Read/Watch my own hCG Diet Journey As It Unfolded:

This is my very first round on the hCG Diet I ever did in March 2011. From start to finish, you can see my own weight loss journey with hCG injections unfold.

HCG Diet – My Personal Introduction to YouTube

January 28, 2011

I learned SO MUCH from all the people I found on Youtube who vlogged their HCG journey for all to see.  Their weight losses, their gains, their experiments, their cheats, their final results.  I stayed up late many nights watching vlogs and learning all I could from real people actually doing the HCG Injections.

This inspired me to start vlogging myself- I knew it would help keep me on track.  Little did I know how neat it would be later to have these beginning videos where I can now barely recognize myself.  Little did I know later too that others would come to find me as an inspiration and helpful aid in their own HCG journey as well and I feel honored to be a part of that.

HCG Starting Hydrostatic Bodyfat Percent

February 18, 2011

Well, before embarking on my HCG journey, I went to the Fitness Wave hydrostatic body fat testing facility (it’s actually a mobile truck) to have my body fat percent tested.  It was important to me to know what exactly I lost while on the weight loss protocol.

I started out with 34.5% bodyfat.  I’m 5’1″ and this equals out to 59 pounds of FAT on my little body.  I weighed a total of 171 pounds that day, so the other 112 pounds was my lean mass- muscle, glyocgen, organs, tissues, etc.  Not a very good ratio.

Thankfully, as of today when I write this (April 2012) I am somewhere around 22% bodyfat- 12.5% less than where I started.  This was achieved almost entirely with using HCG Injections for fat loss.

HCG Round 1 Loading Day 1

 

February 26, 2011

Hello it’s me again nana HCGChica. I had my first loading today it’s actually not over I still have to eat dinner. I have decided to start with 175ius and I’ve decided to use injections. At first I didn’t considered doing those at all I was gonna do sublingual but in the end the two things that made me decide to do injections were 1, the ease of it when you do injections you only have to do it ones a day instead of twice. To me that was a big draw because you’re supposed to do the sublingual twice a day at the same time a day and it I just felt like it could be a little hard to do. And then the second thing was I felt a little concerned about making sure I absorbed the sublingual properly under my tongue cause I was concerned about swallowing some of it and then maybe I wouldn’t be getting it all going into my body so I just thought with the injection I am positive that I know all of it went right into my butt. So I ended up deciding to do injection which is crazy I never thought I would decide to do that. And then the third thing is actually kind of cost almost half as much cause you only have to inject once a day with half the amount. You do have to pay for the syringes stuff like that but it’s definitely cheaper.

My first injection was today and I kept staring at the needle and I kind of touching it to my belly and it kinda hurts when I touch the point to my skin, so I was getting kind of chicken and in the end I had my husband do his first and then I had him inject me. But I can say honestly it did not hurt at all I didn’t even feel him put it in but cause I didn’t look and he didn’t know it was like “Oh did you put it in already?” yeah I didn’t feel anything and I didn’t feel any of the liquid going in and it was cold the liquid was cold but I didn’t feel it going in at all, so that good. Like I said I’ve taken a 175 ius to start. I don’t know if it’s the hormone working already or not but I can usually really pack it away when it comes to food I can have a whole burger, fries and like two huge scoops of ice cream on one sitting and feel really satisfied with it. And today I have had the hardest time eating. I just don’t have an appetite I don’t wanna eat. We went to dim sum, which is a Chinese buffet and there’s a lot of greasy fried yummy foods and I could hardly eat any of it and normally I would have eaten way much more but I was trying and I think I was gonna throw up if I ate it was just making me nauseous just looking at it. That must be the hormone which will be a good thing hopefully once I’m actually on the low calorie diet. I did try having ice cream because that’s really my favorite, favorite, favorite, thing in the whole world and I thought something cold would be easier for me to get down then something hot and I was right so I did have a couple scoops of ice cream after that and I didn’t feel weird about getting that down. But everything else today, I’ve tried to eat that I normally would enjoy, I just really haven’t wanted. I honestly have not been able to eat as much as I normally would which kinda makes me a little nervous but I think lately I’ve been eating way too much anyway so I think I’m probably still eating enough to gain weight. Anyway so there’s that, I weighed myself this morning and I was 171.4 so we’ll see after today and tomorrow what my new weight after loading is and then we’ll proceed from there. That’s my update for today. My husband felt the same way about eating today like he didn’t feel like he really wanted to eat so were both gonna be trying the same dose. So yeah it’s interesting, it’s very interesting. Alright I will talk to you guys later.

My first experience with loading for the protocol was that it is very apparent right away the effect that HCG has on hunger and the ability to eat.  Normally at this point in my life I could literally pack away an entire 1/2 gallon of full fat ice-cream- no joke- without feeling sick afterwards.  While loading, the sight of food actually made me sick. We went to Dim Sum and I could barely eat a thing- fatty or oil things especially made me feel sick just to look at it.  That was a feeling I’ve never experienced but I’ve heard other (usually skinny) people mention.  In general, there’s almost never a time when I couldn’t eat more.  Already I knew the hormone wasn’t simply a placebo.  It was almost disappointing really- not that the hormone wasn’t a placebo, but that I couldn’t “enjoy” my time loading more!  My perspective on that has changed too though since my eating habits have changed for life and for me personally, I have come to the point where I can never allow an excuse to overindulge in such a manner.

Scared of HCG Injections?  I was too.  I was going to take hormone the sublingual way myself at first- but the more I thought about it the more my “cheap” side won out- you only need half the amount of the hormone for injections, and I liked the idea that you only need to take the hormone in injection form once a day, instead of twice as it is for sublingual.  I’m being totally truthful- I chickened out and made my husband do my first injection- and you know what?  I didn’t even know when he had stuck the needle in because….I didn’t feel a thing.  Really.  The injection was totally painless.  Now I have to be honest again and fast forward a year and 4 rounds of the weight loss protocol – after so many injections into my stomach, I had to find some other injection sites.  I’m not sure if it was scar tissue or having less fat in my abdominal area, but the injections into my stomach were getting not only painful but downright impossible during my 4th round- the needle simply wouldn’t seem to go in!  So I switched to my still very fleshy thigh and all was well with the world again.

Round 1 Load Day 2

March 2, 2011

Hi guys! It’s me again. We just finished our second loading day and it went a little easier than yesterday. It was a little easier to eat more. There’s still plenty of points throughout the day that I didn’t feel like eating so again it seems like guess that’s the hormone but I’m not sure. Anyway I’ll give you my official after loading weight tomorrow morning. As of the moment I weigh 174.8 which is about 3.4 pounds more than before loading but also it’s the evening so I’m not sure if I’ll weigh more or less tomorrow depending on, you know because I just had a big dinner recently. If that turns into more fat I may weigh more tomorrow or I may weigh less or the same since you weigh less in the morning than in the evening so we’ll see. But anyway it looks like about 3.4 pounds at the moment.

Round 1 VLCD 1

March 2, 2011

Hi! It’s HCGchica here! I had my very first low calorie diet today and yeah it went good. I’m gonna be honest and say I did feel hungry especially around, let’s say 2:33 and unfortunately at that time I was at the grocery store getting everything for the next week so everything smelled really good I just wanted to eat everything I saw but I stood strong of course. Anyway I’m feeling better now I think it’s just part of getting use to the new diet of course like I said I’m on a 175iu so I’m gonna wait for 5-6 days then after that if I’m still feeling ravenously hungry I think I’m supposed to either decrease or increase my dose a little base on that cause from what I read if you have the right dose once you’ve been on the diet for few days you should no longer feel hungry so hopefully I will adjust soon. Today I had chicken breast, cucumber and strawberries for my lunch and for dinner we had sea bass which was heavenly so, so good. We didn’t eat the skin but we had the sea bass and steamed fennel and it was so delicious and then an apple, I had my apple for my snack actually about 4 o’clock so like I said I was so hungry. Anyway that went pretty well and as far as my official starting weight after loading I was 172 this morning so that really means I only gained like .6 if that’s even fat I mean that could just be water. In the end it looks like I only gained a little bit but I did try to eat a lot of fatty stuff like ice cream and so hopefully I did the job right. My husband’s starting weight is about 2 pounds over his normal weight so he did pretty good on that too. I don’t know exactly what else to say but I’m feeling glad that I’ve made it, almost made it through the first day. It’s actually only 7:20pm I still have few more hours to go but I did drink a lot of water today and I had my tea. I did have one of my mugs with tea I had a little stevia and cause I was feeling kind of deprived and that did actually help feel a little better. So anyway I’ll keep you posted it is really nice as far as being simple. It’s so little food and it’s so straight forward and so simple that’s it just nice is that you don’t have to really think about it. That’s my update for today and I’ll let you guys know tomorrow if I lose any weight and that would be so exciting. This is what I’ve been waiting for. So I’ll talk to you guys soon

Update:

First vlcd’s are hard folks!!  If you loaded with any sugar and carbs and are used to eating more frequently (who isn’t???), those first few days DO involve enduring some hunger pains until your body adjusts to the new shhhedule.

I started this first round of HCG Injections by injecting 175iu’s of a brand called Zykog (don’t see that one around anymore).  This did well for me for about the first 10 or 12 days if I remember correctly before I found myself experiencing hunger again and needing to reduce my HCG dose a bit.

Round 1 VLCD 2

March 3, 2011

The way I chose to apportion out my 500 calories for this 1st round of HCG Injections, after doing some research, was slightly different from what Dr. Simeon’s outlined (not hugely different-just a couple slight tweaks based on what I read online).  I didn’t follow this same method for my ensuing rounds though.

Grilled asparagus on the barbecue is great guys!  I won’t be making an “hcg recipe” vlog for that lol, but basically- put your asparagus on your barbecue for a few minutes, then….eat it.

My HCG dinner “recipe” involved simmering celery in water till soft, then adding Tilapia (you could use any white fish i’m sure) at the end, along with salt and a seasoning or two.  You’ll see as time goes on that I am the queen of simple when it comes to cooking on this protocol- it’s just not worth it to me to put too much time and effort into food that is so….tiny.

I was down 1.8 lbs this day too!  Nice beginning to my first HCG experience.

Round 1 VLCD 5 Thyroid and Hashimoto’s talk

March 3, 2011

Day three was tough for me.  Wanted to give up- only on day 3!!  Day 4 and 5 were much easier- also I reduced my HCG Injections dose to 166iu’s and my hunger was better.  Looking back now 175iu’s was probably just the wrong dose entirely for me.  Most people seem to do best with a dose around 150iu’s and I found once I got to my 4th round, that 125iu’s was the best “no hunger” dose for me.

I know this is totally changing the subject, but that’s what I did in my HCG vlog, so I’m going to do it here too. :)-

For any out there who have Hashimoto’s Thyroid Disease, it’s possible you may not know that iodine, while an important and valuable thing to have in our bodies, is something to avoid until you get your immune system under control and it stops attacking you.  Iodine can and will cause further autoimmune attacks, causing further bad body symptoms and further destruction of your thyroid.  I have experienced this numerous times first hand (basically what happens is, if I eat seaweed or anything with Iodine, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck about a half hour later and have to sleep it off for several hours afterwards).  The logical reason why this happens though is explained really well in this book by Dr. Alexander Haskell called Hope for Hashimoto’s.  It’s the only book I know of that focuses solely on Hashimoto’s instead of just general low thyroid/hypothyroid issues.  The book is appropriate too for anyone whose been diagnosed with Hypothyroidism because if you do your research, you’ll find the leading cause of Hypothyroidism in the United States is actually Hashimoto’s.  So if you have been diagnosed hypothyroid, you very likely have Hashimoto’s too- why don’t you know this?  Because doctors rarely test for it.  But it’s a different animal than just Hypothyroidism itself and should be treated differently as a result.

Round 1 VLCD 9 – Gain on HCG, Big Loss on HCG

March 4, 2011

Hi guys! It’s me again! I just recorded a video and then somehow the sound isn’t working on over half of it. So I’m here to re-record, maybe it’ll be shorter. Anyway today is VLCD 10. This morning when I woke up I was 162 pounds. I started at 172 so that means I’ve lost a total of 10 pounds. This morning I lost 3 pounds but I’m gonna explain a little more about that in a minute. I think my last check in date was when I had my zero day, I think that was VLCD 5 so after that I lost a .5 then 1.5 and then VLCD 9 yesterday I gained a pound but I know it’s just water weight the thing is I made a soup for myself that night that was just way too salty, really salty but I ate it because I had made it and I think that is why I’m up a whole pound. So anyway yesterday I tried to do a couple of things to counter act that which led to my 3 pound lost. And I did drink a couple of dieters tea last night. You get it at the Asian market. It’s supposed to make you go to the bathroom more and the other thing was I had a detox bath. It’s just a bath with a whole container of baking soda and half of the 4 pound bag of Epsom salts. So I did that and I lay there in there for just like 15 minutes but anyway it definitely did its work because this morning I never had a 3 pound lost yet so far. Usually you lose the most in the beginning. I’ve never even lost 2 pounds so 3 pounds is great. I am assuming at least some of that is water so I’m not sure if tomorrow maybe I might have a 0 or I might even have a small gain I’m not sure. I did drink a lot of water today and I tried to be careful not to salt my food too much today. Hopefully we’ll see how it goes and but anyway that was great.

