Pills Day 1

10:30 a.m.
I think the vitamin shots make me sleepy. I was really tired last night and went to bed early. Unfortunately, I woke up in the middle of the night and stayed awake for 2 or 3 hours, I think. Woke up at 8:30, went back to sleep and woke for good at 9:30, still tired.

Took fat burner pill, multi-vitamin and diet pill when I woke up. Instructions for the new pills are to take all of them in the morning, the diet pill an hour before eating and the multi-vitamin plus diuretic with breakfast. (Oops, took the vitamin too early.) The fat burner is 30 to 60 minutes before eating each meal, so I can take the morning dose with the diet pill and the other two an hour later at breakfast. Moved the bottles with the multi-vitamin and diuretic downstairs to the kitchen so I can keep it straight.

An hour after taking the diet and fat burner pills, I'm still tired and have a bit of dry mouth, but I'm not really hungry. That'll make it easy to stick to a very small breakfast. But I was hoping that the vitamin shots and diet pills would give me energy. Right now I feel like eating and going back to bed.

11:00 a.m.

Only half an hour, yet I was congratulating myself on eating slowly.

Eating slowly gives your stomach time to tell your brain that it's full, so fast eaters will usually eat more than slow eaters. I've always been the fastest eater of anyone I've ever met. Sometimes it even results in an upset stomach. So, besides small portions, I also have to get used to eating more slowly.

I had a cup of cereal with a 1/2 cup of skim milk and followed it with a cup of cantaloupe. I did eat the cereal slowly but, since I wasn't really hungry and melon goes down pretty easily, I went through that fairly quickly.

As I was eating, I was puzzling over a couple of diet related things. One, is that I'm allowed 2 dairy products, which equals 2 cups of skim milk or plain yogurt. But I only need half a cup of milk with the 1 cup of cereal I'm allowed, and I probably won't even have cereal every morning. Same thing with the yogurt. Half a cup is more than enough to eat with strawberries, which is the only thing I eat it with, and I certainly won't have that every day either. I'm pretty sure I won't be using the dairy quota of my diet.

The second thing is that I'm not supposed to eat anything after 6 p,m., and I just finished breakfast at 10:30 a.m., so it's going to be interesting trying to fit everything in today. Hopefully my sleep schedule will straighten out so that I can keep a more normal schedule.

So, here's the key thing about diet pills. When you aren't hungry, it doesn't matter so much what your food tastes like, you're basically just fueling up.

1:10 p.m. WATER

Just read one of the papers I was given, this one on the topic of water. It explains "How 8 Glasses A Day Keep Fat Away", and it makes a lot of sense. I have no problem with that, I've been a big water drinker for years now. But toward the end of the document, it says that an overweight person needs one additional glass for every 25 pounds of excess weight. So, for 40 pounds, that would be what? A little less than 2 more glasses a day. Say 10 8oz glasses a day. Okay.

But then it goes on to say that, "To utilize water most efficiently during weight loss," 1 quart (which is 4 glasses) should be consumed over a 30 minute period each morning, noon and evening. So now we're up to 12 glasses, and they're all concentrated within a total of 1.5 hours in the day. I can easily drink 8 glasses a day, but they're usually spread out through the entire day and night.

So, I went down and filled up my liter bottle, which is 1.8 ounces more than a quart, at about 1:05 p.m., right before I started writing this section. By 1:22 p.m., I'd finished drinking it all. I'm wondering, will I still want to drink more water in addition to the 12 glasses I'm drinking during those 3 concentrated periods? I'm guessing yes, but we'll see.

2:45 p.m.

Pills kicking in big time, getting that close to jittery feeling again and super alert. But still physically sluggish. I didn't give in to a nap, but haven't really done anything but surf around the 'net. So close to 3 o'clock, I should really eat something now if I have to eat 3 meals by 6.


3:30 Lunch over, a couple of hours late

Okay, that was a little bit of a struggle, and not at all enjoyable. Due to a lack of planning, I didn't have my cup of carrots or a small potato cooked. I forgot about the potato until I was almost done, but I could've thrown one in the microwave. However, by that time, I had seen how much 1.25 cups of strawberries and .5 cup of plain yogurt equaled. There was just no way I was going to be able to eat a potato, as well. And I can't have it with dinner because the rule is no carbs after lunch, only meat and green vegetables.

Since the chicken was actually in a plain soup, I threw the baby carrots in the bowl when I warmed it up in the microwave. Then I added the spinach when I took the bowl out, not really cooked spinach, only wilted. I just don't like raw carrots at all, and I don't like raw spinach without some kind of dressing. I know that diets go much better when there is some planning beforehand, I'm just going to have to get a little better organized.

