ABC Diet Day 1

Day 1: 205 lbs

Today was my first day of the Ana Boot Camp diet. This diet is designed to trick your metabolism and preventing your body from going into starvation mode, while still consuming small amounts of calories. While this diet only monitors calorie counts, you should be aiming to keep carbs below 20 as well. Low carb diets help you lose weight much faster, and actually keep your appetite down.

I'm not new to the world of dieting. I realize I am HUGE right now, but this has been after a bought of many medications and steroids which were used to treat my asthma. Unfortunately, these steroids make you gain weight like crazy. I gained 60 lbs in 3 months the first time I used them, and was recently on them for 1.5 years. I'll spare you the disgusting number of pounds I gained. 

My healthy weight is between 120-150, so I am aiming right in the middle for 135. If I decide to keep going and hit 120, I'll do that too. This blog will be updated weekly, if not daily. I will post a picture every week of my progress. The first time I did the ABC diet, I lost 15 lbs in a month. Unfortunately, I also went back on steroids right after. This time, I'm going to get all of the weight off, and begin a healthy diet of 1200 calories per day, to maintain my weight. Until I am a healthy weight, however, the only way to get this fat off of my body is to consume negative calories every day. This means I need to burn more calories than I eat, that way my body will be forced to dip into my fat stores to sustain itself. 

If you are a healthy weight (and not what you deem healthy, a medically healthy weight), this diet is NOT for you. If you do not have adequate fat stores, your body will begin to consume your muscle tissue, including heart tissue, and you will be weak and could possibly kill yourself. This is not a maintenance diet, but a radical weight loss for those that are clinically obese. 

So, if you are wondering about how my first day went, it was pretty nice. You start off with 500 calories, and I actually had a hard time eating that much. It doesn't seem like a lot, but my dinner was only 320, and I usually only have the appetite for one meal a day. If you eat more, I would suggest starting off with the Healthy Skinny Girl diet, which slowly adjusts your body to fewer calories. Otherwise, you could feel nauseous, light headed, or have horrible hunger pangs. 

I often find cardio EXTREMELY hard, considering my asthma. If you are like me, I have some exercises you can do. All you need to do for cardio is to get your heart pumping quickly. So, I run up the stairs once and back down (doing more of this would give me an asthma attack). After this, you can begin doing jumping jacks, stopping after about 15 to check your breath and make sure your wheezing is under control. Continue the jumping jacks for 15 minutes (you can also replace these with jumping rope), and run back up and down the stairs again. You should be having some shortness of breath now, that's alright. You're almost done and you can take your inhaler right afterwards. Jog in place for about 5 minutes, then take a 1 minute break, but don't sit down. Do 20 rapid sit-ups (I know these make it hard to breathe, but 20 is nothing), then jump back up and jog in place for another 5 minutes. If you are having too much trouble breathing, you can sit down now. If not, start jumping jacks again for another 5-10 minutes, however long you can make it. That is half an hour of cardio. It won't burn as many calories as a 30 minute run or normal work-out, but it's yielded results for me in the past without putting me in the emergency room. Swimming is another great cardio for asthma, if you have a pool near you. The fat seems to melt away when you swim. 

This is the extent of my thoughts for Day 1. If you want to do this diet with me, feel free to comment!