The other thing is I want to say, I don’t know if you noticed my first few videos a little calorie diet days. I didn’t have my make up on and that’s because I wasn’t sure if I had oil in it. So I had to actually go to the drugstore and check the packaging of my different make-up stuff to see if It had oil and it didn’t seem like it did so now I’m back to wearing my make-up. Now I don’t look like death warmed over anymore. Anyway I was just trying to be careful you know this is my first time on the protocol, my round 1. I just want to do everything right that way I could see how it’s supposed to go and that way if something goes wrong I can try to figure out what was different. I also want to update you on my mom and my husband, my mom has lost 12 pounds now. She also had a 3 pound lost this morning. Its kinda funny some of our weight loses are similar sometimes. She has got a little more than me to lose so she’s losing a little faster at the you know since it’s the beginning for her. She’s down 12 pounds in 9 days and my husband is down 14 pounds in 9 days which is just ridiculous and it just makes you hate you guys sometimes it’s just so unfair. He’s looking great already. It’s so unfair, you know, I have more to lose than him. But anyway of course I’m happy for him I just wish it was me. Anyway were doing great, I mean 10 pounds at 9 days for me is great. I know it may slow down towards the end. The average is supposed to be .5 a day for women and I have Hashimoto’s, the thyroid disease so usually you lose even get slower. But I am on a really effective thyroid medicine. I’m on actual T3 called Cytomel and it’s much more effective than most thyroid medicines that people are on so maybe because of that maybe I’ll keep up with all the normal people. We’ll see. So anyway I’ll be looking to check in you guys again soon.

Having a gain on HCG is not always something to freak out about.  I’m a big soup person, and if you have a pretty large bowl of soup on HCG Injections (okay let’s just call it a big bowl of water with a few bites of meat and veggies in it) with “salt to taste”- which for me is super salty (I should get me a salt lick or something), you can experience some water retention- which I did….and gained 1 lb. It’s just water, not fat, so nothing to panic about.  I tried to be more cautious with salt use the following day, took a detox bath, and drank more liquids to try to eliminate the excess water retention.  The following day though I was down 3 lbs so it’s all good folks!

At this point in my round I was down 10 pounds in 9 days (and I gained I think a grand total of half a pound loading so this was basically all “new” weight), so I was obviously beyond pleased.

Why Goal Jeans Are Important – Round 1 VLCD 11

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March 4, 2011

This is actually the first vlog I did where I stand up for a minute and you get a better idea of where my body is at.  I mention that at this point I’m trying to get back into my size 16 clothes.  That was March 2011.  Today, April 2012, I wear a very comfortable size 4, and an occasional size 2 depending on the brand.  I can now wear an old vest that when I first tried it on at my starting weight of 172 pounds, had a gap of literally, about 10-12 inches across my chest.  It’s so crazy to think where I started!  What’s even more amazing is all the other HCG youtubers out there who have made an even longer journey than myself- losing 100 pounds or more to get to their goal and maintenance weight.

I have a pair of goal jeans I show in this vlog (which have long since gotten way too big and then went back where they came from- the thriftstore).  Get some goal clothes people!  Seriously- you may think now that you won’t really lose weight on HCG Injections even though everyone else has (that’s what I found running through my mind at least), but just please, buy a pair of jeans that’s at least 2-3 sizes too small.  And try them on.  Take notice of how the zipper won’t zip up at all, of how far apart the hole and the button of the jeans is on your body, and at your fat squishing out between it.  Or perhaps the feeling of how you can’t really pull up the jeans over your thighs or bottom, so the crotch part of the jeans is sitting 4″ below your real one.  I’m not trying to be mean- seriously, do this, because then one day after you’ve been on HCG for a bit, you will pull those same jeans on and your jaw will drop when you they zip completely up….perhaps with a small muffin top, but still, they zip and button!  Then, not much later, perhaps 5 days more, and the muffin top is gone.  Then you’ll trade those goal jeans for another pair of goal jeans, another 2-3 sizes too small.

Do this, because it’s amazing how quickly sometimes we can adjust to our shrinking bodies and perhaps not see how much we’ve changed- but it’s not easy to forget how it felt and how it looked trying to wear those too small jeans, and then to physically see your body slide right into them 3 weeks or a month later.  It’s then you know you’ve come far.

 

Thyroid Symptoms Worse on HCG- Round 1 VLCD 14

March 7, 2011

Hi guys! It’s HCGchica again. Today is VLCD 14 and I think I last check-in on day 11 so on Day 12 I was down .8 pounds and in day 13 which is yesterday I had a zero, big fat zero. That’s ok because, that’s my second zero so far which isn’t too bad and I think I hear my son coming in here. Hi handsome. And then this morning I was down .8 so, I was happy about that. Overall my weight loss is still really good I’ve lost a total of 12 pounds now in 13 days, so that’s really good.

Today I made a strawberry smoothie. I took my strawberries from the farmers market, I weighed them and then I froze them and then this afternoon I pulled them out and I put them in the blender with some water and a little stevia and blender it up. It was pretty good I mean it’s not the most amazing thing in the world but it was something different and it was cold anyway you know it was fun to do something different and it seem like you made quite a bit actually once you mix it up with the water, it seems kind of substantial so that was pretty satisfying. I did notice that I think in general I’m not hungry but like today I was hungry and I realize that some days I’m just a little too active. I did a good amount of walking yesterday and I got really exhausted and I think maybe that’s why today I’m more hungry so I’ve just been trying to keep things low key. I can kind of do that. I’m a stay-at-home mom so my son does keep me pretty busy as you can see he’s energetic but I can still keep thing pretty low key and don’t have really stressful job or anything so for me that has been important. I have noticed on this diet that my Hashimoto’s symptoms have definitely gotten worse. I know it’s just a temporary thing, hopefully, that will just be happening on this protocol. But I’ve been feeling fairly good before I started this with you know, I told you I have a really good thyroid medication I take now called Cytomel. But definitely since I’ve started the protocol, I tire a lot more easily and I have a lot of the same symptoms that I used to have. Where I just really had to be careful how much I did or I will just fall apart which has happened twice now and I realize what it was so that probably won’t happen for most of you out there. But for anyone who does have Hashimoto’s, I have heard that a lot of people have had their things like that just disappear while on the protocol and they felt way better. But it looks like for me the opposite is true. It doesn’t matter, it’s still worth it, in the long run this is helping me make a life change that I need to make. I was getting into some really bad eating habits. I used to be really healthy, this is gonna be kind of a reflective blog today just telling you a little bit about myself I guess, that’s what I feel like.

In high school I was extremely healthy, I’m 5’1 so I was very fat, I was 102 pounds in high school but I was also very fit. I did bike riding and hiking with my dad all the time. I basically lived on lunch meat and carrots. I never ate any sugar at all. If I did I felt really guilty. It wasn’t necessary, I wouldn’t say it was necessarily a balance way to live but I was just very strict with myself and I was able to do that then. Cause I was younger and you know I just didn’t have responsibilities that I have now. Like a baby and a husband and you know, you need to cook food for people then you go to people’s houses you can’t be rude and just not eat anything. I’ve been at a place where I was you know like probably peaked fitness level.

It’s been hard for me in the last few years to gain weight. The reason it started was because when my Hashimoto’s kinda started coming on. I didn’t know what it was for a probably good 4 years. I was just kinda calling it chronic fatigue syndrome because that’s kinda all that seem like my symptoms were. I was just extremely tired all the time. If I did exercise and got to the point where any exercise would actually make me feel terrible after. The more I put in to the exercise like if I went for a long hike I would feel that much worse for that much longer. Just like extremely depress and just terrible for like 2 or 3 days and before it would lift. And I finally figured out that pattern thankfully so I stop doing that so I could at least function day to day without feeling awful. But that’s what had happen like I could no longer exercise and a lot of the things that I love to do in life were related to that, like hiking or backpacking. Those are things that my husband and I have always loved to do and I could no longer do that. So it was a hard time for me because I could no longer do the things I love to do and I couldn’t do anything active and eating kinda became one of the few things that was enjoyable that didn’t make me feel terrible. Combination of inactivity and eating more is something that actually gave me pleasure, kinda led to me getting weight.

I was really happy to find this protocol because I kinda have gotten to the point where I felt like it was kinda hopeless. I just felt like I didn’t have the self-discipline and the time or energy to put into a long-term weight loss thing. Like spending a whole year doing really hard things just to lose 10 or 20 pounds. I just feel like I didn’t have it in me. Cause I have so many other things to take care with my life. So I was very happy to find this and so far things are going really well. Anyway that’s kinda the low down on me. In general days aren’t too bad. There is you know, certain days, last Sunday was a really hard day for me but like I said I was too active on Sunday and then yesterday I probably did a little too much again and today is Sunday again and I having a few more cravings than normal but I’m managing to get by. I haven’t actually cheated or anything except for like when I had the one extra apple that day. I don’t know if that would really be considered cheating since I didn’t have my vegetable that day either. The one thing I have done once before which was last Sunday and then I am doing today is, watch out guys. I’m drinking a diet coke. I know that’s not a good idea but, you know there’s just certain days where you feel like you need a little something to get you by for that day and you know that the next day you’ll feel better. So I’m allowing myself this once a week indulgence. I love diet coke; it’s something I tried to get off many times. I’ve been off of it for over a year at different points. I just love how it tastes. I know that sounds crazy but I do. So I’m trying to just be really good but when I really have a hard day.

That’s kinda my one thing that I do there’s no calories so, anyway I guess this blog is getting kinda long but anyway let’s see. I guess I should update you on my husband and my mom. My husband is down, he started at 207 and now he’s 190.2. So I think that is, that’s like around 17 pounds or something crazy like that. Like I said so unfair, he should give me those extra 5 pounds, I’m telling you. And then my mom she’s lost 15 pounds now, she was down 2 pounds this morning. Both her and I have had two zero days so far in 14 days.

It’s a little easier now that I’m actually getting thinner and I actually feel a little thinner. It’s a little easier to deal with those days because I’m “Oh, that’s okay” cause I’m already feeling a little bit of a high look so I could handle day like that. The beginning was a little rough cause I didn’t feel like I look too much different and you know so just a little hard. Anyway I’m getting close to my 10 minute mark so I’m gonna be gone. Sorry this was so long but, I don’t know some of you guys out there have had some similar experiences as me with history, with weight, with food and thyroid stuff who knows. If any of you have any questions about thyroid thing. I have done a lot of research on it. I’ll probably do another blog specifically on that another time. But a lot of people don’t know about the thing that I take and I think it’s been a lot more helpful than what most people are on. Alright talk to you later.

Update:

My Hashimoto’s thyroid symptoms do feel a bit exacerbated on the weight loss protocol.  What this means is that I have to keep things in my life while on HCG really low key.  I view it as a special block of time in my life that I allocate out to losing fat and working towards my long term health.  Much is and has been accomplished in a short span of time with HCG Injections, but it does require almost your full attention mentally and emotionally in order to do it successfully.  But for me, it’s worth doing that for 3 or 6 weeks in order to live a normal, happy, healthy life in the ensuing months (and years) afterward.

In this vlog I also give you a little of my background pre-HCG.  Why I started gaining weight in the first place, how I called my mystery illness “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” (CFS) because those were the only set of symptoms my body seemed to match in my research (there is much new information out pointing to hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s as the root cause of CFS- start googling people- I have no references!  This a blog, not a research paper remember?) :)-

 

Round 1 VLCD 15

March 8, 2011

Hi guys! It’s HCGchica here. Today is VLCD 15. I just wanna give a quick update. Today I gained .2 so, I don’t know if that’s just from having too much salt or not going to the bathroom or perhaps the diet coke I had yesterday. The diet coke didn’t seem to bother me last week when I had 1. Anyway it’s just .2 so I’m not– I don’t think it’s a problem so we’ll see what tomorrow does. I dropped to .8 yesterday and the day before that I had zero. So overall I’ve been losing pretty good. My ratio of how much I’ve lost to number of days is gradually decreasing. Of course at the beginning it was over a pound a day, now I’m on you know on day 15. In 14 days I’ve lost 11.8 pounds so my ratio is going down a bit.

