November 14, 2007
Alright, I’ll go out on a limb here. This isn’t meant to sound like an late-night infomercial, really. Honest. A few people noticed my ‘status’ on Facebook about losing weight with a product called IsaGenix and asking whether the stuff really works. I figured that warranted a post about it, and I wrote up an article at Facebook (since deleted when I shut down my Facebook account years ago) which is nearly identical to this one.
In January 1999, I had a bad ski accident at Mt Tremblant, near Montreal, that blew out my right knee (tore up my MCL and both tendons inside my kneecap), and I gained about 100lbs in what felt like ‘overnight’. I’ve struggled (badly) with trying to lose the weight, to get back under 200lbs and be more active.
Let me tell you: when your knees hurt, you just don’t wanna move at all, and a sedentary lifestyle only makes it worse.
At my worst, I hit 295lbs. I watched what I ate a little, got to 268, and decided enough was enough, that trying to be careful about what I ate wasn’t enough. I needed a lifestyle change, and talked to a good friend of mine who owns a private gym, and Eric told me about IsaGenix. A few weeks after he told me about it, I started working out at his gym and taking IsaGenix.
Popular diet fads say you can lose “100lbs overnight” (exaggerating), but (a) it’s not healthy to lose that much weight that quickly, (b) you’re putting chemicals and crap into your body, and those chemicals are probably going to be even more damaging to your liver, etc. and (c) rapid weight-loss pills typically only make you lose stored water, not actual fat, so when you stop taking the pills, your weight goes back up. Not to mention that some of them have wonderful side effects like “uncontrollable anal leakage”.
I’ve tried a handful of these fad pills over the years, and not a single one of them helped keep the weight off because none of them promoted changing my lifestyle and making exercise and better nutrition part of my life as a habit.
I’ve been on IsaGenix for about 3 weeks and have lost 12.5 lbs, which is about 4lbs a week for those of you good at math, which is still higher than most nutritionists say is ideal (2lbs/week is plenty, they say). As of this morning, I was 265.5lbs. It’s still a lot to weigh; my first target is to lose 20% of my initial weight, (~55lbs), my second target is to get under 200lbs, my final target is 180lbs, which according to the ridiculous BMI chart would still be considered overweight.
Eric’s site has more information on IsaGenix. He started taking IsaGenix himself a few months before he started telling his own clients about it. He’s a bodybuilder and trainer, so he didn’t really have any fat to lose, but he wanted to see for himself what any side effects were before he recommended it to his clients.
The plan he put me on, which is both IsaGenix and working out at his gym 3 times a week doing yoga stretches and crunches, is a meal replacement shake twice a day, snacking every 90 minutes to keep my metabolism working, and a small 400-600 calorie meal, and lots and lots of water – basically take your weight in pounds, divide it by 2, and that’s how many ounces of water you should drink in a day. (this is not necessarily sound medical advice since you can end up with, at best, too many minerals/etc flushed out of your body, and at worst water poisoning and die)
There are other supplements to take with IsaGenix too, but that’s the gist of it.
The best part is that it doesn’t make me all jittery like other diet products have in the past. No Phen-Phen, no Ephedra, and I’m restricted from any sort of caffeine (but honestly don’t miss it a bit!). And if I eat the snacks at the 90-minute intervals like I’m supposed to, I’m never hungry. If I miss a snack though, I get hungry in a hurry.
The IsaGenix powder is all natural – root of this, and herb of that, etc., with very few preservatives, which means you’re putting very little into your body that isn’t natural. As you consume the stuff, your body and metabolism starts to detox your system (the ‘cleanse’ part of their program) but it’s not like the horror stories on the net about that latest fad pill that warns (I kid you not, this is in their documentation) that you should take a change of clothes to work because of ‘uncontrollable anal leakage’ when you can’t get to the bathroom quick enough. I haven’t had a single negative side effect from IsaGenix so far.
Buying IsaGenix, because I’m really only eating one small meal a day, is cost effective – it’s basically offsetting what I’d otherwise be spending on fast food (or even healthy food). You can see the prices if you click on the IsaGenix link at Eric’s site, and if you sign up for a wholesale license you can buy it much cheaper. The other cool thing is that if you’re into network marketing (I’m not), IsaGenix has an affiliate program to make you some money – if you’re into that sort of thing.
And hey, I’m slimming down, I already feel fantastic and I still weigh almost 80lbs more than I should – I have a long way to go, but if I can keep the momentum of 2-4lbs per week while I work out and use the IsaGenix products, I should hit my target weight in no time!
My typical day:
- 7am: meal replacement shake power, 8oz water, 4-6 ice cubes, 1oz of MonaVie(*), 1oz of IsaGenix cleanse product, and sometimes I’ll add half a banana or a quarter of an apple. Drink that with one of their metabolism booster supplements, and 16-24oz of water.
- 9am and 10:30am: snack time, which is 4-6 whole almonds, and one of:
- a hard boiled egg (or two if they’re small),
- two celery stalks with almond butter (like peanut butter but made with almonds),
- a granny smith apple with almond butter
- 12:30pm, lunch, which is either another shake (just the protein powder, water and ice, and 1oz of Monavie), or a 400-600 calorie meal, and another metabolism supplement
- 2pm and 3:30pm, snack time again
- 5pm, dinner time: if I had a shake at lunch, I eat a 400-600 calorie meal, and vice versa
- 6:30pm, snack time
- 8:30pm, snack time and two ‘flush’ supplements
- 10pm, because I tend to stay up late, I usually have another snack.
(*) MonaVie was a highly-concentrated antioxident fruit puree blend with acai. They made some pretty fantastical claims over the years and have shut down operations.