How You Can Benefit By Low Carbohydrate Diet
	Having come this far, and having glanced at the recipes and menus that follow, you know that this diet will not call upon you for heroism above and beyond your strength of character. Once you have trained yourself to edit out the extra carbohydrates, your food allowance is so liberal and satisfying, and can be so interesting, that it can give rise to another sort of problem. Recently a group of teachers in a suburban school decided to try the low carbohydrate diet together, so that they could draw on each other for moral and technical support and enliven their menus by exchange of recipes. By the end of the first week they had all lost between three and six pounds, and by the end of the third week most of them had put in happy hours taking in their skirts and shifts. But one young second-grade teacher continued to appear in her pre-diet wardrobe, unaltered, though her mirror must have told her that she looked baggier every day. Finally a colleague, who knew Miss X wasn't much of a hand with a sewing machine, made a tactful offer of help. 'It's not the sewing!' Miss X burst out. 'I've always had to pay for alterations and I don't mind that. I'm just afraid to believe it, that's all. I'm three inches less around the hips but I just know that the minute I get those skirts taken in those inches will be back. Nobody can take offweight this easily!' Miss X was suffering from her American heritage of post-Puritan conscience: it can't be good for you unless it hurts. Well, this diet is good for you, and it's good for your figure, and it will hurt less than any reducing regimen you've ever tried. You'll never go hungry. It is also very easy to apply because it's loaded with foods that have probably always formed the mainstay of your menu-meats, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese that you like to eat. But if, like Miss X, you can't accept happiness without knowing that it's going to cost you something-relax. It will require some effort at first. If you are an old-line dieter, you probably do not realize how conditioned you are to the calorie-counting dogma. It takes a tricky. bit of mental adjustment to stop thinking of calories as little horned men with pitchforks at the ready, just waiting for you to glance at Beef Stroganoff on a menu. The best way to do it is to stop thinking about calories altogether. Think in terms of grams. The diet list is set up that way, as are the long food charts which have been appended to make it simple for you to keep your menu varied, yet still within your 60-gram limit. Food elements translate very easily from grams to calories. When you eat 1 gram of carbohydrate, remember, you're getting 4 calories; 1 gram of protein, 4; 1 gram of fat, 9. But don't translate. The reason for this is simple but crucial. This diet is carefully balanced to maintain a proportion of carbohydrate to protein and fat. It reduces carbohydrate, but supplies you with fat and protein to perform their own functions and also to fill in for the carbohydrate you've cut down. When you allow yourself to think in terms of calories-particularly of calories of fat-you tend to worry about how many you're taking in. Almost involuntarily you start holding back, cutting down on everything, trapped again by the calorie-counter's credo that if less is good, much less must be better. Shortly you are hungry, fretful, easily tired. You blame it on the diet, but the fault is yours because you have not played by the rules. You must have the protein to feed your muscles, bones, and tissues; you must have the fat for energy, for satiety, for keeping the body supple, for production of fatty acids. Next: Forget The Total Amount