I keep trying to think of different ways to just maximize the amount of weight that I lose in this round. I know it’s to be expected that there will be some stall days and days where your body is adjusting. My husband says that I still look thinner though even though I’m not dropping a lot of weight the last few days. He says I’m definitely looking slimmer. I don’t know how that works but I am happy overall. It’s much easier to deal with days like this right now because I’m just getting much happier in my body so it’s not such a big deal.

I went shopping for the first time since my son was born and actually enjoyed looking for something for myself. My son is 16 months old. Basically since he has been born I haven’t felt good about myself and I just look for stuff for him. I will say shop at your stores I’m a stay over mom we don’t have that extra money and I don’t like spending money on things I can get for cheaper anyway. I usually look for clothes for him that I think that that’s fun but it used to be that I enjoy shopping clothes for myself. But I no longer did and so for the last year and a half I haven’t even done that I’ve gotten a few things if I needed to fit into certain clothes I would just get that but the last few months I haven’t shop for myself at all. I just didn’t even wanna go there it was really depressing. So it was fun I got this sweater there, it’s just really cute it has a lot of little- it’s very me and you can see I’ve been wearing it in the last few videos. I can zip it up but it’s pretty snug but I know like by next week I’ll be able to zip it up fine. So that and the jeans that I got the other day that I showed you guys. I actually enjoy doing that. So this has been really neat experience. I put on one of my size 16 skirts the other night. I know the sizes tend to vary between brands but that skirt was practically falling off, so that was really cool I was glad about that. Some of my other skirts are just kind of like you know a size large and they have a drawstring waist so it’s hard to tell as much well how something is fitting but this was actually a lined skirt with a zipper and it was definitely falling off. I had to wear really long shirt with it. And also one of my nice button-up dress black shirts, I haven’t gotten to the point where I could not even pull it close at all. It was like probably a 2 or 3 inch gap along the whole front of it but I couldn’t pull a clothes at all, and last night I put it on, I buttoned the entire thing up. It was loose around my waist very loose around my waist and fit just very comfortably around my belly area. And that was so exciting I’m just so glad to be able to fit some of my clothes again without feeling uncomfortable so that was really good.

My husband was down .2 today. He has officially down a complete 17 pounds from 207 to 190 in 14 days. So that’s just amazing. My mom actually lost 2 pounds yesterday; she stayed the same today so she is down a total of 15 pounds in 14 days. Totally awesome again and just a reminder were on the RX human chorionic gonadotropin, we are doing injections.

I was hungry the past couple mornings. I have never been hungry at all on this protocol except for like the first day. So we did make new batch, I was still feeling hungry especially in the morning so I decided to lower my dose a little this morning. I lowered it to 150 I was doing like 166 between 175 before I took 150 this morning. Hunger is gone I felt totally better again so I have heard from others that as they lose weight they tend to need to lower their dose and that definitely worked for me so glad about that. Also there is a couple of things I’m wondering about as far as since I did have that small gain. You know, I have grass-fed beef that I used to make a small burger for one of my proteins. Not necessarily every single day, lately I have had it for one of my proteins every day. It does have some fat in it but that was part of the protocol was having some grass fed beef. I have a much smaller portion, I have I think it’s like 2.8 ounces. From one of my proteins that equals a 150 calorie supposedly. Compared to when I have like say tilapia I get 5.5 ounces for 150 calories. But it’s worth it cause the taste is just so good it’s just very satisfying. But anyway, I’m kinda considering on tossing that out for a little bit and see if that could be affecting my weight loss.

The other thing is I know a lot of rouge HCGers says that mixing things up tend to help break stalls. I haven’t had a real stall yet but my weight losses slowed down and you know I’d like to speed it up if possible. I’m kind of thinking about doing an all protein day or something. Different things work for different people and I think you kinda go base on who you are as person. For instance some people say coconut oil just a little bit works for them. I don’t know what’s wrong with me exactly but whenever I have coconut oil it makes me feel ravenous. It doesn’t seem to make me feel good. So I don’t think that’s a good thing for me. I’ve heard other people saying they’ll eat like 6 – 10 macadamia nuts and that will break the stall. I could try it sometime but just knowing my own personal history I just don’t seem to do well with nuts. It’s not that I’m allergic to them that I know of, but whenever I eat them I could be hungry and eat some and it never quells my hunger. It never makes me feel better. But if I have a burger like some meat or some chicken, that always makes me feel better. I’m just a person who does really well with high quality meat protein. I’ve always been that way and so, that’s what it was making me think of possibly trying like an all meat day with no fruit and veggie we’ll see. I haven’t decided to do it yet but it’s just something I’m thinking about. I’m sorry this video is getting long I didn’t mean for that to happen. Hopefully I got some of the best info out at the beginning.

The other thing I’m starting to do again is the California Kicker. I did do it at the first few days of the VLCD. But I just did capsules, I had bought some actual good cayenne pepper and put it them into capsules and I took that. It just doesn’t seems it made a difference so I kinda haven’t been doing it. But I watched another video on it again and I was like maybe I should try taking it in the powder form like just straight in the glass so that it’s just burning and going down. So I did decide to do that. I had one last night and I have one this morning and so we’ll see if that helps at all. I ended up doing a quarter teaspoon of the cayenne pepper with the juice with half a lemon and about 8 ounces of water. So it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Just shagged it down really quick and actually it feel kind of good in my tummy it almost makes me feel a little more full which is probably a good thing. So there’s that and I guess that’s it. I’ll let you know my progress soon and thanks for watching. Thanks for all the subscribers too. I’m glad to know I’m not talking to myself anymore. Okay. Bye.

Update:

If you are or have been overweight, you most likely at one point or another no longer enjoyed clothes shopping, and that is the point I had gotten to after my son’s birth.  So basically I no longer did it.  It was simply too depressing.  As I got to this point in my first round of HCG Injections I went clothes shopping and enjoyed myself for the first time in a long time.

In general, my own personal opinion now regarding the protocol of HCG is to stick fairly closely to the original.  I’ve tried a few different things while on the protocol while tracking my body fat percent at the same time, so I’ve learned what I can “get away with” if you will, without hurting my fat loss, as well what I can’t do (or what will hurt my fat loss/cause more muscle loss).

Had my first cali-kicker this day! (cayenne pepper + lemon juice + water combo)  The idea is to boost your metabolism a bit I guess- not sure if it worked, but sometimes while on the protocol it’s fun to try new things just to feel like you’re doing something to help the process along.

 

Boo on Diet Coke! Bodyshot Round 1 VLCD 16

March 9, 2011

Boo on Diet Coke folks!  I ended up having diet coke for most of this round BUT I have since eliminated it from my life completely and forever, and suggest you do the same!  It’s soooo bad for you (once again- I have no references to back up that statement- head to google y’all.)  Besides, I know you already know that it’s bad for you, and if you’re still drinking it anyway, well- I actually do understand.  Because i knew it was bad for me too but I still couldn’t stop drinking it.  It’s addictive.

Still- if you can find it within yourself- a point where you are mentally and emotionally ready to make a healthy change- during the next year perhaps- remove it and find a replacement.  Finding a replacement is key to success in this endeavor I think.  I found a black tea that I simply love called Chinese Breakfast Tea that I drink with half and half and Trader Joe’s organic stevia (get only the organic one folks- it tastes a lot different promise!)  I love this drink, and I drink between 1 and 2 cups of it a day- it’s the perfect amount of caffeine for me (the caffeine content in regular black tea is actually too much for me and makes me feel shaky and stressed), and it has that wonderful homey comforting feeling attached to it when I drink it (that, believe it or not, I used to feel when drinking Diet Coke).

So glad I did a bodyshot in this video!  Wish I’d done a “live” one like this at the beginning though.  Videos speak louder than photos, that’s what I’ve learned!  I was down 1.4 lbs this day to 158.8 lbs.  Started at 172 and at this point I’m already in the 150’s!  My current stats at this point were 13.2 lbs in 15 days.  Not too shabby!

 

HCG Feels Easy Right Now- Round 1 VLCD 17

March 10, 2011

The farther I get into the HCG diet this round, the easier it gets for me.  I don’t know why, but I think my body kind of had an adjustment period, and after that, it got into the groove of it.  To be sure, there are certainly still days that are harder to stick to the diet than others, but overall, at this point in the diet, it’s feeling pretty darn easy!  14 lbs in 16 days now.

The neat thing I noticed, now that I’m re-watching these old vlogs in order to put them on this website, is seeing myself change before my eyes- the nature of my vlogs from when I started to now gets more bubbly and happy, my makeup is more elaborate and fun, and I’m “doing myself up” with jewelry and what not.  It’s amazing what shedding excess poundage can do for how you feel about yourself.  Of course being overweight really has nothing to do with your value as a person- however, when you don’t feel like yourself and you can’t do the things you like to do, because of your weight and or health, it can be difficult to value yourself as much.  It’s such a good feeling to see part of that problem dissappear with HCG Injections!

 

Abnormal Fat Reflections – Round 1 VLCD 18

March 11, 2011

Hi HCG family! It’s HCGchica. Today is VLCD 18. And this morning I was down .4 so that’s a total loss of 14.4 pounds and I now am 157.6. My husband, the sucker, he’s down 2 pounds this morning. He’s now 186.6. His starting weight is 207, I think when we got married he was 185 so he’s basically a pound and a half away from that. Guys have it so easy. I am not a man hater. I love my husband but man they just have things so easy and it’s just not fair but that’s okay I’ve already talked about that before.

One thing I do wanna mention is just how amazing it is the way that HCG takes of the surplus fat. The thing is I’m 157.6 right now. Basically almost a whole year ago I was about a 153 – 155 pounds so I actually weighed a little less than I do now. There’s some photos of me from that time. Granted my son was only like 4 -5 months old. So I don’t know if that changes anything as far as you know it seems like women carries an extra fudge or whatever. But I was a weight a little less than I do right now. But in the photos my face is so much puffier and just everywhere it look fatter than I do now. I just think that’s a testament to how amazing how the HCG really does seem to get rid of abnormal fat so that you end up looking better way sooner than you went on any other diet. You can weigh more and look better than at a lower weight on another diet. When at that time I wasn’t on a diet or anything but I was hiking and just losing weight because I had finally started taking thyroid medicines so a little bit was just kind of dropping naturally. I just wanted to share that because my face looks so much thinner than its looks in quite a while. And it’s taken only 2 and a half weeks to get to this point so I just think it’s so exciting.

My mom I think she stayed about the same today. Not much change for her but she still had a huge loss overall. Things are going well and lately we had scallops last night and probably lately I’ve been having mostly strawberries and apples for my fruit. I know I should throw some of the great fruit back in there. I do like the grapefruit. I don’t know why I haven’t been eating as much lately. I think it’s just a kind of pain to eat I guess with the spoon. That’s so lazy isn’t it? I just love popping those strawberries in my mouth but I know it’s good to keep things varied. I am doing the California Kicker still morning and night, up to half a teaspoon cayenne pepper per shot. I guess you could call it. Hoping to have a 1 pound plus loss soon.  That would be exciting. Either way I’m definitely shrinking. My arms, my arms look a lot better they were really starting to look not good. Their already slimmed down quite a bit so I definitely not feel as self-conscious in my short sleeves. That’s it. I will talk to you guys soon.

Update:

My face looks significantly leaner than it did at a lower weight a year previously at this point.  How is that??  I have found it to be very true that HCG does indeed take off true abnormal fat.  Now, as of April 2012 I’m 124 pounds, about 22-23% body fat, and for the first time in many years, I like my legs!!! I’ve always had bigger legs, and I always seemed to have this pad of fat on the inside of my knees, no matter how much weight I lost in years previous, that made my legs seem “fat” to me.  This last round of HCG Injections (4th round), I found that my leg shape totally changed!  I’ve never seen these legs on this (my) body before!

I have seen it over and over- the wonderful shape that the protocol gives to women’s bodies.  It’s just simply “weight loss” or even “fat loss”.  Losing fat specifically on human chorionic gonadotropin really seems to create a lovely, womanly shape, within the bounds of each person’s body type.  I can’t explain it properly, but if you watch enough before and after HCG vlogs, you’ll get where I’m coming from.

