Thursday, August 5, 2010

Flawed Beauty: Weight Issues

Flawed Beauty: Weight Issues: "Okay as promised let's go over some of the things that I have tried in order to loose weight. Warning for those of you that are strongly aga..."

Weight Issues

Okay as promised let's go over some of the things that I have tried in order to loose weight. Warning for those of you that are strongly against taking pills, prescribed or over the counter, STOP reading, you won't agree with 3/4 of this blog. However if you have reached a plateau or want to jump start your diet, read on.

For the record I am 5'8' and I was always skinny and lanky. They use to torture me with names like big foot, big bird, giraffe, ostrich, etc. The boys stayed away and the girls were mean up until I was about 16. At the age of 15 thanks to a lack of activities and other activities I choose not to elaborate on I went from  118 lbs to a whooping 157 lbs during the summer, which was still acceptable for my height, just not for my clothes or my parents budget. That was my first experience with stretch marks! Back then I tried a Shaklee meal replacement shake ($40) combined with Lecithin pills. I also started jogging at the high school track and by the end of the year I was down to 128 or so. My stomach was flat and I got to keep my booty, which I didn't have before. I stayed active by joining things at school and jogging.

Fast forward a few years and I was 20 pregnant with my daughter. My prepregnancy weight was 135 and on the last month of pregnancy I weighed 175 lbs, yeah I know. Come late spring my beautiful daughter came weighing 9 lbs. My post pregnancy weight was 152, not to bad I had bounced back from more. How ever I was single and it was depressing.  I started walking and tried the original Metabolife pills with ephedra now known as Metabolife-356. I loved these pills, they gave me energy and I was melting the pounds away. By the end of the year I was back down to 135 and fit into most of my clothes. Your hips take a while to get back into place so some of my jeans didn't fit. I started dating again, ended with for lack of better words "my baby daddy". Settled down for a few years and called it quits after 2 years of marriage. Some of the baby weight was back and I wanted to loose it a long with whatever I was thinking when I got married.

I didn't have the budget for the other 2 items I had taken previously and someone had told me about this wonderful diet clinic that gave you pills and a shot for under $20 dollars. So why not? I signed up and got water pills, a vitamin B12 shot and yes the controversial Fen Phen. My two cents on diet clinics is that they are not bad for you, they even do blood work now to make sure you are not sick. The problem is that women will either lie about a preexisting health condition or not know about it. That is where all these greedy doctors got it wrong. The results were that I lost the weight in half the time with minimal effort. You know what they say about that though, it's a temporary fix. They were right, in order to keep the changes I needed to make a life style change, which I didn't.

So over the next few years my weight was a yo-yo, up, down, then up. One thing I did notice was that relationships=weight gain and single=skinny. I wonder why? Time, comfort, etc. All was fine and dandy in my late 20's, until the day I hit 30. It was as if I got a 15 lbs present, literally that night I started gaining and by summer I was at 153 again. The difference was this time I was single, and I tried exercising, the diet clinic, the shaklee diet, and nada. I was stuck at that weight and I hated low rise jeans, skinny jeans, and don't get me started on bathing suits. Then I went to a new diet clinic that had a different approach. this clinic gave you a recipe book, a few water pills for that time of the month, chromium picolinate (fat burners) for when you work out, a B12 shot, a lipo shot, and they gave me phentermine at 37.50mg in tablets. I started my diet the 1st weekend in May weighing 147 and have lost 14 lbs at a steady rate of about 2 a week, which is healthy. I started with 1 pill a day, working out at least 3 days out of the week, eating lots of small meals like low fat cottage cheese, apples, bananas, cherries, nectarines, granola bars, multi-grain cereal/low fat milk, salads, lots of water and whatever I wanted for dinner. When my body built a tolerance to the pill I moved it up to 2 a day, when i got closer to my goal weight I went back to 1 a day. I'm currently weaning myself off of it and only taking 1/2 a day, till the en of summer. I'm  happy with the results and think this will work more long term.

Dedicated to my friend Jewels.

Let me know if you have questions.

With Love,

Elisa