Day 7 Weight: 260.6 (+1.0 lbs)
Day8 Weight: 258.6 (-2.0 lbs)
7 Day Fast, Total Loss: -6.4 lbs
Product Review
What is in the Kit?
The GNC Total Lean 7 Day Fast Loss Kit comes in a neat little box for about $50. Included are 7 vitamin packs, 7 chocolate flavored meal replacement mixes, 7 vanilla flavored meal replacement mixes, and 7 orange flavored “pre-cleanse” drinks.
A pamphlet lays out the benefits of each item – vitamins, meal-replacement, and pre-cleanse – each combining to boost your body into fat fighting mode before undergoing a full fledged diet. The pamphlet also includes a 1500 calorie a day meal plan as well as exercise recommendations.
Following the plan as it is laid out, you would start the morning by taking the vita-pak along with breakfast or one of the shakes. The vita-pak includes a green tea pill, 2 water pills, and 2 “Burn 60” pills. Basically, these pills enhance energy, boost metabolism, and help shed water weight.
The Pills
I was a little skeptical about taking a water pill everyday, mostly because I didn’t see the point. Everyone knows that water weight is the first to go in a diet, right? Well, that is true, but the reason our body retains water is because it has become toxic – through the environment we live in as well as the foods that we eat.
The body feels like it needs to hold on to the water to survive. The premise with the water pills is that the body will release the excess water, and our jobs is to replenish the water through better eating and drinking habits.
The Menu
The GNC associate that helped remind me of this also shared with my husband and I that he had followed the fast. He recommended that we simply ingest the components of the kit plus one healthy meal each day. He also let us know that adding milk made the supplement more substantial as a meal re-placer, and suggested that we take a multi-vitamin as part of our daily regime.
My husband took most of his meal replacement shakes with milk; I didn’t hear him say anything negative about the taste, so I assume he preferred drinking them that way. For the most part, I drank my shakes with approximately 8 oz of filtered water.
When mixed with milk, the shake is much “thicker” in consistency. Very fibrous, almost. I’m not sure how to better describe it; it was less pleasant than I expected.
Adding ice to my morning shake made it very pleasant, and heating up the shake for a “hot chocolate” was also quite nice. Depending on the type of milk you consume, you are talking about adding 90-150 calories per “meal”.
Taking just the meal supplements during the day gave you 360 calories (with 1% milk, 540 calories). Following the 1500 calorie diet, you had a deficit of 1140 calories. To me, that is insurmountable for 1 meal, assuming the goal is to have a healthy meal.
My husband and I both added 2 small snacks to our day, ranging from 100-200 calories each. Dinner was a reasonable salad with soup or sandwich. I would estimate that we ate somewhere between 1000-1300 calories per day.
My husband was quite hungry the first day, but I noticed that he adjusted pretty quickly to the regimen. I also felt the same hunger for the first day or two.
To fight the hunger pangs, we both increased our water intake during this time. I usually drink about a gallon of water a day (sounds like a lot, but it’s only 128 ounces). My husband and I supplemented our water intake with the following:
– Green Tea/Peppermint Tea: A citrus-y, hot green tea really helped calmed my stomach when I was hungry. Normally, I add sugar to my tea but I found “Mandarin Orange Green Tea” by Lipton to be great by itself. Peppermint (or mint in general) is a great deterrent from hunger, so both of us reached for a hot cup of mint tea in the evening.
– Superfoods Supreme, by GNC: I don’t know that this helped with hunger but it’s a powder that you mix with water, so drinking the extra water helped with filling up the tummy. There is some fiber in mix that also lends to a full feeling. Increasing green food in my diet has been a goal of mine, so doing the fast was as good an excuse as any to add it in. I finally remembered why it was a good idea to add green food to my diet, which I’ll share in a later post.
The “Cleanse”
At the end of each day, we mixed the orange pre-cleanse concentrate with water and drank it up. The cleanse is intended to gently flush out toxins and clean your colon. This may be T.M.I so feel free to skip this part if you don’t want to know about it.
Gas. That is what you can expect while taking the “pre-cleanse” drinks. And…it can be stinky! All of the products in the Fast Loss Kit are fiber-packed, so what else would you expect? The cleanse also helps regulate your system, but I didn’t notice anything excessive (like a famous lemonade cleanse warns about).
The citrus-y, refreshing flavor of the “pre-cleanse” drinks was probably the most looked-forward to part of the day for me. I could probably drink it every day. Not that I’m recommending that, because I’m not sure what the effects would be. It just tastes that good.
Conclusion
Weight loss of a certain level was not a goal for this week, and 6 pounds is a little shocking. I was expecting more like 2 pounds.
I was hoping more for a “reset,” to get my mind and my body in line with eating less calories and being more conscious of what I am doing to myself everyday in terms of nourishment. I know I have a long way to go, but this was definitely a step in the right direction!
I would recommend the kit for use by anyone wanting to kick start a healthy eating regime.
F.O.T.O.T.O.T.I 