My Attempt at the GM Diet

I've known about this diet for ages, but have never been able to follow it through. Call it a lack of motivation or will-power, but my husband swears by this 1-week diet and has lost upto 4 kilos in the short 1 week timeframe.
 
Dubai Municipality put up a challenge last month - win your weight in gold! You can read more about it here but in a nutshell, we have the chance to win 2 grams of gold for each kilo lost, great motiviation for a wannabe dieter like me! So hubby and I signed up on 29th July, and the final weigh-in is this Friday 30th August.
 
We started the GM diet last Monday 19th August. The GM Diet, or General Motors Diet, is believed to have originated from General Motors in a bid to keep staff healthy but the company denies such claims and it is fast proving to be an urban myth. However, its been around for ages and people who have stuck to it swear by it.
 
Given it's only a week-long ordeal, it shouldn't be too hard to stick to, and all that vege and fruit is great for detox too. For details on the schedule read this.
 
However, my hubby made me follow a more ridgid version of the GM diet:
- We didn't make any of the Wonder Soup, and on most days I drank up to 3 litres of water (kept me full, and all that exercise walking to the loo must count too!).
- We did cardio exercises every day (hubby went for jogs, and I did the one-hour cardio workouts from Shaun T 
- We also had 3 to 4 cups of green tea every day (no sugar added).
 
Day 1: Fruits
The diet tells you to stuff yourself with fruits of every variety (except bananas), but we stuck to watermelons alone. Lost 1 kilo by the end of the day!
 

 
 
Day 2: Vege Day
As per the diet, we started the day with one baked potato each, but didn't have any but didn't have the pat of butter. Instead, we seasoned ours with salt and a good dose of Tabasco. For snacks, I bought myself a bag of baby carrots and grazed on it throughout the day. For lunch, we had steamed vegetables (mainly cabbage and a mix of carrot, onions and tomatoes). Reprated the lunch menu for dinner. Tabasco really helped in making the veges more interesting.
 
 
*My hubby took the batteries out of the weighing scale today. He said I should stop obsessing on weighing myself everyday as this could be demotivating!
 
Day 3: Fruits & Veges Day
Watermelon for breakfast, baby carrots and a bowl of fresh blueberries for my midday snack, and the same steamed vege combo of yesterday for lunch and dinner.
 
Day 4: Bananas & Milk Day
I found this day pretty tough as I didn't feel as full. I read other people found it hard to eat all 8 bananas, but I managed just fine - maybe its because I didn't have any of that Wonder Soup. I had a banana smoothie for breakfast (a cup of milk with a banana whizzed in the blender), and a banana for my midday snack. Lunch was the smoothie again along with two whole bananas. Dinner was a repeat of lunch. By the end of this day, I felt quite bloated.
 
Day 5: Beef & Tomatoes Day
We limited our beef intake to 500 grams each for the whole day. I made a spicy beef and tomato curry in the pressure-cooker (no oil - I chopped 6 tomatoes and let them sweat. When the water was half dry, I added the beef with spices and let it cook). I also made a salsa salad using 6 tomatoes (we are allowed 6 tomatoes each for the whole day - so the curry had tomatoes, and we got the rest from the salsa). The salsa consisted of chopped tomatoes, onion, chillies and cilantro. We had this combination for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
 
Day 6: Unlimited Beef & Veges Day
Hubby made a delicious Chinese stir-fry with beef strips and lots of veges. He only used a spray of oil on the wok. We had this for all three meals.
 
Day 7: Unlimited Brown Rice, Fruit Juice & Vegetables
We decided to skip the rice and juice, but shared an apple for breakfast. For lunch and dinner, I made a soup (boiled together chopped cabbage, tomatoes, capsicum, onion). I have to confess I cheated this day. I was packing my daughter's lunch-box and ended up having a whole piece of chicken roast! Sshhh... don't tell my hubby!
 
Woke up this morning, and hubby had replaced the batteries in the weighing machine. Moment of truth...
 

 
 
Would he find out I indulged in that chicken? Would I see any significant weight loss?
 
I LOST 3 KILOS!
Hubby lost 3.5 kilos.
Pretty psyched! And no, I won't be celebrating with that cheese-cake! Gold, here we come!
 
Here is why I think I was finally successful at sticking to this diet:
- Doing it together: Knowing my hubby is in this as well kept me on track, and it also meant sharing meals and not having to watch my partner indulge in something decadent while I munched on baby carrots!
- Not weighing myself every day. Weight loss is slow and painful, and some days it might even spike up. Best to check at the end of the week.
- Having mainly watermelons for fruit. The high water content kept us fuller, and its a low-calorie fruit.
- Tabasco! Spicing things up kept the otherwise bland menu appetising. Also, spicy foods give the metabolism a serious kick-start.
- One-hour cardio daily = more calories burnt!
- Green tea kept me alert and all that antioxidising must be good too.
 
Remember everyone looses weight at a different pace. It all depends on your body and your lifestyle. One week is only 7 days of your time for a slimmer, happier you. Give it a go!
 

- Big Sis.