 

Round 1 VLCD 19

March 12, 2011

Hi guys! It’s HCGchica. Today is VLCD— I think it’s 19, I’m actually not sure I don’t have my paper in front of me. This is just a quick update. This morning I was down 1 pound so now it’s a total of 15.4 pounds in 18 days which is wonderful. My husband stayed the same today and my mom on the last couple days she’s fluctuated a little. She had a small gain I think of .2 two days ago or yesterday and then today she was down I think 1.2, something like that. We’re all doing well. I did choose to try doing an all protein day today I just finished that. At lunch time I had grilled chicken one serving size and then a little later maybe around 3 o’clock I had lean grass-fed hamburger and then for dinner I had scallops. We’ll see if that does anything. I’m also planning on taking a detox bath tonight too. Because I have a big thing to go to, an all-day thing tomorrow, where I wanna look good. I’ll let you know the results of that tomorrow most likely. That’s about all I really have to say. I’m definitely feeling good I used to like to wear overalls a lot. But I couldn’t fit in them anymore. Even if I did find a pair that kind of fit I just didn’t look good in them anymore but this pair is like really loose again so I’m so excited. Alright I will check in with you guys again. So I hope you’re all doing well. If you have any questions just let me know. Probably the one thing I’m best out on this diet is having variety and trying to make use of a lot of the different vegetables and meats and stuff. If you want any tips on preparing different meats or different vegetables just give me a holler. Alright.

15.4 lbs in 18 days now!

 

Stress and Miracle Noodles – HCG Diet Round 1 VLCD 20

March 13, 2011

Hi guys! It’s HCGchica. Today is VLCD 20. This morning when I woke up I weighed the same as I did yesterday so no loss and no gain. That’s fine this whole process there’s always ups and downs different days as far as weight loss goes. There were a few things that were different about yesterday that could have contributed to today’s none loss. One is I didn’t get to drink as much water that I usually do yesterday. Also I had a really, really, just busy hectic day yesterday. I had so much to accomplish and I was running every second to try to get it all done. So it was stressful and I totally wore myself out. I just felt so exhausted by the end of the night and I didn’t get to sleep until 12 which is pretty late for me. I think both going to bed late and the whole stress of the whole day could also have added to that. Also I did my all protein day yesterday. That could have contributed and maybe wasn’t too helpful after all. I don’t know, I’m kind of doubtful of that but it’s possible, it’s definitely not on protocol and I guess those were the main things that were different about yesterday. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. I did have a long event to attend today, it was an all-day kind of seminar type thing and again I’m really exhausted.

I did eat on protocol today all the way up until just now. It’s funny the only times that I feel like I really need  to eat more or something that taste good is on the days that I just get really exhausted. Usually if I can keep my life really low key with my Hashimoto’s then doing the diet is not difficult. But of course it’s impossible to live that way all the time. I’m probably fortunate enough that I get to live that way more often than not. Because I have this thing that I have to manage. This evening I felt like I needed to eat something so I pulled out some miracle noodles, this is my 1^st time trying it in this protocol. I had miracle noodles with just a tablespoon of tomato paste. Hopefully the tomato paste is okay. The ingredients looked alright but I don’t know if there could be any possible hidden sugars or anything. It seem like it was pretty much just tomato paste but we’ll see. It was only 15 calories worth in the one tablespoon and then of course the miracle noodles had 0 calories cause it all soluble fiber. I’ll let you know how that goes. I think with the soluble fiber when you drink water since it’s fiber it’s gonna pull in the water. And I think probably until you go to the bathroom and get rid of it you might even seem like your weighing a little more for a day or 2. I’m not gonna kind of worry too much about whatever happens tomorrow.   But I just wanted you know that was the thing I’m trying and actually it was very tasty. The miracle noodles with the tomato paste that’s all it was and maybe a dash of salt it was delicious. It did really hit the spot and I kinda needed something like that.

I still haven’t given the chocolate delight stuff a try so I have to do that one of these days. I guess that’s about all. My husband was down .4 this morning and I haven’t heard from my mom so I’m not sure about her. Overall it’s definitely good. Definitely it’s harder to go out on about and be around on people socializing when you’re on this protocol. It is definitely something you kind of wanna do and just keep things really low key and then when you’re done with it kind of gets back into civilization. But of course it’s not always possible. But anyway I am doing good overall still I’ve lost 15.4 pounds, I think, today in 19 days. Alright I will check in with you guys soon.

Update:

One thing I have definitely found to be true is that stress definitely causes slower or no loss, even on HCG Injections.  I’ve experience it over and over again.  Anytime I have an all day function to attend, I never lose on the protocol those days.  Also I find when I have stressful days, the diet feels much harder and my cravings to eat are much stronger.  That’s why, even though you may not always have control over the events in your life, it’s good to keep life as simple and low key as possible while on the protocol- there will be time to party in a few weeks when you’re done!

I have Miracle Noodles for the first time this evening- and miracle noodles (or Shirataki noodles) have become a mainstay in my personal weight loss protocol- I have seen that it does not impede my fat loss (they are made purely of soluble fiber and nothing else) and it’s very filling and satisfying- usually I eat them in soups.

 

Weekly Weight Loss Breakdown and Inch Loss So Far- Round 1 VLCD 22

March 15, 2011

Re myself: 16.6 lbs in 21 vlcd days on HCG so far.  Here’s the weekly breakdown:

6.6 lbs lost in week one

5.4 lbs lost in week two

4.6 lbs lost in week three

For the guys/men doing or thinking of doing this protocol out there, here’s my hubby’s weekly weight loss breakdown for his short round of 21 vlcd’s.  His total is 22.6 pounds lost in 21 days of taking the HCG Injections.  He went from 207 lbs to 184.4.  He’s 5’11” so that puts him at a great weight for his height.

9.2 lbs week one

7.6 lbs week two

5.8 lbs week three

Lastly, my mom was also doing this protocol, so I’ve put her current stats here too!  21.7 lbs total net loss in the three weeks so far.  And that’s despite a couple of accidental “cheats” (ie. Lambchops aren’t on protocol mom….)

8.7 lbs week one

7.0 lbs week two

6.0 lbs week three

INCH LOSS

17.5 inches lost so far!  Most significant inch loss spots so far are:

Biceps- 1″ lost on each side- in 21 days!

Bust- 3″ smaller

Waist- 2.75″ smaller

Belly- 2.5″ loss

Hips- 1.5″

Upper thighs- 2.0″ each side!! (that’s 4 inches total folks in case you can’t add)

 

Round 1 VLCD 23

March 16, 2011

Just mentioned that some people seem to have large loss days and then zero or gain days throughout their HCG Injections rounds, while others seem to have smaller but more continual losses.  Either way, we’re all getting to the same place!

 

Regarding Apple Days- Round 1 VLCD 24

March 17, 2011

Quoted from my info section of this vlog:  “Down .8 today. Total 17.6 lbs. Current weight 154.4.
Doing Random Apple day, even though I haven’t stalled or gained- we’ll see how it turns out!”

As of April 2012:  Note regarding Apple Days on the HCG diet – I really don’t recommend doing an apple day unless it’s in the way that Dr. Simeons originally meant to be used, as he outlined in his book “Pounds and Inches.”  It’s really meant to get rid of any excess water retention- not really a means to lose more weight as in fat, which is really the main point of our being on this protocol.  The idea is to only use an Apple Day if your weight hasn’t moved in a few days and you are personally getting too antsy and need to feel like you’re “doing something” to help the process along.  So he really meant it more as a way to soothe the stressed out soul, not really to lose more fat.  Since an Apple Day means that you eat no protein all day, that is why I think in general it should be avoided unless you really need it, since the amount of protein that is prescribed by Dr. Simeons on the Diet is as he had stated, just enough as to prevent protein deficiency.  I am a person who is very concerned with maintaining as much lean muscle as possible since losing it doesn’t accomplish any good and I feel that unnecessary Apple Days on HCG Injections could cause unnecessary muscle loss.  Again, this is just my opinion, I could be totally wrong.  Just throwin’ in my two cents since….it’s my blog!  Haha!  :)-

 

Eating Balanced for Life, Apple Day Results- Round 1 VLCD 25

March 18, 2011

This vlog is kind of reflective, discussing my own feelings on overeating and getting out of that cycle.  I am a very all or nothing person that tends to go to extremes.  As a teen I became super strict with myself never allowing myself any indulgence when it came to food.  It allowed me to become slim and strong, but it also required that I use a lot of mental energy to focus on myself.  Once you’re an adult with a family and other responsibilities, it becomes very difficult to do this, because so much of your time, mental energy, and emotional energy even are required to be focused outside of yourself.  Hoping to find balance instead of requiring such a strictness with myself this time.  This is because the downside to being so strict is that once you “fall of the wagon,” a person like me tends to throw in the towel all together and go to the other extreme, instead of just making allowances for a little fudge room occasionally.

The HCG diet itself is super strict to be sure- and there is no room for fudge- literally and not-so-literally!  But it is a time to re-train your brain regarding food and why you eat it, to detox from sugar addictions and the like, and wrap your mind around a new and healthier way of eating going forward, that you are already learning while on the weight loss protocol itself.  If you think about it, the protein, veggies and fruit that you eat, plus the small amount of starch and dairy while on the protocol are such a simple, balanced way to take food in.  Many who have never spent much time cooking pre- HCG Injections, find themselves learning to cook in order to do the weight loss protocol properly- they are learning life skills that they have then been able to put to use in P3 and P4 which enables them to successfully maintain their weight and fat loss.  The diet plan doesn’t come with pre-prepared meals or meals you call pull out of the freezer section at the grocery store- you have to cook it yourself- it’s you steaming that Tilapia and chopping that cucumber into bite sized cubes; it’s you simmering that celery in chicken broth and adding some chopped chicken and spices at the end.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t lose an ounce after my Apple Day- why is this?  Um….because I didn’t do the Apple Day at the appropriate time.  I had losses the previous three days in a row, so I obviously wasn’t retaining water and the Apple Day is really only meant to used when you have several consecutive days of no losses on the scale to eliminate any water retention.  Oh yeah, and two, TOM came.

 

Round 1 VLCD 28

March 20, 2011

Hi it’s HCGchica. Today is VLCD 28 I think. This is just a quick update, I’m sorry I haven’t been here for the last couple of days I’ve just been busy. Yesterday I had a great loss I was down 1.4. I was really surprised because like I said TOM started a couple of days ago. I was down 1.4 and then this morning down .2. So now I am 153.8 and that means I’ve lost a total of 19.2 pounds. I’m very excited about that. I don’t really have much to say except that the day before I loss 1.4. I had 2 pieces of chocolate delight. I didn’t have my vegetables. I don’t know how smart that is to be replacing vegetables with chocolate. I was trying to make sure I kept my calories within the right range. It was good and I definitely didn’t seem to hurt anything. We’ll see how tomorrow goes. I had kind of a busy day and didn’t get to drink as much water today and I was kinda walking around a lot. We took my son to the San Francisco Aquarium. It was a fun day but when you’re driving to San Francisco and around the museum you just don’t wanna have to pee every 30 seconds. I have to kind of wait till later to drink a bunch of water. Anyway husband’s p3 is going good. He’s been eating the Chile Verde I made him a special recipe from my grandparents. It’s a marinade for lamb and so I made him that with a vegetable kebab on the barbeque which he liked. So that was for this week and next week I’m gonna be making him broccoli beef it’s a Chinese recipe. Broccoli beef and tandoori chicken. So those are both definitely p3 friendly. The tandoori chicken is really good.  It has yogurt in it, just plain yogurt, and then a bunch of spices like paprika and coriander and cumin and stuff like that. So that’s my plan for next week for him. Nothing really exciting I wish I have more interesting stuff to share but I don’t so anyway that’s just my little update and I’ll be checking out the rest of you guys this evening and tomorrow.

I talked about eating Chocolate Delight and skipping my veggies in this vlog, and it’s really not something I recommend, and it’s no longer something I do.  I always eat my veggies on my HCG Injections rounds now, and I don’t eat Chocolate Delight.  The Chocolate Delight is a personal decision (a “dessert” if you will made of Coconut Oil, Cocoa powder, and some type of sweetener like stevia, truvia or splenda).  I lean more towards trusting what Dr. Simeons said regarding keeping all fats out of the diet these days as I have noticed fats to interfere with my body losing fat and possibly causing excess muscle loss.  I can’t be sure 100% sure of this- it’s just my observation based on tracking my body fat with my handheld Omron Body Fat Monitor- days when I’ve done things off protocol, like eating chocolate delight or having an “egg day” etc., I always lost weight on the scale the following day, but my body fat percent would often stay the same or go up indicating lean muscle loss.  So in general I don’t go there anymore unless the diet “tweak” I make is something I’ve confirmed for myself not to hinder fat loss (ie. I replace my fruits sometimes with 0% Fage Greek Yogurt without incident while on P2 of the protocol.)

153.8 this day.  19.2 pounds in 27 vlcd days of weight loss protocol.

