Day Three - (I started the blog today) - STARVING

Well, OK. here goes my attempt to blog. I must hide where I live because if I blog, others will know and then poof, there goes any shred of dignity.

OK, I'm a 44 year old woman. I am overweight and have been, off and on for years. I am overweight for many reasons. First, I have no history of ever associating exercise with happiness or pleasure. I discovered I had exercise induced asthma at 20 years old. Voila, learned I could exercise, but it was too late for that to be ingrained into my head as a happy thing. It is to be endured. I'd rather read a book, a mystery or a sci fi book, and eat something with fat in it.

Next, I ate fast food three times a day, often four days per week. For years. Plus a regular coke. (Diet soda is just too gross). And I have a very stressful forensic practice that deals with attorneys and stress and court and angry people and stress. And I am sortof ADHD and that means I don't do well with tedium. Watch me not blog for weeks on end, just like the ADD person that I know I am inside.

Anyway. ADD people don't have time to cook, prepare, look at labels or write stuff down. If something is on fire, is exploding, is yelling in the street and needs to be hospitalized, I'm your gal. Cool and focused when the intensity is strong. Want me to remember to mail a letter? Call someone else. I can't even remember my own birthday, much less yours. Sorry.

So, you've got some reasons about why I weigh 200 pounds at 5 feet 5 inches. However. Somethings, the last two years, have changed for the better.

1) I started lifting weights. Really heavy weights. With a trainer. I started at three times per week and am down to two times (because it's expensive). Hubby is my weight lift partner now (which is new and wonderful). I went from a size 18/20 to a size 12/14 just doing that. But i only lost about 10 pounds total, over that two years. But I know that weight is relative because I am now strong as a ox. Or a bull. I like bulls.

2) I stopped letting myself eat fast food, for the most part. This was really hard at first. Of course, the habits I substituted weren't that great, like a) eating out at restaurants every day for lunch or b) not eating lunch at all. I also stopped, most recently, the automatic consumption of regular coca cola at least two and sometimes three times per day. I deluded myself into thinking that it was really my "coffee" but who am I kidding. I actually looked at the ingredient list on the can once and wondered if I would be preserved for posterity because of all the crap that's in it. But I LOVE it. It has been my drink of choice. But I let it go. My friend A, hooked me on iced tea. And given that I'm from the South, where we drink it all the time, I switched. And no, it's not sweet tea either but I do long for it.

3) I have been having a talk with myself about myself. First, I surrendered to the fact that I don't sleep and got on some sleep meds. Ambien is not for the faint of heart. It worked though. Gloriously worked. I could count on - rely on sleeping seven hours, to the minute, each night. However, I found myself standing in front of the fridge and eating hotdogs nightly as well. So, I got myself OFF Ambien and would not recommend it for sleep for more than 1 week. I also stopped seeing the MD psychiatrist who prescribed it for me, even though she reassured me that it would be OK and that it would be find for long term use. Nope. It's not. So I then got a different psychiatrist. Dr. D. He saw me and said "honey you are so ADD" and of course I argued with him for a few weeks about that. What if he is just a quack and thinks everyone is ADD? And he tells me "when you are on the right dose of ADD medicine, you will sleep fine." I looked at him as if he has completely lost his mind. STIMULANT does not equal SLEEP!

He was right. Dammit. So, I am on Focalin. Too bad it's not working for appetite suppression. (My appetite is the size of a lion. Nothing suppresses it but new romance and I don't want that, because I've been married for 15 years to a great guy.. of course, 15 years ago, I was younger and did not have peri menopausal symptoms either).

OK, so now, I finally get to a real MD. And I tell her about my weight and have a real examination (not like the old doctor who told me that no matter what I did, I was 'insulin resistant' by genetics, and would not be able to lose much weight. No kidding, he actually said that. So I found a new doctor.) Dr. K. Dr K. told me that she felt I was not "OBESE" as the Old Jerk Doctor told me. (He told me not to lose weight because I would qualify for gastric bypass). She said that I was (as we know) strong as an ox. Also that I could take off a bunch of fat. But that I was not hopelessly obese. She referred me to Dr. T. Dr. T is an MD who is a nature guy(more on this later) and who apparently, has supervised a diet on about 5 of her patients. The patients have all lost like 15 to 30 pounds IN A MONTH.

This is the kind of diet I like, I tell myself.

(This blog is going to be totally long because I have to put all of this down, then I imagine it will grow shorter once I've caught up. And if not, who cares, because it's my damn musings and I'm going to muse at any length I need to. So there.)

So, I make an appointment to see Dr. T. The office is weird in that there is no counter and no nurses - there's two desks side by side and I check in and he's about 20 mins late but the poor thing is running through the clinic and you can tell he's doing he best.

