Dont you have to buy it off of online? Or the reciepe is free like CSD?

I just saw that! we should all pool in a couple bucks and share it

It is too good to be true. 18lb in 4 days? That's 4 1/2 lb per day. How do you think you can possibly lose that much in one day, without amputating a leg or something?

Fact: Your body burns fat to provide energy when it doesn't take in enough energy from food.
Fact: Your body needs in the region of 2000kcal per day (give or take)
Fact: One pound of fat provides about 3500kcal of energy (give or take)

So you can see that if you ate no food whatever, you would burn about one pound of fat every two days to provide the energy you needed. (You'd also get pretty ill pretty quickly because food gives us more than just calories, we also need the vitamins, minerals, protein, fibre etc.)

So a total starvation diet leads to a weight loss of about 4 lbs of fat per week.

(You may have lost more in a single week but I bet it was in the first week of a new diet, or follwoing a blow out. That was mostly water you lost, not fat.

Maybe you can lose more weight if you exercise. Let's see.

Fact: Running is the best form of energy burning exercise (apart from cross-country skiing)
Fact: Running one mile burns roughly 100calories.

Incidentally, walking one mile burns exactly the same amount of calories, it's just that running is quicker so you burn more calories per hour.

So could you lose 18lbs in 4 days if you ate no food and ran a bunch?

18lbs in 4 days is 4 1/2 lbs in one day. That's 11500 kcal. Take away the 2000 you need to live and you can see you'd have to burn off 9500kcal by running, or in other words you'd have to run 95 miles each day.

That's three marathons everyday, for four days, whilst eating no food at all.

That's what it would take to lose 18lb in 4 days (except you'd be dead, it can't be done).

Don't waste your money.

I hate to say it but the only way to lose weight is slow and steady. I wish, just like you all do, there was a way to do it quicker, but there isn't. You have to change your eating and exercising habits for life, and you have to keep it going for as long as it takes, at a rate of about one or two pounds a week. Sorry, but anyone who says different is lying to you, and if they want your money don't give it to them.

That's great Pug. I'll give you the one piece of advice I wish someone had given me before I started running.

Run slow.

I used to think "running" meant "running flat out", but that's actually sprinting. If you're going more than a few hundred yards you need to run slow. I find it better to think of it as "jogging" rather than running. There's actually no difference between jogging and running, but people prefer to say they're running because it sounds more macho. Well you can call it running if you want, but if you think of it as jogging you're more likely to go at the right speed.

You know that feeling you get when you run fast, like your lungs are being ripped out by a boat hook? That's not supposed to happen. You can walk a mile can't you? Well then you could walk a mile briskly. But you can't sprint a mile (some athletes can but if you were one of them I guess you wouldn't be posting here). Somewhere in between is a speed (faster than a brisk walk but slower than a sprint) that you can cover a mile without getting the lungs/boathook feeling. That's the speed you should go.

You'll get faster without really trying as you lose more weight and your body adapts, muscles build etc. But only if you keep doing it. If you try to run too fast what will happen is you'll feel horrible and you'll give in. Then your body will never adapt. But if you go slow you've a better chance of keeping up a regular schedule and improving and in no time you'll be able to run a half-marathon (13 miles) in two hours, like I did two years ago before I stopped running and gained over 50lbs.

If you can, try to get a book by John "The Penguin" Bingham, he writes about this stuff. "The Courage to Start" is one of his and "No Need For Speed". He started running as an overweight middle aged self confessed couch potato, and by going slow he built up his strength and now he regulalry runs marathons and makes his living writing about and talking about running as a healthy hobby for non-athletes.

Good luck, and let us know how you get on. I'd love to join you but I'm still too self-conscious to go out of doors in shorts. One of these days I'll take it up again, and maybe I'll run the marathon I wanted to train for when I gave it all up.