Hi Guys its been a while

Well .. I was on vacation the last week in June and had the usual temptations of the beach.  French fries, junk food, ice cream, pancakes for breakfast.  The good news .. I wasn't very hungry.  The very good news is that, although I didn't lose as much weight as I have been when I am exercising and at work (I didn't do much exercise on vacation)  I actually lost a pound to a pound and a half. 

However .. even with the Phen/Pro, I am finding that the rate of loss is slowing down a bit.  Right after I got back from vacation I went to the gym and exercised really hard for two days and I got down to 195.5.  But then I think I must have been retaining water because I popped back up to close to 197.  However, as of this morning I am down to 195.5 again and I have exercised heavily 3 days in a row.  I've eaten very lightly (but haven't starved myself) and I think I am trending downward.  I hope to reach 193.5 to 194 by Saturday. 

194 is a huge goal for me and if I can get below that by weeks end then I am on my way to the 180s, which is HUGE.

Anyhow that is my story and I am sticking with it.

Be well.  Eat carefully. Exercise.  Have fun.
GP

Hi Guys its been a while

Well .. I was on vacation the last week in June and had the usual temptations of the beach.  French fries, junk food, ice cream, pancakes for breakfast.  The good news .. I wasn't very hungry.  The very good news is that, although I didn't lose as much weight as I have been when I am exercising and at work (I didn't do much exercise on vacation)  I actually lost a pound to a pound and a half. 

However .. even with the Phen/Pro, I am finding that the rate of loss is slowing down a bit.  Right after I got back from vacation I went to the gym and exercised really hard for two days and I got down to 195.5.  But then I think I must have been retaining water because I popped back up to close to 197.  However, as of this morning I am down to 195.5 again and I have exercised heavily 3 days in a row.  I've eaten very lightly (but haven't starved myself) and I think I am trending downward.  I hope to reach 193.5 to 194 by Saturday. 

194 is a huge goal for me and if I can get below that by weeks end then I am on my way to the 180s, which is HUGE.

Anyhow that is my story and I am sticking with it.

Be well.  Eat carefully. Exercise.  Have fun.
GP

New Goal Reached HURRAY

I'm giving myself a high 5 today because I reached an intermediate goal of dropping below 200 lbs.  Today the scale read 199.5 HURRAY.  Only 14.5 lbs left to go to reach my goal.

I have to say that it really pays to use the tools available to us in the day and age.  I've had a little bit of guilt at not being able to lose the weight without external help (i.e. phen-pro).  But then I think about it.  I have allergies too, and they are controlled with Allegra.  I am nearsighted and my vision is corrected wearing glasses.  So I solved my weightloss with another tool phen-pro no big deal.  It really works.

I also think that two days back to back working out really jump starts the metabolism too.

Well I am off on vacation to the beach.  I am going to have to be on my best behavior to avoid the fattening foods, french fries, ice cream, breakfast and crabs.

PLEASE READ THIS !!!!

1) Every single person on this website that is struggling to lose weight can lose weight.  Its not expensive or dangerous or hard if you read my blog.

2) Losing weight is about calories.  Exercise alone WILL NOT cause you to lose weight.  Cutting calories WILL cause you to lose weight.  Excersize will help you KEEP the weight off period.  Exercise will help you lose weight faster if you CUT YOUR CALORIES.

3) Phentermine is a good drug to use but it WONT work (after 4 to 6 weeks) without a seretonin reuptake inhibitor like Prozac or Celexa or Effexor etc.  AND this is NOT in any way dangerous or unhealthy. (NOTE: Fen-Phen was dangerous .. this is not).    Being overweight is unhealthy.  It leads to heart disease, high blood pressure, difficult pregnancy, diabetes, stroke.  That is really dangerous.  There is NO WAY to be heavy and really healthy .. its simply a myth that people are trying to push in the press and elsewhere that you can be heavy and fit and be healthy.  I was really heavy for my frame, I was very well conditioned by cardio and weight lifing.  But I had high blood pressure and raised blood sugar.  NOT GOOD.  The only solution lose weight.  Get lean. I did it .. you can do it.

4) In case you are wondering .. I have NO axe to grind. I have no financial interest in this.  I simply want people to know that they don't have to suffer with being overweight and eating too much.  There is a cost effect, safe, healthy approach .. people should use it.

List of Phen-Pro Doctors by State

Here is a list of Phen-Pro Doctors by state.  I find that most MDs and Osteopaths don't know anything about Phen-Pro.  All they remember is that Fen-Phen caused heart defects and that you shouldn't do off label prescriptions.  But Phen-Pro (phentermine and Prozac) doesn't cause any heart related side effects or any serious health threats of any type.  Rather it causes you to not eat so much so that you lose weight (a lot of weight) and that is much much healthier.