So he talks to me. This was last Friday. He seems patient with me but I worry that I blab too much and am too nervous and he probably thinks I'm some kind of psycho. He starts to talk to me about reading this book by Kevin Trudeau, who is that QUACK CREEPY GUY ON TV and I am thinking "oh shit oh shit." But I do not say anything about that. Instead, I think "Dr. T is healthy looking and seems really serene. He is attractive but not as much as my husband but in the same way. He is talking to me. What is he saying? I am nodding my head. I am talking back. But I am thinking is he a loony? Is this diet going to help me? Oh no, he's talking about 'toxins' which I think is a load of crap. .." And so forth.

Dr. T. tells me that he is interested in eastern and western approaches to health. He tells me that if I take amino acids, and so forth, I will not need ADD meds. I think no way, buddy. I tell him I'm not giving up my ADD meds. He tells me I don't have to. I am so argumentative with him. He probably thinks I'm a wacko. I know I must try his patience. I am asking a zillion questions about hcg and why/how it works. I don't get a satisfactory answer. He is now telling me about the Ladder of Commitment, which is a psychological thing so I pay attention. The lowest rung is apathy (been there). Then next rung is hopefulness/fantasy (man am I there) and then next is "I will try" (and Yoda says, there is no try, there is only DO) and the next rung is "I will ...unless and until.." and the final rung is "I AM DOING THIS NO MATTER WHAT".

I chant this, "NO MATTER WHAT I AM DOING THIS DIET" all the way home from the appointment. I also wonder how old he is and how he got to be this nature MD. The MD part makes me feel better because I honestly believe all this naturopathic stuff is a total crock. Take Collodial Silver, for example. I saw a person, actually saw them, who was COMPLETELY PEWTER COLORED, permanently, because of taking this collodial silver. Thank god he didn't ask me to do that. I would have left, I'm sure.


OK Saturday/Sunday - I go to find the book. No one can stock this book. I end up finding it in a K-Mart when we went to get socks for hubby and child. What a cheesy cruddy looking book.
That horrid Kevin Trudeau person is all slick on the slick red cover of the book. I am so embarrassed that I hold the book next to my thigh as we walk through K MART to pay for it.

I get the thing home and start to read it.

I HATE THIS BOOK. This guys is a self-aggrandizing creep. I Google him and Wikipedia him. Others hate him too. He's in trouble for making all kinds of claims and then not being able to live up to them. The FTC is mad at him (but he scoffs and says "see, I told you 'they' want to shut me down".. the guy is a big conspiracy theorist). The FDA is mad too. He believes that the federal government is in league both with Big Pharma and Big Agri to keep people ill and fat. Like our federal government is efficient and/or effective enough to do this. Our federal government can't find its ass with both hands. But I digress.

I'm reading the book because I want to start the diet on Monday. I read fast. I was so mad at this book my son worried that I shouldn't read it because I kept swearing at it and diagnosing the author. Also, it's poorly written. He just blabs and blabs, like I am doing here, and in the end, the diet is not even developed by him!! The actual Simeons Plan takes up 10 pages, with the most important part, the "phase 2" (his label, because he made up phase one himself) taking three and a half pages. I could have gotten this (and did) right off the internet. And saved myself $25.00 and his smarmy whining about food and additives and conspiracy. ICK.

The diet consists of 500 calories per day, and that is it: Here it is:

You have on injection of HCG (in your fat ass which is why you are here in the first place).

You drink a half gallon to a gallon of water through the day.

Breakfast - are you ready for this?

black coffee, or green tea or Yerba Mate tea or Wu Long tea or Chamomile tea.

that's it for breakfast. But you can have as much as you want of these teas! Whee!

LUNCH:

100 grams (the size of a deck of cards) of:

ORGANIC (it all has to be organic btw)
chicken breast
grass fed beef
grass fed veal (which I found strange and ironic)
wild chilean sea bass
flounder
sole
halibut

OK, veal but not pork? not turkey?
No tuna? even the wild caught kind? no salmon?

this makes NO SENSE to me.

But it continues. Because lucky you, you also get...

"one large handful" of ONE of the following organic vegetables.

Spinach
Chard
Beet greens (oh be still my heart)
Lettuces of any kind
Tomatoes
Celery
Fennel
Onion (any color)
radishes
cucumbers
asparagus or...
CABBAGE.

No green beans? No broccoli? NO. "why?" Brian Trudeau: "Because I said so."

Also you must eat one small organic apple or small organic grapefruit or a handful of organic strawberries.

You can season the food with the juice of half a lemon (it has to be an organic lemon) or pepper or other organic herbs but no oil. EVER.

Dinner is the exact same thing. You need to not have "two meals exactly the same in the same day."

You are not supposed to put creams or lotions on your skin.

You cannot substitute an orange for an apple or it will not work.

You cannot substitute green bean for asparagus and so forth or it will not work.
Why won't it work if I eat broccoli versus asparagus? I don't know, because no one knows, and the original Dr. Simeon is DEAD DEAD DEAD and he developed this diet in the 1950's and 1960's and because he's dead we can't ask him.

