The MakeMeThinner Support Forum

[emarooster]

Let me introduce myself. My goal is to take my son and father to Hawaii to see the whales this winter, ergo my theme. I was born in the Aloha State (my dad is retired USMC and I was born at Tripler) and want to go back for a visit. My dad is 72. If I want him to show my son (and me) the house we used to live in and any of the old spots that are still there, we’d better not wait a whole lot longer. Here’s the rub, I’m too vain to go to Hawaii looking like I do. That gives me a time limit to work toward. I would procrastinate forever without a kick in the seat.

My next issue is that I have more health problems than you can shake a stick at. Most are chronic conditions that I can’t do much of anything about. Being overweight is not causing anything (yet), but it’s not helping my mental outlook, either. I have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and one of the symptoms is obesity. I also have Crohn’s Disease and the treatment for that is Prednisone and that makes me gain weight, too. I’m not kidding myself; this isn’t going to be easy. That is one of the reasons I picked Medifast. I need the ketosis to make my body lose weight. My MD will be watching me for signs of increased inflammation so that I won’t have a flare up or treat it early if I do. Most recently I had to have half of my thyroid removed. The right lobe had grown almost down to my clavicle. No cancer, just annoying.

Now that I have that out of the way, I don’t want to leave the impression that I spend all my free time fixated on my health problems. I really don’t. I try to just deal with what comes up and live my life as best I can. I have a teenaged DS (who thinks he knows it all and that my IQ has shriveled like a raisin in the sun). I’m the Scout Committee Chairperson for our Chartering Organization. I home school said DS, I’m active in my church and work outside the home part-time at a job that I love. I have a husband (20 years in Oct), who puts up with a lot, and is usually pretty supportive. We are remodeling our house and are either too crazy or cheap to hire a professional. It’s been an adventure. DH takes care of the plumbing and electrical. I’m more the “strong back, weak mind” type. I specialize in demolition, whether that was my original intent or not!

Back in the early 1990’s I was a medical assistant for a DO who monitored some patients on the old Medifast plan when it was all meal replacements. Some patients couldn’t get passed the not eating part. Those who did, really did very well and were quite successful. I would weigh these patients in and I was shocked at the dramatic weight loss. I wasn’t much overweight at the time, so I never thought about using MF myself, but I sort of filed this information away. Fast-forward 15 years. I’m almost as heavy as I’ve ever been. I can’t wear cute clothes. I can’t seem to loose any weight without setting off a Crohn’s flare and winding up back on prednisone which makes me gain at least another 10 pounds. The prednisone weight used to come off when I went off the meds. Until I turned forty. Now I get to keep the 10 pounds and add it to the 10 pounds I gained the last time. Ad nauseum.

Then this Hawaii thing came up and I knew I had to do something. I remembered Medifast. I talked to my doctor who didn’t think it would send me into a Crohn’s flare, in fact, it might even help and we can do blood workups looking for specific markers that indicate inflammation, just in case (that would be an ESR, CRP and WBCs for all you medico’s). I Googled Medifast and found the main website and placed my first order from there. I found that I really didn’t like the format of their forum boards, so I Googled Medifast again and found a couple of other boards. I liked this one the best and after lurking awhile I decided to stay.

Before I started I had to really ask myself if I thought I could do this. Delaying gratification is not my strongest suite. I had always caved in to hunger before. Then I remembered that 10 years ago I quit a 3 pack a day cigarette habit, cold turkey. The gum and patches came out OTC about a month after I quit. How’s that for timing?! I figured if I could do that, then I could do this, too.

I am now finishing up my third day. I have had a headache most of the time. Day number two I was ready to eat the carpet. Instead, I ate too much broccoli at my L&G and had two cups of chicken broth that night for my snack. After the second broth I SUDDENLY felt SO much better. I haven’t been hungry since. Today (day #3)has been much better than yesterday, except for the headache, anyway. I’m tired a lot, but I’ve been tired for the last 6 months, so who knows. I don’t go back to work until 6/15/06, so I can lay down and take a nap anytime I need to.

