My summer of indulgence

Well I had good intentions. Don't we all. But this summer I fell off the weight loss wagon and indulged. I think I was too embarrassed to blog about it, I had let myself go. It all started with a trip to Burning Man this summer. Burning Man is a wild and crazy place! Love it just love it. You see the most unbelievable things there and you have to survive in an extreme environment. By extreme I mean a high altitude (coming from sea level this was hard on me) high heat and dust. Oh the dust, it's actually drywall silt if you can imagine. And it finds it's way into everything, not to mention the dust storms.

So with all of this you end up eating whatever you want and I ate. Salt, Sugar, Spice reined surpreme and I ate tons. You would never know just how good those things are until you are in that kind of environment. So I indulged, cookies, chips, snowcones you name it! The only issue is it didn't stop there. After I got home my old eating patterns kicked in and it wasn't to long until I was having a muffin a day and grabbing for those cinnamon buns. Soon enough I had put on weight and was back up to 160 pounds... My face was round again, clothes were feeling tight, it was awful.

So after a work trip to Nevada a few weeks ago I knew I had to make some changes. I knew it was time to stop these bad habits before it got really out of hand. I wasn't going to go back on the Bernstein diet. It does work but I feel the cost is too high. It shouldn't be so traumatizing to lose weight. Having to have shots 3 times a week and having to take soo many suppliments becuase your body's in shock. No thank you not again.

Years ago I use to juice and this is where I went. I will fill in what I'm doing now in my next post.

Post Bernstein Diet and Hair Loss

Well it's been about what 2.5-3 months since I stopped the Bernstein diet and although I tried to stay on top of taking omega oils the hair loss has started. They say on the forums that if you take omega oils you won't get the hair loss as it's the low oils that weaken the scalp. Maybe I just wasn't taking enough... Now I have always been the person with a TON of hair. I've always called it a weed as it just grew like crazy. Well for this last month I've been shedding, a lot. It hasn't gotten to the point of seeing bald patches thank god, but it is much much thinner.

I found this quote on what's going on from the http://www.drbforums.com "Hair loss is common with low carb dieting such as Dr. B. The reason is because of the shock to your body. Your hair has 3 stages: growth, resting and shedding. Usually you have hair in each stage at the same time. The shock of dieting puts most of your hair into a resting stage while your body adjusts to the changes it is going through. Once you're back to normal, your hair goes back to normal. After resting comes shedding. Ta da! Lots of hair falling out. But it WILL stop and it DOES grow back. The dermatologist told me 2-6 months of shedding is normal."

Just another side effect of doing that diet... Hopefully I won't lose too much more hair and hey maybe if it gets hot this summer I will enjoy having the lighter hair...

Questions and Answers

So I have been getting a lot of people asking me why I would have done the Bernstein Diet. To those who know me it seems like the last sort of thing I would do. So I will explain. I felt trapped, exhausted. I didn't know how to start anymore. The combination of being in an accident, hitting my mid twenty's, and dealing with hypothyroidism left me desperate. I knew that I had lost weight before. The year I went vegan and ate only whole foods was the thinnest I had ever been but I also resented being so limited with what I ate and didn't want to feel that way again. So for the last few years I had been trying in different ways to get the weight off. I would try not changing what I was eating but working out all the time. I would try cutting back on my foods and working out but I wasn't really "calorie counting" I wasn't watching everything I ate and being 100% truthful about it so it didn't work. I got to the point where I needed to feel good about myself and after careful thought I joined the Bernstein Diet.

Now I would say that yes it helped me. It gave me that kick in the ass that I needed. But it was also completely unhealthy, I felt horrible the whole time I was on it. And I made it as healthy as possible not eating ANY of their protein bars or shakes and eating tons of great vegetables, fish and tofu. It really wasn't a bad diet in that regard. It's just that you are eating soo little around 700-800 calories a day that you literally feel like you are starving. Because you are! That's the whole premise of the diet you go into starvation mode and start burning the keytones and the weight comes off. But wow I can't imagine how people do it for 6 months or a year. I had a hard enough time staying in it for 2.5 months and my end result was low blood pressure. Luckily because I did my homework I took omega oils along with their vitamins and didn't have hair loss. Yes it got me on the healthy lifestyle train again. But I really wouldn't recommend it as something to do for longer then a month. As something to only give you a push and to show you that yes you can do this it can be a good tool, but one that must be used carefully. If I could go back to my past self I would have told her go find a holistic nutritionist that specialized in weight loss. Figure out how many pounds you want to lose and start counting those calories really counting them. It will take some time but really whats one or two years of your life in the grand scheme of things.

We all can do it we really truly can. If you are thinking about the Bernstein diet I would advise you to only sign up for one month. Afterwards take that cash and put it towards a nutritionist and a psychical trainer. Your body will thank you for it.

Getting off of the Bernstein Diet

Well here I am what 3ish weeks off of the diet. I felt great for the first week or so and then well I felt pretty horrible. When I ended my time at the clinic the nurse had told me that if I started eating other foods off of the maintence sheet that I could stop taking potassium. So as I started eating potatoes and bananas I cut back on the potassium. I guess the combo of too low salt and too low potassium had me feeling like I was going to faint and that I wasn`t getting enough oxygen to my brain which in fact happens when your blood pressure drops. Anyway I went to the Doc and got a bunch of tests done, I should get the results next week. But I really feel that it was cutting the potassium and salt back so much. I have started taking potassium again and can tell you that I don`t feel like I`m going to faint anymore. Now I think it`s just going to be a balancing act until I can truly be off of the supplements and living the healthy life I want. I can`t tell you if going on that diet was worth it or not to me. In so many ways it gave me the tools and motivation I needed to stay on this path. But in so many other ways it is just plainly unhealthy. You have to be soo careful.

2 weeks since ending Bernstein

Well it's been 2 weeks since I ended the Bernstein diet. I feel fantastic, my energy is great and I have lost 3.5 pounds since stopping which is excellent. To recap you need to burn 3500 calories to burn 1 pound of fat. By figuring out your BMR you can figure out how many calories you need to be eating to lose a pound. I am aiming for 1.5 pounds a week so I am consuming 1200-1300 calories a day and am exercising 2-3 times a week. That's for my body, everyone is different. Women should not eat less then 1200 calories a day and Men not less then 1500 a day, unless supervised by a Doctor. But again we are all different heights so it is really a unique number to each of us.

I am happy that I did the Bernstein diet, it is a rapid weight loss diet and it does work. But wow it was a weird experience that I am happy is behind me. It gave me the tools I needed, and I now feel that I can't fail in this endeavor.