It's easy getting me to try anything as long as it promises weight loss. And if you know me well enough, you're probably laughing at me right now for attempting to create a post like this. But who's gonna stop me?
I've had it with gyms, pills, slimming teas, and impossible workouts that never really got me to my desired shape. So in this entry, I'd like to focus on healthy diets. After all, don't all the fitness gurus say a healthy lifestyle is 80% diet and 20% exercise? HAHA.
Here are 5 different diets I've tried that have surely helped me jumpstart my journey to a healthier me, except that I wasn't able to maintain them and found my sorry ass rolling back to the start.
Should we rephrase the title?
5 diets that didn't work for me
(that could work for you)
1. Juice Cleanse
This is by far the most effective diet I have ever subscribed to because after 3 days of nothing but pure juice (plus some sneaky crackers and cookies), I lost a noticeable amount of weight and didn't feel deprived at all. I felt strong, clean, and renewed. And true enough, I was ready to take on another buffet treat, bwaha (joke lang)! Too bad it's a pain to maintain cos a day of juice cleanse would hit at Php 1,300/day. Oh well, health is wealth.
Read about how my
3-day experience went!
2. Master Cleanse aka Lemonade Diet aka Beyonce Diet
This requires a lot of pre-meditation as it will consume you physically, mentally, and spiritually (when you're already on the brink of life and death, and the image of your goddess Beyonce is beckoning you to the afterlife, kidding). This diet is damn hard I quit on Day 1 pa lang 'cos I didn't prepare for it. Well, I did read the Master Cleanse guidebook but that's all I did as far as preparing myself went. After reading the book I was so sold that everything my body needed to reboot itself is contained in lemon juice, grade B maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. My bad that I didn't follow instructions and failed to gradually decrease my food intake and stuff so I suffered terribly on Day 1, feeling so weak and hungry, giving in to my cravings and eventually putting all my money and efforts to waste.
Here's my failed attempt at doing the Master Cleanse. To be fair, even though I have long concluded that this diet is not for me, I believe that it can really jumpstart your weight loss journey to an extent that will motivate you to live healthily ever after!
3. Calorie counted meals |
| Photo from Lunchbox Diet |
The goal in subscribing to calorie counted meals is to accustom your body to eating balanced meals in correct portions. 1200 calories a day, they say, is enough to promote weight loss if sustained for long periods of time. I personally have tried
Lunchbox Diet and
Princess Kitchen and both have proved helpful if you have no time to plan your meals and don't trust yourself with the portions (
like I do). I would suggest subscribing to this after finishing a Juice Cleanse to extend that feeling-healthy feeling while introducing solids foods again to your body. :)
Don't forget that sometimes it's not enough to rely on these diets alone to stay healthy, you have to supplement yourself with vitamins too! This is the least you can do if you find it hard to commit your entire meals to a specific diet with meager portions. What's one tablet daily for a productive day?
I take
Enervon everyday, as suggested by most friends and family, specially since I'm working the night shift. It's effective in keeping my immune system intact and providing me with energy. Diets tend to make us weak on the first days or so, so don't skip on your vitamins, you'll need it!
4. Soup diet |
| Yummy tomato soup! |
We've been constantly rolling our eyes over infomercials cos they sound like a load of crap. But heyy, for the first time we bit into the trap (stepped onto the crap) and purchased the Soup Mate Pro (basically a hybrid of a blender and a water heater). It came with a 7 Day Soup Diet booklet that contains recipes for a variety of totally tasteless and foul looking soups. Why do they have to look so delicious on screen? Oh, right.
Good thing is, it's easy to alter the recipes so we kindof added pampasaraps to lighten the burden of getting into this diet.
The result? It's good to know we're being consistent with eating vegetables. That's all. LOL. Will make a separate review of the Soup Mate Pro one day! :D
5. CGN diet (Chrono-geno Nutrition Diet)
Oh this. I remember being so excited to try this because it's personalized based on my blood type.
I had to pay to have access to a portal containing a detailed meal program complete with grocery list and recipes, an active forum of dieters, and an effective customer support system manned by their very own nutritionists and dieticians. They really answered all my questions, encouraged me to keep up with the program even though I kept on complaining that I have no time to do the grocery, cook my food, let alone shell out more money than I paid for the membership HAHA. I was so whiny. And fat.
But then I liked this program. Looking back, the recipes aren't that hard to cook and meals are quite easy to prepare. You'll get used to it. Plus, it's really masarap. I don't usually cook and this forced me to cook my own meals and I loved it. Char.
I chronicled the days I was in this diet, and apparently I failed (HAHA) but I had no regrets. I would gladly do this again!
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The ultimate goal of these diets is to promote good health and quite frankly, weight loss is just a consequence. Take this list as a form of suggestion if you're looking for ways to jumpstart your journey to good health. :)