DH took my before pictures today. (The French doors in the background replaced a sliding glass door that hadn’t worked right since the Loma Prieta quake. That was our first home improvement project.) I have no idea how to post the pics in the forum. I’m the least techno-savvy person in the house. Unfortunately, this lends credence to DS’s “mom-IQ-raisin” theory. I’m just going to have to suck it up and ask DS or DH how to do that.

That brings me up to date. I will be posting my experiences as things come up and look forward to reading about all the really cool folks at this board. I have learned so much from everything that I’ve read here. Most important is that I have new friends who have faced or are facing now everything that I’m going through. We are all in this thing called Medifast together. Someday, when I have more MF experience, I hope to be able give a hand up to the newbies who come along after me.

Signing off,
Em

[TonyR]

you are doing great, and about those pic's if DH or DS hasn't figured it out, just give a shout to Unca Tim and email them to him and he can get them up for you! May I suggest to you if you would like to, get a copy of a book called "The Makers Diet", by Dr. Jordan Ruben. He had Krohns disease also and has made a wonderful improvement, then once you get off the weight you want you can maybe try some of his stuff that he has...that is what my wife and I did before MF and it was pretty good! Anyway good luck and keep up the good work!

Tony

[emarooster]

Day #5

I am a scale junkie. I HAVE to weigh myself every morning since I started MF. I used to avoid the scale completely, but now the scale is my friend. This morning I climbed on, and almost fell off when I saw the red LED numbers flashing back at me a 10 pound weight loss. I wasn’t going to say anything at first. I thought maybe I should wait a couple of days to see if this is for real. I’m much too excited to keep this a secret. I told my family and made them both ooh and aah over me. I’ve read enough on this board to know that MF is real for all of you, but I wasn’t sure what would happen with me. I’ve been watching the scale drop 2 pounds a day, every day for 5 days. I know that this rate of wt loss is unsustainable over the long run and that this is just a beginning spike, but that doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm. I am shocked and elated.

The headache lasted 3 days. The worst day for managing my hunger was day #2. By the end of day #3 I felt pretty much in control of things. Now I know that I may get a little hungry, but I can manage for a couple of hours. I’ve had some leg cramps at night. I make sure I get a Fast Soup for my snack in the evening. I read that somewhere. The potassium in the fast soup will help with leg cramps. I had leg cramps a lot before I started MF, so I’m not really surprised by them now. I wouldn’t miss them if they went away, though. My usual schedule goes something like this:

8:00 am Oatmeal
11:00 am Shake
2:00 pm Bar
5:00 pm Shake
7:30 pm L&G
10:00 pm Pudding

I’ve been playing around with the schedule and this one looks pretty good for summer. I work from 1:00pm to 6:00pm. I tried to work it out to only need one supplement during work hours, but still have my L&G at dinnertime with the family. It didn’t really work out well. When school starts my first supplement will be more like 5:00 am or 6:00 am. That will make my L&G dinner my last meal of the day, which looks weird. I do go to bed earlier, though. Oh well, I’ll deal with that when I get there. This one seems to work for now.

I go back to work this Thursday. I work the afternoon relief position. Usually it’s just me and the secretary in the office. My boss is in and out (usually out) and she goes home early since her day starts at 6:00am. Everybody else starts between 4:30am and 7:00am, so I don’t always see them everyday. I told the secretary about my plan to go on Medifast before I left on my medical leave. I haven’t told anyone else, though. Kim, the secretary, is a real sweetheart. I knew that she would be supportive and really want me to do well. I don’t know if I will have lost enough weight for anybody but me and my scale to notice. I sort of hope so.

[Prancer]

I havent started MF yet, I have been reading a lot and I think I am ready to make the committment. Your 10 pound loss is encouraging. I have PCOS also and I gotta say knowing that this program will work with PCOS is helpful.

[emarooster]

Hi JennP. This diet does work, but I expect I may be a "slow loser". I haven't been on the program long enough to tell yet. Since I can't seem to loose anything at all on the other plans, I'll take MF anyday!

[emarooster]

I haven’t been blogging at all, lately. We’ve been having some computer problems. I don’t know what all is going on. DH is an engineer; he takes care of the household computers. Anyway, I’m back online again. Hooray!

