My second round of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots computer-generated diet is now complete. This improved version is easier to tolerate since it allows more than one food per meal. It’s still pretty limited, I think, for a person who likes to have carbs and proteins and fats in the best proportions at most meals. And the days of fruits only and veggies only make you crave even the blandest cottage cheese or anything with some protein in it. Still, this is better than monomeals and the overall plan isn’t likely to cause malnutrition even if you did it repeatedly.

But how did I fare on it? Keep in mind that I have been following a fairly conscious plan of eating for some time so I will not show the huge water losses that some people do when they first start a restricted eating plan like this one. In short, your results may vary, as the legalese goes. I lost 4 pounds on the 11 days of eating exactly what was on the list every day. Even though the plan says no exercise, I did take 40 minute walks on about five of those days, in addition to my usual 2 miles or so that I put in just doing the daily things. I gained one of those pounds back back after a weekend that included some yummy carbs like whole grain bread, brown rice, and pizza dough. So, in two weeks I lost 3 pounds. Not exactly the 9 lbs promised on the website, but a noticeable loss nontheless. Read the rest of this entry »

Fat Loss 4 Idiots, Review of Fat Loss 4 Idiots, Reviews

I went back to the Fat Loss 4 Idiots site to see if there had been any changes. And sure enough, the computer-generated diet is now putting out a much more varied type of meal.

Now, instead of almost all meals consisiting of one thing only, most of the meals have at least two different constitutents. The overall plan is also more balanced. There is an all fruit day and and all veggie day in my plan, both of which are a bit tough for a person who likes varied meals. But it's only one day each and you certainly feel light after those days.

The exercise requirement is now gone for people on the computer diet.

There is also a guide to create your own diet based on carb or protein classifications of foods. So you can have a bit more variety if you want to plan your own meals. That system does require the exercise. A good thing, IMHO.

Will let you know how I fare this time around. Meanwhile go have a look yourself if you'd like. The site, again, is Fat Loss 4 Idiots. –Di

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Quick answer : Yes, there is some evidence that Hoodia extract can help you eat less and thus lose weight if you are very careful about where you get it .

Happy New Year!! May you fulfill all your goals in 2007!

If you have determined that you will take up a more healthful lifestyle this year, there may be an intention to release a few pounds in the process. And you may be thinking weight loss = diet = deprivation = hunger = arghhh! Believe me, I know that chain of thought.

For sure, the intake of energy (food) has to go down and the outgo of energy (exercise) has to go up if we aim for a slimmer, healthier body. This doesn't have to be so painful if you follow Tom Venuto's Burn the Fat system  but still, the prospect can be a little daunting. What if you could just cut down on your hunger in the initial stages of your re shaping process, just to get the body used to the idea?

Hoodia gordonii is the botanical name for a leafless, spiky succulent plant that grows throughout the semi-arid areas of Southern Africa primarily the Kalahari desert. The local San people have intentionally used Hoodia stems to stave off hunger and thirst when on long journeys for many, many years, since it acts as an appetite suppressant.

Many news sources, including CBS's 60 Minutes show, ABC News, NBC's Today Show, Oprah's "O" magazine, and many others have talked about this plant as an appetite suppressant that really works. Is it true?

The Phytopharm company that bought the rights from the South African government to control the distribution of Hoodia first tested it on rats and found it made even a special strain that is morbidly obese stop eating so much. Then came trials in humans. Phytopharm discovered that the active ingredient that works in the brain as an appetite suppressant is a protein called P 57. They carried out classical double blind placebo-controlled studies in human subjects that showed that the people who took P 57 lost significantly more weight than people who took the placebo and consumed about 1000 fewer calories per day. This study is included in their application for a U.S. patent. So it works.

The problem, as pointed out in a BBC article, is that many products claim to have Hoodia in them that don't have any or very little. If you buy those, you are wasting your money. Hoodia is actually rare and expensive. You should look for two things from the manufacturer of any Hoodia product you buy. One is the C.I.T.E.S. certification that guarantees that the company bought the licensed South African Hoodia. The other is actual testing data on the product from an independent pharmaceutical testing laboratory. In the U.S., Alkemist Pharmaceuticals is the industry leader in herbal testing.

