I am on a diet

Ah, Goolai salad: you are one piece of veggie heaven in a plastic container. ♥ I just had a Goolai salad for dinner, and it was awesomely delicious. The creamy dressing is not really a good choice, but it was the only salad left there, so I couldn’t really pick anything else. I wish it was more accessible to me, though, but not always eating would stop me from getting sick of it too fast.

Don’t you like it when you know you ate healthy in one meal? :)

On another note, my mom started doing the General Motors diet starting Wednesday last week. General Motors diet, or the GM Diet, is this seven day diet where you eat specific types of food on each day:

Day One
All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consist of all the fruits you want. It is strongly suggested that you consume lots of melons the first day. Especially watermelon and a loupe. If you limit your fruit consumption to melons, your chances of losing three lbs. on first day are very good.

Day Two
All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the raw or cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the amount or type. For your complex carbohydrate, you will start day two with a large baked potato for breakfast. You may top the potato with one pat of butter.

Day Three
A mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet. No potatoes today.

Day Four
Bananas and milk. Today you will eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. This will be combined with the special soup which may be eaten in limited quantities.

Day Five
Today is feast day. You will eat beef and tomatoes. Eat two 10 oz. portions of lean beef. Hamburger is OK. Combine this with six whole tomatoes. On day five you must increase your water intake by one quart. This is to cleanse your system of the uric acid you will be producing.

Day Six
Beef and vegetables. Today you may eat an unlimited amount of beef and vegetables. Eat to your hearts content.

Day Seven
Today your food intake will consist of brown rice, fruit juices and all the vegetables you care to consume.

There are other details in the diet, which you can read from this page, like the wonder soup, and something about alcohol and what it does to your body and such. It’s made to be some kind of cleansing diet, to help you eat right, and get this: it’s designed to make you lose 10-17lbs in a week.

Ten to seventeen pounds. In a week. That’s almost as much weight loss you’d get if you drink weight loss pills, based on this phosphacore review I read.

The biggest weight loss I’ve had in the past six months I’ve been in the gym was 3lbs in a week, and about 5lbs of body fat, and that’s after a whole lot of physical activity and careful diet. I can’t even dream of losing that much weight in a week.

So why not follow it, right? Well, call me a gym junkie and a purist, but I’d really rather stick to my own diet rather than do something like this. I thought of following this diet early 2009 after a friend told me about it, but I loved food too much to do something like this, and I really don’t believe any diet that tells you you could lose weight without exercise. Plus isn’t losing too much weight in a week dangerous or something? I hear the healthy goal is 2lbs a week, right?

So yeah, maybe I am a purist. The diet I follow right now is based on the servings that my nutritionist made for me when I started out at Fitness First, which consists of approximately:

  • 4 servings of vegetables
  • 4 servings of fruit
  • 4-5 servings of carbohydrates
  • 5 servings of low fat meat/protein
  • 1 serving of medium fat met/protein
  • 5 servings of fat
  • 3 servings of sugar
  • 1 serving of milk

That’s about 1300 calories in a day, according to her. At first it was hard to get used to this diet, especially since I was awfully selective of the veggies I eat, and I eat a lot of refined stuff. Having a sweet tooth doesn’t help, too, as well as having access to so many fast food branches around where I work. But after some time, a whole lot of discipline, and a part of my mind reminding me not to waste this because I paid for it, I got used to it.

Now, I can’t even consider my day complete without getting my servings of vegetables. Too much grease makes me dizzy and eating anything too sweet makes me want to run around to sweat it off. Would you believe I haven’t had a Dairy Queen Blizzard since August last year? This is from someone who actually wrote a review about a Dairy Queen Blizzard. I also learned how to read nutrition facts and labels and now I can’t stop doing it, which helps me shop better.

I think my diet is still normal — I eat normally, and I don’t really lessen the things I eat. If anything, I actually eat more this time. It’s the choice of what I eat that matters — as with everything else. Like, I choose to eat an apple over some potato chips for a snack, that kind of thing. Or for example, if I splurge on a Starbucks frappuccino, I choose non-fat milk and remove the whipped cream. I know, a frapp without whipped cream is sad, but do you know how much calories the whipped cream adds in the drink? :o

It’s not really revolutionary, just…well a change of lifestyle, at least for me. I’ve learned to eat different kinds of veggies now — okra, eggplant, and sometimes even ampalaya. I make sure to eat every three to four hours so I wouldn’t get too hungry and to keep my metabolism going. And of course, I exercise.

That’s what works for me, anyway. I’m not saying what I do would work on everyone, although I’m sure eating healthy would never hurt anyone. I still allow myself some cravings every now and then (hello Krispy Kreme! And other pastries!), but I make sure to work out extra hard after to compensate for that. :)

As for the GM Diet…well, I think it would only work if you really have a change in lifestyle after you do the diet. I mean, yeah, do the diet for a week and lose 17lbs but if you go back to unhealthy eating after, then it’s useless, right? As we all know, it’s so easy to gain back the weight we lose.

If you’ve tried out the GM Diet above, tell me how it worked out for you in the comment section. If you have any other diet ideas or whatever, post away, too! I want to hear your stories. :)