The South Beach Diet , Atkins and Confessions of an Emotional Eater: A Personal Reflection

Dr. Atkins died a few years ago weighing in at over 260 pounds, and had heart problems. The cardiologist who developed the South Beach Diet and a tiny man who took the Atkins plan and gave it a twist. The Emotional Eater is me, Katie Raymond, weighing in at…well that doesn't matter right now.

I walk through the aisles of Atkins, Low-Carb and diet supplements at the local drug store. I didn't always need to walk through and see what was on the shelves. There was a point in my life where I was a regular weight. My pediatrician said that I had a large bone structure, and even though I was just under 5 ft, I would never be as thin as the rest. Being a softball catcher, I was okay with this - -my hero was Yogi Berra, and he was always short and squatty. Nothing wrong in that.

But then I noticed something - -as my confidence level dropped as I began battling Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, my weight started to go up. It's fluctuated for the past few years, nothing extreme either way. With each day that went by I started to realize that I wasn't eating because I was hungry, I was eating because I was upset. I was that emotional eater Oprah loves to book on her shows.

Dr. Atkins and Mr. South Beach Diet cannot fix that. No book or little bars in shiny gold wrappers can make me change. I have to change for myself.I heard once of a man who got extremely upset over losing his job in California. He spent his days and nights eating only Twinkies. One afternoon, after not getting his sugar fix from the treats he shot the mayor and the guy who took his job. Seeing what he had down, he tried to run out of city hall. One can only assume that those Twinkies had caught up to him and he didn't get very far. He was found not guilty - -this was called the "twinkie defense" He was an emotional eater too. This isn't to say that I would go out and shoot anyone if I didn't have my chocolate chip cookie.