I just completed a 40-day weight loss program supervised under medical care. I added the supervised under medical care because it is true and it is very interesting the process used. The plan was to eat between 500 and 650 calories per day and not do any exercise that caused a sweat to develop. The function of this limited diet (40 days) was to cause the body to use its own fat as a source of energy. The 500 or so calories is the border line between the body choosing to lose weight due to low calories and to maintain weight inspite of lower calories. It’s a fine line and I experienced several days of plateaus in which I did not lose any weight.
I recorded my daily pH in the morning and evening. I think this is important because I want my body to be continuously in an alkaline environment. The medical plan recommended an alkaline water filter. We did not use it. I chose to use lemon and/or lime juice in water as my primary method to force my body to be alkaline.
We (my wife and I) ate a different protein (max 4 ounces) each day and did not repeat the protein for at least two days in a row. It is to train your body to extract the amino acids from different sources – you don’t get used to getting your amino acids from the same source. We ate beef, shrimp, sole, snapper, moonfish, cod, turkey, bison and probably a couple others I can’t think of right now. Everything was as close to organic as I could find.
The same is true with the fruits and vegetables that we ate daily. We could not eat the same fruits on the same day. We ate primarily blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and cherries. I bought as organic as I could find.
The vegetables were easy to find in the organic section. We ate celery, parsley, lettuce (several types), kale, spinach, scallions, bell peppers, etc. No carrots or anything that had high or hidden sugars.
Everything was weighed and recorded with each meal. The calorie count for each meal was totaled and recorded. I started on Day-1 at 190.6 pounds and was 164.2 pounds this morning. My average morning pH was 7.1 and my evening pH was 7.645. Most nights I slept eight or more hours. My average caloric intake was 558.5. I was never hungry and many times I did not feel like eating the second meal of the day. We planned our meals to be between noon and 6 p.m as much as possible. I prefer to fast at least eighteen hours daily. This diet had no carbohydrates or fats. It was not as balanced in nutrition as I would have preferred, but it was a short duration option. We will now concentrate of balanced nutrition for our daily food options.
We are now off the low calorie daily diet and adding additional foods (including healthy fats), but no carbohydrates. The next 30 days is intended to keep our current weight and have our hypothalamus reset to the new weight. If reset properly, it will help us to maintain this new attained weight from now on. We will be able to redo this program again in six months if we want to lose additional weight. My purpose now is to convert some extra fat deposits into muscle and lose additional fat but not weight. I’ll keep y’all advised on that progress.