 

Sesame Almond Flour Crackers – P3 Recipe – Round 1 VLCD 29

March 22, 2011

Hi guys! I t’s HCGchica. Today is VLCD day 29. I just want to check in and share couple things. I want to share my progress and also a couple of p3 ideas now that my husband’s in that. Today, yesterday and the day before I was down .2 pounds each day. Now I’m 152.4. I started at 172 so that means I’ve released 19.6 pounds. Week 4 I lost 3 pounds. In the previous vlog I mentioned what I lost the first 3 weeks. Week 1 was 6.6, week 2 5.4, week 3 4.6, and week 4 3 pounds. A little bit less each week. Still what other diet you’re gonna lose 3 pounds in a week when you’re on the 4^th week. None, no other diet.

I have been doing some cooking today for my husband cause he’s on p3 and I know everyone has been mentioning the flax seed crackers. I wanna share that in a minute but I found another recipe it might be on YouTube somewhere too, but I found this on a food blog. It was for sesame crackers made with almond flour and according to my husband they were delicious, I don’t know because I didn’t get to taste them. But I just wanna show you one. So this is it and I’m going to post the link to the recipe below but it’s on elenaspantry.com it’s a food blog and the ingredients are 3 cups almond flour, 1 and a half teaspoon sea salt, 1 cup sesame seeds, 2 eggs whisked until frothy. And two tablespoons, grape seed oil, I used sesame oil because that’s what I had on hand. It was very easy and it’s filling because it’s made with the almond flour and definitely p3 friendly. So might be something you wanna try. The other thing is I made the flax seed chips or crackers whatever you wanna call them. These were not bad. The recipe I found was a little different. It had flax seed meal and grated Parmesan. My husband said those were pretty good to. Maybe not quite as good as the sesame crackers but he said probably if it had a little more salt it would be good. So this recipe was one cup of cold flax seed meal, 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese and I would do at least 3 quarters or a teaspoon of salt and then half a cup of water was the recipe. I actually ended up doubling that recipe so that it was spread out to fill my whole baking sheet. That’s what I would suggest. I’ll try to post that below as well. Another idea I was making my husband some salads today and I’m just trying you know think of different things to make them a little different and create some texture. I ended-up roasting some pepitas. Actually to be honest I’m not sure what kind of seeds they’re from. I kind of wanna say pumpkin seeds but I don’t think that’s actually right. They’re called pepitas and I roasted them probably with a little salt that would be tasty but anyway I put that with some slivered almonds in a salad with sprouts and artichoke hearts and cucumber. I also made a dressing that’s called French vinaigrette and that was a really good recipe too. Maybe I’ll try to post the links to some of these recipes I found cause my husband said their very tasty. Anyway those were just a few ideas.

I made call carne asada for my husband tonight. I’m not gonna recommend it as a p3 food necessarily because it has soy sauce and it has a little teeny bit of sugar in the recipe. But other than that its fine. My husband like I said he has a very active job so he really hasn’t had trouble maintaining. So for him having a little bit of that isn’t gonna be a problem for him, but you know, take that and use that info with caution for yourself, but anyway it’s a very, very good recipe. Obviously without the taco, without the corn tortillas or flour tortillas so it’s just the meat and then I just made a simple onion, lime, and cilantro. Little salsa, I guess you can call it, to go with it. Anyway I just- those were a couple of ideas I’ve just kind of been really trying to prepare myself for p3 and get more ideas. I’m gonna start a kind of a list of snack ideas. The baby pickles. I really enjoy baby dill pickles. I’ve been eating few of them on p2 you could continue to eat those on p3, fruit, hard boiled eggs, avocado. My husband actually mixed up some coconut milk and a banana the other night in the blender. And I think with a little stevia that would be pretty good and I think I’m kinda thinking of freezing in ice cubes like coconut milk and almond milk into ice cubes and that way when you blender things up you’ll be able to get it nice, cold and smoothie-like without having to water it down too much. Those were just a couple of my ideas so far I’m gonna be happy to share a few more. He’s been maintaining fine and I guess that’s all I wanted to share so I’ll check in again soon.

Below is the link to a fabulous P3 cracker recipe that has no sugar and no starch or flour.  The base is the almond flour and sesame seeds.

http://www.elanaspantry.com/sesame-crackers/

3 pounds weight loss for my 4th week of HCG of my first round.

 

Goal Jeans Almost Fit! Round 1 VLCD 31

March 24, 2011

Hi guys! It’s HCGchica. This is just a quick check in. Today is VLCD day 31. I had a good day today and yesterday as far as releases go. Yesterday I had a release of 1.4 and this morning .8. Now I’m down to 150.2. I’m so excited basically by tomorrow or the next day I’m gonna be out of the 150s so I’m so excited about that. So that means I’ve loss a total of 21.8 pounds. I just feel like it’s getting really substantial now so it’s really exciting.

The other cool thing is I haven’t been able to take my wedding ring off for quite some time and last night I was able to slide it off pretty easily. I’m really excited about that. That’s kind of a neat change. Not that I wanna take it off it’s just nice to see those small changes. Other thing is my special goal jeans that I bought at the thrift store almost fit. It’s so close guys probably in another 3 to 5 pounds. Another week or 2 and they will fit. When I first bought them I couldn’t even pull them up over my thighs at all. Now I can pull them all the way up over everything and I just need like another inch or 2 and I’ll be able to zip and button them. I’m so excited those are a size 11 so I’m getting close to that.

When I first started the protocol I had basically busted out of all my size 16 stuff and I needed to be getting size 18 but that’s when I decided I needed to figure something out cause I didn’t wanna buy more clothes. Anyway I was basically an 18 and I’ve pass up the 16 and I guess right now I’m probably a 14 and getting down to an 11/12 soon. So that’s great too. A little update on my mom, she had a couple of cheat days a couple days ago. I guess she ate some of my dad’s left over sweet and sour chicken and rice or something. It get fried from a Chinese restaurant. The next day on her skip day she had a bunch of popcorn with butter. I know many of you know what it’s like to have a cheat day. Sometimes it just happens. The day after her butter thing she dropped a pound but then this morning she said was up 2 pounds. It did come back to bite her but that’s okay she’s still done really well over all and and it happens to most of us. I’ve definitely considered cheating on a number of occasions so I understand the feeling. Anyway she’s still doing pretty good. I think she’s lost about 23 pounds net now so that’s great and she’s still ahead of me. My husband’s maintaining well I think he was 1 pound above his LDW yesterday morning. Yesterday he just tried to be a little more careful that he just ate when he was hungry. He said he was kinda just eating a lot because he could and when he was bored. It’s so easy to get back into that pattern so he decided to try to just eat when he was hungry and he was gonna see how things turned out. I didn’t get to talk to him about that yet. So there’s that. I guess that’s about it. That’s all I really have to say today so I will check in again soon. I’m trying to been catching up on your guy’s vlogs as well and so I’ll talk with everyone soon.

21.8 lbs in 31 days.  150.2 this day.

 

P3 Ideas- HCG Round 1 VLCD 32

March 25, 2011

For anyone not aware of it, www.Foodblogsearch.com is a fabulous google powered search engine.  I basically search for recipes mostly on this site- it searches all the top, high quality food blogs.  It’s a great place to find any manner of recipe for p3 or p4 and I have found it to be a great resource for “alternative” recipes- recipes that don’t have wheat, or gluten, or eggs, or dairy, or whatever it is you’re allergic to (as it happens, between myself, my husband and I, we are allergic to just about everything- we really should be living on water).

My other little P3 discovery so far is plain yogurt with stevia.  I never eat regular yogurts with fruits or flavorings already in them anymore- they all have a TON of of sugar.  I’m absolutely in love with plain yogurt and stevia now.  You can either add enough stevia to make your yogurt sweet, OR I have found that adding just a little stevia cuts the sour taste of the yogurt and reduces it to that simple “creamy” taste that I like.

Another 1 week on HCG Injections yielded the following inch losses:

Bust: 2 inches down

Waist: 1.5 inches

Belly: 1.25 inches

Hips: .5 inches

Each Thigh: .5 inches

20 pounds lost now in 31 vlcd days of the protocol folks!  At this point I’m fitting into size 12 pants and jeans, where I started out at a size 18.  It’s amazing how just 20 lbs lost on HCG  lead to dropping 3 dress sizes already!

Video Transcript:

Hi guys! It’s HCGchica. Today is VLCD day 32 and this morning I was down .2 so now I’m 150 even which means I lost 22.2 pounds. I wanted to share a couple of things, again p3 ideas. There’s a resource I use online all the time but I’m not sure how many people are actually aware of it. It’s called foodblogsearch.com and it’s actually a Google powered search engine, but it’s a search engine that specializes it only searches all the top food blogs. I’m not sure how many of you have frequented food blogs but I like to cook to we like to make things like really gourmet and authentic. I use that all the time and people come with the neatest recipes on a different food blogs so you can type any type of meal that you wanna make like a specific meal and it will bring up all the recipes only from a selected list of food blogs. I’ll put it in that thing below but it’ foodblogsearch.com. It’s a really great resource because it has these really high quality recipes that are really outstanding so that’s pretty much the only place I actually look for recipes this days.

The other thing was plain yogurt I think you can have that on p3 and everyone likes the Greek yogurt, I do. The FAGE brand is really good but of course you can’t have any sugar. A while back I had been having plain yogurt with stevia and it’s really good. Someone was talking about how plain yogurt is really sour and that they don’t like that taste and some people do like it and that’s fine it does have its uses but sometimes if you just wanna eat it for a snack it’s a little sour. I noticed when a put stevia in my Greek yogurt it completely cut the sour taste. You can put enough to make it sweet or just putting enough that it cuts the sour. It ends up being just kinda creamy tasting. For some reason I don’t know what it is with the stevia but it completely neutralizes the sour taste. I have noticed myself that stevia is really good in some things and then in other it just doesn’t taste good to me. For instance I like tea and I have a lot of different teas, I don’t know if I’m repeating myself  maybe I already talk about this before if I did I’m sorry I have a bad memory but anyway I have rooibos tea and just teas that have a more basey flavor those seem to pair really well with stevia and then teas like lemon or lemon grass or rose tea or anything with a higher taste and a palette I don’t know if that makes sense but those teas just never taste good to me with stevia so it’s kinda nice when you find what works well and the yogurt was actually kind of surprising to me but it taste really good with it. Those were really the main things I want to talk about. The other thing was, my husband tried today, I know probably a lot of you on p3 don’t eat bananas because I know they are really sweet. But you could try this with something else too. At the Asian market where we are and I’m thinking a lot of the other ones may have it too. In the frozen section they have this frozen coconut milk and its pretty high in fat you don’t have to use a ton of it but it’s really, really good. It’s a lot thicker you know then coconut milk in the can I think and anyway it doesn’t have and of the weird like sodium benzoate or anything like that, that’s in a lot of canned coconut milks. It’s really good it’s in like a square package like this big and it’s flat like that and it’s frozen. He used that and some banana and a little stevia and blender it up and he says it was delicious it’s like super good. Like I said if you didn’t wanna have a sweet banana you could try with some berries or Ms. HCGgirls blueberry protein smoothie. I can’t wait to try that that just sounds so good I think that would be a cool thing to try with. Anyway that was my tips for that.

The other thing I wanted to share was I did take my measurements again. On the 22nd, yeah so couple of days ago. These measurements are after my 1st measurements a week ago. Did I make sense? So on the 14th I took my measurements and I put that  in one of my past blogs and then a week later which was the 22nd I retook my measurements and I had loss an additional 6.5 inches. Just to break it down my bust I lost 2 inches which definitely coming of the back, my waist went down another 1.5 inches, my belly area 1.25 inches, my hips .5 inches and each of my thighs went down another half inch. I think it was pretty amazing in just one more week to lose that many more inches especially on the whole midsection area. Because that’s really what really what needs work, so it’s exciting.

The other thing is I think I’m a size 12 now. I haven’t- all my clothes are- I don’t really have pants that are certain size anymore because I just wear black stretch pants because you know when you get larger jeans their just not comfortable anymore and they like cut into your fat in your middle and stuff. So Brazilian girl was saying how it didn’t seem like I could be a size 14 because I look a little which is really sweet to say. I do have a pair of size 14 jeans and they fit but they are a little loose now. I did go shopping today again at the thrift store, that’s my thing. And I got some clothes for myself. I know I’m not done losing weight and it probably would make more sense to wait until I’m done but I think these clothes will fit for a while because they were on the snugger side and I was just so excited it was so fun to go shopping for myself, by myself without having any complaining kids and to have a shape again and to have a waist again it was just so enjoyable. So anyway I did fit the size 12 pants so I think that’s my current size and I did try some 10s and they do not fit yet. Soon enough though I ended up buying a more goal pants for after my goal jeans this ones were even a little smaller. I may not fit them but at the end of this round but I really like the pants and they were only 2 dollars and I know I’m ready to go all the way with this thing. I’m excited to start the next round in six weeks after the end of this one and I’m ready to go all the way. I had about given up I just really didn’t think I’d ever be able to lose weight and just feel normal again. Now I’ve seen how possible it is I wanna just go all the way and lose all the excess fat, all the excess abnormal fat. I did find a size 8 skirt but I kinda squeezed into. It’s like really high up on my waist though where it’s smaller so I definitely lose a little more around my middle before it fits properly. It was so fun to buy a few things that even though they don’t really fit yet I know they’re going to and it’s exciting to think about that in the future. Only on this protocol would you be able to do that. If I did it without this protocol I would just be depress that I didn’t fit in to them. That’s about it. Oh this video got long. Well I’ll talk to you guys soon.

