Back at home, 3 of my cousins had become slim. Their secret - Herbalife. When we met up, I interviewed my cousins, and they more or less disclosed to me their regiment. It sounded easy, and Mom was insistent that I try it out. Another cousin, who's a doctor asked me to try too. She's really slim but she herself is drinking the Herbalife shakes, for health purposes.
So, when Aunt came over to the house, I requested that she bring me the products. I knew she had them in stock as she was a distributor. So she did. She taught me how to make the shakes and how to go about drinking them. I then called my cousin, and being a faithful user for many years, he also advised me willingly. He said that I should "enjoy" myself while being on the shakes. So on 24 December 2011, I drank my first shake.
People said that the shakes made them so full that they were not inclined to eat anything else. That was what made them slim. For me, it was not true because I was in perpetual hunger when I began. The starting was extremely torturous because I was used to eating anything at anytime I liked. But for the first few days, I had to consciously stop myself from eating. It was very difficult because there were lots of delicious food that Mom made at home. I couldn't eat muffins. I couldn't eat the glutinous rice which Aunt made especially for me, and I couldn't even eat stir-fried leek with Chinese sausages and egg when Mom cooked it for dinner. To lose the pounds, I had to be on 2 shakes a day - breakfast and dinner. So even though I drank the shakes, I still required a lot of self-discipline and determination to ban myself from eating.
Although I was told that I could have basically anything I liked for lunch, it was not entirely true. According to cousin, I should have a Mickey Mouse lunch.
Mickey Mouse Lunch
I needed to have a large portion of vegetables, a small portion of rice or bread, and a small amount of meats. Because I did not have dinner, Mom went through all the trouble to make me a nutritious soup for lunch. I had a herbal chicken soup, a lotus root, pearl bean & pork ribs soup, and so on. She even ensured that she skimmed off all the fat on the surface of the soup. That's why mothers are the best!
However, my days at home were numbered. I needed to go back to work. And here at work, I did not have the luxury of eating home-cooked food. I ate whatever food I could get my hands on. That's usually canteen food for me. I made sure I ate in moderation though.
One mistake I made was that I started without making sure that I had enough supply of the product. I had a bottle of formula and a bottle of tea. That was it. I thought I could easily buy it from anyone once my supply finished, but that was not the case. I went to the Nutrition Club here in Miri, and the lady said I had to be a member.
At that point in time, I did not want to be a member. Ok. Part of what I tend to do a lot is to analyse people (I attribute that to analysing Literature texts ... an occupational disease? ;p) - especially from their speech and mannerisms. And there were some things about her which put me off :-
1) I hardly knew her. And she hardly knew me. She looked at me and dictated straight away the number of pounds I had to lose. She had not even considered my frame. She only agreed about the size of my frame when she looked at the data. By the way, she did a body composition test for me. The test showed that my bones were heavy.
2) She also spoke too loudly for my liking. I couldn't stand it when people spoke with such loud and sharp voices. My ear ached, listening to her.
3) She also did not speak English very well so how would we communicate when my Mandarin wasn't that great either.
4) She dictated her requirements, especially about the times that I should make myself present at the Club. I told her that I sometimes worked on Saturdays, but I got the feeling that it did not really get through to her.
5) I also felt that she did not relate very well to professionals. She was a housewife who did business on the sideline, after all. Hence, I felt that she did not explain things that I felt that I had the right to know. I wanted to know more. But she did not want to disclose anything to me because I was not a member. That really annoyed me.
6) I also doubted whether I could really BELIEVE what she was telling me. What she told me could probably be her own interpretation of things, of what she thought was right. She was profit-driven after all. I knew that I had the ability to rationalise too, and I wasn't going to take what she was telling me wholesale. Just call me stubborn, but I've always had this problem with people.
And so nevermind that I came back from the Club empty-handed without my supply of the product. What transpired with the lady there gave me a bellyful of angst. There wasn't any element of "enjoyment" emphasised there. I made up my mind that I was never going to go back.
So since my supply was quickly running out, I bought from another distributor online. Again, he was a money-driven person who ensured that he got paid before he courier-ed them to me. It was just my luck that the courier service sucked and I did not get my supply in time.
So, my regiment went haywire because of all these problems. Throughout that week, I was anxious because I knew that my supply was going to finish. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't concentrate on my work, knowing that soon I wouldn't have shakes to drink. That was the time when I could really empathise with drug addicts. I was as desperate as they were, for my "drug".
I'm not saying here that Herbalife shakes were addictive. They were not addictive. It was just that I was "addicted" to the thought that I had to continue drinking in order to lose weight. I was definitely annoyed because the courier came late and it interfered with my diet. So, to those who intend to try the Herbalife Weight Loss method, I do urge that you have enough supply of what you need before you even begin. There is no need to go through the emotional roller coaster that I went through.
While many people drink the shakes differently, all of them agree to one thing. Drink lots of water. Many litres a day. But none of them told me why I needed to do as such. Eventually, I read that water helped to metabolise fat and flushed them out of the body. Now that I understood, I made sure that I drank a lot.
There were many views about how much water one should drink. Some said 8 glasses a day. Some said 1 litre per 25 kg. The lady at the Herbalife Nutrition Club said I should drink at least 5 litres based on my weight. She drank 7 litres. Now, I ensure that I drink at least 5 litres a day.
After taking the shakes, I felt and looked trimmer, though my weight did not drop very significantly. 5 days later, I went back to work and the chief clerk commented that I looked slim. Lol, happy. But I told her it was because my top was fitting and it was black. Ironically, the other clerk, who herself is a plus-size, told me to try Herbalife. Lol.
It's 4 months today, and I've lost 12.5 kg.
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