My scale went up....

However, I am still under 2 pounds over my LIW, last injection weight. Today, I emphasized protein more, and I am hopeful the scale will settle back down closer to LIW or below. I lost some more between LIW and my first P3 day.

In case my scale goes over 2 pounds past LIW, I have some grassfed ribeye in the freezer ready for a steak day. A steak day is Dr. Simeon's prescription for gaining. The dieter who finds their scale registering over 2 pounds more than their LIW will only drink fluids until dinner at which time they will eat a giant steak accompanied by an apple or a tomato.

Am I the only HCG dieter who thinks a steak day sounds good? I love MEAT-LOL.

"You look like you've lost weight..."

I have several scrapbooking classes I teach on a monthly basis to 5 different groups. The group I taught last night saw me before HCG last month and after HCG this month with 4 out of 8 asking out of earshot of one another if I had lost weight!

Music to my ears...

Breakfast

For about 3 weeks during P2, I skipped breakfast; only drinking tea and water until around 11:30 or so when I'd have a half grapefruit. I loved sitting down to eat breakfast with my boys this AM!

Phase 3 is when we are no longer on very low calorie diet but restricted from sugars and starches. So, today, my first day on P3, I enjoyed no nitrate thick sliced bacon and two yard eggs fried in that bacon grease. The yolks were almost orange they were so healthy.

This is how I ate my bacon and eggs after seeing the TV show on TLC called "I can make you thin". After TiVoing this program, I watched it this weekend. It's about learning to eat like a thin person. http://tlc.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.html?paid=2.14464.55929.35324.2 Also, check your listings for reruns as there are 5 in the series. The host has four golden rules, and the one I really applied at breakfast was to "eat consciously."

I took time to look at my food. In between bites, my fork was placed on my plate as I chewed each mouthful slowly. For the bacon, I'd take a bite and set it down, not just accordion it into my mouth as more room became available-LOL. As my youngest spoke to me, without eating more, I just listened and when he had finished talking, I took another bite. This is how skinny people eat; slowly without rush, enjoying their company and not attacking their plate like a project with an overdue deadline!

Losing this 50 pounds is only part of my goal. The other part is to learn to change habits that could cause the scales to creep back up. Another great thing this AM- I broke into the 150s! I should not lose any more during my week of P3 though.

Visions of sugarplums dance in my head...

Well, really bacon and eggs for my first P3 meal tomorrow AM. Gasp, what about cholesterol???? ( tongue in cheek).

I do not know if I blogged this, but my cholesterol reading from my bloodwork in February, (fasting), was 170 total: 92 was HDL, the good stuff which should be over 39, and 67 was the LDL figure which should be under 100.

At that time, I often ate no nitrate pork bacon and pasture raised eggs for breakfast. Along with whole fat, raw milk, real butter, and plenty of saturated fats in meat- grassfed, of course. I think this is why my HDL was so high compared to the LDL. I was not eating a high fiber diet to "offset" these maligned fats with the exception of grapefruit and apples. I did not eat any canola oil or any other vegetable oil, but instead used butter and extra virgin coconut oil for cooking.

Tomorrow is my first day for P3, and with today being my last VLCD, the HCG is wearing off. I have a touch of a headache, and I feel pretty crabby.

Tomorrow, I'll be typing with bacon greasy fingers on my keyboard! Hurray.

Joy

Inching my way along...

Ok, so today is my last VLCD, and I wanted to reward myself with some measurements' outcome.

Total inches lost: 21.25 inches.

5.5 inches off of my waist! (From 37.5 to 32)
2.5 inches off my hips (From 45 to 42.5)
2.75 off my tummy (From 45 to 42.25)
2.75 off of my thigh ( From 26 to 23.25)
2.75 below my braline gone
only 1 inch lost for bust from 44 to 43"
plus 4 other areas of measure- knee, upper arm, forearm, and calf.- all shrinking!

my weight loss as of today: 15 pounds.

How cool is this?

Hot-diggity! Over 14 pounds gone!

Mamaw would say, "hot diggity!" as her voice would brandish pure excitement. My Papaw would say, "how do ya' like dem apples?", with a nod and a raise of his eyebrow.

Well, hot diggity, I love dem apples of over 14 pounds gone!

Also, I am right in the middle of the BMI scale between overweight and normal weight now! Remember, my BMI registered on the low end of obese when I started HCG treatment on March 4, 2008. http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/ to find your BMI.

Also, my body fat has dropped below 40% for the first time in a few years. My goal is to have less than 30% body fat when I am down to goal.