 

P2 Tips and Bodyshot – Round 1 VLCD 33

March 26, 2011

Hello everyone! HCGchica here. Today is VLCD 33 and I had another good release this morning, 1.2 pounds come on. On day 33? That’s so awesome honestly I can’t believe how well I’m still doing on this. I keep expecting it to slow down. But it’s kind of been varying up and down the whole time so it’s awesome. Now I’m 148.8 so I’ve loss a total of 23.2 pounds and I’m out of the 150s. Anyway that’s so exciting I just can’t believe it. Those are my stats for today I think I’m gonna do a little body shot today too and I wanna share a couple things- P2 related.

One. I know different things work for different people. Sometimes it’s hard to know if what you’re doing is actually contributing to your weight loss or if you would be losing the same amount anyway so I wanna come to pro-posit by saying that. Some of the things that I think are helping me, I’m going to share. One getting enough sleep, I think I mentioned that before I think that’s so important whether you go to bed early or sleeping. And the other thing is lately like the last week I’ve been varying my calories a little bit. That’s because I’m just really not hungry. I’m getting used into eating so little sometimes I almost feel like I could go without eating entirely. Although that’s not true I do get hungry for small meal at meal time. What I mean to say is, what I’ve been doing for couple of days I’ll have my 2 proteins, my 2 fruits and I’ll have 2 pieces of chocolate delight and I don’t have any veggies. Like I said before I have to still keep it to the 500 so something’s gotta go. I do that and I’ll have good releases and then I’ll kind of [peter?] down. I have read in Dr. Simeons’ protocol again recently that you can I have some cottage cheese in replace of the protein if you get sick of meat. So I don’t know I just thought that sounds kinda good to have something different. I had some cottage cheese I and had kind of a lighter day where I didn’t have my vegetables and I had my fruit and I had the cottage cheese so I was definitely under 500 calories that day, maybe more like 400 or something. Anyway I had a really good release after that. I think that might have been my 1.4 day or something. So I did that.

I’ve kind of been doing that where I vacillate back and forth between having chocolate delight and my full 500 calories for a couple days and then taking a day where I have a little less and I don’t have any chocolate delight. I think that’s working for me and helping me to lose pretty good. I have a loss every single day for the last 8 days 3 of which were over a pound and then I had one zero before that on the 9^th day previous. I’ve been having really good losses late in the game. I’ve heard a few people say that, oh you know, you need to make sure you eat the full 500 calories or you won’t lose as well. But I’ve been reading Dr. Simeons’ book again and in there he specifically states after giving you all the different foods you can eat in the portion sizes, after all of that he says, if you wanna eliminate any of them any of the items you feel like you don’t need them that it’s okay to do that. To me what he’s saying is if you eliminate a portion of something you’re gonna be eating less calories than 500. To me what I read was that he was saying that that was okay. You might wanna look at it again yourself to be sure that you get the same understanding but that’s what I understood. That makes me feel more comfortable as well with eating less on certain days. I just do that on the days where I feel like it’s not gonna bother me, like some days I just like, “I could not eat that right now” and just you know have a little bit of smaller meal. I think that’s kind of done good for me. The other thing is I’ve been getting pretty tired lately. I have been tired on this whole protocol in general, I know I seem all excited on here and I do that for you guys, I do have days of energy but in general with my thyroid disease. I’ve been more tired on this protocol than when I’m not on it. Which is fine, it’s totally worth the results and I can still manage I’m still cooking for my family I’m still cleaning I’m still organizing. I just felt motivated to, like my hobby is quilting. Probably seems weird but I’m kind of young but I love to quilt. I’m also usually a very active person I love to go hiking which I know obviously I can’t do on this protocol right now because I haven’t been too active before I started. I just haven’t really wanted to do those things because I just feel too tired like I used too much energy and too much effort so that’s a little different. What I want to say was I was extra tired the last few days and yesterday especially I started to feel like really cranky and just irritable and exhausted. I was kinda thinking probably getting a little bit of a nutrient deficiency. Since I’m not even eating my vegetables lately, a little bit. We’re eating so little and back in Dr. Simeons’ time I think people had better nutrients. The food they had had more nutrients in it there wasn’t as many processed foods so the fat that they had, the excess fat that they had was hopefully built up with more nutrient dense stuff in their fat. It just seems like now we’re so unhealthy and what we eaten that got to this weight is fat that doesn’t have nutrients in it. That’s just kinda my own little personal theory.

I took some vitamin B yesterday. Vitamin B is a water soluble vitamin which means if you’re not taking it in your body doesn’t store it in your fat. So you pee it out every day. So you need to take vitamin B in continually its kinda thing that I’m probably not getting in here. Basically within like 20 minutes or half an hour I’m taking a good size dose of vitamin B which make sure you check the label because some of them may have starch or sugar in it. Mine didn’t. I felt a 100% better I felt a lot better. I also took some vitamin C I just kinda look through my whole thing of vitamins and herbs that I usually take off protocol and I took whatever I was able to. So that made a big difference. If you are really feeling really tired I would suggest trying that out because I think the longer you’re on this you might start getting some deficiencies. I kinda hadn’t meant to be taking it all along but sometimes just to be safe we choose not to do certain things. That’s my two cents there.

The other thing is, my husband, I keep forgetting to mention this earlier he has a very active job he does a lot of manual labor and actually one of you other HCGer’s violytrula she had mentioned that she had started feeling sick on the protocol and she was kinda thinking it was because she had a very active job or something. I want to talk about that a little because my husband he does manual labor for work, he works super hard I mean he must burn, I don’t know, I mean he burns high 5 or 6 or 7 thousand calories every day. He mows like 20 – 25 front and back lawns every day and he uses his heavy like machines that he has to hold his arms out like constantly to trim stuff, he’s up on ladders, so he’s really active. First he felt fine on the diet and then like a 4 – 5 days into it he started feeling really fatigue. But he was again for himself thinking like he needed more nutrients so he has this green drink. There are different brands out there that have it. It’s a green drink made up from things like kelp and different stuff like that has a really nutrient dense stuff it taste nasty, just warning you. It’s something you chug down with water and then drink something else real quick after. But anyway the brand he uses, I think it’s from daystarbotanicals.com you could check it out. I put it in the little comments below. The green drink when he took that it was 60 calories so he uses that in place of some vegetables. And he said he got rid 90% of his fatigue. He didn’t have it every day. He just had it maybe once or twice a week. And that just seem to make him feel almost completely better so he was able to do his job and do the round successfully and not feel terrible. I want to mention that too, to any of you who are feeling tired or who maybe have an active job that really worked for him. This video is already pretty long so I’m gonna make another one doing something else on the second but I just want to give you that update and a quick body shot for anybody who’s still watching.

Here is me now, this is like significantly different as you can see. I don’t know if I wanna show you my real fat, maybe I’ll show a little bit. I have like this bit but a lot smaller than it was. Anyway that’s it, thanks for watching guys. I found some new subscribers today I mean I found some people to subscribe to today and I’m gonna make another vlog in a second mentioning a new few people who are starting that you might wanna check out. OK thanks.

MY P2 TIPS SO FAR:

Get enough sleep.  It’s so important!

I find that varying my calories and foods seem to keep my losses going.  Remember, as long as you don’t actually feel hungry, Dr. Simeon’s book specifically states that you can eliminate any foods but the proteins on any given day, meaning you won’t always feel the need to eat the full 500 calories.  This first round, I definitely felt like there were many days when I truly didn’t need to eat hardly anything.

Down 1.2! Total 23.2 pounds in 32 days. New weight 148.8.

 

Round 1- Capella Drops and Shout Outs

March 26, 2011

Hey it’s me again same day, just a few minutes later. One thing I want to share I forgot is that my Capella drops came today see? I have like 8 of them. This is ginger bread, vanilla custard, cola I’m hoping to make my own healthy diet coke version with stevia and that we’ll see. I’m kinda doing a, I don’t know if you wanna call it a pole but can you guys please anybody who has used the Capella drops who likes them or I guess even if you don’t like them maybe tell me why you don’t like them but please tell me what you do with your Capella drops. Simple recipes for either p2 or p3 I guess mostly p3 is probably where you’re gonna be using it the most. Anyway let me know what you do on p3 with Capella drops because I wanna get some ideas. I have a concern about them because they came and even inside the bottle they smell like strongly of sweetness that kinda made me a little concern because the whole goal here is to eat healthy right? To occasionally indulge but to not be reliant on a sweet taste all day every day. I kinda was a little concerned about getting dependent on this taste drops that taste like cinnamon coffee cake. Do any of you have any opinions on that? Has that affected you at all or has that not been your problem? Because I definitely like the idea but I don’t want it to become like a crutch where instead of eating healthy food I’m having other things that are sweetened with sweet tasting stuff. I don’t know if that makes sense. If anyone has input on that please share and please share recipes.

Now time for my shout outs. I haven’t really done any of those too much so I’m sorry I hope I didn’t seem like all self-absorbed. I’ve already have so much to share about the actual journey it just seems like there’s never a time. I found a few new people today. hcglight92, she’s just starting her journey I think her second loading day is like today or yesterday. You might wanna check her out she looks like she’s ready to go and It’s funny we actually have the same starting stats pretty much we’re both 5’1 and our weight was about the same, so that’s pretty cool. MissAprilSkye, she’s part way through her p2 journey already but she’s new to blogging she just put up a second video. You are kinda running into some struggles MissAprilSkye. Basically it seems like you’re having a lot of hungry issues? And because of that it’s causing you to cheat a lot and that making you feel not successful or discouraged on the diet. I kinda wanna tell you I don’t know exactly what form and amount of HCG you’re using and that would definitely help us help you figure out that problem. But I really think it’s a dosage issue or your HCG is not good because you should not feel hungry on this protocol specially 16 days into it. If you could figure out your dosage problem we could help you with that if you gave us some more info. You won’t feel hungry anymore and then you’ll be able to stick to it. Being hungry is torturous and yeah you’re gonna fall of the wagon so don’t feel bad but let’s try to get that worked out so you don’t feel like it’s something that you just can’t do. I did feel like the diet was hard like the first week or so but now it’s been like a month my cravings are gone. This is so easy for me now. And I think in general that can happen as long as your dose is right and you get passed the, what I like to call withdrawal symptoms of not being able to have sugar or really fatty things or whatever it is that is your pleasure. I hope you figure that out and you guys might wanna check MissAprilSkye out too and give her some support.

The other one is Hcgktransformed. You are starting soon and I’m excited to see how your journey goes. I’m really glad you did your research, I like when people say “Ohh I’ve been researching HCG for a couple months” and that’s what you said and that makes me feel good because it is the kind of protocol, it’s very different, it’s controversial so if anyone finds out you’re doing it you’re gonna get weird comments from people that don’t know anything about it cause their just genuinely concerned but when you have done that research you can feel secure in yourself knowing that you’re doing the right thing and that it is healthy etc., etc.  I’m excited to see how that goes for you. Also LosingLaura, you’re also just starting your journey and you were showing all the stuff you are eating for a loading it’s funny at first I would never been able to watch that cause I would just be too tempted. But now like I said it I’m just not having any cravings it’s been so long since I’ve had any of that good stuff that I can’t even really picture how it taste but anyway you have this photo of pineapple soda, I have actually never heard of that but it looks really good. I want to tell you I think you mentioned that you hadn’t gained a lot on loading although I don’t think you had weighed yourself for the second day yet or maybe you did I don’t remember. I didn’t gained a lot on loading either I think I only gained .8 pounds but I have still lost well so that doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t do well. If you did eat a lot of fatty foods I’m sure you’ll be fine. For me I attributed that to the fact that I had already been eating high quantities of high fatty foods for the last three months. I felt like my body was kind of used to that’s why it didn’t pack on the pounds really fast but either way it was still a good amount of fatty food so your body will still release the weight.

