Starting Anew!

Well, I have been busy!  Since the last time I posted, my son Wyatt has grown a LOT.  He is almost 2!  It is hard to believe lol

My weight at my last post was 168.5.  For the past almost two years, I have been fluctuating, but my average weight was about 172 or so, +/- 5 pounds.  So I've been looking forward to starting the HCG diet again.  I tried a few other weight loss things, like weight watchers, which uses a point system, and that worked well while I was being very consistent with it, but the consistency sort of fell by the wayside when my best friend went to Seattle to have her baby.  While I was there with her for quite some time, I didn't really pay attention to points, though I did try to pay attention to what I was eating.  Although, once I discovered YogurtLand, that sort of fell by the wayside also!

So now, once again, I am able to do the HCG diet.  Here's a recap.

For the first 2 days, you take your HCG, in whatever form you're talking it, and however many a day your form calls for.  I am doing non-homeopathic HCG, 20 drops a day (7 in the morning and afternoon, and 6 at night).  You then stuff your face as full of food, preferably the fatty kind, as much as you can possibly stuff in.  This is Phase 1, and is very important as it kickstarts your body into gear burning fat, and gives you a little something to carry over into the first week so that you don't suffer from hunger while your body is getting used to the diet.  Phase 2: for the following 21 days, you continue to take your HCG, and you eat a very low calorie diet, consisting of the following.  Each meal contains one source of protein, one fruit, one veggie, and one Melba toast or Grissinni bread stick.  All protiens, fruits, and veggies must be on the approved list.  For breakfast you drink tea, and have as much water as you can drink.  Meals are Lunch and Dinner.  The meals can be broken up, in that you don't have to eat your protein, fruit, and veggie all at once, but you can't have two proteins together, two fruits, or two veggies at the same time or one after another.  For the final three days of the 500 calorie diet, you continue to eat the same, but you don't take the drops.  This gives your body time to clear out the HCG.  If you don't give your body this time, and instead go back to eating normally, you'll gain weight, because the HCG is still in your system.  Phase 2 lasts a minimum 24 days (including the 3 days you eat the low calorie diet but don't take the drops), but can be extended for up to 43 for those who have more weight to lose. Phase 3 is where you eat around 1200 calories (for a normal healthy woman) of just about anything you want, minus grains.  You want to continue to limit your sugar intake, so watching what fruits you're eating is important.  For instance, you don't want to eat a lot of peaches every day, because they are very high in sugars.  Phase 3 lasts about 21 days.  Then comes Phase 4 (at least that is the way my app has it.  Many websites list Phase 3 at 42 days, because it doesn't break up the phase where you eat no grains and the phase where you wean it back in).  In Phase 4, you begin to slowly wean grains back into your diet.  You still want to watch your carb and sugar intake, but you can be a little less wary of the higher sugar fruits and such.  You also want to watch caloric intake.  You don't want to lose a bunch of weight just to gain it all back because you're eating too many calories.  Too many calories, regardless of how healthy, will cause weight gain.

And of course, you want to weigh yourself every single day to make sure that you are losing properly, and to catch a stall (where you lose no weight and no inches).  Many people also measure their bodies every single day as well, but I like to do once a week.  I also try to do weekly body pics.  In Phase 2, if you don't lose weight from one day to the next, it is a good idea to do your measurements then, and any subsequent day that you are at the same weight.  This way you can tell if you have truly stalled, or if you are continuing to lose inches.  If you truly stall, as in no weight loss and no inches lost, then it's time for an apple day, where you eat nothing but 6 apples throughout the day.  That is supposed to get you back on track.  I haven't had to do one of those yet, thankfully.

Okay, so now for my details.  Right before I went on the diet, I was sick for about 3 weeks with horrible diarrhea.  Being sick made me lose 10 pounds.  So prior to being sick, I was 172.5.  After antibiotics and no more being sick, I was 162.5, and I stayed there for the week prior to me starting the diet.  After looking at the calendar, I decided the best day to start would be the day before Thanksgiving.  That way, that day and the day before would be my loading days.  I ate until I was feeling physically ill and gross lol.  But it definitely helped!  Friday began my low calorie diet.

I am now on day 8 of Phase 2, and I have lost 6.5 pounds!  I didn't lose weight from one day to the next, but I think that I was blocked up.  I drank some Smooth Move tea and got back on track after a few bowel movements.  My goal is to be done and on maintenance by Christmas Eve, so the max I will be on Phase 2 for is 25 days, including the 3 days of no HCG drops.  In that period of time I am hoping to be down in the 130's.  I am most comfortable around 135, so that would be a total weight loss of 27.5 pounds.  If I continue my current trend of about 6 pounds a week, I won't be down that far, unfortunately.  I kind of chose a bad time to be on it.  Ideally I would have done it after New Years, but I was getting tired of putting it off!  If I only lose 18 pounds on this diet, that will put me at 144.5, leaving me with roughly 10 pounds still to lose.  The HCG diet is something you want to do if you have at least 15 pounds to lose, so I don't know that I'd repeat this particular diet.  I am planning on using weight watchers to maintain my weight during maintenance, so after Phase 4 is all over, I will lower my points to lose more weight that way.

This morning I ran into my first problem.  The last time I did this diet, when I hit my body's idealish weight, I started getting ravenous, not being able to focus, feeling weak, etc, which was when I knew I had to stop doing the diet.  I did so by going up to 900 calories a day during the three days I went off the drops, and that worked to keep me from feeling ravenous and weak.

Well, this time around, I have never felt truly hungry.  My hunger levels range from "Hmm, I could eat" if you asked me, to "I think I'd better eat something."  I have never felt truly starving.  This morning, after my drops at 7, and my short nap until about 7:45, I woke up with my stomach rumbling.  It was hard to walk down the stairs because of how weak I felt, and you can forget raising my arms.  I had to pick up Wyatt to put him in the car and it felt like the hardest thing I've ever done.  As I was driving to drop the kids off, I realized that I was having extreme difficulty focusing on the road.  I KNOW I am not at my ideal weight at 156 pounds, so I can only guess that my problem is that I'm not getting enough calories.  There have been a few times where I forget to eat my veggie with my meal, and I haven't been eating the breadsticks or melba toast.  I knew I had to fix this problem because I have school today, so I went by the coffee shop.  I ordered a drink and a muffin.  I ate half the muffin and drank half the tea.  By the time I got to school I was feeling a lot better.  Much better focus, not feeling like it was a chore just to lift one foot to put in front of the other.  The extra carbs was what my body needed.  I'm grateful to be in tune enough with my body to recognize when something isn't right.

So I REALLY need to pay closer attention to my meals, and making sure that I eat EVERYTHING I'm supposed to eat!


Today's weight: 156