Cheating on Phase 3 and Stabilizing on Phase 3 Or: What not to do.

Sorry I've been MIA. The holidays are something else with a pair of kids running around, man.  I spent the past couple weeks trying to wrap and hide presents. Good times. Or, like, not. At all.

I'll spare you guys my tirade about how much I hate Christmas, and jump right back into the diet.

Which is what I'm planning on doing soon, anyway.

So, first, let's talk about ending Phase II, and how not to do it.  I'm an expert on this. Trust me.

The first thing you don't want to do is celebrate the end of Phase II with a big holiday dinner out.  You definitely don't want to order a steak with a cheese "thing" that turns out to be breaded and deep fried.  If you do accidentally order such a thing, you should immediately remove it from your plate (along with the mashed potatoes that you also accidentally ordered) by either dumping them on your husband's plate, or asking the waiter to take it back and bring you something that you are allowed to eat.  Don't be snotty about it. He doesn't know what you're allowed to eat.

Order a glass of wine with dinner. Go on. It's allowed in Phase III. Enjoy it, savor it. Don't use it as an excuse to then order four beers AFTER dinner.

Skip dessert (this I did right. The ONLY thing I did right that night!).

When you get up in the morning, don't head to the diner for a nice nutritious breakfast. You won't find one. And just because you CAN eat bacon now, does not mean you HAVE TO eat every single piece of bacon in the entire place.  Also? Educate yourself a little better while you're in Phase II as to what actually has sugar in it. Lots of bacon has sugar.  The bacon I inhaled at the diner probably had sugar.

When you pick your children up at your inlaws' and drag them to the mall for some last minute Christmas shopping, don't expect that you're going to get out of there without eating again. And let me tell you a very simple math equation. Mall Food=BAD. Even the mall food you think=good. No. Bad.

All of this is why I gained four freaking pounds nearly immediately after starting Phase III.  I had lost two more pounds at the end of Phase II, after my last blog. At the end of Phase II you stay on the VLCD for two more days, so the HCG has a chance to work its way out of your system. At the end of those two days, I had dropped two more pounds. But you "count" what you weighed on your last day of drops, not anything you lost after that.

So, the plan Dr. Simeon gives us to deal with unwanted weight gain is simple. It's a steak day.  Basically, he says, if you gain more than two pounds of your weight back, you should immediately, on the same day that you show the two pound total,  skip breakfast and lunch, and for dinner have a ginormous steak with either an apple or a tomato. Sounds rough.  Wasn't too bad. I drank enough water to sink a battleship, and enjoyed an AMAZING steak (Thank you Joe, butcher to the stars) with a chopped up seasoned tomato. And I was fine all day.

The next day? Weight was the same. Curses.

The day after that, those two pounds were gone. Woot!

Since then, I did gain one more pound, but I've been holding steady with absolutely NO fluctuations.  None. Despite trying some of Jaime's amazing brownies last week, and having a bit of breading on the eggplant parm my brother in law made for Christmas.

I do believe I have stabilized.

And I'm ready to get started again, and lose some more pounds. Since I'm not ever going to do a round of HCG while I have my period again (I'm not even linking that. You can just read any of the blogs from the past month or so to learn the reasons behind that), I'm anxiously awaiting it for the first time since my last pregnancy scare.

Before I can start losing again, though, I do need to load again. The menu for loading this time is pretty simple. Pizza with a side of chips and dip. Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.  And maybe some buffalo wings with an amazing amount of blue cheese dressing.

And a whole bunch of Jaime's amazing brownies.