minus 30

This is my first post in about two months. This has been partly out of a desire for objectivity, partly because my life has been very hectic (lots of road tripping and 1 knee surgery, and my prescription lapsed in California and I wasn't able to recover it for two weeks, which was horrible), and partly because I don't know what to say. Today however is special, because today I have lost a total of 30 pounds since I started on the Belviq.

I wanted to report because I was surprised when I weighed myself today. I hadn't been paying a whole lot of attention to watching what I eat, and I have been exercising almost literally zero since my surgery, unless you count rehab, which you shouldn't because I can barely walk. I also, had two bad weeks of not being on the pill for prescription reasons, and another two weeks pre-operatively by order of my anaesthesiologist.

But the pill, without any other devices, kept me eating sanely even when I thought I wasn't, which is a pretty strong endorsement.

I will probably give quarterly reports from now on.

Week 4

Relevant statistics:

weight lost since start: 15 pounds
average daily intake: ~1200 Calories or kcal
money spent on food: $175.31
12 month monthly average spent on food: $400.61
cost of drug for the lazy: $214.00
total savings for June 17th - July 17th: $11

I am almost never hungry, when I am I eat well, I could eat more, and I could eat less. I am comfortable.

I just refilled my prescription.

Week 3

Switching to weekly format because these updates were taking on the order of an hour and a half every day and I ended up deleting most of my speculations and just ending with a list of food.

over the last 3 weeks I have spent 270 dollars less than my monthly average. at an average of ~50 a week (vs ~100/week). This means that the money I have saved in cost of food will almost certainly offset the price of the prescription, which is totally cool.

I am going to say, unqualified, that my relationship with food has changed for the better, and because of this I am happier, and I eat more slowly, less, better, and less often. It isn't difficult to do, and for the most part, it's involuntary.

My pill schedule, which I haven't put forth yet for some reason, is one pill at 9ish AM and one at 6ish PM, or more specifically, before and after work.

Week three is more of the same food wise. I went to someone's house for a barbeque and that was a fine experience, had a few ribs and a hotdog, with some chips and guac to start. Aside from that it was more of the same, hummus aplenty, chicken tikka occasionally, eggs, fruit. Went for sushi once but didn't eat much, this is probably where the major savings comes in.

when my prescription runs out I will weigh myself, and that should be soon.

Quick Interim

Sorry I'm late on the updates.

http://www.drugs.com/comments/lorcaserin/belviq-for-obesity.html

this isn't a whole lot of data. but it does seem to reflect my experience.

Day Sixteen

This is also very late, I am forgetting to write the blog, which is, from at least the objectivity standpoint, sort of a good thing, I guess.

Today I was afraid of getting gallstones from losing weight too fast. I will go into more depth about the dangers of this, but they are not well understood. To compensate, I had a slice of leftover green pepper and mushroom pizza in the afternoon, it was terrible pizza, but it alleviated my fears somewhat. For dinner I had a half an egg sandwich and a cucumber and hummus sandwich. I probably had a piece of fruit too, but I don't exactly remember.

Day Fifteen

This is very late, and I apologize.

I was very noticeably short on energy today. After plenty of sleep, and plenty of coffee I could barely keep my eyes focused at work. I felt much better after eating a couple of sandwiches for dinner, but I think I need to be more vigilant about actually eating at the very least the bare minimum of food in a day, today that amounted to an egg sandwich and a cucumber and hummus sandwich. I also had some juice and pretzels in the afternoon.

I had to make a conscious effort to eat food today, although once I got started I realized that I was hungry and ate happily.

I also felt much better afterwards. No vivid dreams to report, as I have started sleeping with a fan, which inhibits outside stimulus's influence over my sleep.

Day Fourteen

Early in the day I ate a bowl of black bean soup, after which I was very full. In the afternoon I ate some seeded bread, and TJ's chicken tikka masala (which I plug here because it is excellent).

More weird and vivid dreams last night, but I awoke feeling quite rested. On other serotonergic drugs I have taken, weird dreams we're completely solved by getting any amount of exercise during the day. The dreams have not necessarily been particularly bad, just vivid. I also took the second pill relatively late in the day.

At the end of the month, I will try to get an estimate of the number of calories I have eaten, and then also estimates for each week. I will try to do some analysis on that graph, but I want to avoid making calculations for as long as possible, because obviously that will affect my objectivity.