One company that meets these criteria is Prime Life (TM) Nutraceuticals. They have the CITES certification and the results of two types of tests from Alkemist verifying that they only use 100% pure South African Hoodia in their product prominently displayed on their website. Their product is called Hoodia Thin (R). It comes in liquid form so it is easy to take, rapidly and efficiently absorbed, and doesn't have the fillers needed to make pills or the bitter aftertaste. It is unconditionally guaranteed. So if you think Hoodia might be a useful tool in your quest for a slim and healthy body, this would seem to be a reliable place to get it .  –Di 

How did your weight loss and body sculpting resolutions fare last year?  Did you adopt a way of life that included lots of fruits, veggies, and lean protein with a good mix of aerobic, high output, resistance, and flexibility exercise? Did you have some fun doing all this and are you liking what the mirror and your energy levels are telling you about all you’ve been doing? If so, let’s celebrate! Here’s to you!!

If not, you might be tempted to rush into something drastic at the beginning of the year “just to get a jump on things.” One practice that rears its ugly head at about this time every year is the Master Cleanse. Originally designed as a way to detoxify the body by abstaining from foods that contain pesticides, heavy metals and various other forms of toxins for a period of time, some people have promoted Burroughs’ plans as a weight loss program. Is it? Does it work?

Here’s the basic plan. For more details, if you really want to learn about this, you can get Stanley Burroughs’ book, Master Cleansers and read it yourself. I would not recommend you buy pre-made “kits.” The necessary items are cheap and readily available in the English-speaking world.

For 10 days, more or less, you will ingest only three things, all liquids. Starting the evening before the first day and continuing through the entire cleanse, you make yourself some herbal laxative tea and drink it. There are a number of brands that will do the trick. You are looking for tea that contains Senna leaf. Just read the ingredients of whatever laxative or “diet” teas you can find and look for this ingredient with as few others as possible. This will act, probably, before the night is through, so be prepared. It causes quite as bit of commotion in the lower gastrointestinal tract, so expect pronounced physical sensations, including some cramp-like feelings.

Then, in the morning, there is the salt water flush. You mix two teaspoons of salt in a quart of warm water and drink the whole thing. Do not stray far from the bathroom until it has worked through your system.

Next, over the course of the day, you drink about six 8-10 oz glasses of a sort of zesty lemonade. To make a glass, you mix 2 Tbs of freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice, 2 Tbs grade B (darker color, more nutrients) maple syrup, 1/10 tsp cayenne pepper, and 8 oz. of spring water. It tastes better if you make it fresh, but you can make a whole day’s supply at once and keep it in the frig.

That’s your diet for 10 or so days. Then you go on a day or so of citrus fruit juice, then fruits, then vegetable broth, then vegetable soup, then slowly back to normal.

If you would like to read the journal of someone undergoing this cleanse for the first time, here’s a link: http://yestheyrefake.net/lemonade_diet_cleanse_journal.htm It’s a little graphic in places so be forewarned.

This is a starvation diet. All-in-all, it has about 650-700 calories per day with very limited vitamin and mineral content, virtually no protein, and no fat, and no fiber. The weight you lose is water and muscle and maybe a little fat. Your metabolism will slow, so when you start eating food again, the weight will come back fast. When you stop stimulating your colon with that senna tea, it may have forgotten how to deal with the relatively mild stimulus of natural food and you may get clogged up until it recovers.

Here’s a pretty good description of the whole concept from the Chicago Tribune:

Experts are appalled, but `master cleanse’ has a large following (Chicago Tribune)

What’s a body to do? There’s no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to managing our precious bodies. The things that work quickly aren’t really fixes, are they? The best fix I’ve found is in the book by Tom Venuto, Burn the Fat...  He really has been there, done that, and tells you exactly how you can do it, too.   –Di

technorati tags:master, cleanse, weight, loss, maple, syrup, diet, starvation, diet, detox

Update after one complete round of this diet: 

After the 11 days of eating what the computer told me to, no more and no less, I had lost exactly five pounds and had neither lost nor gained in fat percentage. I did the recommended 2 x 35 minutes of walking (about 4.5 miles for me) every weekday and about 50 minutes on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

At that point, I was bored out of my mind with the very limited selections, got hungry between meals, and had that deep down "ghost hunger" that comes when you stay on a restrictive diet plan too many days in a row. I craved everything, even things I hadn't even thought about for year, but especially vegetables. Perhaps I was missing some essential nutrient(s) or maybe my body was just trying to find that 5 pounds I had "lost."

The second part of this diet is three days of "normal" eating after the 11-day computer-generated menu. During that period I made sure I didn't binge on anything, although I did eat some low carb bread products and had a good-sized piece of cake with ice cream at a family birthday party. Two of the five pounds reappeared, making my net loss for those two weeks three pounds. So this diet does sort of work, but others work as well, are less painful to go through, teach you how to make healthful and yummy menus, have built-in mechanisms for elevating the metabolism and give you a plan you can live with very well for the rest of your life .