Also one more I found she’s not new this was Niecy D-Nel I just found you today, you’re actually on p3 or p4 but I really appreciated your most recent blog you were talking about how you found that not restricting your calories on p3 was actually the key to losing and maintaining your weight and that you realized you are only eating like 700 calories in p3 and you didn’t realize it cause you weren’t hungry but that you are gaining weight, At least I think that’s what you were saying. Sometimes I get things mixed up but you found that not restricting your calories within the guidelines of the no starches and no sugars was actually helping you maintain and I think that can be true. That was really neat and I was glad to find you, I guess you might be doing another round and I’ll be excited to see how that goes for you.

So yup. That’s all. Also shout out to current HCGers, mzbekdiva I just want to say I’m so glad you figured out your hunger issue with that it’s so frustrating. Definitely the potency from everything I had read online was like don’t go pass 20-23 days and make a new batch midway. I’m really glad you figure that out and you’re doing so good .8 pounds average for your round that’s awesome that is so awesome so good for you. And genuinelatinahcg, 1.8 release the other day that is so great. So good for you. You gotta love those days cause they don’t happen every day, but when they do it’s just like so fun! So good for you. That’s probably the end to my shout outs and I will talk to you guys soon

I tried out Capella Drops while on HCG Injections – they aren’t sweeteners so you’ll still have to add something like stevia or splenda to your food or drink, but the Cappella Drops add the flavor of butterscotch, carmel, orange cream, strawberries, etc…..here is an Amazon search for the drops:  http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Acapella%20drops&page=1

They seem to work well for adding to things like smoothies, water, and carbonated water, along with your chosen sweetener.  If you check the comments on my vlog you’ll find some other useful information regarding how others make use of the Capella Drops.

Aside from that, I’m feeling fantastic at this point in the round- my cravings are gone and the HCG diet is feeling pretty easy.  It doesn’t feel easy every day, but certainly at this moment it’s been pretty smooth sailing.

 

HCG Round 1 VLCD 34- Figuring out Hunger Issues on HCG

March 27, 2011

Hello everyone VLCD day 34. I was down .8 this morning so another really great release so now I’m 148 which means I have lost 24 pounds in 33 days. Excellent.Excellent. I wanted to ask you guys something. My mom had done very well on the earlier part of the protocol but I’m just kinda worried about her now. She’s been physically hungry this entire time, we’re on the same schedule so for 33 days she has been physically hungry that’s what she says for the entire time. And we have tried adjusting her dose several times and we’ve tried lowering it, we’ve tried increasing it. She’s kinda a little bit of an anomaly when it comes to drugs and medication she always needs like the maximum amount or often times even more of whatever she’s given for it to have any effect like when she goes do the dentist she has to have more than they give any other patient of the Novocain or else she’ll feel their drilling. Based on that we kinda started increasing her dose and she actually tried 300 the other day and she said that they didn’t feel hungry. But then I guess the next day even though she did the 300 again she felt hungry again and she’s been down all the way down to 175 and it just as seems like no matter what dose we tried she says she feels hungry. It just makes me worry I think now that it’s getting to be further into this it’s getting harder on her cause she’s craving fat and it just worries me that I’m just concerned one that she might be losing muscle because she is physically hungry and also that this will be a bad experience for her cause like for me I’m not hungry in general it’s been not too bad of course everybody body has bad days. Today I wish I could eat a little bit but we’ll see, cause I am worried about her so I’m feeling a little stress. I just wanted to know if anyone else had had this experience where they couldn’t seem to find the right dose. We do RX injections. She uses the same stuff I do. I mixed up both of our batches and it works great for me. I only take 150IU now and I started out 175 and that was good for like the first 2 weeks and then I needed to lower it. And based on that, she tried lowering hers too but it just seems no matter what we do she’s still feels hungry and I’m just kinda wondering, gosh is there anyone out there who’s had to take even more than 300? I mean I haven’t really heard of that but she’s so different from most people. I just feel bad. I wish I could figure it out for her because she was saying for the next round she definitely think she should do a short round because it’s just getting hard on her cause she’s really starting to crave fat. Cause she’s missing that fat in her diet and it just seems that this protocol is so difficult if you’re feeling hungry. I don’t know if any of you have any experience with being difficult like that for the whole time and if you still stabilize well cause I’m concerned the whole losing muscle thing I’m concerned about her not stabilizing well because when you feel starved for a month as soon as it’s over your body is gonna want to eat lot and I’m just concerned that that might happen to her. And also like I said I wanted this to be a positive experience for her. It’s just I feel like she’s not gonna wanna do another round if she has this negative feelings associated with it. She has been fine about it she hasn’t complained about it at all. She’s just kinda seeing the facts that lately her weight has fluctuated around the same weight now for like I think for a whole week. Granted she did have that cheat earlier in the week so that could be part of it too but she says now she realizes that she’s eating too much protein every day and that’s why she’s not losing because she just feels the need to have some fat. I’m just worried about it I couldn’t even go sleep the last couple of nights for a while cause I keep thinking about it and just wishing I could fix it for her and I don’t know what to do. The HCG has to be good because it’s the same stuff that I used. Anyway I’m just kind of throwing that out there. There maybe there isn’t a solution but I guess I’m just really hoping that she’ll be able to stabilize okay and that this one end up being like, you know, that this whole experience won’t end up backfiring on her cause I’m the one who invited her to do it with me and I’m just gonna feel so bad if it ends up being like a total backfire thing where she lost weight and then gains it all back and more or something. I’m just worried. If anyone has any thoughts I’d love to hear them. I know she does eat pretty late at night she has that kind of weird work schedule so she will eat lunch and then maybe sometimes she won’t end up meeting her dinner till like 10 or 11. She’s a music teacher she teaches singing lessons and I guess she’s just so busy she just has less than straight to the afternoon and to the evening. We do need to work on things for her for like getting food prepared ahead of time since she can’t take a break and eat it. That what I’ve been trying to work with her on as far as creating better new habits because obviously if you don’t change your habits when you do go back to eating normally you will gain weight if you’re eating too late at night and not eating before that for 8 or 9 hours so it’s just not good for your metabolism. That’s it I guess I’m just worried about her, like I said and I just wanna do the most that I can to help her be successful so I thought I would see if you guys knew anything. Anyway I’m doing fine today I’m really tired and when you get tired it’s not that I’m craving anything. Today I’m feeling like OK I’m ready to move on to the next phase. But in general I’ve felt pretty happy on p2, yesterday I was very happy on p2. So it does a little. Thanks a lot for watching. Talk to you guys soon. I’ll be checking you out in a minute.

Update:

First of all, even though I’m asking for help regarding hunger on HCG Injections in this vlog, I’m putting it here in the HCG tips section because of all the wonderful comments regarding possible causes and solutions presented by a number of helpful people.  I’d also like to state for the record though that it is NOT NORMAL to experience on the protocol, once you’ve addressed the normal possible causes.  Usually if you are experiencing abnormal hunger while on p2 of the weight loss protocol, it’s usually either a dosage issue, a potency issue, or a mixture issue.  Ask yourself did you mix your hcg correctly?  Seems like a dumb question, but there have actually been several people on youtube, who once it was brought to their attention as a possibility, went back to check what they had done and realized they did indeed mix their hormone incorrectly.  Potency of the hormone can easily be checked with a pregnancy test (the dollar store ones work great for this!).  Usually though, it comes down to finding the proper daily dose of the hormone- this can be a little different depending on what brand of HCG you are using, where you are in your current weight loss journey (lots of fat left to lose or very little), and just the unique state of your individual body.  Most people find the happy no-hunger (except the normal hunger just before your usual meal times) medium somewhere between 125-200 iu’s.

 

HCG Diet Round 1 VLCD 35 – Miracle Noodles Can Cause Temporary Weight Gain

March 28, 2011

Hi guys! hCGChica checking in.

I’m gonna cover stats, my mom and a couple new people I found and maybe a couple other tidbits.

Okay so stats, this morning I was up .2 so I’m 148.2 which make my total loss 23.8 pounds

Just a little explanation about that I know that it’s not fat it’s just water or food because late last night I was kinda feeling hungry so I had a little bit of miracle noodles with tomatoes, canned tomatoes with no sugar, so it was really good. I’ve done that a few times now it’s never affected my weight loss but I had it pretty late, I had that around like 11pm last night. The actual bowl of food weighed definitely quite a bit more than a quarter of a pound. I know it’s just the food and the water being still in me. So as soon as that goes away I’ll be continuing on my downward journey, so that’s that.

Updated Info November 2014 on Miracle Noodles and Shirataki Noodles

I’ve been trying out some of the other styles of noodles made by the Miracle Noodle team- I’m LOVING the fettucine cut!  They are my fav. They also have a “rice” version and a angel hair pasta version – so if you want to have the various custom cuts of zero carb pasta, you can purchase those at the Miracle Noodle’s site here. And keep in mind their shelf life is like a whole year, so you have plenty of time to use them if you buy it in bulk.

Many people who try out HCG Injections at one point or another give miracle noodles (aka shirataki noodles) a try.  They are zero calories, made up entirely of soluble fiber.  If you use the non-name brand noodles from the Asian markets, don’t be fooled by the ingredient list that states “yam flour” on the package.  This is just a misnomer because of the translation from Chinese to English- it’s really made from the root of the Konjac Root, which is simply a soluble fiber, and as such doesn’t contribute any calories or carbs.

So why did I have a .2 gain after having the miracle noodles one night?  Because being a fiber, one, it adds more bulk than normal (till ya poop it out that is!) and two, it soaks up water.  So basically I had a lot more stuff in my intestines, and that weighs a bit extra than normal.  So that I had gain was not fat.  It’s nothing to worry about at all- it’s simply water and food.  I have used shirataki noodles on the HCG diet all of my rounds and I feel safe recommending them to people as a tool to create a feeling of fullness and satiety.

 Back to My Round 1 2011 Blogpost

Regarding my mom thank you guys so much for all your responses and replies to me, some of you wrote some really long messages to me with ideas and your experiences and things. I really appreciate it even everyone who just wasn’t sure what it was with just writing with encouragement and hoping I would figure it out. I really appreciate it and it’s so nice of you all. It is helpful to get different ideas and different things out there and different questions so that we can try to tear it apart and figure out what it is.

What we’re gonna try for the moment is she has been taking 300IU for like the last 4 days or so and her hunger still isn’t gone. Dawman wrote to me that out of like 2000 people that he’s dealt with only 1 person needed 300IU to get their hunger go away. Based on that and the fact that her hunger isn’t gone on 300, I think we’ve hit the max of- she’s basically hit the highest dose that’s usually ever taken with the hormone and since that hasn’t done it, I think what we need to do is totally go the other way. She’s gonna try 150 for like the next 3-4 days and if that doesn’t get rid of it we’re gone drop it to 125. That’s the plan for the moment I do still need to actually test the hormone HebbiDobbie mentioned that even though I mixed it for her it’s really not old at all and it’s the same stuff I used. She did mentioned that in the same shipment sometimes there could be differences so yes it’s definitely worth checking out.

The only thing is I’m not able to get to her house right away she does not have time to go to the store and get the test and everything so I’ll have to do that in another probably not until Thursday unfortunately cause I won’t be able to get up there. But anyway that’s the plan for the moment and we also talked a little more and she hadn’t really looked at her paper though I had made a couple papers or had printed out a couple papers that showed the different foods allowed on the protocol and how much in stuff and I guess lately she hadn’t really look.  So just regarding the whole weight stalling thing after her original cheats like a week ago I guess she’s been having some none-protocol foods like carrots and cauliflower. I’m glad we’ve got to talk about that, she’s like “oh wow really” and then she had jicama- I mean I know those are healthy but she didn’t realized that they weren’t on the protocols.

I taped my sheets of food with the calories they equal or taped to my counter, so I’m like “tape them to your counter so that every time you’re making your food it’s right there” it just makes it really easy so she’s gonna do that. We only have a week and a half left of injections. Were just gonna really buckle down and try to stick to the protocol. I gave her the chocolate delight recipe she’s actually never made that yet, I hadn’t actually she mentioned that to her before I just didn’t wanna confuse her cause she just doesn’t have a whole lot of time to do, to make different things but I think it’s time. I really think the chocolate delight has helped me lose better, I’ve been having really good loss in this last half of my round and that’s when I started the coconut oil in the chocolate delight and I don’t have 2 pieces everyday but I have 2 pieces every maybe for a couple of days and then I won’t have it for a day, you know something like that so I think it’s really help. I’m hoping that will help her too.

Updated Info November 2014: I no longer support the use of Coconut Oil on the hCG Diet at this time- I just don’t have enough proof that it’s not causing muscle loss on the diet – Dr. Simeons was very adamant that no fats or oils be used on the diet, and that is what I currently believe. This particular round we are speaking of, Round 1, I lost a significant amount of muscle mass, FAR more than any other round, and it’s the only round I used coconut oil. I do not know if they are linked, or if I would have lost the muscle anyway (I have some interesting thoughts on this here), but I’d rather be safe than sorry, and that this point, that is my recommendation to you guys too.

