Diet Pills and Jenny Craig and Cows

So I had just left my Physical Therapy session, and was sitting in their parking lot in my car. I googled “Jenny Craig” on my phone. I had gone there once YEARS ago. That was when it was brought to my attention that I am a cow.

Cow Eating

Jenny Craig and Cows

Back then, I was shown a poster with different kinds of over-eaters. There was the binge eater, which was totally my friend Kathy. A binge eater diets strictly for a while, and then go crazy and eat the whole cake, or the whole gallon of ice cream (or both!) or some other huge amount of food. They will down like 2000 calories in 15 minutes. Then there was the grazer. They eat smaller amounts, but tend to eat them all day long. That was me. I’m a grazer. Cows are grazers. Moo. From then on, everything she asked me (my Jenny Craig person), I answered with “moo”. She kept telling me not to talk about myself that way, but I thought I was funny. Heck, I’m laughing now.

Anyway, to make a short story long, my Jenny Craig person was absolutely awesome. At the end of my first week when I had lost the first few pounds, she jumped up and down for joy with me. She couldn’t have been more excited if she had won a billion-dollar lottery. But she was genuinely excited for me. I loved her! But so did everyone else. She was so good with people that the next week I had someone else, because they had promoted the awesome girl. Now she would be in charge of all the diet counselors.

Natural Dieting Plus Pills

So back to the present, now I was checking to see if there was a Jenny Craig anywhere near me still. There wasn’t. But, one of the search results caught my eye. There was a doctor, right down the street from me, who was all about losing weight naturally. I liked what I was reading, so I made an appointment. As we talked, I realized his diet plan was exactly the same as Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s Eat To Live plan, which is totally awesome. He asked me questions that came straight from Fuhrman’s books. Like “which do you think has more protein, an ounce of beef or an ounce of broccoli?” – (it’s broccoli and I may not have the amounts right) – a question that is asked in Eat to Live. He even quoted Dr. Fuhrman by name, several times. So I said “so your diet is the same as Furhman’s?” Maybe he thought it was a put-down, but it wasn’t. I fully love Eat to Live. I had even thought about trying to start an Eat To Live support group locally. I was excited to have found something like that! But he took it offensively and said “I was doing this 15 years before Fuhrman!” I don’t think he’s old enough to have done that.

And then came the kicker. He also wanted to put me on Phentermine and Topiramate, two very potent drugs that are being used for weight loss. I was so disappointed and couldn’t hide it. “I thought you were all about natural weight loss, and now you are talking pills?” He continued talking, actually it was a well-rehearsed speel, and then hung his head and said “well what are you going to do?”. I was somewhat desperate at that time, so against my better judgment, I said I would do it. Big mistake. I went totally against what I thought and what I was feeling about this doctor.

They didn’t take my excellent insurance, so I had to pay several hundred dollars out-of-pocket. Kathy decided to come, too. The pills are awful. She couldn’t take the jitteriness and went off of them after a couple of weeks. I held on for about 4 weeks. The side effects can be terrible, and you have to be weaned off the Topiramate. I lost a bunch the first week, then nothing, because either those pills or physical therapy hurt my back and I could hardly move.

Money Grubber

Plus, we found out quickly that the doctor was just in it for the money. He ordered expensive blood tests (more than the standard ones), and even though they came back showing that our B-12 and Testosterone were within normal ranges, he said they weren’t, and we needed shots. BUT. He wouldn’t give us the shots during our appointments. We had to make separate appointments for shots at $85 a pop (for the office call only, not the shot). I got online and looked up reviews on this guy, and sure enough, he had tons of terrible reviews with people saying over and over that he’ll drain your bank account.

I ended up losing 9 pounds, which slowly crept back on over the next few months. That was a good thing. I can usually put it back on in a matter of days. Maybe there was still Topiramate in my system. It’s the appetite suppressant (among other things it does to you). Kathy has only regained a pound or two. She lost 10. I feel like putting up the dollar amount spent, the pounds lost, and a ka-ching sound, like on 2 Broke Girls. Lesson learned. Listen to your inner self next time. Oh, and check out the online reviews, too.

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