Here is the list of Drs. by State: 

Phen-Pro Doctors

Here is a partial list of physicians who have shown a willingness to prescribe phen-pro and demonstrated an understanding of the therapy. If you are a physician and wish to be added to this list, please e-mail me at manchors@aol.com

Notice: Dr. Anchors cannot control what these doctors do and cannot be held responsible for their actions.

Thermogenic effects

Ok ... so aside from being quite warm out now, I have noticed that for the past couple of weeks I am hot and sweaty at the drop of a hat.  Though it hasn't been unusual for me to be warm at night .. I hadn't noticed that I was sweating quickly at even the most mildest exertion. 

So I asked Dr. Anchors about this and he said that he had discovered that Phentermine has a thermogenic effect that he had not previously known about.  Apparently some of the other MDs in his network were familiar with this.

It turns out that Phentermine stimulates the release of noronepherine from fat cells.  This in turn apparently (at least insofar as I understood the explanaition) causes increased body heat generation (burning fat).  The effect of which causes you to sweat cause your hot .. not too hard to understand.

Went to the Phen-Pro Dr. Today

I had a really good day today, the only problem ... NONE OF MY CLOTHES FIT.  Fortunately I had a few suits I never really wore which now fit me and look good.  But I need to go shopping.

Went to the Dr. this afternoon .as the Dr. likes to see you 6 weeksafter the first visit and then every 12 weeks after that.  The Dr. was ecstatic at my progress.  I chalk it up to being determined and being disciplined about eating and exercise.

Frankly, the eating part isn't that hard. The Phen-Pro combination really makes me very, very disinterested in food. When I get hungry I eat .. when I am full I stop .. the off button works really well now.

So the big question is why does everyone have to struggle through some sort of diet?  The Phen-Pro works, its safe (3000 patients worth), and its relatively fast. I'm scratching my head as to why anyone wouldn't want to do this.

SO thats my rant for the day.  Don't hesitate to drop me a line.

My first 45 days

Ahh .. welcome readers. So you want to know the secret of weight loss. Its simple really, find a way to eat less.  I know, I know its harder than it sounds .. in fact, if you are like me its down right impossible.  Why oh why is this so .. well dear reader its genetic.  Some of us are programmed to store fat and to have slow metabolisms.  More importantly, many of us have defective off switches to tell us when we are feeling full during a meal.  This is certainly the case with me.

I have been through this before. In my mid 30s I was part of the Fen-Phen craze that swept the country. If you had a BMI over 30% many MDs and Osteopaths would put you on the cocktale. It was all the rage.  Amazingly, after so much bullshit in the diet world and with so many jaded people it actually seemed to work. Millions of Americans like myself lost millions of pounds of weight.

I personally lost over 60lbs by taking the Fen-Phen and combining it with a regular cardio and weight lifting routine at least 3 or 4 days a week.  Not only did I lose the weight quickly in 1996 but I kept most of it off for many years.  Of course the great Fen-Phen craze ended when the heart valve damage trend emerged due primarily to the Fenfluramine (serotonin reuptake inhibitor).  Fenfluramine was removed from the market (rightly so as 45% of people taking Fen-Phen would have had heart valve damage) and millions of Americans went into mourning.

From about 1997 through early 2001 I struggled to maintain my weight at between 180 and 185, but unfortunately it started to creep up again.  It went from 180 to 185 to 187 to 190 to 195 to 204 to 210 to 215 to 217 where it equalized for many years.  In early 2002 I started doing Brazilian JuiJitsu which helped me get my weight back under 205 for quite some time, but being over 40 at the time I couldn't keep up with the sport .. to many injuries.

Eventually, I was injured pretty severely and was unable to exercise hard for over a year.  My weight ballooned up to 217 or so and stayed there since late 2002 until March 2006.

Now, it took me a year or more to recover from my injuries in 2002 and then less than two years later in 2004 I had a root canal go bad.  My reaction to this kind of stress was to put on weight (eating too much). So in May of 2005 I tried to take matters under control.  I started a regular cardio (biking) routine along with weight lifting.  I have religiously stuck to this since May of 2005 but I noticed that I was NOT losing any weight.

It became obvious to me that losing weight simply requires more than just exercise. You have to cut your calories. My goal was to cut my calories in half (eating half of what I normally did).  But eventually I realized that I couldn't do it by myself.

