COFFEE, TEA OR ???????

Suzy and I are coffee drinkers from way back -- waaaay back! This morning we had our early coffee, and discovered that we don't like coffee very much any more.

Why is that? For the past three and a half weeks we have not had coffee, drinking tea instead: black tea, green tea, regular tea, decaffeinated tea, fruit favor tea, herbal tea. Teabags with strings and labels, teabags without strings and labels. Just TEA.

[Mike McFall, don't not read beyond this point, we're going to be talking about food.]

Tea is the drink of choice in our new weight control protocol; in fact, in Phase 2 of the program, which we have just ended, coffee is forbidden because it contains "essential oils." Whatever those are. We certainly were delighted to be back to coffee -- until we tasted it, and decided we preferred tea!

When we first learned of this program from our good friend Ron, we thought, "Snake oil, smoke and mirrors, there's gotta be a catch," since we are very skeptical of most of the "magic" diet programs that are advertised everywhere you look. But as Ron continued on the program, he began losing serious weight, told us he was never hungry (even with a 500 calorie a day program!), and that he had never felt better. In fact, the breathing problems he'd had for years were lessened significantly.

We watched Ron for a while, found out that two other friends in our park had gotten great results on the same program.Then we jumped in feet first ourselves. But not without reviewing the program with our doctor. Her response? "I've heard about it. It's a starvation program. Do you think you could actually handle that?"

The key to this program? Redirecting the body to burn the fat that it has had to bury in out-of-the-way places, and the typical diet program just doesn't do that. Those programs burn the loose flab, yes, but people are often left with over-padded hips, hanging skin, and other unappealing conditions.

This program, called MyFatCure, hinges on a simple spray bottle of hCG, a product natural to the human body. In this form, the hCG actually redirects the attention of the hypothalmus gland to that stored-away fat, as well as to the 500 calories we eat daily. Voila, the stored fat burns away, and along with that, the skin holding it seems to shrink back into place. See why we thought it might be snake oil, smoke and mirrors?

Here's a typical menu for a day:

+ Breakfast, half a grapefruit, OR 3.5 ounces of strawberries.
+ Lunch, a chicken salad (3.5 ounces of chicken, 3.5 ounces of shredded lettuce, a good dollop of Walden Farms Ceasar salad bressing), and one piece of Ry-Krisp.
+ Dinner, 3.5 ounces of grilled fish, a serving of well-seasoned "Skinny Noodles," 3.5 ounces of tomato with Walden Farms Blue Cheese dressing, one small breadstick.
+  Dessert, a baked apple with cinnamon and Stevia (an artificial sweetener found in most grocery stores).

But that's only for three weeks. And we have lost weight! Suzy is down 27 pounds and I've lost nearly 22. We are now in a six-week phase in which we must eat more to stabilize the weight loss and establish a new set point the body is comfortable with. Ideally, I should eat 2900 calories daily, and Suzy needs 3400! That's a heckuva a lot of food! But the food list is greatly expanded, even with some temporary limitations such as no starch or sugar at all for three weeks, gradually adding them in during the second three weeks.

Today on the new Phase 3, we had three thick slices of bacon, 12 ounces of milk (our first of both in the three weeks), scrambled eggs, and half a grapefruit for breakfast. Lunch will be grilled tilapia, and mixed vegetable salad with REAL salad dressing, and cottage cheese. Dinner will be large pork chops, the Skinny Noodles, another salad with real dressing, a baked apple and 12 ounces of nonfat milk. And we are nowhere near our calorie goal.

The hard part of the whole program was Phase 1: two days of absolute pigging out! We had to eat cinnamon rolls, bacon, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, cookies, pie, ice cream, anything fattening, and then when we couldn't eat another bite, do some more! Pile it on, stuff it down. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? But it's not. It's torture. We were afraid we'd be sick, and kept a barf bag handy all day the second day. And the pounds we gained from those two days aren't counted in the weight loss I reported. What about friend Ron? As of last week he has lost 60 pounds and is eager to do another round very soon.

Would we do it again? Absolutely! We'll start mid-January on the the second round with two more days of pigging out.

We are feeling great; people have already commented on how our weight loss shows, and on the new glow on Suzy's cheeks! Her breathing problems are lessening. We're gonna be slimmer and healthier and more active, continuing ... Our Life on Wheels.