Gulp! Liquid diet hard to swallow

Leslie Machefski is shaking up the way she looks at food and fitness.

Last weekend, Machefski embarked on a health and fitness journey that begins with an all-liquid diet. Professionals with Aultman Weight Management provided Machefski and her two team members with nutrient-rich shakes that will replace each of their three daily meals.

“The first three days were exceptionally hard,” Machefski admits. “Your husband eats and you can’t eat, so it’s more of a mental challenge.”

Once a day, Machefski said with a laugh, she can add a bouillon cube to a cup of water if she likes. She admitted that, while it doesn’t sound gratifying, switching up the options – even a little – is enough variety for the menu.

Initially, Machefski will focus only on her diet. She will not exercise for the next two weeks. That period of inactivity allows her body to adapt to her ultra-low calorie diet.

Each shake only contains 200 calories, accounting for a total of 600 consumable calories each day. Initially, that will not provide her with the energy she needs to hit aerobics classes.

At first, the dip in calories meant that Machefski was even struggling to get through her day.

“The first two days was very hard. I was tired until my body got adjusted,” Machefski said. “(Monday), I felt really good.”

Machefski will remain on this liquid diet until she comes within 10 pounds of her goal weight. At that point, she will slowly re-introduce solid foods to her diet starting with proteins and working up to carbohydrates.

“I didn’t realize how much I was eating. I am constantly thinking about what I am putting into my body and what it does to your body when you overeat,” Machefski said. “They told us to you have got to learn that you eat to live and not live to eat.”

Already, Machefski has discovered that food and hunger do not always go hand-in-hand.

“It’s more of a mental hunger,” Machefski said. “I am not physically hungry, I am mentally hungry.”

To prevent overeating and to redefine the ways in which she eats, Machefski is sticking to a schedule. At the same times everyday she eats breakfast, lunch and dinner.

If she feels hungry in between, she looks for other ways to occupy her time.

“When I get a craving, I will work on my scrapbook ... or I just keep myself busy,” Machefski said. “Late at night, if I start feeling hungry, I just go to bed.”

Some of the most difficult mental challenges Machefski faced over the first weekend involved attending two picnics with her friends and family. What she discovered was that her will power and support system were greater than her hunger pangs.

“That was hard,” Machefski said, “but everybody knew, and they were very helpful. My one friend kept refilling my water bottle, and they were all very interested in what I was doing. That helped, too – talking about it.”

To help keep her on track at the picnics, those eating opted to eat in the house, away from Machefski so as not to tempt her into helping herself to helpings of picnic treats.

Little things like that, she said, have made friends and family her pillar through one of the hardest parts of the journey she will face. They call her daily, they send her cards and they table their food talks when they are around her.

Two of her biggest supporters, though, are her teammates, David Clouse and Janet Allen.

“I think that it would be really hard without ... team work,” Machefski said. “Without my team members, this would not be as easy.”