I’m on week number 4 of MF and I’ve lost 18 pounds. I couldn’t be happier. My clothes are all too big and I had to buy some new clothes for work. Not too many though, as I’m not done losing yet. I have just enough to get by for now. I work in a very small department and my co-workers are both very happy for me and supportive, or completely silent; at least to my face. I work with a couple of women who are just miserable human beings. They can best be described as the bride at every funeral and the corpse at every wedding. I don’t mind being especially happy around them, just to annoy them.

As the weight falls off and more people begin to notice, I field may questions about what I’m doing. I try to explain MF in 10 words or less and it comes out sounding either goofy or draconian. This is the best weight loss program I’ve ever done. It’s so much easier than anything else I’ve ever tried. Most importantly, it works. I can lose weight without losing my mind. The MF food doesn’t aggravate my Crohn’s, either. I have had almost no abdominal pain since I started the program. Only one day during the first week did I have a couple of little twinges, but nothing bad. I feel better than I have in years.

Today was a difficult day. For some reason I’m really hungry. Too much free time, perhaps. I can cope. I have SF Jell-O made, pickles in the fridge, and I can always have an extra shake if I need it. I don’t have to cheat or fall off the program. In some ways MF is more flexible than it might seem on the surface. I appreciate that a lot. When I started back to work after my medical leave I had to play around with timing the meals and what kind of meals to bring with me to work. Some days I spend more time in my car than I do in the office and I can’t always be in the office when it’s time to eat. I usually have my one bar of the day on the road. I keep MF shakes and a shaker jar in the office. I keep a cooler with me in the car to keep my water handy and that can now (since my last order arrived) contain RTDs just in case. I love those RTDs; I’m just too cheap to drink them exclusively. Oh well.

This being my 4-week anniversary, I suppose it’s time to re-measure myself. That may be interesting. I haven’t started working out yet. DS has been working with a personal trainer since February and he loves it. He has lost 40 pounds and is now power lifting. That is so not my thing. I don’t mind exercise as long as I don’t have to sweat. It’s icky. This attitude will not serve me well if I want to maintain my weight loss, however. If I ever want to eat another carbohydrate, I’m going to have to come to grips with some kind of exercise. I’ll work on that a little later. I crashed into the sofa two weeks ago and broke a toe. It still hurts to walk on it. Plus DS wants to be there and this is his week at Scout Camp. By the time he comes back, I may be able to ride the stationary bike, at least.

I want to wish a Happy Independence Day to you all. Let’s say a special prayer for all our young men and women around the world who stand between us those who have declared themselves our enemy. Every generation must secure the blessings of liberty for their own time. Here is our challenge. May God give us both strength and wisdom.

[Jen]

I am really enjoying your journal, thank you.

[Arklahoma]

I don’t mind exercise as long as I don’t have to sweat. It’s icky.

I thought I was the only one that felt this way. Nice to know I'm not alone.

[alohacate]

Aloha - Best of luck to you & congratulations on your sucess

[emarooster]

I’ve been sort of gone for a while. First we had some computer problems. I don’t really understand what the problem was. DH is the engineer in the family and he took care of it. Then we had a killer heat wave in the San Joaquin Valley of CA. I think the highest temp was 115’F. Way too hot for me. After work I just wanted to get in a cool shower and stay there ‘till I turned into a prune.

But I’m still sticking with the program. I average about 2.5 pounds lost per week. I’m officially in the 20 pound club as of a couple of weeks ago. I’ve had to purge my closet a couple of times now. My old “skinny” clothes are too big for me now. For the first time in years I went shopping in the regular size ladies section. Even my shoes are too big.
This diet is the greatest. I have had a weight problem since the 3rd grade. Like many of you here, I have struggled and failed at other name brand diets, groups, clubs and whatever. Medifast is the simplest, fastest diet I have ever done (after the first 3 days, anyway!).

I love reading all the supportive posts and all of your stories. You are all an inspiration to me. Sometimes I get a little bored with the sameness of the meal replacements, or I think I really miss some type of food, but that’s just life. I come here and check up on what ya’ll are doing and then go out and face another day. If I could say one thing to anyone thinking of trying Medifast, it would be; DO IT.