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Anyone do a cleanse?
If so would you mind sharing details? I hear people talking about cleanses, but I honestly don't know what they are talking about. Do you have to buy products, make your own, etc?
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Re: Anyone do a cleanse?
Unless you want to have a liquid diet for a span of 3 - 5 days, I would not recommend it. There are folks who say that they do these to "cleanse" their system...Well, the human body has a intestinal system and colon that takes care of that.
In lieu of a cleanse, I would suggest that you be mindful of your meat/poultry consumption, eat whole, real foods, increase your green leafies and fruit, and eliminate sweeteners (no "diet" foods or splenda/equal-type stuff).
You could do an all-vegan diet or vegetarian diet as an option, too.
You are doing it right! We are probably 90% vegetarian in our meals, even more so in the summer from our CSA. Dairy is a big part of diet as well as eggs, and lots of legumes. We get our milk through Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative. However, we do eat meat/poultry/pork on occasion. All of those products are purchased at the PHX farmer's market. My h and I are very active and have never had a problem with iron or protein levels with our diet.
I believe that some proponents of the cleanse have not taken the effort to really examine what they are eating. But, you have done that!
A bunch of my co-workers did a cleanse a few months ago and it was awful, though some lost a good amount of weight (they had a lot to lose to start). It was 10 days, and every day you would get a schedule in your email that indicated when you should have a shake, add special powder to your water, and eat. There were some days where they ate 1 small meal, some days with 2 small meals, and some "deep cleanse days" where they just had the shake and a would add powder to their water. I think every day they could have 8 almonds, but the schedule dictated when you could eat them - usually 2 at a time. Everyone was so grumpy during those 2 weeks!
My one co-worker had a breakdown because she was so hungry. She wanted to quit, but she paid almost $200 for supplies so she felt like she should stick with it.
I personally don't believe in cleanses. Some of my co-workers eat crappy and they were the ones who responded well to the cleanse because they lost so much weight...they claimed it was to jump-start their weight loss, but diet/exercise didn't seem to change after that. They just did the cleanse again in a month.
I have another co-worker who does the HCG diet...which is basically another cleanse: max 500 calories a day (!!!!), and ingesting the drops for 3 weeks. She does it once every 3 months or so, but when she's not cleansing she is eating frozen pizza and Marie Callenders meals...no fruit or veggies in sight. There is no convincing her otherwise that it will actually take work to lose weight for good.
Honestly, I think in your situation a cleanse would be okay! I think it's amazing what you're offering to do. I would just worry that you would gain the weight back as soon as you started eating normally again (which sounds very healthy already).
I don't think a cleanse would really help in this situation, as you put back on the weight within a week or so, and I doubt a nutritionist would allow it too.
Ugh 15 pounds in a month seems kind of crazy to me, I assume they are trying to get you into the normal BMI range? I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but my first thoughts would be to increase exercise and movement and decrease eating to whatever the nutritionist recommends calorie wise. I would eat most of the calories in the morning and no food after 6/7pm. I would eliminate carbs in the lunch and dinner foods.
DRINK ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD. i would start carrying at least two 40oz bottles of water and aim for 80-120oz a day.
Are you getting hormones at the same time? Man that would really mess with the body weight wise too.
I get what you're saying, but what you're trying to do to your body is unhealthy, unrealistic, and not good for you or a baby. Sustainable, healthy weight loss is 1-2 lbs a week.
Your body cleanses itself. Your internal organs do it for you. Doing what you're proposing can strip your body of vitamins that are needed to grow a healthy baby and can throw off your electrolyte balance which can affect proper functioning of your heart and other organ systems.
Not to mention that a weight loss that large is going to be mostly water and muscle so while you could be smaller, you'll add lbs right back on when you start eating normally again.
Please speak to another doctor not involved in the surrogacy process for a healthier alternative.
I'm doing all of this, and yes I'm still on some meds and that is NOT helping at all. I just need to do the best that I can do and be happy with whatever results I have. I don't have to loose the full 15, I need to lose 12, but I was throwing in the extra 3 just in case.
I understand what you're saying, but I feel a lot of the extra weight right now is artificial from the IVF drugs.
I would not imagine saying mean things! I have had my own weight struggles, gone up and down a few times, but I have found a lifestyle that works for me and has kept me at my WW goal weight for the better part of 3 years.
Essentially, the cleanse is a controlled starvation and it is not sustainable. And, when you starve your body, and add the stress of having a deadline for weight loss, your body will fight you the entire way and you may find that it is doubly difficult to lose.
Must the loss be 15 lbs exactly and within 4 weeks? (I assume this has to do with IVF timing of procedures). It is possible, but it's not like you are coming from a lifestyle of poor food choices. I know from my WW experience, participants will see the greatest loss in the first week (sometimes up to 4 lbs), and that is due to a drastic change in a person's food choices. It usually levels off to 1 to 2 lbs a week, so I would say 15 lbs in 6 - 8 weeks is more reasonable (and, without the stress of such a short time period, it's likely that you could do it faster than that).
For long-term sustained weight loss, the goal is to increase your resting metabolic rate. To increase your resting metabolic rate, you will want to engage in strength training. And no, I promise, you cannot bulk up from lifting weights.
