• Lemonade (64 oz): ~585

Day three is at an end, and, contrary to what I would have expected, I still feel pretty good. I’m alittle tired – 6 hours of sleep instead of 8 tired – but it’s nothing bad. Surprisingly, the fact that I feel pretty good is the reason I’ve decided not to continue.

I’ve already mentioned how tentative I was to start this in the first place, and to be truthful, I never thought I could go the entire 10 days. Now that I’m wrapping up day three, I know I could hit day ten, and it brings up a lot of other concerns I hadn’t really expressed as I didn’t think they would come up.

For instance, what sort of strain is dropping to 600 calories for 10 days putting on my already stressed out heart? How much of the weight loss is just an illusion due to water weight? More importantly, how much of it is lost muscle tissue that actually hurts my long terms goals?

I must say I’m incredibly impressed with how well the lemon juice mix really helps curb a majority of the side-effect one would expect from such a drastic calorie reduction. Unfortunately, I think that’s all it does – mask my body’s feedback that’s telling me what I’m doing isn’t very good for it. If I believed in the whole ‘cleansing’ aspect of this diet, I think I would have some sort of incentive to continue, but I don’t.

If it were this or remain fat and unhealthy, I would definitely choose this. If I had no other choice, I could easily drop 40 pound in 10-12 days sticking to this, and assuming I would then keep them off, be better for it. However, I was losing weight at the 1.5 – 2 pound a week goal I had set for myself before I started this. I had already laid out a sustainable path to a better life, and though it was slow going, I was staying on it. I’m not about to leave that for a hand painted sign along the way that says “Short Cut”.