Yeah yeah yeah. Me again. Trying to lose weight again. What’s new?
Well THIS time, my family is going to do it with me. (Well, that’s what we thought. Read on…)
In texting this weekend about what we could possibly “do” to lose the stupid weight we’d both gained, my daughter and I talked through a bunch of plans.
The nutritionist at my daughter’s gym uses Haylie Pomroy’s “Fast Metabolism Diet.” 
As we texted about it, I realized that it sounded familiar. So I went to my stuffed “diet and exercise” bookshelf (four huge shelves!) and looked through it. Yup! I have tried that diet – oh, I mean “eating plan” – a few times! Not only that, I blogged about it HERE and HERE and HERE . (The second link actually talks you through that plan in detail.)
My issue with dieting is always that no one is doing it with me, so I get bored, and quit.
(I talked about that, in fact, in the first blog post linked above.)
I had one copy of the Fast Metabolism Diet book but, for some reason, I happened to have two copies of her “micro-repair” follow-on book, The Burn.
It has a 3 day plan, a 5 day plan, and a 10 day plan. They state that you are likely to lose 3, 5, or 10 pounds on them.
These plans are centered around dealing with a certain issue for why your “scale is stuck” – the 3 day plan is the I-Plan for “Inflammation,” the 5-day is the D-Plan for “Digestion,” and the 10-day plan is the H-Plan for “Hormonal Regulation.”
The 3-Day plan appealed to me as a “Jump Start.” I Priority Mailed the 2nd copy to my daughter and texted her that it was on its way.
We decided to go on the I-Plan (the 3 day plan).
The thought was that we could do it Monday (today) through Wednesday, then we could pay attention to what we were eating and not go wild from Thursday through Sunday (Mother’s Day), then perhaps start one of the other plans from The Burn – or even jump to the 30 day Fast Metabolism Diet plan – next Monday.
Yesterday was “grocery and prep day.”
One thing I do like about Pomroy’s books is she gives you grocery lists for everything that’s on the plan you’re about to embark on. You can take a picture of it on your phone and just go buy the stuff. She also talks about how to prep, and also has some “Success Boosters” that you are to add to each day.
I actually like prepping. My daughter and her husband are in Utah, and I texted to find out how the shopping was going. Though they thought they’d have trouble finding watermelon, turns out they couldn’t find cranberries, not even in the freezer section of a number of stores that they frequented.
My issue was celery seed! I went to 4 stores and finally found one TINY package of it. You need 3 Tablespoons – this was 2. I did have some celery
seed in the upper reaches of my pantry probably circa the last millennium – but I figured that 2T of the “good/new stuff” and 1T of this wouldn’t be so bad.
You have to prep (at least) three things – a tea, a soup, and a smoothie.
Now – Pomroy tells you to “make the smoothie every morning fresh.” But, come on. You’re supposed to drink it within 30 minutes of waking up, and in my daughter’s household, that involves wrangling kids, getting lunches ready, being sure homework was really done, not to mention waking up yourself, dressing, makeup, etc.
The recipe calls for (among other things) peeled limes, which isn’t an easy task at 0-dark-00. Knife. Bleary morning eyes. Slippery citrus. Um, nope.
So I made “baggies” that contained the makings of the smoothie, already parceled out. In one bag, I put the cranberries, blueberries, and kale (my “Success Booster”), in the other bag I put the walnuts, cucumber, peeled limes, and avocado.
As for the tea, it’s made up of a ton of lemons that you squeeze into the water and then throw in, boil, and let steep. There’s herbs in there too (the aforementioned celery seed, plus dried parsley and cayenne) – and I was able to find dandelion leaf at the bulk food counter, so I also included that (another “Success Booster”).
The soup is mainly root vegetables and mushrooms – there are 2 different kinds of mushrooms, sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, parsley, then 2 “other” root vegetables (I used a rutabaga and a turnip), plus a few other things. You can also add beet greens (another “Success Booster”), so I threw those in there too. You bring it to a boil then simmer it for like 2 hours, ultimately putting it through a high-powered blender to make the soup.
I suppose I should have had an inkling of what was to come when my husband came in and said “It smells like skunk in here.”
I had the kitchen fan on High, but he was right – the kitchen definitely had an “interesting” smell. He chuckled, and said he was so glad he wasn’t getting roped into doing this.
A while back – geez, has to be over 10 years ago – we did a cleanse that involved pulverizing raw beets into a smoothie. He has never looked at a beet since.
Everything was merrily cooking away, and I got to work prepping for our actual dinner (read: The Last Supper). As I was chopping, my husband came back in, held his nose with his fingers, and said (cue Austrian accent): “Oh my God no! It smells like ass in here now!”
I was texting these “peanut gallery comments” to my daughter, and they were dealing with the same smells on their end. We just couldn’t stop laughing in our texts. Yeah, well it turns out, joke’s on US! . . .