Final score: two stars for ease of use and at least some effectiveness.

Be well. –Di

technorati tags:Weight, loss, fat, loss, 4, idiots, lose, weight, diet

Well, this program is aptly named. It has an attention-grabbing website that purports to make the whole fat loss process idiot proof. They have (a) great copywriter(s) who offers dirt simple solutions to very complex topics. Just plop down your $39 and you get access to the handbook and the amazing diet generator software. No thinking required here, on the Idiot Proof Diet.

The “Handbook” is totally on screen. Nothing to download unless you want to print screen shots. You get descriptions of 10 basic rules, followed by another 35 or so pages of short essays on subjects like how much water to drink, is wheat bread or honey or maple syrup really better, the myth of salad, the importance of varying the types of food you eat, and so on. Altogether less than 50 short pages with big print, so you don’t get bogged down in reading.

The diet generator software quizzes you about some of your likes and dislikes, then spits out your diet for the next 11 days. You can print that out. This is not a calorie-limited diet. You can eat however much it takes you to feel satisfied, but not stuffed, of the item allowed for each meal. You eat 4 meals a day, at least 2 1/2 hours apart, except for day 6, which has three meals, all fruits and veggies. Most of the meals are “monomeals,” at which you only eat one thing. A lot of soy chicken in my case. On most days, one of the four meals has two things, like maybe yams and soy chicken. The proportions of protein to carbohydrates to fats changes from day to day and is apparently one of the driving forces of this diet.

I think this is not a plan that you can or should stay on for an extended period of time. The emphasis is on plain and there doesn’t seem to be enough variety allowed to give you all the nutrients you would need for your body or your psyche. At the very least, you’ll be needing good vitamin and mineral supplements, not to mention your omega three fat supplement. There really is no attempt to teach you how to design a really good diet for yourself and your family. You just eat what the software tells you for 11 days, then go back to whatever bad habits got you to the place where you needed to lose weight for 3 days, then ask the computer to give you a new diet for the next 11 days and so on forever.

The exercise component of this program is, ideally, two 30 minute walks a day or one 45 minute walk. As discussed elsewhere on this blog, walking is a great way to get started moving, but eventually your body will need some change if it is going to continue to burn fat.

Do you have questions about the program? Want to call or send an email to the author? Actually, I couldn’t find any way to do that. If it is not covered on the website, including the Frequently Asked Questions, then that’s just too bad. No contact info anywhere, except an address to which you could send snail mail, except there’s no name anywhere to address it to. No idea who is responsible for this.

Can you lose weight on this diet? Possibly. Your intrepid and endlessly curious experimenter and blogger will give it a try and update this blog with the results. The last time I tried it, I lost interest several days into it when faced with a can of cashews for dinner. In the meantime, if you’re dying to give it a try yourself, here’s the link: Fat Loss 4 Idiots

Be well!! –Di

Update after one complete round of this diet:  

After the 11 days of eating what the computer told me to, no more and no less, I had lost exactly five pounds and had neither lost nor gained in fat percentage. I did the recommended 2×35 minutes of walking (about 4.5 miles for me) every weekday and about 50 minutes on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

At that point, I was bored out of my mind with the very limited selections, got hungry between meals, and had that deep down “ghost hunger” that comes when you stay on a restrictive diet plan too many days in a row. I craved everything, even things I hadn’t even thought about for years. Perhaps I was missing some essential nutrient(s) or maybe my body was just trying to find that 5 pounds I had “lost.”

The second part of this diet is three days of “normal” eating after the 11-day computer-generated menu. During that period I made sure I didn’t binge on anything, although I did eat some low carb bread products and had a good-sized piece of cake with ice cream at a family birthday party.  Two of the five pounds reappeared, making my net loss for those two weeks three pounds. So this diet does sort of work, but others work as well, are less painful to go through, teach you how to make healthful and yummy menus, have built-in mechanisms for elevating the metabolismand give you a plan you can live with very well for the rest of your life .

Final score: two stars for ease of use and at least some effectiveness.

I do believe Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is the most famous of all the downloadable diet books. This is the gold standard by which others are judged and rightfully so. I thought the title was great and certainly reflected what I would like to do with my body. So I paid for it and downloaded it and let it sit on my hard drive for a few months Didn’t do much good there.

Then I noticed that I had fewer and fewer clothes I could get into and that I looked pretty much stuffed into those few I could get into. So, I decided, back to The Diet.

