I am a couch potato and I love to eat – a deadly combination, right?! One of my resolutions for this year is to take care of my health, exercise more and eat healthy, so when the husband proposed we try the renowned GM diet, I was more than happy to try!

To give a background of GM diet, this is a diet scientifically developed by General Motors, a US based MNC, for its employees with the support of US Dept. of Agriculture and FDA at the John Hopkins Research Center (All well respected organizations) and the snapshot of the diet looks like this!

This was the exact diet reference I followed! Here goes my day-wise experiences with it!

Day 1: Started at 71.3 kgs
Had Rosella tea in the morning and a cup of grapes. By 11 headache I have a pounding headache. I thought those were hunger pangs so had a pear and felt slightly better. For lunch, I had a big bowl full of cantaloupe and another cup of Rosella, hoping that would help. Headache soars high so I went to sleep at 2. I woke up around 4 only to realize my headache has gotten worse. So I had half a cup of normal tea (Milk + Tea + Ginger) with 1 tsp sugar and the headache still persists 😦 Had a small bowl of watermelon and a cup of Turkish lemon-mint tea as evening snack around 5. I had chamomile tea after 6 twice and that finally helped the headache, a bit (May be it’s totally unrelated, I don’t know)! Had an apple and an orange for dinner and slept.

Observations: This was the toughest day of all! I felt dizzy all day and that headache was so bad that I thought I was gonna die! 😮 My husband, on the other hand, had a mild headache for the lack of caffeine in the morning but it subsided around noon. In your case, the effect might be totally different too! Every person is different and the responses will be different too.

Day 2: 70.5 kgs
I woke up feeling famished and dizzy but realized I had lost 800 grams in one day! Had roasted sweet potato for breakfast and Sulaimani Chai (Ustad Hotel fame! 😀 ) The sweet potato made me feel strong and that felt really good after a day long fast the previous day! This was my library day and I went to the library with a flask full of apricot vanilla tea! The tea was so hot and I was so hungry I burnt my mouth pouring the hot tea without checking! Snacked with baby carrots at 11 am and had roasted broccoli and mushrooms for lunch! Shared husband’s Cauliflower rice and sautéed spinach. Drank hot tea throughout. For dinner I had sautéed bean sprouts and tea! Couldn’t resist to temptation and sneaked a fistful of Omapodi!  😥

Observation: This day was slightly better than the first. I think I survived better due to the tea I had all day long. You can have a no/low caffeine tea or cabbage clear soup to have throughout the day, whenever you are hungry! That really helps! This is also the day when you feel like snacking/sneaking something! So watch out for it, if you are like me but don’t want to end up doing what I did!

Day 3: 70.1 kgs
This was a veggies + fruits day! So started the day with Sulaimani Chai and had Sautéed Brussel sprouts for breakfast. A cup of blueberries at 11. Had some left over steamed cabbage from the clear soup I made for the husband. One avocado Guacamole (which was divine) with 3 small carrots. A small cup of vanilla tea. 1 cup of grapes and 1 cup of blueberries for dinner. Few strawberries as 10 PM snack. Second batch sulaimani and sleep!

Observation: You might notice I have had a lot of tea! While the sulaimani tea has actual tea leaves (and has caffeine) the Rosella (from Bali), Apricot-Vanilla (Gifted), Lemon-mint (from Turkey) are just extracts which don’t have any caffeine, so I was ok drinking it! Even otherwise, I would have had it, since I felt I deserved it for even trying the diet! 😛 Set your own rules, and make your own decisions in terms of what you want to allow and to avoid! Push yourself towards good health choices but don’t be too hard on yourself!

Day 4: 69.4 kgs
This is a banana-milk day! Had a banana and 250 ml milk at 10 (that’s when I woke up)! Had half a glass of sulaimani chai at 12 when I felt hungry again. Had another banana and some milk again around 1. Since it was weekend, we went for the Farmers’ market and came back feeling famished, so had a mason jar full of cabbage clear soup! Then a little Sulaimani Chai. I was frustrated with the Monkey diet, so I cut up the same banana, added some milk mashed it up with some (7 to be exact) cut up almonds! (It was still bland and tasted the same but I felt I am eating something different, which was everything I was looking for) this day was so difficult.

