Thursday, July 8, 2010

General Motors Diet... effective or not?

I've first heard it in the pantry of the office. Apparently, several people are into DIET thing called the GENERAL MOTORS DIET. Curious as I am, I researched this thing in the net.

GENERAL MOTORS WEIGHT LOSS DIET (source : internet)
The following diet and health program was developed for the employees and the dependants of General Motors Inc. The program was developed in conjunction with the grant from the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. It was first tried at the Johns Hopkins Research Centre and was approved for distribution by the Board of Directors of General Motors Corporation at a general meeting on August 15, 1995. General Motors Corporation wholly endorsed this program and is making it available to all employees and families. This program will be available at all General Motors Food service facilities.

It is the management’s intention to facilitate a welfare and fitness program for everyone. This program is designed for a target weight loss of 56 Kgs. per week. It will also improve your attitude and emotions because of its systematic cleansing effects. The effectiveness of this seven day plan is that the foods eaten burn more calories than they give to the body in caloric value. This plan can be used as often as you like to without any fear of complications. It is designed to flush your system of impurities and give you a feeling of well being. After seven days you will begin to feel lighter by atleast 10 pounds. You will have an abundance of energy and an improved disposition.

During the first seven days you must drink 10 glasses of water each day.
DAY ONE
All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consists of all fruits you want. It is suggested you consume lost of watermelon and cantaloupe.

DAY TWO
All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the new and cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the account or type. Avoid oil and coconut while cooking vegetables. Have large boiled potato for breakfast.

DAY THREE
Any mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet and no potatoes today.

DAY FOUR
Bananas and milk. Today you will eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. You can also have I bowl of vegetables soup.

DAY FIVE
Today is a feast day. You will eat 1 cup of rice. You also have to eat six whole tomatoes and drink 12 glasses of water today to cleanse your system of the excess uric acid you will be producing.

DAY SIX
Today is another all vegetables day. You must eat 1 cup of rice today and eat all the vegetables you want cooked and uncooked to your hears content.
DAY SEVEN
Today your food intake will consist of 1 cup rice, fruit juice and the vegetables you care
to consume.
Tomorrow morning you will be five to eight kgs. lighter than 1 week ago. If you desire further weight loss, repeat the program again. Repeat the program as often as you like, however, it is suggested that you rest for three days before every repetition. You have your system under control now and it will thank you for all the purging and cleansing you just gave it. Even more than a diet program it is good to follow this diet once in a while to clean your digestive system and remove toxic substances that have a accumulated in the system.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
The most important element of the program is the 10 tall glasses of water a day. You can also flavour the water will some lemon to make the drink easier. While on the program, take only black coffee and never more than one teaspoon of oil. Preferably do not use oil because the high calorific content. No fruit juices before day seven. Here is what happens to you body while you are on this program and how and why it works.

Day 1: You are preparing your system for the upcoming program. Your only source of nutrition is fresh fruits. Fruits are nature’s perfect food. They provide everything you can possibly want to sustain life except total balance and variety.
Day 2: Starts with a fix complex carbohydrates in the form of a boiled potato. This is taken in the form of a boiled potato and taken in the morning to provide energy and balance. The rest of the day too consists of vegetables which are virtually calories free and provide essential nutrients and fibre.
Day 3: Eliminates the potato because you get your carbohydrates from fruits. Your system is now prepared to start burning excess pounds. You will have cravings, which should start to diminish by day four.
Day 4: Bananas and milk. You are in for a surprise. You probably will not be able to eat all the bananas allowed. But they are there fore the potassium you have lost and the sodium you may have missed the last three days. You will notice a definite loss of desire for sweets and you will be surprised at how easy this day will go.
Day 5: Rice and tomatoes. The rice is for the carbohydrates and the tomatoes are for the digestion and the fibre. Lots of water purifies your system. You should notice colourless urine today. Do not feel you have to eat one cup rice, you may eat less. But you may eat six tomatoes.
Day 6: It is similar to five. Vitamins and fibre from the vegetables and carbohydrates from the rice. By now your system is in a total weight loss inclination. There should be a noticeable difference in the way you look today compared to day one.
Day 7: You may celebrate with champagne. You may also have white wine instead of champagne, but in al practical programs, and in all surveys done to measure the success of the program, General Motors employees have always preferred champagne to white wine.
More than one cup of coffee with milk is especially forbidden. Milk and oil add empty calories to your diet. Avid coffee lovers can console themselves with black coffee. However, after the first week, it will help your digestion and set your stomach. The key think to remember is that if you are hungry at any time, then you are not following the diet correctly. Almost all people give up the diet when they are hungry because of dieting. The secret of this program is that you should never hungry. If it is a vegetable day, eat so much vegetables so that you are never hungry. If it is a fruits day, eat so much fruits that you are never hungry. You may be bored of eating vegetables all day, but you should not be hungry. You can take any amount of General Motors wonder soup on any day.
GENERAL MOTORS WONDER SOUP
The following soup is intended as a supplement to your diet. It can be eaten any time of the day in virtually unlimited quantities. You are encouraged to drink large quantities of this soup.
23 oz water
06 large onions
02 green peppers
03 whole tomatoes
1 cabbage
1 bunch celery add
herbs and seasoning as desired.
This program is highly recommended for women and men above 40 for whom excess weight is especially dangerous. Excess weight for women aggravates arthritis problems and leads to rapid joint decay. Pain and joint deterioration can be lessened by weight loss as weight loss removes the stress on the knee joint. Excess weight is the most critical factor in keeping good health and excess weight is responsible for the most problems including coronary diseases, heart problems, arthritis and cancer among other serious life threatening diseases. Most serious health problems can be avoided by the single function of maintaining an ideal weight. Daily mild exercise of 20 minutes is also essential. Do not tire yourself out, but being regular in your exercise and maintaining an ideal weight goes a long way in ensuring a happy, healthy and long life.
And so I have done some more research about its side effect. They say that for some, the side effect is hair loss... I don't see the connection of this diet with the hair. But well, if this is true, then it's scary. Also, there are some who opposes the many comments of its effectiveness... but what the heck? You cannot please everybody... Maybe I just have to do it and experience it myself and see if this really works. So when it's gotta be??? Tomorrow? Next week? Next Month? Aaahhh... i'll let you know in the future.
I became curious how this works for General Motors but I came across this article which spilled the truth about GM Diet. Read on...
July 30, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The General Motors Diet
By ROGER COHEN
(Few parts in the beginning of the article already ommitted...)

