How The Desire To Lose Weight Created A Desire For Wellness
Change was needed. I had recently retired a multi-decade tobacco addiction and gained twenty pounds in two months when my metabolism came to a screeching halt without the nicotine. A friend of mine had dropped twenty-five pounds in twenty-six days on the Jennings’ RealMecleanse. Cautiously committed, I met with the naturopath who created the cleanse to get the skinny on how to loose some weight fast.
“Naturopathic medicine is something that some people still don’t know about,” Dr Kelly Jennings tells me during our consultation in an upscale production office in Santa Monica. Miles away from her practice in Portland, Oregon, this naturopathic doctor is calm and disarmingly vibrant with a focused compassion… the poster girl for wellness.
As a naturopathic doctor and licensed acupuncturist (abbreviated ND, MSOM, LAc), Jennings looks at health though a broad lens, assessing and evaluating my health and well-being with a comprehensive intake and review of my past medical history. She does this with practiced precision…and a contagious smile. “Naturopathic medicine? It is four to six years of medical school, with all of the subjects typically taught in a conventional medical school such as anatomy and physiology, neuroscience, immunology, and biochemistry, then add on to that training in homeopathy, botanical medicine, hydrotherapy and, for many students, including me, Chinese medicine,” she says.
Just under the social skin the doctor is all business as she cuts to the chase breaking down the protocol for her RealMEcleanse; a metabolic enhancement and weight loss cleanse that utilizes hCG (human chorionic gonadotrophin). It’s all good fun until she drops the following bomb, “500 calories a day maximum,” she says. Though initially alarming, I found that I was never hungry during the 26 day period on the protocol and dropped 20 pounds with minimal exercise. The hCG acts as an appetite suppressant.
Dr. Jennings has been working with a variety of cleanses with exceptional results over the last decade in her practice at Urban Wellness Group in Portland. This group of holistic physicians focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease with a focus on natural health. She assures me that this particular cleanse was the right cleanse for me. It was safe, given my history, and would stimulate my metabolism so I’d lose weight while doing it.
I’d done the research on other hCG diets and thought they seemed a little extreme. The many important distinctions between Jenning’s cleanse and others gave me the confidence that this was responsible and right for me: Others involve injectable hCG which I wasn’t interested in taking. The RealMEcleanse uses homeopathic hCG drops taken orally plus it’s a vegetarian/vegan friendly, medically supervised process that addresses any potential side effects and maximizes weight loss.
hCG is human chorionic gonadotrophin, a glycoprotein hormone produced in pregnant women by the placenta. It acts on the hypothalamus, signaling the body to release stored fat into the bloodstream where it’s used by the cells for nourishment. Coupled with decreased food intake, taking hCG forces the body to use the mobilized fat that is now circulating in the bloodstream to fuel the daily metabolic rate. The best part is that it preferentially stimulates the release of abnormal fat stores in the body and does not affect structural fat and muscle tissue. All this means that people on this regimen predominantly lose fat in the stomach, hips, thighs, buttocks, and upper arms.
I’d read that hCG was extracted from the urine of pregnant women, which, although a little disturbing, wasn’t an issue for me. I was focused on weight loss and wellness and the magic of hCG. I opted for the homeopathic oral preparation.
During our initial consultation, Dr Jennings completed a full medical intake including a review of my past medical history. Her thorough evaluation made me confident that I wasn’t doing anything reckless. At the end of the program, her final consultation focuses on helping people develop a sustainable long-term eating program. Mine was individualized for my particular constitution and incorporates foods that I like to eat. She also offers additional detox support to help boost metabolism and support fat cleansing during and after the process. And, though I didn’t require it personally, the availability of 24 hour/7 days a week medical supervision would have been helpful for any questions or concerns that emerged during the cleanse.
When I was cleared for take-off, I entered the wellness matrix through the RealMEcleanse portal on a Monday morning. I was good to go, although still concerned about the 500 calorie a day restriction, I committed to a twenty-four-day cleanse motivated by the promise of losing weight. Although I entered this plan with the primary motivation to lose weight, the experience led me to consider the broader implication of wellness in general as a lifestyle. I recommitted to my Yoga practice and was now seeing a future with new healthy possibilities.
I had somehow been seduced into wellness. At least the idea of wellness. Wellness as a framework for personal motivation. That and the promise of losing a pound a day, which is exactly what happened over the next month.
The RealMEcleanse protocol is: six small meals at two hour intervals daily combined with hCG drops before all but the last meal of the day. Two of the daily meals are 100 grams of protein and 40 to 60 calories each of vegetables. Other meals are fruit or bread sticks.
As part of the agreement Dr. Jennings was available for bi-monthly phone consultations. She also made herself fully available by email in the case that anything came up during the course of the cleanse. The benefits of her expertise and experience were essential for making a dietary lifestyle change as opposed to a crash diet. I already knew from experience that those types of diets would only lead me back to where I began in a month or two.
A few days into my first 500 calorie per day cleanse I began to understand the journey was not just about changing my relationship to body fat. The challenge and the opportunity presented involved a psycho-emotional purge as well as an expanded awareness of my emotional eating habits. My hands automatically reached for things I couldn’t eat… so I didn’t. The subsequent emotional upheaval that followed clearly mapped out what I’d been doing with food: Food I didn’t like and wasn’t hungry for but still ingesting. The pattern was glaring. As the fat drained from my cells, the process became more than physical.
I could see the pounds melting away. I felt at home in my body again. And what had been stored in my tissue was being expressed in another way. It was coming through my senses as emotion. I was now processing what I had inhaled in a cloud of smoke and then stored in my fat cells from the subsequent weight gain when I quit smoking at a rapid pace.
Though it’s usually advised not to exercise during the process, Dr. Jennings encouraged me to continue my burgeoning Yoga practice. I showed up every other day at the new YogaWorks mega-plex in Tarzana. The convenience of the studio right next to Whole Foods was a big help in the first week as I became oriented to the protocol. I shopped for the following day’s food before my Iyengar level 1 & 2 class.
During the RealMEcleanse I lost twenty pounds. There were a few days I didn’t lose any and a couple I gained a pound. I could probably have lost a few more but I repeated some meals, which is not advised.
What happened over the course of the process was something much more valuable and lasting than temporary weight loss. I taught myself how to eat for optimum efficiency in a way that benefits my overall health. My body, now cleansed, has a new understating of high performance digestion.
The things I’m interested in eating now are good for me. The idea of putting sugar, wheat, and dairy into my system is not something I’m compelled to do. It’s not a conscious decision but rather an internalized function that doesn’t require thought. I’m no longer reaching for things that I really don’t want to eat but only served as an emotional suppressant. For me, the RealMEcleanse is a super conscious, lasting systemic dietary education.
For more information about Dr. Kelly Jennings and the RealMe Cleanse, visit: urbanwellnesspdx.com/jennings. She can also be reached at her clinic (503) 445 – 9771 for individualized consultations.
Sam Slovick is a regular contributor to LA YOGA Ayurveda and Health Magazine (among other publications) and the author of the current LA Weekly series, PAVEMENT: found atblogs.laweekly.com/informer/pavement. His website is: samslovick.com.
By Sam Slovick
Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.