Black Shaky-shaky Pills

I’ve hit another plateau. I’ve been lazy in my cardio, often not doing my required "hour a day." My diet has gotten sloppy, as I started to substitute my own menu for my assigned one. I’ve started to incorporate some red meat into my diet. And not the super lean protein that Tyrese said was okay on occasion. But I’ve started to order happy meals at lunchtime, and just throw out the buns and wipe off the mustard before I devour the “meat”. (<--as always, those quotation marks are not an accident.) So, it should come to no surprise to me that I’ve hit a plateau. Regardless, I act totally surprised as I hop on the scale, in front of Tyrese.
“WTH?!?!” (I make my eyes as big as possible, because everyone knows that this makes you very believable when you are feigning surprise.)
“Hummmm……I was afraid of this” says Tyrese.
Since I’m not sure what “this” is, I make my eyes even bigger. (They actually start to twitch.)
“Afraid of what?”
(Twitch.)
“Well, I think your body is getting used to those fat burners.”
Whew! (twitch) He’s talking about the shaky-shaky pills. I’m still taking them daily. I hadn’t noticed it before, but they really aren’t doing much for me anymore. I don’t get that shock to my system when I take them anymore.
“We’re going to have to try a new brand.”
Of course. I just bought two more bottles of the old stuff. ($48)
Before I leave that day, he puts several different pills into a sandwich bag, and tells me to try two of each every day for the next week. (sounds safe, huh?) Like an idiot, I do as he says. Every day, he asks me “what color pills did you take today?” and I would tell him. At the end of those two weeks, he decided on what my next brand would be, based on how my workout went that day. I got switched over from my purple shaky-shaky pills, to the new and improved black shaky-shaky pills.
I start taking the new shaky-shaky pills, and notice a difference right away. Not so much in my weight loss, or my workout, but in my anxiety level. I might have mentioned it before, (or, if you were somewhat observant, you would have guessed) that I have OCD. (Not the funny “ha-ha” OCD that everyone claims that they have, but the actual diagnosed by a real doctor OCD. <--not by Dr. Asshat either. A REAL doctor) So, my OCD is in overdrive when I start taking the new shaky-shaky pills. And my insomnia (that I’ve had since I was 12 years old) gets worst. But of course, I don’t mention either of these two things to Tyrese. Or my doctor. I just lay in bed every night, and listen to my heart pounding, in my ears.
I started hanging around with Ethel again. She has been determined to lose weight, so she calls me daily. (This is something that happens a lot. Once someone hears that I am working with a personal trainer, they start to call me and want to hang out. They start to ask me a ton of questions about my routine and diet. Of course I figured out that they want me to pay for the sessions, but want me to relay the info to them…..for free. At first it bothered me, so I kept everything to myself. But the more that I would tell someone about my routine, the more it becomes clear that they would never do the work that I was doing anyways. So, I answered every question that anyone ever asked me.) Ethel was really determined to lose the weight. She asked me a ton of questions all the time. She would make dates with me, to do cardio together. She was really going above and beyond too. If I told her that I did 300 bicycles every night, soon she would be doing 350 every night. If I told her that I was doing 8 upper body machines, doing monster sets on each one, soon she would be doing 10 machines each time. I told her that I was eating 6-8 oz of chicken for dinner, she would cut it down to 4-6 oz for herself. So, of course, I told her about the new shaky-shaky pills. I was taking two in the morning, and two right before my workout. She ran out that night, and bought the same kind.
The chick was crazy about losing weight.
This whole competition goes on for a few weeks. One night, I get a call from her husband. He tells me that she just got admitted to the local hospital. I rush over to meet him there. Once there, he tells me that he came home for lunch, and found her unconscious in the shower. He had no idea how long she was in there like that. He called for an ambulance, and they rushed her to the hospital where she finally regained consciousness. She had no memory of what just happened. Her doctors suspected that she might have suffered from a grand mal seizure, even though she had no history of seizures. They ran a battery of tests, and all came back inconclusive. She was released from the hospital the next day, with no explanation of what caused her to black out. As I’m driving her home, she asks me a question.
“Do you think that the shaky-shaky pills could have done this?”
I tell her that I don’t know, and that they haven’t made me feel remotely unusual.
“What about if I was taking more than it directed me? Do you think that may have done this?”
“Uh, maybe. How many did you take??”
“Sixteen.”
“Wow. Really?” I was trying to be calm. (On this inside, I was saying “Holy shit! Are you f'ng kidding me??!”)
“Do you think that did it?”
I didn’t answer her. I could tell that no matter what I said, she was going to continue to do whatever she wanted to do, whether it was dangerous or not. The whole time that she was in the hospital, she never mentioned the pills to her doctor or her husband.

A few months later, those same shaky-shaky pills were pulled off the market. (along with a whole bunch of other diet pills.) When Ethel heard it on the news, she ran out and bought a case of the shaky shaky pills. (Tyrese also ran out and bought several cases of the shaky-shaky pills. Some for his clients, but most to sell on ebay for five times the retail value. When clients would come in and ask about the pills, he would direct them to talk to this one shady trainer. They would go into a corner of the gym, and whisper. At some point, money would change hands. It was all very fascinating to watch. I thought that at some point, Stone Phillips would pop out of the tanning room with a full camera crew.) Eventually, Ethel ran out of her supply of shaky-shaky pills. She convinced me to go down to Mexico with her (again) and try to buy them there. (again, I figured that she was going, with or without me.)

Luckily, we were not able to find them in Tijuana.