21 FEBRUARY 2004, Page 54

Ups and downs

Petronella Wyatt

So the fabled Dr Atkins was 18 stone when he died. His friends and relatives claim this was because of fluid retention. But, as a commentator wrote a few days ago, that's an awful lot of fluid. So now we are faced with the possibility that the man who claimed he could make the world thin was actually a fatty.

When the Atkins diet was first sprung upon us it seemed like a gift from Heaven. Now doctors bombard us with statements claiming that, rather than being a gift from Heaven, it is likely to send us there rather quicker than we would have wished. High cholesterol, sluggish blood movement, clogged up arteries and then, bang, the quick goodbye.

At my age, however, it is not my heart that worries me. It is the effectiveness of the diet. Does it actually turn one into Audrey Hepburn? Having tried the diet twice I can safely say, yes, but only for about a week. As soon as one stops, the fat returns quicker than ever.

I suspect that the Atkins diet is better suited to men than to women, anyway. Men's bodies are better equipped to take a barrage of protein and no carbs, because their metabolisms convert the protein into muscle. But women, unless they go in for that body-building stuff, have about a tenth of the muscle mass of the opposite sex.

The effect the Atkins diet has on females is not a salutary one. It all begins quite well. One has bacon and eggs for breakfast, cold cuts for lunch, and fish or steak for dinner. But after a few days the side-effects kick in. I remember the rakethin ballet dancer Deborah Bull once saying that her favourite food was pasta, partly because it provided energy. Another mainstay of athletes is the banana, which, I learnt from Dr Atkins's book, is 'banned food' because it allegedly contains more carbs than a pot of double cream.

As I was saying, after a few days on Atkins one's energy level drops alarmingly. After a week, one wants to sleep in until ten. I met a girl once who suffered from something called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She must have slept about 18 hours a day. It then transpired that she had been on the Atkins diet for two months. Frankly, I wasn't surprised.

After ten days, I admit, one begins to see a weight loss of a few pounds. But does this make one happy? No. By this time the Atkins dieter is so bad-tempered due to lack of carbohydrates that she feels like kicking the scales, rather than taking in that pair of jeans that used to be a bit snug. At the end of two weeks she feels positively suicidal and is shouting at everyone in sight. Yes she may have reached her ideal weight, but does it stay that way? Of course not.

Having been denied carbohydrates for so long, I immediately hinged on pasta and cake. After seven days the weight I had lost was back on. But at least my energy had returned and I was no longer behaving like a snappy crocodile.

Apart from Atkins, there are so many diets on the market now that it makes the head spin. But the truth is that some people are born to he thin and others are born to be plump. Many of my Italian friends are size eight and yet whenever we go out for dinner they stuff themselves with spaghetti and never put on weight.

On the other hand I once had a nanny whose figure, as they say, let her down. She ate like a bird and then tried virtual starvation but her body remained as large as ever. Her mother was the same. I think both women had sluggish glands and were simply unable to become thin.

Then there are those of us who are not fat, but naturally curvy. All the diets in the universe are not going to reduce wide hips and a large bust. And consider women who are large-boned. The only way they can make their wrists or ankles thinner is by chopping them in half with a meat cleaver.

It's all a bloomin' lottery. Going back to Audrey Hepburn, she, I believe, never dieted. Her waif-like figure was due to the tiny rations of food her mother could get hold of in Holland during the war. This probably shrunk Miss Hepburn's stomach and determined her figure for the rest of her life. There you have it. In my belief the only way to lose weight, if one is lucky, is to eat less and drink fewer glasses of wine. A depressing thought, but not as depressing as Atkins.