About five years ago, I was struggling as I watched my weight slowly climbing back up.
Back in 2010-2011, I lost a ton of weight. I didn’t own a scale at the time, but I dropped from a size 18/20 to a size 12/14. I didn’t do it in the healthiest way. I cut my calorie intake down to 700 calories a day and convinced myself that “feeling hungry” was a sign of success in my weight loss journey. I’d just ended a 7 year relationship with the first love in my life, and I wasn’t in the best place mentally.
Fast forward to 2015, and I was back up to a size 16/18 (180 lbs, since I’d finally invested in a scale) and slowly but surely moving upwards again. So I started focusing on my weight again, and again not in the healthiest of fashion. I was looking only at weight, not health, and wanted to do anything to drop those pounds.
One of the methods that I tried at the time was taking an herbal supplement called Garcinia Cambogia. My roomie at the time had lost 60 pounds while taking it, so I figured it is worth a shot. My metabolism has always been slow, and Garcinia Cambogia is supposed to boost the metabolism while stopping the enzymes that turn carbs into fat, as well as serving as an appetite suppressant.
My Experience –
- Hunger:
- I found that I was actually hungrier than normal while taking the supplement. I’m not sure if this was because the supplement was actually speeding up my metabolism or if there was another cause, but it certainly didn’t serve as an appetite suppressant in my case.
- Energy:
- While taking the supplement, I found that I was excessively tired all of the time. Not an unmotivated, I don’t want to do anything kind of tired. But an on the verge of falling asleep constantly kind of tired.
- Mood:
- This was the straw that broke the camel’s back in my case. I’m generally a very happy person. I am positive and pretty easy going. I may have a bit of a temper, I admit it, but it normally takes quite a bit to set me off. I’m more often frustrated by inanimate objects that actual people. None of this remained true while I was taking Garcinia Cambogia. I was constantly irritated by the smallest things, and had no patience or optimism in me. I hated how I felt. I hated how it changed my moods.
I took this supplement daily for a few months. Long enough to really give it a go, with the idea that my body probably needed a few weeks to stabilize to this new thing I was putting into it.
It didn’t stabilize.
I didn’t lose much weight at all during the time (a few pounds, at best), and I felt awful. All in all, it worked wonders for the roomie, but was a total bust for me.
