I am a 57-year-old white American male infected with Hepatitis C. I am involved in a controlled medical research study by Roche Pharmaceuticals of an experimental Polymerase Inhibitor (RO5024048 also known as RG7128) drug therapy for the virus. This document is the story of my illness and the experience of treatment. My lovely and pretty damn wonderful wife will be contributing her take on the experience as well.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Welcome to: The Everything Tastes Like Crap Diet

Most everyone has had a time in their life when they wanted to lose a bit of weight. Anyone who has ever decided to lose some weight faces the sad fact that losing weight is both a simple process and a very difficult one. There are three ways to lose weight. Eat less and be more physically active is the best and most successful way. Then there is the option of eating the same amount of food but increasing the physical activity. This method is slower, but still successful. The third way to lose weight is to eat less and have about the same level of physical activity. This is the slowest, but still you eventually lose weight.

If none of these simple yet difficult methods appeal to you, there are many dieting options available. The Grapefruit Diet, The Water Diet, The No Carbs Diet, The Take Two of These Pills and Don’t Eat After Eight P.M. Diet, and the many programs that offer you the opportunity to pay them for both food that they prepare and for support during the process of only eating their food. Maybe these diets work and maybe they don’t. I, on the other hand, can offer you a guaranteed method to lose weight over a 6-12 month time period. The interferon and ribavirin diet. You could call it the Hep C Diet, the I & R Diet or even the Treatment Diet but the most accurate title is indeed “The Everything Tastes Like Crap Diet.”

The problem with the 3 most effective ways to lose weight and, for that matter, the popular diets as well, is that you still miss food. You still want to eat. You sit around between meals distracting yourself from the fact that you are hungry and still want more food. Well, the TETLCD solves that problem. After you have been on the plan long enough (which is generally only 6-8 weeks) the last thing you want to do is eat.

How does the TETLCD achieve this miraculous transformation, you ask. Well, there are actually two separate methods the diet uses. The first is that the TETLCD removes all taste from 80% of the foods you used to love. Ice Cream – tastes like cold, sweet Styrofoam; Mexican Food – the beans and tortillas taste like cardboard with the flavor removed; Sandwiches – the taste and texture of the bread actually causes you throat to close; Salad – the lovely tomatoes and avocados and lettuce look enticing but then the smell of the French dressing makes you nauseous. Speaking of nausea, that is the 2nd secret weapon of the diet. You can feel nauseous for hours at a time and boy is there anything less appealing than food when you are desperately trying to keep your gorge from rising, I think not. This two-pronged approach is the secret of the success of the TETLCD. Just ask anyone you know who has been on it.

While I could cite numerous testimonials as to the effectiveness of the diet, most of the folks who have had the opportunity to experience TETLCD are trying so hard to blot the experience from their minds that they, mostly politely, refused to discuss the diet. That leaves it up to me to offer my testimonial. I am only 19 weeks into the full 48-week TETLCD program and I have already lost 16 pounds. Just think, by the end of the program, I could be a shadow of my former self - literally.

So, while I don’t recommend contracting Hep C just to get on the program, for those of you in the midst of it or considering it, the steel-gray lining to undergoing treatment is that you will lose that extra weight. You might also lose weight you can’t afford to lose, but most dieters have no sympathy for those folks anyway.

Happy Dieting!

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