Current Standings

At the end of our first week on Phase 2, I figured I'd do a little update blog to let you know where we're at.

First, I need to tell you that I have totally been doing a half-assed Phase 2 here. The numbers are going down, but not very quickly. Mostly due to those string cheese sticks in my fridge and the walnut delights that used to be on my counter. *burp*

On to the stats!

I have lost my loading weight.  That's about it. (My own fault, I'm fine with it. Pass the Dove sugar free caramels.)

Paul is down 9.2 pounds. NINE POINT TWO. IN SIX DAYS.

Good stuff going on over here. 

Now my Irish is up and the competition is on.  He's still going to kick my ass, but at least my ass will be skinnier when we're done. 

Okay, I lied...

I'm doing another round of HCG.

Wait, hear  me out!

My husband has decided to do a round, and I am being super-supportive, by doing it with him.  He'd like to lose about 20-30 pounds (which, I have no doubt, being a man, he can do in one stupid round. Grrrr). I'll be happy if I lose these last 10 stubborn pounds, but since this round wasn't exactly my idea, I'm not too married to that number.

That's got an up side and a down side. The good part is that I am totally non-stressed about the number on the scale. In fact, I didn't even weigh myself before or after I loaded. I weighed myself today, after my first day of VLCD and am up very slightly from where I was at the end of my last round. Probably still loading weight I'm taking off.

I might weigh tomorrow. I might not. Very freeing, all told.

The down side is that I'm having a hard time staying committed. I've been cheating little bits here and there. One of my friends calls it "Phase 2 plus cookies." I call it "Phase 2 plus walnut delights." (Thank you, dear MIL, for bringing them over this weekend. Now if I could just stop EATING them! LOL)

My husband is the picture of HCG Protocol. He isn't eating anything he's not supposed to, very carefully weighs out his meals, and doesn't seem to be hungry at all.

I am hungry.  No, that's not entirely true. I'm MUNCHY, but not always hungry.

Anyway, here we go again.  More to come. :-)

And on to the rest of my life...

I've gotten down to the mid-140's and have decided I've gone as far as I want to on HCG. I'm sure I could stand to lose another ten pounds or so, and maybe I will, but quite possibly not on HCG.

It is a HARD diet, you guys. Yes, there are dramatic results, because it is a dramatic diet. And because it's so dramatic, it is hard.  The key, if you decide to do it yourself, is to remind yourself that it is super temporary. 3 weeks on Phase 2, if I can do it, anyone can.

It gets really hard when you're getting closer to your goal weight and the pounds aren't dripping off anymore. It gets even harder when you're close enough to your goal weight that you start thinking things like, "eh, what's another 10 pounds, anyway? This is close enough."

I'd love to tell you to just muscle through these thoughts, but since I can't do it, I'm certainly not expecting anyone else to.

So the rest of my life...what shall I do?

One of the things that I love about the HCG protocol is that I cut out all the really bad stuff in my diet, overnight. After a couple brief days of detox, I felt amazingly wonderful. Light, and happy, and energized. Without exception, every time I finished a round, and started going back slowly to bread, rice, crackers, etc, I started to feel sluggish, bloated, moody, and well...more like my "regular" self.

This past round, in fact, I cheated one evening with a donut while I was on Phase 2. Within 20 minutes or so of eating the donut, my mood plummeted, my stomach was bloated and distended, and I had stomach cramping. I was so uncomfortable. And I know that this is how I was mostly living before. I never realized it wasn't normal, for example, to feel bloated after eating.

But here's the deal,  it's not.  After eating, we should feel energized!  We just ate ENERGY!  Quick aside, did you know that in Europe, calories aren't listed as "calories" in nutritional information? They're listed as "energy."  Food is energy!

If you're not eating foods that energize you, I posit that you are eating the wrong foods. Like I've been doing for a good long time.

Being on HCG showed me what it really feels like to eat foods the work with my body for optimal wellness. It also showed me what it really feels like to eat foods that work against my body. And I don't like that.

So, somewhere over the last couple rounds, I started wondering with some of my friends, what are we going to do next?  When we get to the end of our weight loss with HCG, how will we eat?  Almost all of us said that we don't think we ever want to go back to sugar and nearly the same amount have decided to do without wheat.

While we were in the middle of these discussions, one of my friends mentioned Mark's Daily Apple, which is a site dedicated to "Primal Blueprint" living. Mark's a cool guy, he lays it out as it is. He's done his research and he knows his stuff.
 

The Primal Blueprint way of life is basically approximating our lives to being as close to those of our ancestors, the cavemen. He uses "Grok" as an example of such a person, and gives us really easy ways we, too, can "party like a Grokstar."

When we first got our dog, his trainer mentioned giving him a biologically appropriate diet, instead of buying kibble at the grocery store. We researched it, and decided that we didn't like the idea of commercial dog food, and went in the direction suggested by his trainer. Baxter has been eating foods that his canine body has been designed to digest.

In similar fashion, I think humans should be enjoying foods that our bodies were designed to digest. That includes meat, vegetables and fruit. A little dairy. But no grains.

Yep, NO GRAINS.

As it turns out (and if you want to read all the research, I highly recommend Mark's book, although you can also find a ton of information on his website), humans weren't exactly designed to digest grains.  This has played out in my own life, as I've explained, with the vast differences in how I feel on HCG and off HCG.

Here's the really amazing thing about this. When I shared a lot of the body of evidence that Mark sets forth in Primal Blueprint, against grains, my husband agreed. He said it made a lot of sense. Guess who else is grain free, now? We're working on the kids.

I don't want to give you the idea that if you stop eating grains you'll be living a primal lifestyle. I mean, that's a nice start, but there are other things involved.  Take a good look at Mark's website for a ton of information.