According to my ebook calculator, I have lost about 9+ pounds of fat. Consistently, my loss seems to include about 3-5 pounds of other than fat which must be mostly water loss since fat is anhydrous, contains no water. I might see how much I weigh tonight before bed and then see how much water is lost during the night although I know fat is lost at night as well.

Had a craving for popcorn and overview of my plan of weight loss

Wow, cravings are unfamiliar to me on HCG, but after walking into Target, I had a humdinger of a hankerin' for popcorn, one of my favorite snacks. Do you think it is because the entire front of the store smells like popcorn? I had considered going to a movie today but was worried about popcorn craving there, but WHAM! Target got me-LOL.

Even off of HCG, I'd never eat their popcorn because I make my own in a stove top popper made with coconut butter wax oil and virgin palm oil with organic white popcorn sprinkled with Redmond salt. My husband makes a better bowl of popcorn in my opinion. Well, that fluffy white goodness is quite a ways off for me as I am doing the short round HCG plan until my last round. 20 days of injections followed by 72 hours VLCD with a 7 day strict P3 before loading and moving onto the next Phase is the controversial non-Simeon short round version.

Overview:
Round 1: short round hcg subcutaneous injections
Round 2: short round sublingual- takes twice as much hcg
Round 3: Classic Simeon's round 125IU intramuscular until goal is reached.

My best guesstimate is I will be to goal weight sometime in June.

On my "old" program to which I am a "lifetime member", it would have been 12 months! AND, I never would have dreamed to shoot for 125 as goal weight on that program; I would have settled on 145!

Oh, what I bought in Target: a clashing pink print yoga carrying strap for my mustard yellow yoga mat. Looking forward to going back to Yoga next weekas I've been out with a shoulder injury. I'll have about 15 pounds less of me to hold in poses. I wonder if any yoga classmates will notice my transformation?

Something sweet.....

I did not eat anything sweet! This was something heart touching from my husband today: he gave me this wonderful hug, and I could feel much more of his arms around me (meaning less of me.) I asked, "Can you tell how much I am shrinking?" So, he hugged me again, I saw a twinkle in his eye, and he said "there is much less of you to hug" with a big smile on his face.

Today was my first TOM, time of the month, since my HCG journey. Following Dr. Simeon's recommendations, I skipped my injection although a little scared of hunger. For my trip today to Whole Foods, I had 100 grams shrimp on board in a little Pyrex container and half a cucumber peeled and sliced plus one nice Braeburn apple. No hunger for the trip, especially with two 16 ounce bottles of instant Yerba Mate plus some left over mineral water from yesterday.

On my shopping list was frozen shrimp, organic strawberries, chard, cabbage, fresh ginger, parsley, cucumbers, apples, celery, and free range chicken. I found some jarred Kefir Lime leaves which will be fabulous in some cabbage soup later this week- going to try for some Tom Kha style soup minus the coconut milk. Eyeing a cute little knit organic top, I imagined myself wearing something like that in the not too far future without reservation with a cool above knee skirt and sandals. I love this diet!

BEST thing that wound up in my cart was a Phase 3 food, bacon; it's good to be Gentile. Look out bacin and eggs next Thursday becasue here I come to Phase 3!

Final Rewind (part 3)- special offer for blog readers for CC's ebook!

For the 3 weeks that I did P1 in preparation for my P2, I gathered as much information as possible. I joined the hcgdieters yahoogroup to read testimonials and glean tips from seasoned hcg dieters. This was so inspiring!

I kept reading sage answers to group postings from CC or "apracticalidealist". CC always pointed people back to Dr. Simeon's manuscript by helpfully quoting an applicable passage as well as elaborating with her experience. She was ready to get to the meat of a matter if someone was struggling. I found myself always slowing down to savor when reading her thoughful replies.

At the bottom of each of CC's posts, she advertised her Ebook, Guide to Implementing the Weight Loss Cure,offering a special price to hcgdieters group members through a special payment method only available through the group. So, I was able to get her resource book discounted to $19.95 emailed to me directly within hours. ***CC has offered dd.ca challenge Blog readers the same special: you can get my eBook for $19.95 by sending it to me at this email address (apracticalidealist@yah.com) through PayPal "Send Money" tab on www.paypal.com. She suggests using the credit card option on Paypal for faster service.

