The 17 Day Diet

I was lucky enough to win a copy of The 17 Day Diet by Dr. Mike Moreno, from Simon & Schuster publishing house recently.  Just in time too, as my winter weight gain may otherwise interfere with me fitting into my springtime clothing.  I admit I was not as active this winter as I have been in the past, but as I mentioned in a previous blog, I've fallen three times in the past year and I simply wasn't taking any more chances.

I did a test run of this diet on Friday, and discovered that I was down 2 pounds by the following morning.  I say test run as my food supply needed to be restocked and Saturday I ate things like bacon and fried eggs for breakfast, a lovely big biscuit with my soup at lunch time, a muffin for a snack and a big plate of spaghetti for supper. Oh, and let's not forget the cheese ball that went with the wine and cheese while we observed Earth Hour by candlelight last night.  This morning I weighted 3 pounds more than the night before. 

I did get my shopping done however, and made sure I had lots of fresh vegetables and an abundant supply of both chicken and fish.  The chicken breasts were on sale, thank goodness, and were much cheaper than the turkey breast I spotted and considered.  I had kind of hoped to find some ground chicken or turkey also, so I could add bit more variety to the type of meals I was about to prepare.  My nice big grocery store didn't happen to have such a thing however, but perhaps I'll find that some other week.

I'm not going to tell you exactly what my menu was for today, as I'm sure the publishers would rather you go buy the book, but I'll give you an idea of how the day went. 

For breakfast, I didn't need to eat all that was in today's menu and I was quite satisfied anyway.  I really enjoyed my lunch, and supper, which consisted of ample portions of both protein and vegetables.  My biggest problem seems to be getting all that water in me. Like most diets, they tell you to drink 8 glasses of water. That's more fluid than I would normally take in during any 24 hour period, no matter what I tend to drink.  Normally I'm a tea drinker, and I can have that, but I cannot count it towards my water intake.  Well, it's now 7:04pm and I've had only three glasses of water so far today, and can only imagine maybe getting one more in before bedtime. That's half what they suggest, and four glasses more than I would normally manage to drink.   

I'm taking an online painting course these days, and while it's supposed to run from 3:00 to 5:00pm, you have to get in there about an hour early, in order to get a spot. Then the instructor carries on until he's finished, so we're seldom done before 6:00pm.  Somewhere in there I have a dinner to prepare, and I've managed to do that both Saturday and Sunday every weekend for the past nine weeks.  Tonight, of course, we were having chicken breasts, which I wanted to grill.  Well, you can roast chicken while in another room, but you can't exactly stick it under the broiler and then wander off.  However, it is a quick way to cook poultry, and I was able to prepare, and cook, the rest of the meal during the time it was in the oven.  Of course it is necessary to add some extras to my hubby's version of the meal, but that wasn't difficult this evening, as I had some left over rice in the fridge.

I still have a snack available for later this evening. I say later, as right now I'm quite full and don't feel the need for anything else.  Of course, that could be the water.  What ever it is, I can't claim to have been hungry today.  This could be an easy diet, especially since I only have to follow it for 17 days.  If I decide I want to lose more after those 17 days are up, I can actually add other food into the diet for the next 17 day cycle.  In other words, it gets easier as time goes on, and you are not so likely to get bored. 

Wish me luck. I'll fill you in on how things go.

Probiotics Is Not a Dirty Word!

I'm a BzzAgent. It seems the best form of advertising is word of mouth, and since I like to talk, I decided to give this a try a couple of years back. The idea is that I will join a campaign to tell my friends and family, and anyone else who will listen, anything and everything about whatever product I have been lucky enough to be asked to buzz about.

Being an aging female, one would think they would happily get me involved in some campaigns dealing with cosmetics, or other creams (oh, oh). Or since it's spring now, maybe a cleaning product of some sort would be appropriate. But no. I have had 3 campaigns so far, and every one of them involved putting something in my mouth.

First there was the Ontario Pork campaign. They sent me a sample of something to sprinkle on pork to give it a nice flavour, or to tenderize it. I like this stuff, but I have no idea what it's called. Too bad as I'd happily buzz about that! But I did enjoy talking to people about pork and that was certainly easy enough. Everyone likes to eat, after all, even if some of them don't like pork.
The second campaign was for Dan Active. Now, this was something new to me, but I had some coupons, both for myself, and to give away, so I got some strawberry flavoured Dan Active to try, and found I really liked it. I still buy the product from time to time. I did have more trouble having discussions about Dan Active, or even giving away the coupons. The minute people heard the word Probiotics, they shut me down. They told me their system was fine. They almost seemed offended that I would offer them a chance to try this product. Another common response was, "I already eat yogurt, so I don't need that!"  Hmmmm.....

Now, this latest campaign is for Multibionta Probiotic Vitamins. There's that word again. I'm having even more trouble with this campaign. The coupons I have are for a free month's supply and I'm not having much luck at giving them away at all. There is even a line on the coupon that says the company is so sure you will feel better that they guarantee your money back! That's a funny thing to put on a Free coupon, but I'm sure they still meant they stand behind their product, even if you paid for it. It's that probiotic thing again, I think, since many people I've offered these coupons to admit they do take mulivitamins. Still, they turn me down.  Yesterday I was in a room with about 20 people, and only managed to give away two.

Well, hey people, I just won a book called The 17 Day Diet, and you will likely be hearing more about that as time goes on.  It came just in time for me to try to lose some of my winter weight. In this book, written by a Dr Mike Moreno, it says probiotics are good for helping you lose weight. It seems there is lots of new evidence that part of the obesity problem might be caused by an imbalance of bacteria in the intestinal tract. So, if you have a set of very efficient bacteria, as you would get from probiotics, they would be more efficient at extracting calories from what you eat and help you manage your weight. At least that's what this book claims. Now that should get some folks excited. I'll be passing on that tidbit next time I try to tell someone about this new product.  The probiotics in Mulitbionta not only help improve you digestive tract, but they are also supposed to improve your immune system.  At this time of year, with all the nasty flu around, one would think people would be happy to get all the help they could, especially since I'm offering to let them try it for free.

I doubt I'll sign up for any more campaigns for products that are supposed to be good for you!