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Curse You, Metabolism!

My whole life, I was pretty skinny.

As a child, my doctors would (mostly jokingly) ask my mother if she ever fed me; she replied with a stoic “Doctor, she eats more than me and her brother combined. Yes, I feed her”. I suppose the amount of running and jumping and falling and climbing I did factored into that, but the truth was I could eat all i wanted, and did. People would be amazed at how much I could eat, and ask me where all that food goes. My typical answer was “to my toes!” My nickname was Katie No-Butt Wagner. It was true. There was no meat on me, anywhere.

When I hit Jr. High and the joys of puberty, I became “curvy”. Still skinny, but with hips that could move a mountain. I’m Hispanic; I expected that. I wore a size 7 juniors jean which was too big for me because a 5 wouldn’t get past my hips. I wore the same pants until college.

In college, my metabolism was still a good friend of mine, but without marching band to keep me moving all the time, I gained a few pounds. No really, only a few. I was not a victim of the Freshman Fifteen; it was more like 5 pounds, max.

After I dropped out of the art school (that’s a whole other story for a different blog post), I got into kickboxing and other strenuous activities. I dropped those last few pounds and was wandering around in that elusive size 5 for a while. I was stoked; I looked good and was in my prime! Wheee. If only I had known those days were so short!

In the 2 years that I’ve been in Portland, I’ve gained a lot of weight. Granted, I probably needed to gain 5-10 pounds, and I did, and felt pretty good… but it didn’t stop there. I am the heaviest and biggest I’ve ever been, and I am not happy about it. I’m not “fat” persay, but having always been so thin, this is kind of a downer for me.

So, now I’m ready to do something. I chatted with the people at Jenny Craig but really, my problem isn’t portion control, so I don’t think that’s quite the right thing for me. My problem is that I eat bad foods and drink too much beer. Ah, beer. Portland has more microbreweries per capita than most places do.. anyway. I know that if I just start eating better foods, and working out more, I can lose the weight. I wanted something to help jumpstart me though.

I’d heard people raving about The Master Cleanse a long time ago, but it just stricks me as way too extreme and probably extremely unhealthy. I can’t imagine not eating for 10 days. And the salt water chug? No thanks.

Recently, on my plane ride back to Portland from a vacation to LA (where I ate horribly, because I was on vacation, sigh), I was reading a Glamour magazine and saw and advertisement for SLIMQUICK Cleanse; a 7 day cleanse option made specifically for women that helps with issues specific to women’s weigh loss. It’s a supplement that you take while still eating actual food, so it seems less drastic than other programs.

I did some research on my good old trusty friend Google, but I couldn’t find anything that didn’t sound like a sales pitch or fake reviews. But, I did find the Cleanse package and the followup SLIMQUICK Caplets for a damn good price, so I figured.. what the hell? I’d try to kill two birds with one stone.

So I bought them, and will be starting the SLIMQUICK regimen (including their recommended diet [as closely as possible, as I’m allergic to most fish] and excercise plan) on Thursday next week to see if I can drop some weight (I’d start tomorrow, but it’s my birthday tomorrow and damn it, what good is a birthday when you’re on a diet?!) (when I get paid, so I can actually afford to buy healthy foods) for Bird One, and I’m going to document my experience for Bird Two; that way, when the next girl that wants to drop some pounds Googles the product, they’ll hopefully find my saga that will be full of useful information. Yay!

Wish me luck!

SLIMQUICK Cleanse series: Intro · Day 1 · Day 2 · Day 3 · Final Review

3 Comments

  1. Erin
    Erin Jul 22, 2009

    You know, I had exactly the same situation all throughout high school and college. Well, except for the hips thing. I didn’t get those until after I got pregnant.

    Good luck with the trial although I must say, dieting really makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like to tell myself no. Usually I’ll be like, okay I can have this brownie but that means I need to go on a run or do 100 sit ups or something. Lol. That’s my version of dieting. I hope it goes well for you!

  2. spidgey
    spidgey Jul 22, 2009

    Happy birthday, and good luck!

    I was a victim of the freshman fifteen, but then I discovered that I actually enjoy jogging. The trick is to find an exercise that you like doing.

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