My personal transformation
I’ve always been a bit of a porker. In school I was the chubby kid and I took the teasing in my stride. But recently I decided that enough is enough. I wanna be the skinny(ier) kid and so I made the decision to get my ass in gear and lose the flab.
A few friends of mine had done a diet by a certain “Doctor Cohen” and had achieved amazing results. So I investigated it for myself. Basically what happens is you go for a blood test and then those results get submitted to Dr Cohen. He analyzes it for certain markers etc and then puts together a diet specifically designed for you. You receive your meal portions and details on when to eat them and you also receive quite an interesting list of foods that you’re NOT allowed to eat. For some people, pork (for example) might be off limits, but for other’s its fine… This is where your blood tests come into play by determining what your body likes and doesn’t like.
The food portions are exceptionally small and the first 4 or 5 days are a nightmare. I was crabby, depro and listless. But I pushed through it. By day 6 or so, I was feeling awesome. The hunger pangs had gone, the cravings had gone and I was in a good routine. Slowly, after much consideration of my allowed foods & spices, I came to find foods and combinations of foods that I really liked and I started to look forward to my meals. Although small, they were very yummy. After about 2 weeks, the small portions started looking like mountains of food and I felt quite full after meal.
Exercise is not really an option on this diet. Not only do they tell you that people who do loads of exercise often lose slower than those who don’t, but you’re eating so little anyways, that your energy levels are just enough to get you through the day, let alone let you spend 30 minutes on the treadmill. When I do find that I’m wanting a bit of outdoors entertainment like having a surf or doing a mountain walk or something, I rely on my fruit to give me the energy I need. I’ll have a naartjie or apple just before I head out into the waves and I find this keeps me going quite adequately.
The principles of the diet are:
- Eat strictly. The portions are very specific for a reason and you must always be within 5 grams of your portion. (Check my recipe for a great soup that I’m loving at the moment)
- Water. AT LEAST 2 litres of water everyday are required. This does help you lose faster and gets you feeling better quickly too.
- Fruit. Your specific diet will let you know how many fruits you can have per day. They can be big fruits. If you only have those smaller Golden Delicious apples, then have two.
- Snacks. Provita’s, Crackerbreads, Ricecakes are your carb extras. You can have these along with your meals to give some crunch, or you can have them inbetween meals as a snack.
- Timing. 5 hours between your meals. This might take some planning because you can’t eat after 9pm either, so your last meal would have to be before 4pm
You can drink yourself into a coma (not literally please) on this diet. In addition to your 2 litres of water a day, you can have teas and coffee’s (100% coffee only – no blends like Frisco etc), up to 1 litre of Sprite zero a day and a can of Schweppes lemon light. If you need some sweetness in your tea/coffee, you can use sweeteners like Canderel etc. Note that absolutely ZERO ALCOHOL can be consumed on this diet.
Once you have reached your goal weight (calculated for you on your initial consultation), you then go onto a refeed. This is a 19 day period where normal foods are introduced back into your body and quantities are increased. This is pretty much the clincher of this entire diet. Unfortunately many people apparently get to their goal weight and then sit back in their skinny glory and think that they’re all done and they don’t need the refeed. These are the people who relapse into fatness. By just going back to normal eating, your body isn’t trained to maintain the current weight and you’ll pick it all back up again in no time. So do the refeed…
It’s also a fairly pricey diet. The diet itself will set you back around R2 200. The blood tests (required up front, then after 4 weeks, then after another 8 weeks etc) are around R600 each, depending which clinic you go to (although these can be put on your medical aid). The food that you’re buying, both in nature and in quantity, will save you quite a bit no doubt however, so if you need to justify the cost, just think of what you’ll save by not buying fast foods etc.
Because of this cost, this diet isn’t really recommended for people who have a couple kilo’s to lose. If that’s you, just put down the donut and go to gym. If you have quite a chunk to lose, then go for it. It’s a great diet that gives you rapid weight loss and by far the highest record of post-diet weight maintenance that I’ve seen.
It works. After around 6 weeks, I’m 18 kilograms lighter and feeling fantastic. I’m fitting into clothes I haven’t worn in years. I’m getting compliments from people left, right and center. It’s great :)
My goal weight is 90kg’s so I still have a ways to go, but I’m totally committed and motivated to push through and get this done.
Remember, nothing tastes as good as thin feels.
If you’d like to do this diet, drop me a mail (mark at yellow-llama.com) and I’ll send you the details of the place and they’ll get you hooked up.
Good luck!
UPDATE – As of 20 May 2010, I’ve lost 24.6 kilograms in 69 days.
For real!
I’ll post some before/after pics once I hit 20kg’s after this weekend :)
Well done bro!!!
That’s inspiration right there :)
Rock on Mark!
Thanks very much guys :) Well pleased with myself.. Looking forward to getting the last chunk done :)
Well done Mark. Was looking at the images of you holding that ipad (posted on @ChrisM’s web > Imod) and thought you looked skinnier.
Stoked for you.
shot guy! appreciate it :)
Oh my hat!! I did Dr Cohen about 4 years ago, is Mariaan the Dragon Lady still doing it? I lost 10kgs in a month, but HELL…… You hardly eat anything!!! Very very similiar to Sureslim, did u notice? I still have the diet, should maybe give it a go again!!! You are right, the re-feed is most important of all, i didnt reach goal ( or the 2kg before goal ur supposed to start with re-feed), so never got to that point! Took quite a while, but i did pick the weight up again, but im a eater and its all food’s fault! Thanks a mil for the inspiration ……. Im gona go look for my dreaded Dr Cohen file right now!!!
Mark, you are my inspiration dude! WOW.
So Impressed with what I saw. Now if I could just do better than Oprah and learn to put down that damn muffin!
well done! while I didn’t quite have the same need as you did to lose a ton of weight, I was very successful in reaching and maintaining my goals through the use of the web site dailyburn.com – combination of the calorie counting and exercise approach – with a cool iPhone app to make the process more fun for us geeks :) check it out.
Thanks Mac. Yeah dailyburn is pretty awesome. I used it more when I was gymming etc – helps to keep track of what your’re eating.
Good job! :)
Holy crap… Seriously?