The diet I was on is called the General Motors diet. I have a friend in London who, as he puts it, “does a G.M.” a few times a year to stay in shape. I’ll ask him how he is and he’ll say: “Fine, yeah, doing a G.M., going well.”

He has found it an effective week-long diet, yielding a weight loss of 10 to 15 pounds. My own experience confirms this.

The diet, which can be easily downloaded from the Web, has some curious characteristics (for example, you begin Day Two with a baked potato). But by about Day Five you will notice that your body is geared to total weight loss.

The introduction to the diet says: “The following diet and health program was developed for employees and dependents of General Motors, Inc., and is intended for their exclusive use. The program was developed in conjunction with a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. It was field tested at the Johns Hopkins Research Center and was approved for distribution by the Board of Directors, General Motors Corp., at a general meeting on August 15, 1985.”

I was intrigued by this. Why, I wondered, had G.M. not made more of its diet? Cars have not done wonders for the company of late. With some inventive marketing, couldn’t G.M. be the new Atkins or South Beach? For a company that’s slimming down, wouldn’t this be nice synergy?

So I called Tom Wilkinson, a G.M spokesman. He confessed he’d never heard of the diet, but was kind enough to do some research, going through all the board meetings from the 1980s.

“We’ve concluded it’s an urban myth,” he told me. “It’s a fairly unconventional diet, and in the 1980s G.M. was the most conventional of companies.”

Wilkinson had thought the diet might be linked to Jose Ignacio Lopez De Arriortua, an executive of Basque origin whose obsession with cost-cutting through a global supply chain earned him legendary status during a spell at G.M. as head of purchasing. Lopez was into fruit and lean meats and what Wilkinson called this “whole Samurai thing needed to keep up with all the 24-hour traveling of the global age.”

But this lead, too, yielded nothing. “Nobody here recalls anything about such a diet, and we have no idea how it got attached to G.M,” Wilkinson said. He noted that the number of G.M. employees in the United States had gone from 583,000 in 1986 to about 64,000 today. “That’s the real G.M. diet, an almost 90 percent loss.”

Downsizing is not that radical with the diet, but it is rapid. A first day of fruit, especially melon, is followed by a day of vegetables — quantity is immaterial. On the third day, it’s fruit and vegetables (but no potatoes).

Day Four brings you bananas (up to eight) and milk. On this day, you’re also encouraged to drink a vegetable soup (called “G.M.’s Wonder Soup”) that may be consumed any day if hunger pangs get severe. The fifth day is devoted to beef and tomatoes. Day Six: beef and vegetables. And you round things out with a day of brown rice, vegetables and fruit juice.

It’s a good diet, G.M. or no, but Wilkinson told me the company was too busy focusing on its “core mission” to embrace it. I lost 11 pounds in a week.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Elijah loves Ice Cream

June 12, 2010
After lunch
Bauang, La Union

This scene came as a surprise to us. It was the first time Elijah ate ice cream on a cone on his own. Oh! He loves ice cream so much... don't you agree?