I tried to lose 10lbs in 10 days
So. Much. Kale.
Summer
is pretty much here, and with it the inevitable wave of new-age diet plans,
meal replacement remedies and over-the-top methods to aid us in our endless
quest to be deemed ‘bikini ready’. A few ladies in my office have been trialing various different diet plans, so, me being the competitive, sporting
lass that I am, decided to join them.
The diet I decided to choose was a
free, shortened version of Haylie Pomroy’s “The Burn” diet I found on the Daily
Fail’s website. An extreme, intense and very strict diet plan, The Burn claims
to help users lose 10lbs in 10 days.
Sounded good to me.
The diet works by supposedly
“resetting errant hormones” which for a variety of health-related reasons might
be malfunctioning and causing the body to grow more fat cells than required. It
claims that the combination of ingredients used in the ten days work together to
stimulate fat-burning enzymes in the body, whilst also supporting specific
organs required to get your hormone function back on track. This allegedly resets the entire digestive system, making your body a purported “fat-burning machine”.
So what do you have to do?
The
diet is mainly focussed around eating little or no carbs, no dairy and no
sugar. Each meal is washed down with a cup of special tea made from limes, detox
tea bags and turmeric. Breakfast each day consists of a kale, spinach, beetroot, orange
and sunflower seed smoothie, and lunch and dinner are variable, taking one of the
many low-fat, low-carb recipes as well as a bowl of very green soup. Snacks include
specific fruits, unlimited cucumber or celery sticks, and kale crisps.
Is it as bad as it sounds?
Pretty
much. The detox tea, when made to the recipe which stipulates that you steep
the tea in water for over an hour, is extremely strongly flavoured and
certainly takes some getting used to. Even with a small amount of stevia
allowed in the plan, it’s pretty sour.
The
breakfast smoothie isn’t actually bad at all. The first day I made it was quite
lumpy and difficult to get down- however on subsequent days I blended it for
much longer and it was far better. The orange/grapefruit provide a much needed
bit of moisture and sweetness to break through the vegetable flavours, making
the smoothie actually quite pleasant!
The
soup is really nice, for the first day or so. Then you realise you literally
have to eat this twenty times in ten days and it all gets a bit too much. By
the end of the ten days, I realised I’d actually rather be hungry than eat
another bowl, so took it down to just one bowl a day. It’s also *really*
filling, so I’d advise to have a little less than the recipe says to eat in one
sitting.
Overall
I think my previous point sums up this diet – whilst most of the food and
drinks you are required to have aren’t necessarily unpleasant, the amount
you’re required to consume them makes you so bored that by the end of the week the thought of another cup of sour tea makes you want to cry. It was certainly more of a
mental challenge than a physical one for me. I had no problems with feeling
hungry or unsatisfied, but the boredom and monotony of eating and drinking the
same foods for ten days was maddening.
The main meals.
Most
of the meal recipes in the plan were actually really nice – and there is some
flexibility here with an added list of "allowed foods" which could be combined to
make another meal (I really took advantage of this). Some of this, however,
seemed way more restrictive than the set meals. For example, whilst there’s a
tuna salad on the recipes list with added hummus, olive oil and pine nuts, if I
was to make my own tuna salad from the allowed foods list, I would only be
allowed one can of tuna, one portion of either oil, avocado, olives or seeds
and one handful of cos lettuce. So the meal plans are much tastier and flexible.
I tried most of the set meals on the recipe list, apart from the fish ones. Because I was doing it on my own
and the recipes make two portions each, I would have one portion for dinner and
take the other portion to work the next day (prompting many admiring comments
from my colleagues!). My favourite of all the recipes was definitely the
Asian-style prawns, which I’ll make even when I’m not dieting now. Other
recipes I really enjoyed were the chicken and avocado salad with coconut-mango
dressing; tuna salad; egg salad; rosemary chicken and veggie quiche to name a
few. The dishes, whilst being totally carb free and very low in fat, are actually really large and filling, leaving you feeling very satisfied.
Did it actually work?
Not a bad difference for 10 days!
In
the ten days of doing the diet, I lost 7lbs. But there’s a confession to come
with this. By the end of the first five or six days, my fridge was nearly
empty, having spent over £50 on ingredients to start with. Frankly, to
keep this up, bearing in mind I was doing this solo rather than as a couple, I
would have ended up spending well over £100 on food to keep going for the whole ten days. During
the final few days I did ‘cheat’ a few times, using veggies in my fridge that
technically weren’t part of the allowed foods list, as well as giving up
entirely on the green soup. I also think it’s fairly unrealistic for a normal adult
to consume 450g of fresh spinach for breakfast, as well as 225g kale and the
other ingredients. The smoothie was well over a pint of liquefied veggies when made to the recipe, and quite frankly I couldn’t physically finish it!
Having said that, I didn’t cheat at
all on carbs or sugar. I made sure each meal, even if not technically part of
the regulated list of foods, was carefully balanced and super-healthy. The last
two days, I did treat myself to an actual cup of tea, milk and everything. The
sour tea finally got too much for me, and whilst it did the job it was supposed
to do (help to, ahem, activate the digestive tract), I couldn’t face another
mouthful of the sour, turmericky taste.
If nothing else, the diet certainly
taught me a lot about myself. It took real willpower to stop eating the dreaded
dairy so – condemned by Haylie in the diet plan, and made me realise just how
much gluten and sugar I consume on an average day. I was pretty happy with my
weight loss, and feel my diet has certainly been changed for the better. I’m
now committed to eating much fewer gluten-rich foods, eating more green veg and
drinking much more water. The diet certainly works if you’re looking for a
quick fix to lose some weight before an event, whether it resets you’re bodily
hormone function for good is certainly doubtful, however. But I’m glad I rose
to this challenge, and am happy to say my attitude towards food has certainly been
changed for the good.
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1 comments
Interesting read! Think I will give it a whirl myself - trying to lose weight before my graduation!
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