Guide to Implementing the Weight Loss Ebook turned out to be a much needed time saver for me. While some of the info contained in the ebook can be found here and there, it was so convenient to save time by just going to the ebook for an answer instead of deciding if I saw an answer in a post, or in the group files, or on another hcg focused website. Also, I did read some exclusive tips that I never would have uncovered without their being so nicely compiled in CC's Ebook. She even included a neat little tracker thing to keep up with calories and weight loss progress. I'd like to add that I have had contact with another hcg ebook author, and was not nearly as impressed with their knowledge as with CC's, but maybe I am just partial. Hey, maybe CC will offer a special to readers of this blog! I will contact her shortly.

If you'd like to join hcgdieters group, go to http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/HcgDieters , you'll need to set up a yahoo user ID (do NOT choose a yahoo email option as this confuses things-LOL). Set "message delivery" option to DIGEST as this group generates up to 200 emails each day!!!!!! Then look for CC or apracticalidealist and follow her instructions to get her ebook for $19.95.

Now, onto my progress thusfar using Dr. Simeon's HCG protocol; today, I am 13 days into VLCD, and down 12.2 pounds. My original 40" tape measure would not go all the way around my hips, tummy, or bust ( how sad is that?) so my main measurement from which to calculate loss from inception is my waist. Before HCG, my waist measured 37.5 inches, after 15 days of injections and 13 VLCDs, my waist measures 33 inches! 4.5 inches off of my waist in 15 days- wow. I had a visit with someone on Sunday who had seen me about 13 days ago, and she commented on how much slimmer I look, how beautiful my skin and hair appeared. I told her in a stern voice, " you have exactly 15 minutes to stop all those compliments!"

Tomorrow, I'll present my favorite foods on the protocol, preparation methods as well as my day to day. Finally, we can stop the rewind, but I do hope these last few posts have been a helpful overview to readers.

Smiles,
Joy

Rewind (Part 2)- this is long...

Very excited and a little scared to do something wrong, I started my first injection day on Tuesday, March 4th. I had everything I needed in my hcg kit at my fingertips. Following the mixing instructions from hcgsupplies.com made the mixing process easy.

The first two days of an HCG injection cycle are used to "load" the body with calories as well as to bring the HCG level to a therapeutic level in the body. A friend shared that she had seen many dieters going for Krispy Kremes and McDonald's to load their bodies. Knowing the disadvantage to loading in such a way, I went for a pound of no nitrate, organic bacon (it's good to be Gentile), crispy nuts, whole raw milk, and raw cream. I also purchased a large juicy grassfed ribeye for more protein. The raw cream had 1600 calories in one pint alone!

According to Dr. Simeon's manuscript, over a long course of HCG dieting, the body comes close to protein deficiency so protein load seemed important to me. Also, fat has so many calories that I knew I'd get a good load using the healthy fats I chose. I loved trying to GAIN weight for a change-LOL- for my 2 loading days. I was opposed to loading using junk and sugar because I did not want to feed unfriendly intestinal yeast/bacteria which would cause sweet cravings once I went onto the Very Low Calorie Diet or VLCD.

Over my two day course of loading, 3.4 pounds found their way onto me, and I felt as full as a tick as we say in the South. My friend who had successfully lost 27 pounds her first round through a doctor's clinic about 100 miles away, incidentally loaded the same days.

I spoke with her on load day 2, and she commented that they only had Pirate Booty Snack, sort of like organic Cheetos, as junk food to load, and she was having difficulty loading. Through a third party so may not be accurate, she has reported hunger during her first several days on HCG which could be due to an less than stellar load!

Although, I was worried about hunger, my first day on the VLCD, very low calorie diet, was a breeze. I started my VLCD 1 with 16 ounces of clean water followed shortly after with a 16 ounce cup of organic green tea sweetened with 4 drops of Stevita stevia. For the boy's breakfast, I made almond flour banana waffles, but had little to no desire to eat any. The difficult part was adding the honey which is always messy and usually, I'll do a little clean up with a swipe of my finger which finds its way between my lips! So, I was left to run rinse off the precious honey down the drain. I tried to talk one of the kids to de-honey my finger, but they looked like "yuck, Mom."

So, here I am cooking delicious healthy food, drinking tea; experiencing no hunger. Where were the feelings of deprivation, the need to white knuckle through by telling myself- this food won't help you reach your goal, Joy? All my training I had had through my "lifetime membership" in the popular weight loss system meetings were not necessary to get me through. Albeit, I had nagging doubts due to that programming that I might not be doing what my body needed with HCG. The antidote to those doubts was reading testimonials of dozens of people losing their weight, keeping it off, and getting healthy using HCG.

