Slow and Steady Wins the Race, right?

Holding steady at 20 pounds gone. Still.

I'm getting frustrated, but hanging in there.

PSA: If you're new and wondering about my diet, please read the post linked in the sidebar. If you're wanting to try it yourself, check out the links, also in the sidebar. It's IMPORTANT.

Today, I'm going to begin challenging myself to go back to the beginning of this diet. Back to the basics. I was careful, in the beginning of the last round, to count every calorie, and make sure I was getting enough water. (Half my body weight in ounces. Which was 10 more ounces last round than it is now!) I'm going to go back to that, and take it one day at a time.

I CAN stop after this week, if I find that I'm burning out. But, with only ten more pounds to goal, it seems counterproductive to move to P3 and give myself three more weeks at 145-ish.  I'll have to gauge where I am one day at a time.

Which is what we should all be doing, right? Living one day at a time?

Crap, did I just start my own 12 step support group or something?

My Magic Roller Coaster Ride

Down a little, up a little, down a little, up a little.

Sigh.

I have decided that I was entirely too rough on my poor womanly functions last time around. My weight loss has followed the exact same pattern this round, without a visit from AF.  So, maybe it wasn't my period's fault that my weight loss slowed down.

I'm forever preaching about reading Dr. S' book and following it to the letter. You'd think I'd have believed him when he said that the weight loss will slow down as you get closer to a healthy weight!

In any case, I'm still 20 pounds from where I started, and have decided that it's highly unlikely that I'll lose my last 10 pounds in the next 10 days, which is when my period is supposed to start back up. So I'm going to keep on keeping on, I think, and push right through that week.  We'll see how it goes.

I'll tell you what, it is HARD to stick to this diet when you're not losing a good amount a day. It's even HARDER when the scale creeps back up some. But, I still fully believe that it is totally worth it.  I mean, hello! I haven't been 145 pounds since after my little monster was born. I think. I don't even know for sure that I hit it then.

I am finding it harder to stick to protocol this round, but I think it's all mental. I KNOW it's all mental. I'm going to spend some time today in prayer and meditation and try to get my head on straight.  Other than that, it's all about swimming. You know, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....just keep swimming, swimming, swimming." :-)

Oh! Look what I found! The HCG Diet Gourmet Cookbook: Over 200 "Low Calorie" Recipes for the "HCG Phase"  I'll be ordering that, and requesting super quick shipping, I think!  Also pulling some great recipes from The Liquid HCG Diet page. Just click on the HCG recipes tab at the top of the page.

Off to drink my second glass of water and get my poor dog fed. He's like, "Really, woman, I'M not on a diet!"

Smoochies and Huggles!

-21.2 Total

Yep, that's not even close to a lie. So far, I'm down a little over 20 pounds on the HCG protocol. That's 2/3 of the way to my goal.

Are you thinking about doing this? Make sure you read the post in the sidebar, and check out the links to Dr. Simeons' book, and the SkinnyMe Forum. I didn't put them there because they're cute, people!

Sorry for the incredibly short post today, just wanted to celebrate TWENTY FREAKING POUNDS with you, but I also have an insane amount of backed up work for a client or two, and yay. Another snow day.

Love you, sweets! Smooches and huggles and all that other stuff.

Crafting Concrete Shoes for my Scale

I've read that it takes about 3 days to recover from a cheat. So, today is day 3.

MOVE, SCALE. MOVE TOMORROW OR YOU'LL SLEEP WITH THE FISHES.

I'll tell you what, that slice of pizza I ate at Chuck E. Cheese, or the small slice of cake, or the glass of wine I had when I got home with friends.... none of that was worth this. I hate not seeing the scale move. It is really hard to stick to a 500 calorie diet (even if you're not hungry, which, dude, I am not), when the scale is showing no results.

(I almost typed resluts, which is one of my favorite typos. Just thought I'd share that.)

The other side of this, and I think I mentioned this in yesterday's blog, is that I'm kind of close to my goal. I'm only 13 pounds away from 135, which is where I wanna be.  When you're doing ANY weight loss plan, the closer you get to the end, the slower the weight comes off. I'm thinking about contestants on the Biggest Loser, after about midway into the season, you stop seeing lots of double digits on the scale, you know?

I'm going to try pushing through this time, even if I'm not to my goal by the time my TOM rolls around again. (Even though I said I'm never going to stay on this diet through that again.) I'm just so close, it seems really ridiculous to move to Phase 3 for three weeks to lose whatever is going to be left in two weeks.

So, my game plan for the near future, is to stick to protocol, get better about counting calories, because I haven't been counting very closely, and just keep keepin' on.

I'm not officially discouraged yet, because Dr. Simeon did say it can take 3 days for an indulgence to correct itself. So, good. Day 3 of correction. And boom. Tomorrow, I will lose eight pounds. Right?

Shoot me some encouragement here, hcg folks!

The Introduction and The Protocol

So, I have the world's greatest best friend. You know your best friend? Yeah? Mine's better. How do I know? She tells me all her craziest ideas. And then I research them and decide it's an awesome idea and we do it. Like, for example, the HCG Protocol.

Now, this is not her idea. She just found it. She first read about it in a thread on Mothering.com and then found Dr. Simeon's book. She read it and then told me about it. So I read it. And ordered my HCG before I was even done reading.

I did a little Googling of my own along the way, of course, and found that there are lots and lots of places to order HCG from. And, seriously, if you Google "HCG Diet" a gajillion sites show up. How the hell did I never know about this before? I also found, of course, that the diet has lots of nay-sayers. But for every person who gives their reasons for not digging the protocol, there are two people who have lost significant amounts of weight and have kept it off.

