Oh yeah - real food again!

I did it, or may be survived it. It got down to a matter of principles, finishing those last days of the Master Cleanse. I am glad I did it. I am stronger, more toned, and a total of 8 lbs. slimmer. But, I'll be honest: I don't think I could have gone one more day. It was nail-biting hard the last day. I finally tasted a bite of the too delicious chimichangas I made my family for dinner, before spitting it out after I got a good taste!

For weight loss: a thumbs up. Just don't go hog-wild the first day off. Today I broke my fast with some miso soup broth. Later I ate a quarter of a fresh mango. That's all my stomach could hold. It's more good practice for me I guess with self-control (in the past me and self-control did not pair well with food because, well, it just tastes so darn good!). I'm going to maintain with eating a varied, healthy diet of the calories it takes to maintain 116 lbs. or less on 6 days a week, while using my treadmill. The 7th day is always my "day off" and I don't work out that day and eat any old thing I want to. It's good for me and good for my body to give it a metabolic switch once a week so I don't get used to the same calories all the time and have my metabolism slow down.

As a cleanse: I am not sure. I really started seeing the effects the past couple of days with my skin getting all bumpy (toxins coming out) and getting very run-down feeling. Today, after 10 days of no solid food, and for the first time in a week, I actually had a bowel movement. I won't go into details :) It must be some old gunk finally getting the clean-out. So, maybe as a cleanse I would prefer to do the GNC brand, or other 7 day cleanse. On that, I had three days of feeling like I had the flu, then lots of energy, which makes me think it does the job faster. If I am only just now moving out the toxins on the Master Cleanse, I sure wouldn't want to go another 10 days! But, believe it or not - some people have done it for nearly a year!!

Since I still haven't reached my original weight goal, I decided that along with doing all the tricks I learned while losing 40 lbs. about two years ago, I am also going to incorporate the "Cabbage Diet" also known as the "Heart Disease Diet" into my daily eating. This goes right along with a macrobiotic or vegetarian diet. It is just variations on vegetable soup, with additional fruits, vegetables, and some dairy. You can read more about it in these books if you are interested: The New Cabbage Soup Diet, The Cabbage Soup Diet (Original), The Ultimate Cabbage Soup Diet. Most of the food is also actually "Negative Calorie" foods, which reportedly take as many calories as are in the food just to chew and digest them. You can read more about it here Foods That Cause You to Lose Weight:: The Negative Calorie Effect. You can find a lot of the info by doing an online search, but supposedly the books also have more food listed, as well as more information about why it works (my guess is the fact you are eating 600 to 1000 calories a day except on the meat and dairy days.) I have tried to order them both from the library with no luck. So, got to buy them if you want them, but you should be able to click on the link I provided to Amazon.com and get a used copy.

Just so you know, I used the concepts from these plans, as well as about a gazillion tips I came up with by reading countless books and magazine articles to lose weight myself (40 lbs in about 9 months,) and if you want to know all of them, I wrote about it in my book, Effortless Weightloss: Small Changes That Lead To Extraordinary Results!available at Amazon.com or my website http://www.karenrwinkelman.com/.  Eat happy and healthy!