Although, I had read so many people posting huge losses during their first week- some up to 15 pounds in their first week, and had hoped for the same performance for myself, I lost at MY pace which has been about a pound/day. On day 12 of injections, I awoke to only a .2 pound loss, felt a bit discouraged, but was reminded by a close friend about my average which did perk me up. Rereading Dr. Simeon's booklet allowed me to see that losses tend to average to a bit less than a pound/day, and I am hopeful this will be the case for me. What a huge departure from my previous weight loss experiences!

During my losing times with the other program, it took months to lose 20 or 30 pounds, and a 1 pound loss in a week was a happy thing. A 7 pound loss in a week would have been met with disapproval and concern by the program supervisors.

Tomorrow- last Rewind, and we can get up to the day to day tidbits of my HCG journey. I have so many tips that I have learned from a very special ebook from a super special friend, and I cannot wait to point you to the ebook as a necessary resource.

Rewind

Today is my 13th day of HCG subcutaneous injections, and I'd like to rewind to my weight loss journey thusfar using the HCG protocol.

As mentioned in my intro, I visited my friend on February 8th, saw her progress, decided that night to move ahead into the HCG diet. Seeing WAS believing. On March 9th, I chose to do what Kevin Trudeau calls Phase 1 cleansing as well as making an appointment with my professional health care provider. I began eating 2 organic grapefruits each day, 2 organic apples each day, upping water intake as well as walking at a leisurely pace 5 days/week for an hour. At this time, I increased my tea consumption as my friend said this was key to have that tea drinking habit during Phase 2. I chose a few mild cleanses as I was already eating organic, drinking clean water, and breathing clean air.

My appointment with my provider, who I will call Chris, brought the horrific news that my BMI, body mass index, showed me to be at 30, fully clothed, which clinically is OBESE. After full blood panels and a thyroid panel, my thyroid was functioning in an odd way. Chris said, "I beleive the HCG will help this function, and I do not think we need to address the numbers with any medications". I also went to see my chiropractor who muscle tested me and confirmed that " your hypothalamus is not communicating properly with your pituitary". Again, confirmation that hcg would be an answer to my goofy thyroid.

Chris told me that her supplier of HCG was out, and to move ahead and order from drugdelivery.ca. I ordered on February 14th, received shipping confirmation on the 16th, and patiently began my wait for my answer to my weight problem to arrive. Also, after learning the best place to order an HCG injection kit, I ordered through hcgsupplies.com and received that order within the next week. I loved not having to figure out all that was needed by buying an all inclusive kit. It would have been terrible to try to put a kit together "ala carte" and to find that I missed something once my HCG arrived. Many thanks to David at hcgsupplies for his wonderful service and speedy delivery.

I kept tracking my order online, calling the polite and helpful customer service people at drugdelivery.ca every few days to see if I could get a bean on when my goodies would arrive. It seemed like they never would and then 10 business days later, the postman rang my doorbell asking for a signature. This was Monday, March 3rd, and I was ready to being my weight loss journey the next day!

Joy's intro:

Approaching age 45, homeschooling mom of 3 boys, a small business owner, and a "lifetime member" of a popular US weight loss program, I found myself once again too heavy to enjoy life to the fullest with 50 extra pounds on my frame. Despite eating an extremely healthy diet for the past 2 years, the weight just hung onto my figure. I considered going back to countless meetings, eating a diet that is not as healthy as touted by that program, or rejoining the health club again, spending precious time away from family to work it off- AGAIN.
A friend, locally, sent an email about her weight loss using hcg, and I looked into the program by reading Dr. Simeon's booklet online; only to find myself angry at the idea of a 500 calorie diet being "healthy". That US weight loss program to which I am a "lifetime member" had trained me that too little calories, "crazy" diets, anything that didn't follow their high fiber/lowfat model would be detrimental and return to me in spades with more weight.
However, I read some reviews on Amazon.com about Kevin Trudeau's book, decided that an author who had so many people up in arms must be bucking the system that had kept me fat, and ordered the book. The day after I received my Weight Loss Cure book and devouring it, I went to see my friend who lost 27 pounds in a 45 day round of hcg. Have you ever heard that "seeing is believing?"
Seeing my friend, trim, energetic, gave me hope to regain energy and health, as well as a way to avoid health problems that arise from being 50 pounds overweight that tend to creep in at my age. I could see myself more active in a body that weighed what it should with a hypothalamus that wouldn't allow me to regain again the weight I lost!
It is my earnest desire to share my progress to readers and offer them what my local friend offered me: a real person, losing real weight offering real hope for lifetime health and fitness using this fantastic program.