Reading the Mothering thread, and the doctor's book, explaining the research behind it, was enough to get me on board to at least give it a try. If it didn't work, I was out a measly $37 on the HCG drops I ordered. I've spent way more than that on the latest diet, nutrition, or exercise products, that ended up doing nothing.

So here's a quick breakdown of how the diet works. For a more complete picture, really, read Dr. Simeon's book. Also, you can visit the Skinny Me Forum, which has the most AMAZING breakdown of every single aspect of the protocol I've found anywhere. Seriously, I give the girls over there at Skinny Me a ton of credit, because that must have taken a ton of time to put together.

So, HCG is a hormone that is most frequently associated with pregnancy. In fact, it's the hormone that pregnancy tests pick up in urine to give you that cute little pink line. It's also used as a treatment for various maladies, including, but not limited to, infertility in women, and "failure to become manly" in men. (I don't know. What would YOU call it?)

When you take HCG, either by injections, or sublingual (which are drops under your tongue. I had no idea what that meant when I first heard it. Thank you Dictionary.com), it's like popping the lock on the fat you hate and want to get rid of. It tells your body, it's okay to burn this fat. Release it. Let it go.

Let's take a quick stroll down memory lane. Remember how I mentioned, in my previous blog, that I was sick as a dog in the beginning of both my pregnancies, and couldn't eat anything? Yet my babies grew, completely healthy, despite my eating only Fruity Pebbles and cheddar cheese for three months. (Not together. Gross.)

Turns out that's because the rising HCG was telling my body, "Burn that fat! Grow that baby!"

So, if you can introduce a little more HCG into your body, and then restrict your calorie intake, it takes that fat and burn, baby, burn.

Ah, so about that calorie restriction? Yeah, it's 500 calories a day. Shut up, because I know what you're thinking. First of all, yes, if you ate 500 calories a day without HCG you would totally lose weight. But you'd lose a lot of muscle mass and be passed out on the floor at some point, too. The HCG ensures that you're burning fat, and not muscle. Also, yeah, 500 calories a day sounds like you're going to be massively hungry. But the HCG really helps with that. A lot.

The best part about this protocol is that you're actually RESETTING your body's set weight. For the past several years, I've been hanging out around 165 pounds. Just hanging around there. Down a couple pounds one week, back up to 165 a little later. It's become my body's "set weight". That's why, even though I lost weight after having my girls, I slid right back up here, in no time.

The protocol has several phases. Phase I is called the "loading" phase, and it lasts two days. During those two days, you take your HCG and eat as much fatty stuff you can gorge yourself on. This is to give your body something to work with while the HCG works on getting the rest of the fat mobilized. I loaded on Thanksgiving and the day after. Pass the green bean casserole, please.

Phase II is where I am now. It's called the Very Low Calorie Diet phase (VLCD for short). During the VLCD you eat a very low calorie diet (duh) while taking your HCG. That's 500 calories a day. And you're restricted as to what foods you can eat. But there are also tons of awesome recipes floating around cyberspace that can help you feel like you're not eating the same thing over and over. And really? I'm not eating the same thing over and over. Even though it's restricted, I find there is enough variety that I'm okay. Phase I and II together need to be a minimum of 23 days. So, if you can't commit to 23 days of this.... Come on, it's less than a month. You can do it! The max, by the way, is 40 days. You can do another round if you need to.

Phase II ends with the suckiest idea ever. It's two days where you continue the VLCD without the HCG. It's critical to long term success, though, apparently. Maybe it won't suck as bad as I'm thinking, though. I mean, I'll be used to eating this amount of food by then. And it's only a couple days.

Phase III is the stabilizing phase. Three weeks of no starch, no sugar. Not a big deal. You haven't had starch or sugar since Phase II. This phase is where you reintroduce fats, pretty much. Like cheese. Oh, how I miss you, my cheddar. We shall be together again, soon. You keep yourself within 2 pounds of your weight on your final day of Phase II here. Keep counting calories. And you are resetting that "set weight".

Yay, science!

Finally, in Phase IV, you begin to slowly reintroduce starches and sugars. Honestly? My plan is to be done with sugar. I have no problem admitting I am a sugar addict, and not just plain old boring sugar. Give me some High Fructose Corn Syrup, and I'll drink it straight from the bottle. Just FYI, I'm using liquid stevia to get my sweet fix while I'm on protocol, and am planning on continuing that when I'm done.

So, sounds nuts, right? Or maybe you've already started looking for where you can get your HCG yourself? No? Oh! You want to know how it's working for me!

Well, as I mentioned, I loaded on Thanksgiving, which was a week ago, tomorrow. So, counting Thanksgiving as Day One, here are my numeros:

11/26 165.4

11/27 164.4 (Yes, I lost a pound while loading. I ate chips and dip with a spoon. And I lost a pound.)

11/28 161.4

11/29 159.4

11/30 158.2

12/1 157.4

That's eight pounds in five days.

Yes, I know it's fat and not muscle. My super awesome scale also measures body fat percentage. I've gone from 32.8% fat to 30.4%

Do I expect to keep these amazing results up? Not exactly. The average loss for a woman on the protocol is about half a pound a day. Most people lose more per day in the beginning, and then it stabilizes out, and they start losing a little less. That's born out in my own numbers. Down 3 pounds on the first day of VLCD, I was down 0.8 this morning. Which is fine. I mean, half a pound a day is still nothing to sneeze at.

I have no "official" before picture. But I'll find something that shows me at my largest. One of my wonderful Facebook friends probably has something LOVELY posted of me somewhere. (With friends like these, who needs Facebook?) And I hope to start taking "during" pictures tonight. Like, in a sports bra and shorts. So you can REALLY see my nastiness. Prepare your stomachs and hide your children.