Trudeau's book talks about this "diet secret" as if it has been handed down since then like alchemy secrets from the Knights Templar. Jeez.

Man I really hate that book and I hate it that no one can give me a straight answer about green beans versus asparagus. But I don't want to bug Dr. T because if he sees me as a whacko, then I can't follow this diet and if, if, if on the outside chance it can work... if I could lose, as Dr. T wants me to lose, a half pound to a pound a day... then I have to do this. Maybe there is something magical or perhaps chemically magical about the food combinations. But I don't think so.

And the HCG. Let's talk about that.

So, HCG is the hormone present in pregnant women (I loved being pregnant so I am OK with this) but the injections, daily, given by my brave needle phobic husband, are really low levels of this stuff.

Allegedly, apparently, etc..... HCG somehow addresses the hypothalamus gland which regulates just about everything, including appetite. Somehow, Trudeau glosses over HOW hcg injections WORK ON THE HYPOTHALAMUS... but voila, if you eat a low calorie diet while having hcg injections for no more than 45 days, and then eat what looks to be pretty atkins like for the next 45 days, you will be "cured" and you won't want gross food that is bad for you ANY MORE.

So, I am going to really dig to understand how this works, if it works. And I don't know what I will find. Dr. K says to research on the NIH website.

But I digress again.

Get this, the first two to three days of the diet, are not about 500 calories. You are supposed to eat - indeed gorge yourself - on really high fat foods. This is to send a 'fat signal' to the hypothalamus (Dr. K confirmed this as did Dr. T.) So we tell hypothalamus "all is well. see? look at all the food and abundance we have! no need to panic. no need to shut my metabolism to zero and screw me up for the rest of my life because of this low calorie stuff. ok?"

Apparently the presence of injectable hcg helps me fool my hypothalamus further when I restrict caloric intake like crazy. Hopefully my hypothalamus won't notice that I'm eating for.. for 1/2 a person. heh heh. Don't tell it. What my hypothalamus doesn't know won't hurt it.


THE GORGE DAYS.

This was not a fun as you might expect. I went and got a greasy cheeseburger, onion rings and something called fry sauce which is basically my favorite food, mayo and ketchup, combined as a heart attack dip for fries. I tried to order the coke that I used to drink to go with it, but I just didn't have the heart to do it. I was too grossed out already. I ordered tea. Dinner, we went to Japanese restaurant and I had tempura shrimp and tempura everything and gyoza dumplings and so forth. I was still grossed out from lunch. I finished the shrimp and some of the dumplings. It was too gross.

That was Monday - the day we went back to Dr. T. Dr. T gave me a B12 shot with god knows what else in it and showed hubby how to give the hcg shot. Both of these were in the hip. Here I am, pants halfway down, with two men behind me. It had the makings of some weird porn movie. But I digress. Again and Again.

We try to fill the hcg script but no on has it. Finally a "compounding pharmacy" (means not a chain like Walgreens) had it. Got it, went to office. Secretary let it slip I was on this diet. GRRR. I didn't want anyone but her to know about it because what if it failed? And how pathetic am I that I can't lose weight the way you are 'supposed' to lose it - diet and exercise, with no excuses. Friend was intensely interested in this program. I felt embarrassed describing it to Friend A and Friend B. Friend B later tells me "I think you are brave to try this. You should not be embarrassed. It is new and different and you are suspicious of it and you are trying anyway." Such a nice thing to say. It helped.

GORGE DAY TWO

Lunch was pizza slice from famous pizza place. So much cheese and sausage on my slice. I'm thinking "well this is fat loading" but honestly, it didn't taste so great. I mean it DID, but because I'd been fat loading.. it was gross. Dinner - tried for Mexican, what I love with all my heart. However, it was also gross. That was last night. I couldn't finish it. I kept thinking "you better enjoy this because you are going to eat nothing but boring stuff (see above) for what will feel like forever" etc. etc. I know that this is a bad thing to think. But I still thought it anyway.

BEGIN THE RESTRICTION DAY THREE (TODAY)


No breakfast? Stomach is growling. I made the Yerba Mate Tea (ick ick) and drank it like a potion and got on the treadmill for 45 mins. Then an appointment. Then back here to write this blog. Weight 199.8. (it was 197.2 before the two day gorge part dammit). Took the 4 amino acids from Dr. T in the AM. Got shot from hubby. Now am blogging. Have to eat "lunch."

Back from "lunch" - all things being equal - it was ok. chicken breast (what a teeny portion!) and asparagus. I heated it up in the (horrors!) MICROWAVE - screw you Kevin Trudeau - (he says no Microwaving - i'm gonna ask Turner about this) and ate it. Sigh. My stomach is still growling. I am going to drink 32 oz of that horrid tea. Potion Potion Potion.

I still need to eat that apple. OK. Have to go eat it. More later.