today, my daughter's father asked if we could swing by his work so saari could get her birthday well wishes and to thank his manager for the beautiful dress (mary-lou *loves* my daughter). he's a cook at a pub in town. just as we pull up, we suddenly remembered we're out of garbage bags so he dropped saari and i off and headed for the grocery store.
saari and i went in, chatted, and settled down for the long haul because he was going to be a while (that's not him - that's living in a small town: lord HELP you if you try to just dash in and out quickly!) and i ordered a shirley temple for saari.
"corona with lime?" asked mary-lou and i automatically said yes then "omg! no! sorry!"
so then it was the big explanation and her mentioning she'd thought my face was thinner but didn't want to insult me by asking and so on and yadda and i had a plain orange spice tea instead.
i mean... wow: even a 67 calorie beer, that's nearly 9% of my daily intake!
i think that's one really good thing about the VLCD: i only get 750 calories a day and it's amazing what i suddenly no longer want to eat. i mean, drink one lo-cal beer and what do i give up - 1-1/4c of strawberries? 3/4c of blueberries? an orange? something with protein? half a shake?
yep - i weigh in every week at the dr's office or the dietitian (same clinic) depending who's not busy at the moment, they check my blood pressure, and every four to six weeks (depending on the results) i go in for bloodwork.
first blood tests came back fabulous: all nutrients (incl iron, which was wierd) normal except beta-carotene was high enough to give him some concern, insanely low cholesterol (i've never been on pills but apparently my numbers are typically only seen in ppl after they've been taking cholesterol medication for a while), and for once the urine was fine - that means i don't have to take the blood pressure pills because my kidneys are no longer stressed.
i do get free food - tossed salad (no egg, no bacon, no dressing, no oil, etc), beef/chicken consommé, cauliflower, that kind of thing - so it's not a dead loss.
Last edited by threenorns; 03-16-2012 at 08:12 PM.
I have never heard of a doctor placing a person on a diet with less than 1000 calories. I weigh almost 30 pounds more than you and my doctor has me on 1,200 - 1,550 a day
Last edited by SmallSteps; 03-17-2012 at 10:07 PM.
Sounds like the hcg diet, which I find very scary. My sister in law did it last year. She dropped a lot of weight very quickly because she was basically starving herself. No surprise, she has since gained it all back and then some. Be careful of fad diets!
it is a valid diet doctors have been using for years.
the first time i was on it, that dr started me at 1500cal and i gained 5lb in 2wks.
so he dropped it to 1200cal and i gained 2lb in two weeks.
he sent a public health nurse to vet my apartment and believe me, i was following it *stringently*.
so he dropped it to 750. i didn't lose any weight at all for something like 3wks and then finally it started sloughing off. i was on it for 9 months when i got down to 155lbs and started at the gym. got a trainer there who talked me into bodybuilding (which i *love* doing) and he revamped my diet which caused a few weeks confusion because i blew up like a puffer fish for a couple weeks.
the second time, i didn't bother with the 1500 and 1200 cal stages, just went straight to 750 and lost 90lbs in about 6mo (i was way more active from the get-go than i was the first time) and this time, i figure it should be about 8mo to lose 100lbs because i'm not as active as i was the second time but not as sedentary as i was the first time.
Its a valid diet so long as you are being monitored. My doctor (who is a diabetes and lipids specialist) has mentioned this diet to me as a last resort if I am unable to lose at my current calorie budget (thankfully so far this is working and I am not on a VLCD, I just know some information about them). Its managed with frequent lab work, and meticulous attention to nutrients. He also mentioned the tricky part of this diet is once you get to the weight you want, the adjustment can be hard and increasing calorie intake can be tricky, but possible and in many extreme cases its what gets results. He stressed to me that this was a very last resort as its extremely important to have frequent lab work done, nutrient and micro nutrient care, and in my case medicine observation but thats because of my diabetic situation and it can get expensive getting frequent doctor care. He also mentioned that he only uses this with patients that have medical problems that are severe enough to be more of a risk than losing weight quickly with a very low calorie diet, and he suggests tapering back to normal calorie intake once in a safer weight range. He also discredits the HCG diet and basically any "fad diet". He has a sign on his office door that has the red circle and a slash through HCG and tells people not to even ask for it because he wont supply it.
One of my friends is on something similar, sounds like it to me.. dr visits and blood work and all. She was very obese and he was worried about her immiedate health. She has 2 meal replacement shakes a day followed by a normal VLC dinner, consisting of mostly veggies. She feels tons better and all her numbers went down to a near normal range, so she's out of immeidate danger.
As long as you're being monitored by your doc, youre good.
one really good thing about a very lo-cal diet
