The How

So, just what the hell are these shakes, anyway? Where do they come from, what goes in them, what do they taste like? Also, what's the actual diet plan itself; how many in a day? Do you REALLY never eat any solids? How does this shit work?

How convenient that you asked, Self! I was just about to write about that! Allow me to answer!

I buy the shakes from New Lifestyle Diet. They're a cheaper replacement for the original shakes I was using when I was on this whole shake program thing, and I don't know much about them other than:

A) They work.
B) My friend Morgan found them and used/uses them, and I have the utmost faith in his intelligence.

I've ordered a 2 Week program worth of just Strawberry, Vanilla and Chocolate; keeping it down to the basics and limiting my choices makes it easier on me to focus on the purpose of the shakes, and not the taste.

As for the plan:

Each shake is 100 calories for 10 oz. of liquid that has 20% of my daily required vitamins. For my size, I'm supposed to be taking about 1200 calories a day, which means 12 shakes. Since they're pretty small, I usually double up on them, which means 6 shakemeals throughout the day, with an occasional fiber capsule and multivitamin thrown in there to keep things regular. Along with the shakes, I'm supposed to be drinking a full gallon of water throughout the day... which I find is harder than the diet itself, to be honest. XD Not to mention murder on my bladder; 30% of my day is going to be spent walking to and from the bathroom.

I keep this up for about 1-2 weeks wherein my body adjusts (which is a very kind way to say "Freaks the fuck out") and I get used to the new system. Once that's all done, I start daily walks. I can't do too much, exercise-wise, because anything too fast/strenuous can be really damaging on my joints in the long run. Walking, though, and stair climbing both work fine. After that, I progressively increase the work-out and... yeah. That's about it. Ad nauseum, ad infinitum, whichever works.

I... I think that's it.