DEFINITELY NOT! Let me tell you a story.
About 7 years ago, I was pretty heavy; I weighed in at 286 lbs. My Father was rather heavy at the time too, he weighed about 250 lbs. The two of us were in Las Vegas on vacation, when we decided to stop at McDonald’s for some food; we ordered 8 cheeseburgers, 2 large fries, and a 2 large cokes. As we are sitting there stuffing our faces with our meal, my father looks me right in the eyes and says “dude… we’re freaking fat”. I casually look myself over and say “I guess so”. At this point, he drops this one on me “I’ll tell you what, if you loose 50 lbs by the end of the year; I will give you $5,000. If you make it 100 lbs, we will go on a cruise too!” (That time frame gave me 5 months) I gave him a look like he was out of his mind, and asked if he was serious, and his response was to grab a piece of paper out of his binder to draw up a contract (my father is very official with things like that).
Flash forward about 2 months; I had been trying countless things to lose weight, but I had no idea where to start or what I could really do other than eat less, or try my hardest to jog (which was more of a trundle than a jog for me really). I only have 3 months left, so I start trying more drastic ideas. I finally try something that seems to be working; I’ve switched 3 out of my 4 daily meals to a high end protein shake. My 4th meal, usually contained a healthy portion of meat, so again another serving of protein. I wasn’t careful, I didn’t care how I lost the weight, as long as it was gone; this was working, so I was going to stick with it.
Flash forward another 3 months. End of the goal date. I’ve been sticking with my ridiculous diet for 3 months, and the only change I’ve made is to start taking vitamins to try and recuperate any nutrients I’ve been missing out on. I had lost 98 lbs, I got all the way down to 188 lbs. I was thrilled with myself (despite being 2 lbs off) and so was my father. He wrote me a check for $5,000 and together we got online and booked a cruise to the Caribbean.
The aftermath:
Flash forward another 3 months. We had just gotten back from our cruise, and I had noticed that my appetite was all out of whack. I craved things that I previously hated, and I could never eat more than a couple bites of anything despite being hungry constantly. My diet was over, but I had lost another 21 lbs and was down to 167 lbs. Around this time I started getting sick, really sick. I felt weak all the time, every morning I would wake up super early needing to throw up, and I would have diarrhea all day long. After about a week of this, I finally had a bought of weakness that was so intense it led me to pass out; I decided it was time for a doctor.
I described my symptoms over the phone trying to set up an appointment, and my doctor told me that I needed to go to an emergency room ASAP. So of course, I hop right in the car and head over, worry spreading in my mind. I get to the ER and described my symptoms, and the nurse looked pretty concerned, they got me back into a room and had me hooked up to an IV and took some blood. The doctor came in and I described everything that happened, and then the nurse came back and whispered something to him, and he told me they needed another blood sample. They could tell something was very wrong, but they couldn’t tell exactly what it was. So they had my blood sent off to a blood specialist, and then scheduled me to see a gastroenterologist.
After about 2 weeks of seeing specialists, a colonoscopy, an upper endoscopy, and countless blood tests the team of doctors working with me have come to a conclusion; I have two problems that are both feeding into each other. Problem one, half of my gut culture (the bacteria your body uses to digest) is dead and is no longer able to process proteins properly. Problem two, my body is the one that killed them, because my blood is flooded with proteins and my kidneys and liver are both inflamed and suffering. Now that they knew what was wrong they could finally act on a treatment plan.
The doctors prescribed me a few medications, one to help with the nausea and sickness. Another to help balance a chemical level that was out of whack. And 3 different types of probiotics to replenish my diminishing gut culture. For 3 months, they also put me on a very strict meal by meal diet plan that was curated by a nutritionist that was following my state of health, and I had a physical trainer that gave me light exercises to help me replenish my lost muscle weight. The whole process was hell; I still have nightmares about those times. And I still to this day suffer from pretty bad IBS.
Moral of the story; DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SURVIVE OFF OF NOTHING BUT PROTEIN!!
If you are considering ANY type of diet plan, schedule some time with a nutritionist FIRST; do it the healthy way and make sure you are getting the proper nutrition that your body needs. Take it from someone who almost killed themselves trying to lose weight.
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