Then we started renovating the house and we had (and still have) no kitchen from Feb 2006 until present time. We were eating out every night and I started really putting the weight on.  I jumped from 217 or there abouts on Feb 6th to a max of 237 on May 1st.

That was the straw that broke the camels back. My clothes didnt fit, I couldn't touch my toes, my blood pressure was up and I felt like shit. My self image sucked badley. It hurt me at home and at work.  Ironcially, the only thing that kept me sane all this time was going to the gym regularly which I have been super disciplined about.

So, around 2001 I heard about a combination of Phentermine and Fluoxatine (Prozac) that was supposedly as effective as Fen-Phen.  At that time I went to see a Dr. Michael Anchors in Rockville MD (near my home) and he explained his Phen-Pro strategy.

Frankly, not being a doctor and reading all the scary reports from 1997/98 about the side effects of Fen-Phen, I declined to take the therapy.  I was paranoid and just didn want to take the risk.  But I kept it in the back of my mind.

Dr. Anchors and a handful of brave MDs nation wide kept prescribing Phen-Pro.  A report was published that definatively showed that the Phen-Pro combination had nothing in common with the Fen-Phen combination.  Phen-Pro causes absolutely NO damage to the heart and has very few side effects none of which are serious.  I learned from Dr. Anchors blog sight (www.phenpro.com) that he had succesfully treated over 3000 patients since 1995 and that most of them had lost 15% or more of their body weight on average and a good percentage of those had kept it off permanently.

So on May 4th I went to see Dr. Anchors.  He recalled my earlier visit. I assurred him that I was serious and told him about my desire to cut food consumption/calories in half. He felt that with my exercise routing and Phen-Pro I would be very successful and he was absolutely right on.

My dosage started as 1/2 37.5 mg phentermine for the first 6 days along with 20 mg of Prozac. After day 6 I took the full 37.5 mg dose of phentermine and the 20 mg of Prozac. 

In order to strengthen the effect of the Phen-Pro, I followed Dr. Anchors advice and added a supplement called 5HTP at the end of the 4th week.  Though the mechanism isn't fully understood, apparently this supplement helps the body continue to better use and metabolize the Prozac and the Phentermine so that you don't  experience Phentermine burnout. (which happens when you take phentermine by itself).  Of course this is the role of Prozac but the 5HTP appears to make the entire process metabolize and work much better. It seems to have helped me as it really damps down my dinner time appetite. It also helps me sleep a little better too and helps other things such as constipation.  I take 50 mg in the AM and 50 mg in the PM before my dinner.

Don't forget that you should be drinking at least 8 8oz glass of water a day .. and more than double that if you exercise hard like I do.

So here I am 45 days or so from where I started. I've lost 33 pounds.  I am down 2 pant sizes. Because I have been working out regularly both weight lifting and cardio wise I actually have a really good physique underneath all the body fat and it has come out of hiding.  I feel great .. I look really good and I am more than half way to my goal. Now the process is slowing down a bit and I don't think my next 15 pounds will come off quite as quickly as the first 30 plus.  But it is working pretty steadily and by the end of the summer I should be at my goal.

Ultimately I want to get down to below 12% bodyfat.  This should put me at a weight of 172 or there abouts.  But my initial goal is 185 .. if I get there and no further I'll be pretty happy.  But I should be able to make my ultimate goal. I did it on Fen-Phen and I WILL do it on Phen-Pro.  Frankly, I don't miss eating all that food. I feel better, Im less gassy,  better poops etc.

Now .. the ugly truth is that it hasn't been all smooth sailing.  While there are few side effects for the most part, taking phentermine is not side effect free.  It does make it harder to sleep, it can for some men make it harder to pee when you have it in your system (an enlarged prostate is not uncommon). It can make it difficult to have an orgasm.  I have experienced all these effects.  My next check up with Dr. Anchors is actually tomorrow Jun 15th and I am going to see if we can't work on these issues.  Perhaps another variation of a Prozac like drug might have fewer impacts. 

Thats the scoop.  There is absolutely no reason why anyone who is overweight can't lose weight using Phen-Pro. Its easier than weight watchers. Its faster than any diet I have ever used. I am in fact NOT dieting. I don't beleive in diets .. most of them are gimmicks.  Eat a balanced meal protein, carbo, and fat focusing on fruit and vegtables and lean meats.  Just eat less of everything.

In the end its all about calories.  Cut calories by 30% to 50%, exercise (walk, run, swim, bike, have sex, chase your dog or cat or kids or wife .. just move)... it will come off.