Just as a bit of background. When I was in college I had a pretty long walk to class, rode my bicycle all over Boston, and played several sports. Also, dining hall food wasn’t that tempting and so I was fairly trim. I got married right after college and didn’t have a job right away so I stayed home and cooked for my wonderful, appreciative husband. I soon blossomed forth out of all my clothes and even after I started my new job, I continued to gain weight. I had worked up to a women’s size 22 dress when my mother-in-law, always helpful, handed me a diet book she said her sister swore by.

The book was called The Eating Man’s Diet, written by Ralph Sharkey, as I remember. It’s out of print but you can sometimes find it for sale from individuals. Without going into too much detail, what this book advocated was alternating days of very low calories intake, less than 1000 calories, with days of enough calories to maintain your ideal weight. What kind of calories wasn’t really an issue, although the author did stress that you should eat a balanced diet with lots of fruits and veggies and protein. He said the occasional day of fasting wouldn’t hurt. He also said that, while exercise was probably a good thing, it wasn’t at all necessary to lose weight on this diet and that he purposefully didn’t exercise when he was testing this diet to make sure that was true.

Well, I set out to follow that diet when I hadn’t been able to stay on other diets for long at all. I would be OK for a week or two but I would just get hungrier and hungrier and feeling more and more deprived until I was a psychological and physical wreck. Then I would go back to my old fattening ways. One really good thing about The Eating Man’s Diet is that the deprivation was only one day in a row. You can stand just about anything for one day. The next day, I could have whatever, as long as it fit into the allowed number of calories. I got to be very good at calorie tradeoffs and stayed on that diet until I lost 80 pounds, 12 in the first month. My husband and everybody I knew loved my new look and everybody accommodated themselves to my “diet day” and “eating day” schedule quite happily. I kept those pounds off for a decade plus by just going back to The Diet whenever I saw my weight creeping up past a certain ominous number. It worked for years but gradually I got busy sitting in front of the computer all day and half the night munching on almonds between my three square and didn’t watch my weight and… You probably know that story.

So, once again, I took myself in hand, and decided to go back to The Diet. I stayed under 800 calories on my “diet” days, which left me definitely hungry and feeling deprived, and never went above 2200 on my “eating” days. I lost 8 pounds in two months. Years of largely sedentary living had allowed my muscle to atrophy so my resting metabolism had gotten lower, making it harder to lose weight. In the meantime, I had bought one of those scales that also measures body fat and it said I was 35% fat (!!!) at the beginning of those two months and 38% (!!!!) fat at the end. So the pounds didn’t come off so easily and I sure wasn’t losing much fat. I thought there had to be a better way.

Open up Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. This book is so compellingly written that I went right through the whole thing in two days. Started the program the next day. This one also uses a “zig zag” approach, with two to four “light” eating days interspersed with a “normal” one but what a difference! You eat five or six times a day, so even on the “light” days you never go below 1200 calories and you’re never hungry. No feeling deprived. No pain. Also, since you set the ratios of the types of nutrients to fit your body type on this program, you are always full of energy. Exercise is definitely part of this program, too, and Tom explains very clearly what kind, how much, and how often.

This is no “one plan fits all” approach. Tom tells you how to figure out what your body type is and so what would be a good starting ratio of good carbs, protein, and good fats for you to start with. Then he tells you what to watch for and how to modify your diet and exercise plans to get the best results for you. This is one of the very few books that deals with the dreaded weight plateau effct. He tells you exactly what to watch for and how to correct it.

The author is a body builder and so he knows all the secrets. You don’t have to want to look like him or the woman on his web page to use his secrets to your advantage. This book really is worthy of being called his life’s work. It is a complete approach to living the fit life that you can master regardless of where you’re starting from. If you really want to be mistress/master of your physique and are willing to learn how to do just that, you NEED Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.

If there’s anything I would point out as a drawback to this book, it would be that perhaps it has too much information. It’s hard to digest it all in one reading. I got a pretty good idea from my first reading but got a lot more the second time through. Also, you shouod know that if you follow the plan he teaches completely, you will be doing lot of calculations of calories, calories from carbos, proteins, and fats and percentages. The calculations can be alittle daunting at first. Fortunately, he does describe how to do this in an approximate kind of way that works fine. So no need to do all those numbers if that’s not your cup of tea.
I’m not a body builder. I’m an old lady with a sedentary job who wants to look and feel like she’s twenty-two again. After twelve weeks of following Tom’s system, I am 18 pounds lighter and three dress sizes smaller. My merciless Tanita scale says I am still 25% fat but that’s a huge improvement. When I go out for a brisk walk with a few sprints thrown in, I feel like I’m floating because I have so much energy. I give Burm the Fat, Feed the Muscle a four and a half star rating out of five. Go get it here: