“Abruptly lost 12 pounds and ended up in the hospital with exhaustion and pneumonia.” Personal experience

Nutriciologist

“My story began in 2005, I was 20 years old at the time and I was always uncomfortable with my weight and body quality. Since childhood I was a moderately well-fed girl, and my parents did not limit me – I always ate as much as I wanted. Especially a lot of candy.

By the age of 20, I had gained extra pounds. I crazily wanted attention from the opposite sex, and I began to study popular at that time diets. I read a lot of diets – the easiest and, as it turned out later, effective in terms of rapid weight loss was the Kremlin diet (limiting carbohydrate intake).

Why was this diet easy for me? Because I was able to easily give up sweets in favor of meat. Plus I was happy that with such restrictions do not feel hunger.

I found a detailed description on the net, printed out a table of products and started the next day. All products are assigned points from the calculation of the amount of carbohydrates in each of them. For example, meat has 0 points, but honey – 70.

This diet allows you to eat a day no more than 40 points, that is, you can eat a lot of meat, fish, vegetables, cheese, but forbidden cereals, pastries, sweets. This is a kind of analog of the Dukan diet.

The first week was easy, despite the fact that I was a student and lived in a dormitory, where I tried to feed me candy friends, but I firmly decided that I will not give up and sit for a month.

At breaks at the university, when all my classmates ran for buns and coffee, I ate a few slices of cheese, which I took with me, and drank coffee without sugar and milk (per 100 ml as much as 4.8 points). And if I drank two or three cups of cappuccino without sugar, I would get almost 15 points on coffee alone.

The girls at uni laughed at me and did not believe that I would lose weight. There was even a case when they put sugar in my coffee – they tried to “sweeten” my life. But it was the lack of sugar that made it sweeter months later.

When I got on the scale after 14 days, I saw -4 kg. At that moment I was immediately motivated to go further!

But then the difficulties began. I lost energy, headaches appeared. At university it was difficult to think, with difficulty did homework, but did not give up and continued to follow the diet. It’s been a month, on the scales -12 kg. I am glad, all things are big and hang on me.

My classmates are shocked at how I’ve changed – my face has shriveled, but it has become more beautiful. It suits me to be thin after all. I’m getting looks from the opposite sex. But the health problems were mounting. I didn’t tell anyone about them and decided to go on the diet for the second month.

In the third month I lost my cycle, my skin became dry, acne appeared on my shoulders and back. I realized that I needed to stop, but I was afraid that the weight would come back. The feeling of fear made me keep on the diet.

Six months later I caught a cold, and on the background of weakened immunity, the cold turned into a complicated inflammation of the lungs. And it was lower, which is very difficult to treat. I weighed 53 pounds at the time. I was hospitalized. It was spring 2007, as I remember now: May, Victory Day, everyone was celebrating, and I was lying in the ward under an IV. In the end I stayed there for a month.

The pulmonologist visited me every day and set me up that when I was discharged, I would start eating properly. At the end of May, I felt better, had a final fluorogram and was discharged. But! With a huge request that I take over my diet and stop dieting. Then I gave my word to the doctors and kept it.

After recovery, I began to study nutriciology, balanced diet, immersed myself in various kinds of training and courses on healthy eating, read a lot of books. In summer I went on vacation – home to my mother in the south, where I ate fruits, vegetables, good food, and also swam in the sea, sunbathed.

Three months later, by September 2007, she had gained only 3 kg, but she was completely healthy. More than 15 years have passed since that incident, but I have never gained weight again.

I made a conclusion – if to reduce weight, then properly, under the supervision of specialists. I do not regret this experience, I am glad, because now I help others. Now I am healthy, I do sports, nothing bothers me, I eat a full diet and do not limit myself in almost anything. I just eat my calories and go to the fitness center.

Doctor’s opinion

nutritionist, gastroenterologist, candidate of medical sciences, clinical pharmacologist

“Any restrictive diet sooner or later leads to an eating disorder, which is what happened to the hero of the article. Whether it is a diet on buckwheat with kefir, which no one likes, or cheese with sausage.”

Weight loss is rapid, the body does not have time to reorganize, any change in the diet leads to fluctuations in the figure on the scale.

Psychological problems develop, leaving their imprint. In addition, a person faces a deficit of nutrients: in this case, lack of fiber, lack of carbohydrates, B vitamins, most likely potassium. Yes, a high-protein diet can be medicinal for people with candida or insulin resistance, but only for a short time, no more than two to three weeks.

I am a stickler for individualized dietary choices, not restrictive but selective. Not all of us are well tolerant to casein and lactose, for such people any dairy diet, including the Kremlin diet on cheese, can be a trigger for an autoimmune condition. See a nutritionist for dietary adjustments and don’t play around with diets.