Observation: This day felt like a boring day! Since so far in the diet you have multiple choices in vegetables and fruits and day 4 is restricted to only banana and milk. Feel free to spice things up! They say a banana milkshake is unhealthy but have it if that makes you feel better, but do it in the morning so your stomach has enough time to digest it and you don’t feel bloated for long!

Day 5: 68.4 kgs
This is actually a beef and tomato soup day, as per the actual GM diet! Since we were not for both, we changed it to our preference. So had 1 lb chicken grilled with Indian spices in the morning. Sulaimani Chai around lunch. Since we don’t like tomato soup, we made tomato rasam (without tamarind) with Indian spices and had hot rasam whenever we felt hungry. Chai again and rasam in the eve. Since we are allowed 500 grams of beef on this day and we had only close to 1 lb chicken, we baked some tofu with spices and had that with rasam for dinner.

Observation: This will be a breather, since you are eating meat and you will feel so good when you reach this day! (This day was actually our motivation whenever we felt exhausted from days 2-4 😛 )

Day 6: 68.4 / 70 kgs
I weighed the same 68.4 as before and was wondering if everything was ok. Then, started the day with sulaimani chai. Had roasted broccoli and mushrooms for breakfast. And cabbage clear soup at 12. Cauliflower rice at 2 and Sulaimani again at 3. I couldn’t resist temptation and checked weight again and the scale showed 70 kilos. I was feeling so frustrated, actually depressed is the actual word for it. So I don’t know what came onto me, so had a Lindt chocolate at home and 2 more within the next half hour. Thinking of it, it sounds silly, but I just couldn’t take it that I have actually put on weight through the diet while doing exactly what I was supposed to! Anyway, had grilled salmon and asparagus for dinner instead of meat!

Observation: Day-wise it’s not a very different day from the previous one. One recommendation I would give is to check for weight only once, at the same time everyday. I wouldn’t ask you to not take it personally and do something like me if it looks like you are putting on weight during the diet, between two successive days, cos I have been there, and I couldn’t do it! But towards the end of the diet, I really regretted giving in to anger/temptation on this day and wonder that I probably would have lost more weight if not for this day!

Day 7: 69.5 kgs
Diet of the day is 2 cups of brown rice and fruit juices. Sulaimani Chai. Watermelon juice for Breakfast. Pineapple juice at 11. Guacamole at 1. Mango and tea in the eve. Again watermelon juice. I had only one cup of grain. Replaced brown rice with Quinoa (they have the same calories, I checked) curd rice with grapes and strawberries for dinner.

Day 8: 68.5 kgs

My general observations:

I did not lose 7 kgs (it’s those 3 chocolates, I tell you! Tbh, I don’t know and that’s ok for me!) like the diet promises, but I felt much lighter at the end of it and realizing that I CAN do this was my biggest takeaway! Occasional fasting has been proven to be effective for better digestion, geriatric health and weight loss too! It’s something our generation probably wouldn’t have tried unless someone is extremely religious and it’s been a long time since I did! The results are different for different people I’m sure and you might lose more weight based on your body type, metabolic rate, weight etc.

So I think the success of this diet for me was not in the 2.8 kilos I lost, but in the fruit salad I chose to eat for dinner on Day 8, despite having Parupu urundai Kuzhambu in my fridge! (If you know me or Parupu urundai Kuzhambu, you will know how big a deal it is!!)

I have given the recipes of all my healthy/filler foods during the diet! Click on the highlighted text and voila! 😀 Hope you enjoyed reading the post and consider trying this diet! If you do, let me know how it went! 🙂

Image courtesy: All images used in this post are courtesy Google.com