Good luck!
eta: I did not see the other comments until after I posted this, so I apologize for the duplicate info.
What do you mean when you say artificial?
Have you met me? :-)
The drugs made me retain a LOT of water as well as other things, without being too much TMI, which made think that do an intestinal clearing out would be a good idea.
The bottom line is you'll lose weight with a cleanse. Wait, I'm not calling it a 'cleanse' b/c that's not what it is. It's a crash starvation diet.
But your body cleans itself as long as you're getting the right amount of fiber and water. That's what's happening when you pee and poop and sweat.
In a crash starvation diet, you'll lose water and vital nutrients that your body needs to maintain balance and that you need to maintain a pregnancy, along with muscle.
You'll also gain weight back as soon as you stop the crash starvation diet.
And you'll still have to take the drugs, right? So you're going to be dealing with that regardless.
I'm sure you're afraid to disappoint the potential future parents.I see that weighs heavily on you and you want to help these people have a baby. But you're a parent and a wife and a person whose first responsibility is to be healthy for the people who are closest to you.
What else does it entail as far as dietary changes? FWIW, increasing your fiber intake too quickly can have the opposite effect of slowing down your gi system too much and making you constipated and distended. What is the mechanism that will help you lose such a large amount of weight in that small of a time?
Also, please make sure you're seeing a Registered Dietitian and not just a nutritionist. There is no regulating who calls themselves a nutritionist.
This is what happened to me in my first tri. I got so constipated from consuming only soft pretzels (the only thing that I could tolerate) that I went into desperation mode and loaded up on fiber. It totally made things worse and I ended up taking Colace and drinking amazing amounts of water for about a week to get myself straightened out. I never felt so awful.
Ok, I may have read that wrong b/c i thought you said that your nutritionist and trainer thought it was realistic.
I'm going to do a little math to show you what you're looking to do. Bear with me, there is a point.
So in order to lose 1 lb you have to create a deficit of 3,500 calories by either diet modification or exercise or preferably both. To lose 15 lbs you have to create a deficit of 52,500 calories. In order to do that in a month that means you have to cut out or burn an extra 1693 calories per day in a 31 day month.
I don't know your height or weight to calculate what your daily energy needs so I'm using mine for an example. I need 1475 calories every day to make my heart beat, my brain work, my eyelashes blink, my lungs breathe. That's my basal metabolic rate or BMR. That's what I'd need if I was confined to bed all day long.
When you add in activity like cooking, walking, caring for a child, etc etc, your body needs even more energy to do that. That will increase those needs to 1770 calories per day and that doesn't include exercise. My weight stays relatively stable so I know I'm eating and burning about that amount.
If you had the same calorie needs that I do at 1770 per day and you try to lose 15 lbs in a month by cutting out 1693 calories per day, you get to eat 77 calories a day.
You cannot live on 77 calories per day for 31 days.
This is just an example, of course.
Yeah, that's also pretty common with pregnancy in general. Your hormones slow down your GI system and cause an awful lot of constipation and horrible bloating. I practically bought stock in Colace.
Honestly I don't know 100% but I can speculate.
I'm sure it comes from extreme diet modification, huge amounts of exercise and I have no doubt there are some unhealthy methods being used.
That said, if someone eats like garbage by drinking large amounts of their calories i.e. soda, consuming lots and lots of processed or fast food and then they make a huge change by cutting out those foods, eating healthy foods, and exercising a lot it's natural that they're going to lose a lot of weight fast.
For an extreme instance, say someone is drinking a 2 liter of regular soda a day then they stop drinking soda. They've just cut out 800 calories per day (5600 per week). There's 2 lbs per day without making a dent in what your body needs.
You're also talking about extremely overweight people who are eating thousands more calories per day then people who are normal weight or even slightly overweight.
IMO it's harder for the person who already eats and drinks healthy to lose weight b/c there's less wiggle room to make dietary changes.
Also, re TBL, these people are away from home and their only job is to focus on losing weight. They have unlimited support from trainers and doctors. They don't have temptations and work and home stress. They have huge motivation to win $$.
You see a lot of them gain weight right back as soon as they're back in their normal environments. It's not a realistic portrayal of healthy weight loss, IMO. It's just fast, extreme dieting.
It reminds me of celebrities. If I had huge amounts of $$ and only had to work here and there, I'd be way thin.
the biggest losers are severley over weight and eat like major crap. it is a huge change.
you should tally all your calories over at livestrong.com i still use it to keep track of my weight when i loose/gain so i have record from 2008
I was just on their site checking out my BMR, (thanks larrysdarling). I need to burn 1662 calories a day to survive, if I eat 1200 a day and burn 500, I should be able to lose 4 lbs a week. I think I read that right. I'm eating 1200 calories a day now, and burning about 400-490 per work out. Times 4 weeks that's 16lbs. I'm eating 6 small meals, every three hours, high in lean protein, and high in veggies.
Just be careful not to consume too few calories. Then your body tends to hold on to everything as if it is starvation-mode. I think eating any less than 1200 calories a day is pushing it.
Also, have you had your thyroid checked?