ANNIVERSARY MONTH: It was 10 years ago this month that I knew I had taken off 100 lbs. They are still off!

POST #833
Ten years ago, on October 2, my birthday, I realized that my clothes were rather loose.  I ultimately took off @100lbs.

So, now, it has been 10 years that  I have kept the weight off.  I hope you will understand if I reach around and pat myself on the back.  Yeah, I’m proud.  Today, instead of wearing a size 22, I am wearing a size 2.

 

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Ani Phyo’s 15 DAY FAT BLAST

Well, I did finish Ani’s 15-day Fat Blast… I guess we can see that I am not the person to give you day-by-day updates.  I liked it well enough… As I have previously mentioned, I did email Ani Phyo to ask her if I had to do the varied diet, or if I could stick with one thing, i.e., one breakfast smoothie, or one evening soup, etc.  I never received an answer from Ani Phyo (which fact has made me like her much less – always, before, when I have approached a raw vegan book author with questions about the recipes In the book I have bought, they have been very helpful.

Anyway, I just pretty much stayed with the blueberry shake throughout the whole 15 days.  Sometimes I did do a banana shake, and, in the last days, I did a banana-blueberry shake, based on both shakes.

I ate spinach salad until the spinach I’d bought started to wilt. Then I made a big spinach/sauerkraut salad.

I liked the tomato soup, the coconut tomato soup, and the red bell pepper soup, so I stuck with those.

When I was finishing up, I went back and read what Ani Phyo  included after the diet info.  There, I found a lot of the usual – eat what you want to when you want to. Ha!  This seems to me like a disclaimer. You eat what you want to, and you will not get the results promised in the title.

By the middle of the Fat Blast, I found I needed to add a laxative tea at night.  Things just weren’t moving through. I was eating things which were suggested, and I was using a blender, as opposed to a juicer, but needed some additional help to perform my morning ablutions.

I am happy to tell you that I came down  to suing two or three of the shakes pretty much exclusively. 1    I found that the blueberry shake, and the banana shake worked well for me throughout the diet. A big reason there was finances.I just really didn’t have enough money to add in all of those lovely ideas that are suggested in the program.

Regardless, I did stick with the *idea* of the program, and I did lose at least one size (I don’t have a scale, so I can’t tell you what the 9weight equivalent was – I just got into my jeans and did not have to hold my breath to close them. I was able to put on a couple of dresses and not look like I was selling something.  In one case, I was able to wear a dress I’d received as a gift, for the first time. Whoopee!

Since I am a veteran Master Cleanser, the whole time I was going through this Fat Blast, I felt a strong desire to do the salt cleanse.  I think that was why I finally went to the laxative tea in the last days. I avoided using laxatives or the salt cleanse during the first part of the diet because I wanted to know how the diet worked.  My experience, in the end, was that I needed a little more excitement to move me, so I finally resorted  to the laxative tea.

Should you do this diet?  I’d say yes. If you have enough money to eat all the things on the diet, it will be fun (all of the recipes are easy to prepare).  If you adhere even moderately strictly to this diet, you will lose at least 15 pounds.

ANI OKEN’S NEW BOOK — ANI’S 15 DAY FAT BLAST

POST #744
I don’t usually get excited about raw food nutrition books (count the books I have not talked about), but Ani Oken’s new book, ANI’S 15-DAY FAT BLAST is an exception to my rule, primarily because she recognizes everything that I have always held true (basically, if you want to lose weight, you need to amp up the protein, eat low-carb vegeables and fruit, and also include ample fats (of the good kind).

Just yesterday, I received ANI’S 15-DAY FAT BLAST, by Ani Phyo.  I inhaled this book.  Okay, I read what I thought would be interesting, then went back and read the beginning, then went back and read through the end.  What a great book!  I already knew most of these things, but the way in which Ani has put them together, as well as the shopping lists and recipes makes the book a must-have for my purposes.

Interestingly, the beginning of the book reads like one of those obnoxious ads you get from the self-styled gurus of raw (you know who I mean), with the long come on, the emphatic sales talk  (but wait! I already have the book in my hands—I don’t have to read through all this to find the exorbitant price!  Realizing this relaxed me enough to be able to read through the intro and be more receptive to the plan).

My take is that this is sort of like the Master Cleanse, only with food.  The plan starts with a short juice fast (the  yummy looking recipes for smoothies and soups make it look zipless; you’d be hard-pressed to feel deprived at all). After that, you add in more solid food taken from a list of fat-burning, metabolism-boosting vegetables, fruit, and superfoods).  The recipes are all right there, and, according to the book, won’t take but a few minutes to prepare.

Master Cleanse is easier (no thinking about what to prepare; only one recipe), but this plan seems like something you could fall into a pattern with and sustain easily over a protracted period of time – there’s plenty of variety.  I’d even venture to say there are more recipes in Ani’s 15-Day Fat Blast than I would normally use at home in a month.  Actuallly, there are 80 or so recipes in the book, which make it worthwhile even if you just want another of Ani’s wonderful recipe collections.

I’m off to write up my shopping list, so I can start right away!

BEFORE & AFTER – so you know

I have just found an old picture (from a family reunion in 2000), and a picture of me now. I was a cute round girl, but I like myself now.

I’d like to make this so you can see it when you first come to my blog, but, until I learn how, here are the pictures.

this is me in my old britches.

I got here on low carb raw.