As of 9:00 last night, I texted my girl, “Fingers crossed this starts us on a good path!” She texted back, “It’s gonna be great!”
Oh my lord in Heaven. Joke’s SO on us . . .
And then, it was Monday. Time to get started.
I dumped the smoothie baggies into my high speed Ninja thang, and got it a-whirlin’. It didn’t look all that bad, so I took a cautious sip. HOLY COWS! It was SO limey! I mean, limey beyond all limes. Battery acid with a hint of lime.
As I was putting my tea into the microwave, I texted my daughter and asking how it was going for them. (You start out with the smoothie and the tea.)
She texted back: “For the love of all that is holy, that tea is the worst thing ever. Like drinking acid. I wanted to die!!! And the smoothie wasn’t much better.”
By this time, I’d gotten my tea out of the microwave. The oddest part was that, in pouring it into the cup, it seemed almost…?gelatinous? Well – definitely “thicker” than tea normally is. As I took a cautious sip, I realized why.
As I mentioned above, to make the tea for the 3 days, you squeeze the lemon juice into the water from like 10 lemons, and then you actually throw the lemons into the water and boil. Then let it steep for a couple hours. With those skins/rinds in there.
The lemon oil “steeps out” of the skins and into the water. So that’s why the “tea” seems “viscous” (I just typed “vicious” – yeah, that too) – because it’s full of the lemon oil.
I think that drinking Pledge would be more tasty.
Their smoothies were much more “cucumber-tasting” than mine – well, either that, or I just don’t mind that flavor as much as I do lime. Within an hour, I had a text that said my son-in-law had barely made it to work before the diarrhea started.
We kidded a bit about how “cleansing” that was, but within another hour, we had another text from my son-in-law:
“I have the perfect disclaimer for the book. ‘In order for this program to work, you must stay home for the amount of days for your preferred plan. This way you can stay in the bathroom the full time, shitting your brains out.'”
Three hours passed, and I’m still working on the smoothie.
I had diluted it with water – you’re supposed to drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water, daily – but it tasted so much like lime battery acid that I couldn’t get it down any quicker.
Another hour, and my son-in-law texted that he was out. There was no way that he could be this sick and work.
The mid-morning snack was a pear – which was good – and you’re “allowed” to “drink as much of the tea and soup as you want.” I hadn’t tried the soup yet, but drinking the tea is like a special torture invented to get people to spill their guts. (Um, literally.) “I’ll tell you anything, just no more TEA!”
My daughter, being ahead of me a few hours, texted that the “ass soup” actually tasted pretty good. She was at work, but luckily hadn’t had the same issue as her husband . . . I was at home, but was worried I might start having the issue, as lunch called for a spinach-based salad, and spinach sprints through my digestive tract.
At about this time, I realized that the only water I’d had was the water I used to dilute the smoothie.
I knew I would be rowing later in the day, which would help me catch up – but going from basically zero to 5 Nalgene bottles in a day is a TON of water. Drinking too much water makes me barf – so I have to be careful about it. There are tricks to it, of course – I’ve blogged about it a number of times, probably the best one being HERE. I’m not a good water drinker.
Just as I was picking up my phone to text that I was behind on my water and was afraid re. the spinach, I got a text from my daughter:
We really are the picture of loveliness . . . I just threw up the tea I forced myself to drink.
I couldn’t stop laughing.
I had to be careful though because if I laughed while drinking the tea, I was afraid it might burn a hole in my sinuses, or I might spit it out, and then it would burn through my desk, and the floor, and . . .
Another hour rolls around, and it’s time for lunch.
More tea. “Drink all you want,” says Pomroy. Who obviously has a sadistic streak.
I grumbled about it to my daughter, who texted back: Just chug it like you are a frat boy. Mind you, then you will puke it up, but it’ll be done.
Mid-afternoon snack – watermelon.
That’s actually a great snack, I like watermelon. Even better, my dog LOVES watermelon, so I parceled out some for him, too.
As an experiment, I put the soup bowl, the cup with some of the tea in it, and the smoothie glass on the floor to see what my dog thought.
He liked the soup.
He sniffed at the tea and didn’t even try.
But he licked the smoothie glass, snorted, then pulled his tongue in and out of his mouth while trying to wipe it with his paws. I nearly fell over laughing. Yeah buddy, I’m with ya!
And that’s where we are, as I type this blog. Dinner is to come – it’s based around roasted vegetables and fish (to which I am allergic, so I will have ground turkey). I can feed my husband the roasted vegetables, but I have to make him a steak or he will divorce me. :-) Dinner also comes with more soup and – surprise! – Tea. I might be willing to give up state secrets after another cup.
But at the end of today we will be 1/3 over . . . and in 3 days, we will certainly have a story to tell!