I also don't want to give you the idea that Mark is the grand high guru of primal living (although he did "write the book"so to speak). There are other books out there, there are other websites. There are TONS of people who are doing this, who are writing about, who are advocating it. It just so happens that I find Mark's information to be the most accessible. He thoroughly researches, then reports back everything in a humorous and easy to read way that makes me look forward to reading about all these boring reports he's slogged through.

So this is where we are for now. We're finding it not as hard to be grain free as we'd thought. We're working out some kinks (if we're friends on facebook, I'm sure you read my status update about thickening gravy without flour!) and we're finding some new stuff that we love. (Coconut bread, for example, is like a yummy morning muffin, without all the ick and bloating that goes along with regular morning muffins.)

This is working for our family right now. We feel great, we're losing weight (I'm still losing weight, even off protocol and without really trying at all!--The kids, I should mention, are not losing weight. LOL They definitely don't need to!), and we're excited about this way of life. It's not a diet, or even just a dietary change. It really is a way of life, and we're looking forward to this journey together.

Shattering the Stall

I didn't just break that stall, you guys, I shattered it. It didn't work right away. Yesterday, the scale didn't move. Today, though, 2.6 down!  That's about seven and a half pounds in a week, which averages out to a little more than a pound a day.

I think I'm losing a little better on this round than I have on previous ones.  I should tell you that I'm using different drops this time around. I snagged these on sale at CVS.  They are not homeopathic and contain "HCG amino acid." I dig that they're not homeopathic, because it means I can keep up my mint tea habit and I can dye my hair without worrying about these things negating the homeopathics.  It tastes absolutely awful, but I only have to deal with it twice a day, and I'm actually getting used to it. I don't make my "cough medicine face" after I down it now.

So when I took the time to sit down and think about it, I'm pretty sure I figured out that my stall was caused by too much red meat. I'm going to try to keep my beef meals to one or two a week and rely on chicken and eggs for the rest of my  protein. This would be much easier if I ate fish at all. I wish, for the three billionth time in my life, that I could stomach seafood.

Two women at the bank today asked me if I've lost weight. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, that is the best feeling in the world.

Anyway, looking forward to the coming two weeks, I see Thanksgiving rapidly approaching. My husband asked me today if I'm going to be on protocol through Thanksgiving and I said yes. We're cooking here, so I am planning on making veggies that are completely protocol friendly, cheating slightly with turkey instead of chicken and cheating a little more with a sugar free, gluten free (ie Phase 3 friendly) dessert.  I've been looking at a few pumpkin custard recipes and am trying to find my favorite one. I'll totally be topping it with some sugar free whipped cream, as well.

Quick note to anyone who hasn't read through this blog much, when I say "sugar-free" I am totally NOT talking about nutrasweet, asparatame, or any other artificial sweetener. My sweetener of choice is liquid stevia.  It's totally yummy, completely natural, and doesn't cause an insulin spike like sugar does.

Unless something more exciting happens, next entry, I'm going to talk about how I'm successfully "cheating" on this round. Yeah, I'm cheating. It involves chocolate. Stay tuned.

Ten pounds left, but the chocolate won't let me go!

Hi! If you're visiting from IComLeavWe, thanks for stopping by!  If you're new here, please take a few minutes to read the post in the sidebar!

Holding steady at 20 pounds gone. That's fine. According to my super awesome scale, I'm also retaining water like that kid from WonderTwins.  (Have you ever seen my brother and I do our Wonder Twins impersonation? Oh you totally have to. I'll video tape it one day.)

I'm having a hard time with The Munchster this round. I did great last time, but this time, I am finding that it's easier for me to pop little things into my mouth throughout the day. I have a particularly hard time when I'm cleaning the kitchen. Or walking through the kitchen. Or thinking about the kitchen.

I'm not having huge binge cheats. The bag of Doritos I didn't get to when I was loading is still there, unopened. But, I'll snag a Hershey Kiss from my kids' snack box. Or...ugh...I found a chewy Werther's in my cabinet yesterday and snarfed it before I could even blink. 

WTH?  Trying to get my head back on straight, because these last ten pounds are going to fight me every single way possible. Sneaking pieces of chocolate isn't going to encourage my body to release them any quicker. 

So, today, lunch will be chicken soup, which I'm really looking forward to, because I've got a wicked cold coming on.  How about you? What's for lunch, folks?

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!

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!

Round Two, and I'm coming out swinging!

Well, hello there! It's been about three weeks, and I've been busy. Also? There is just not too much to talk about in Phase 3. It's not like you're losing any weight, so my blogs would have looked like, "Well, I ate a bunch of cheese and some nuts before. And now I'm eating some chicken. I might have steak for dinner. Keep you posted." And that's just no fun to read.

On the other hand, Phase 2 is a great time to write, because WOOT for weight loss!

So, I'm here tonight to report that I ended my stint with Phase 3, and have happily jumped back into Phase 2 following two loading days.

I've been at it for about a week, and am down about 7 pounds. It would have been more, no doubt, but I had a weekend of birthday parties and one of them was my own daughter's. So stress eating abounded. I wasn't even hungry at Chuck E Cheese, but I ate a slice of that nasty pizza anyway. Because, you know, woohoo.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of recovering from my cheat-ie weekend (and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I really didn't cheat that much. You need to follow this diet to the LETTER, man), so didn't lose anything today. Hopefully being back on track today will get some pounds off by tomorrow. I'm only 12 pounds from my goal, so I wouldn't be surprised if I lose slower now, but I'd still like to be LOSING.

As we all know from my last round, being on HCG and NOT losing weight AT ALL really sucks monkey tush.

So, that's where I'm at, folks. Where are you at? Leave me some comment love so I know I'm not the only one reading this! ;-)

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.