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Okay, so if I got out the spreadsheet I’d probably find that over the past three or four years I’ve spent about that much getting to this point, but that really doesn’t change how I feel about it. Maybe an auto loan refinance would have added more to the bottom line, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as much fun. Overall I ended up breaking even, so the last three or four years of gambling turned out to be free, and I had plenty of fun along the way. Who’s gonna tell me that’s wrong?
But along the way I ran into something that really changed my life. Actually more than one thing, both related to my health, and both things that were very easy to ignore up until the bright lights of recognition were shined onto them. One has to do with my declining muscle base – yeah, I’m becoming a couch potato, and the other is very closely related – I was getting fat!
Both are very common occurrences in the modern world, and both are very bad indeed. My primary care physician strongly recommended that I impose some strict discipline and force myself to change the lifestyle that was leading me into the abyss. After several failed diet attempts (dieting is hard work, by the way) my wife suggested I try a company called Diet Doc. They have a super fast weight loss plan that turned out to be exactly what I needed.
Their claims seemed outrageous – 30 pounds in 30 days! Turns out this is true. But you have to get with the program, and strictly adhere to the plan, which I was completely motivated to follow to the letter. They permit you to load up prior to the diet (seemed strange at first, but made much more sense once I understood the logic behind it).
I used something called ‘hCG’ injections, which I learned to give myself, under the supervision of their doctor, nurses, and nutritionists. The Diet Doc plan is completely doctor supervised, so it was not like any of the other diets where I just read the material and tried to follow instructions. This plan is very carefully monitored and the results speak for themselves. I lost over 25 pounds the first month.
hCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin – it’s a hormone derived from pregnant women and does an amazing thing – it permits the body to burn stored fat. It’s a prescription medication, so you really have to have a doctor involved with your diet effort if you go this route. This is the magic behind the program in that normally, your body does not ever do this, and when it does, you feel terrible. That’s because without the hCG, you FEEL weak and hungry all the time. The hCG stops the craving (at least for me) and the low caloric intake works in concert with the hormone to get rid of existing fat deposits.
So I’m now a big fan of this diet. I noticed that there are a lot of scammy sites out there selling ‘hCG drops’ – basically homeopathic versions that don’t really have any hCG. These diets seem to work because the caloric intake is so lot that you lose weight by not eating. Stay away from any non-prescription version of hCG – lots of fraud happening in the weight loss arena.
Now my plan is to keep the weight I lost off and I’m keeping a journal to help me understand how to do that. Diet Doc has supporting products and a nutritionist to help me make some choices, but even if I handled this part on my own, I feel I have a head start just because of how much weight I took off. And so quickly!
So I can report that I’m getting back to my normal activities – will report shortly on how I’m mixing up gaming, online gambling, and dieting (weird combo you say?) to create a lifestyle that is both fun and won’t kill me before my time. I really spend too much time in front of a computer screen, so I’m thinking of taking up racquetball just to throw in some variety. Stay tuned.