Re dairy: I haven't had anywhere near 2 cups a day of dairy products in years, and it hasn't seemed to hurt me. I know that women, in particular, are supposed to keep a certain level of calcium as they get older to guard against osteoporosis. But I've also heard that humans are the only mammals that continue ingesting milk after infancy. So, I'm not sweating the dairy portion of this diet unless I see some very persuasive evidence in favor of necessity.

Another problem is that I'm cooking with no salt whatsoever. I've never been a heavy salt user, but this diet only allows for 1/2 tsp of Morton Light salt daily. I was able to get by with no salt for the 3 day diet, but I'm seriously thinking that even 1/4 tsp on each of the 2 pieces of meat I'm allowed might actually make a difference. So I'll probably end up picking up some.

So there is no way that today will be a complete success. I won't have gotten all of my food groups in, and the mealtime hours were all a little off. BUT...

This is actually adding up to be a reasonable amount of food. It's possible that the maintenance diet will not be as difficult as I had imagined.

Whoops! Just realized I forgot, for the first time in 5 days, to take my fat burner pill before lunch. You see what I mean by getting organized? I'm a very organized person by nature, so this will not be hard, I just have to figure out the best way. I think alarms on my phone will be the most efficient method of dealing with this. But I can imagine that getting kind of annoying. Still, here goes, next fat burner pill at 5 p.m. in order to eat at 5:30 and be done by 6.

Oh, forgot to have my quart of water with lunch, too. Man, I SO need to make a freaking schedule. I really hope I don't need to do this for more than a few months, it will drive me crazy. But now I also realize that the fat burner needs to be taken with a glass of water at least 30 minutes before eating. I can drink my full quart within those 30 minutes, but that leaves none left to drink after eating. The alternative is to drink the full glass with the fat burner pills in addition to the quart I drink with meals.

Okay, so here's the schedule:

8:00 a.m. Fat burner and diet pill with a full glass of water
9:00 a.m. Breakfast, with a quart of water
12:30 p.m. Fat burner and diet pill with a full glass of water
1:00 p.m. Lunch, with a quart of water
5:00 p.m. Fat burner and diet pill with a full glass of water
5:30 p.m. Dinner, with a quart of water

By my calculations, this will equal 15 glasses, without any extra I might want between meals. Good Lord, I'm going to be floating away by bedtime. Hope this enormous amount of water is doing a fabulous job of cleansing everything inside. Geez.

6:30 p.m.

Dinner was a chicken thigh and a cup of zucchini that was al dente enough to almost be considered raw. I'm allowed a cup of raw vegetables or a half cup of cooked. But zucchini is a free food on this diet, and I am actually allowed to have up to 3 cups a day. So that particular measurement wasn't at all important. The 6 ounces of blackberries I had may have been over the 3/4 cup I was allowed, but I'm not going to worry about it. And I finished my quart of water, too, so I am DONE for the night.

Still tired. Plus, I've started getting muscle cramps and spasms. A Motrin tablet seems to have helped that, but it was very strange and I hope it doesn't recur. That's the thing about subjecting your body chemistry to so many new things at once, you never know what's related to, or caused by, anything else.

Conclusions:

My meals could have been a lot tastier, a LOT tastier, with very little more effort. As it turns out, I didn't care. But it does augur well for the future, that I won't feel constrained by a healthy maintenance level diet. I'm more optimistic about portion control now, too. Once you fit all the different food groups into a day, you really don't need so much of any particular one. Still, I can't imagine sticking to a 1/2 cup of cooked pasta for a meal. Seriously, that seems like nothing at all.

I was off schedule a bit and trying to fit 3 meals into a condensed period of time, so I wasn't ever really ready to eat when it was time. But I ordinarily live on a later schedule than most people, usually not getting up until just before nine. Now, I'll have to get up at 8 just to have enough time to take the diet pill an hour before breakfast. But it should be easier to at least have the meals spread out with at least a few hours in between.

All this water is keeping me very full. But I doubt I'll drink more than the 8 or so glasses I'm used to once this diet is over, so I can't count on that to help later, I don't think.

All of these pills are a real pain. I never did like taking pills, although I'll take Motrin at night if I need help getting to sleep. At least I won't be tempted to continue using them as diet aids once I'm done with this diet.

One way or another, I need more energy. Maybe more sleep will do the trick, maybe less B6 mixed in with the B12 in the shots would work. But I'm never exactly brimming with energy to begin with, and today was worse than usual. If it continues, finding a solution will be a top priority.

So that's it for Day 1 with the pills and the new 1200 calorie diet. Not wholly successful, but mostly encouraging. Second shot tomorrow morning.