racing and fluttering. It scared me too. I told the docter and I believe that's when he instructed me to stop taking them. He told me also that there was talk of fen-phen lawsuits that had been brought up in the news. The only thing easy about it was that it was easy to swallow a pill." |
Then Angela found Dr. Atkin's diet. "Nothing else worked. To discover this way of life was not only appealing for the variety of foods you can enjoy but the fact that it didn't require a lot of physical activity to work! That was the clincher. I was in a lot of pain. Even the most simple exercises were not something I wanted to do. |
'Not only was I obease, I was afflicted with what my doctor diagnosed as psoriatic arhritis. I knew it wouldn't be long until I |