That’s the plan so I thank you guys very much there is couple of new people starting also duckyluvey you guys wanna check her out and give her some support. She already did her loading and I think she already had her first VLCD day or maybe her second one and then also barbarad388 it looks like she already has a good number of subscribers but for any of you watching me who haven’t seen her go check her out so she’s starting too. It’s actually her second round it was her first blog she posted today I think. Anyway those are the new people I found and that’s what I wanted to share today. I’m sorry I’m kinda being boring at the moment. I guess that’s it. I will check in again tomorrow and I’ll see everyone soon. Bye.

 

P2 Food Ideas – HCG Round 1 VLCD 36

March 29, 2011

Hi guys! HCGchica here, checking in. Today is VLCD 36 this morning I was up .2 again so this is my second small gain in a row. I’m 148.4 which makes my net loss 23.6 pounds. I think it’s to be expected to have some stalls and small gains, I’m not worried about it there may not be a real reason for it but there also could be. The last couple nights I got to bed really late like last night was like 12:45 before I even went in to bed and then I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. I’m really starting to have some major insomnia lately I don’t really know why. I didn’t have any caffeine yesterday or the day before but I didn’t get as much sleep the last couple of days so I kinda think that could be a part of it. Other than that it’s going good. I just finished my fifth week, this last week I loss a net of 4 pounds which is really good actually because week 4 I only loss 3. In general I had gradually loss a little less each week but this week I ended up losing a whole pound more. Definitely nothing to complain about there.

hcglight92 you are asking for some p2 food ideas. I don’t really have anything like interesting to say but I do pretty simple stuff cause I’m busy I just felt like spending time in this really boring food. The few things that I do that I do enjoy, I do barbecue a lot for me barbecuing chicken I also have grass fed beef or just get some healthy low fat meat beef, I barbecue my little burgers. I know they say not to do beef too often and I’m careful with that I don’t have it every single day cause I know sometimes people mention that it can slow weight loss but it is really tasty. When I do have it, asparagus can be really good barbecued also. I steam a lot of stuff. I don’t know how much you’ve had like scallops but I hadn’t really had that much before this protocol but I kinda wanted to keep my diet varied so I’ve been trying some things. I get frozen scallops. I get frozen shrimp and I put a little paprika and salt and if you steam that or barbecue it it’s really, really good. Also I know not too many of you out there eat fennel braziliangirl you were talking about fennel and that you didn’t like it too much and then I forgot the other one the blonde hair no glasses you were mentioning fennel too on a comment the other day. I love fennel and what I do with it is I steam it and you cut off the bulb part of it, you can toss the rest, you can eat that too but what I do is cut off the bulb part like an onion, sliced it up and then I steam it in the steamer until it’s nice and soft. It can sometimes take like 10 or 12 minutes and when it gets really soft I just add little salt and pepper and its super good. When you’re not on p2 if you add a little olive oil it’s even better and when you’re on p3 I actually like to roast it with the olive oil and pepper and salt and I find it very tasty, that’s something you could try. Also soups, a couple soups I’ve done I have simmered my portion of celery and water and then I add tilapia at the end or you could do chicken and I have found that pretty tasty and it’s very filling. The only thing you wanna be careful of with soups I have found is that I find myself adding too much salt. I kinda like things that taste salty and I guess for soups since it makes a big portion since there’s so much water. I ended up having like a 1 pound gain after I had my soup but that’s because I added too much salt. This is something that you keep in mind with soups. I haven’t actually had too many soups since then cause like I said I like things salty and I didn’t wanna go there again but I think you can, it is very good. Also chard chips there’s other blogs on here giving the recipe but the chard chips were really good actually. Just make sure you go light with the spices before you pop them in the oven because they shrink down and those flavors get really concentrated and I made mine a little too strong. I found them very tasty and they definitely feel that kind of snack kind of craving.

Those are the few things I’ve done. That’s all for that. So I’m gonna be posting something else soon too.

 

Variation of Calories and Food on HCG Seems to Help – Round 1 VLCD 37 – 1.4 Loss Today!

March 30, 2011

Hey you all HCG folks, HCGchica. Today’s is VLCD day 37 so guess what. Got on the scale and I was down 1.4 this morning this is so awesome. You know what this means is that I’m now 147 and that means I’ve loss a total of 25 pounds. If you include my .8 loading weight which I am choosing too cause otherwise it’s just too confusing for me. 25 pounds! That’s a lot more than 24, yup. There’s something about those 5 number increments that just really seem big like anniversaries 5- 10. I had my 10 year wedding anniversary month or 2 ago. I’m just so excited it’s just kind of funny like looking back at the whole pattern of weight loss I had a 1.4 loss exactly one week ago too. There’s not really any pattern but you know it’s interesting to look at that and you’re like “oh wow starting of the week right again”. I’m glad, the gains were really tiny but still no one likes to a backward. I’m really excited about that and I also wanna mention what I did yesterday was I didn’t eat the 500 calories again I probably ate like 420 I had 2 proteins and 2 fruits and actually by 4 o’clock all I had eaten the entire day was 1 protein. I didn’t really mean to do that. I just end up getting really busy and I am just like the longer I’m on this I’m just not hungry at all almost ever. I know that won’t last forever when I’m not on the protocol anymore which is sure is fun though. It’s just fun not feeling addicted to food it’s fun not feeling dependent on it. I really, really enjoyed p2 in general. My opinion at least what is worth for me is that varying your calories and varying your food seems like really crucial to having continually good losses. That just what seems to be the case for me. It just seems like your body adjust to things really easily. Our bodies are smart it’s like they adjust so easily even to the same foods and I think that is why Dr. Simeons specifically said in his protocol not to eat the same foods in the same day like have 2 different fruits, 2 different proteins and I know that can be kind of challenging sometimes cause of the prep work involved sometimes but I don’t know it really seems to make a difference and I think with the amount of calories that makes a difference too. Varying it from somewhere between 350 and 500. I’m really noticing a difference this second half of just losing well. I don’t know. I think that’s what I think it is. And the chocolate delight, the coconut oil that really seems to make a difference for me too. Just want to throw that out there I have probably said that before.

But anyway, suziehayes1 guess what I’ve got, almond flour gluten-free cookbook that you recommended I’m so excited looks like there’s some great recipes in there and I am excited to do that. My husband does have- he’s not allergic to gluten like entirely like his not a celiac but he did have a food allergy test some time ago and it did show irritation to gluten so if he can avoid it as much as he can I mean he would definitely feel healthier. The other thing I’ve got I don’t what this are gonna be like cause I just got them but, I’m sorry I know they’re backwards, these are stevia cookbooks. The more I use stevia the more I get used to it and the more happier I am with it and now we would all like to have less sugar in our diet, obviously most of these are sweet recipes cause that it’s just using stevia but yeah there’s still like cake recipes in here, all kinds of stuff and it’s kinda interesting cause I was looking at like this one and it shows like a sugar comparison of like for instance this one is from almonds pound cake has almond flour. Actually I’m sorry no it doesn’t it has regular flour but anyway it has a sugar comparison and it show the calories with the recipe they give and the recipes with the traditional sugar recipe. This one the calories for I guess one slice of the pound cake is a 183 calories and then they show in the traditional sugar recipe that it would have 570 calories, a huge difference. It also shows the sugars like there’s only 3 grams of sugar in the stevia pound cake recipe and in the regular one it’s 50 grams of sugar. So I have no idea how this taste but eventually you know P4 I’ll probably be trying some of them and I might even try to adopt some of them for p3 like with the almond flour and stuff we’ll see. So that’s kinda interesting. Also I’m kinda thinking of trying Brazilian girl Rosanna your flax seed bread I kind of thought about it again after Niecy D-Nel posted a vlog about how she’s eating it for a couple mornings and had pretty good losses. I know she’s early in her round and you always have better losses then however like I said I’m really thinking is varying the diet thing is super successful and since I never have that if I throw that in the mix I’m kind of wondering if might have a couple of good days if I do that. I’m thinking about it, that’s it.

I’m gonna try to catch up on you guys I had a busy day. I meant I want to mention melatonin thank you guys for responding about my insomnia. I did actually have some melatonin around it’s like we have our own herb shop. I have a huge drawer that we put all the stuff we’re not currently using and then we have like in my kitchen all the stuff we are currently using which is also a lot. It’s just weird I can go shopping in my own drawer because we have so many different herbs and vitamins and stuff like that. I had melatonin. I did try it last night and I probably need more. It was a 5 milligram capsule time release and I didn’t sleep well at all last night. I don’t know what it is. I just- the last few nights my mind has been going I can’t turn it off. I’ve had periods like this in the past but in general I’ve been sleeping pretty well the last couple few years so who knows I might try taking more. Tonight I actually do feel fairly tired I had a long day, a fun day but a long day so I think I’m probably gonna sleep well tonight. I was outside quite a bit which actually being outside and getting sun is also really important for being able to sleep at night. I had been kind of indoors a lot lately.  In here reading all you blogs it’s just fun I should probably get like some type of computer that I can go outside with instead of holdup in this little office cave. But anyway that’s it I will check in I’m gonna catch up with you guys now.

This is simply my observation, not proven fact, but I find that varying my calories on this protocol and varying my foods seems to keep my losses going well.  But I could totally be reading into things.

Also, in prep for P3 and beyond and my new life without sugar, I bought a couple of Stevia recipe books.  Here’s the links if you want to check them out (click the pic to take you directly there).

 

Round 1 VLCD 39

April 1, 2011

Hi! HCGchica here! With my son checking in today is VLCD day 39. I’m here to report on the flax bread experiment and I’m happy to say I was down .8 this morning so to me that’s a great loss. I seem to kinda this last stuff I seem to vacillate between over one pound loses like 1.2 or 1.4 and then other than that I have .2 loses and then I have .8 loses that’s mostly what I’ve been having lately. So that seems to be going right along with it since I had a 1.4 loss just 2 days ago and a .2 loss yesterday. That went great so now I’m 146 which means I lost 26 pounds now. Kinda sad because technically P2 is supposed to be ending soon, my last injection is supposed to actually be on Saturday which is in only 2 more days. I didn’t realize it was almost already over I’m a little torn. I am kinda considering continuing my injections just long enough to get to 30 pounds which I’m guessing would be another week or so. I’m undecided. I am kinda thinking “oh it would be nice to eat” I’m actually craving salad but I’m not craving “craving” it but it sounds so good to have a big salad we have lettuce in our garden right now that’s all ready to go. I just feel like it’s getting to be a nice weather here. I’m in California it’s just warm and the garden is growing it just makes me wanna start hiking again and eating garden vegetables. I kinda do wanna stop but then again it would be so nice to get to that 30 pound mark its only 4 pounds away. This protocol has gotten so easy for me as time has gone on, for me it’s easy to add on and continue whereas when I started it was pretty tough for me at first at certain times with cravings and things so I’m not sure, I’m gonna see I’m basically just gonna take it one day at a time and see how it goes.

I wanna give you a report on my mom she checked in with me today she has been on 150 now for I think 3 days and as far as the hunger goes I think she feels like she has something mess up with her, you know brain synapses with the whole hunger mechanism and stuff, from years of dieting, different things, you guys know. You guys have all been through it. But it’s not unbearable for her she’s on the 150 but anyway I do wanna report that she has had finally some good loses she had that kind of major stalling and then let me just share she had a 2 pound gain which was after the cheat, that was sometime last week and then she had a .2 loss .8 loss, 1 pound gain, .4 loss, so she was still kinda hovering around the same weight within a pounds or so of the same weight for like 8 days but anyway she reduce her dose and she had a loss. And then she lost 1 pound on VLCD 38 yesterday and then this morning she was down 5 pounds can you believe that? That’s even bigger than her last crazy 4.2 release which was earlier in the round. Needless to say she was super excited she said she double checked the scale more than once and it still said the same thing so she was down 5 pounds so that kinda makes up for all that kind of vacillating within a pound or 2 last week. Now she’s lost 31 pounds in 39 days. Needless to say she’s extremely happy about that and she says she looks so great that all her hunger fails in comparison so she’s feeling good. I was actually the one who’s a lot more worried than she was. It’s just doesn’t seem to be normal to be hungry in this thing it definitely seems to be manageable for her and like I said were basically done with this round almost then we’ll be on p3. I’m excited so start that with her. I’m actually gonna be cooking for her for like lunches and stuff like I said her work schedule is kinda weird so I’m gonna be doing some cooking so that her food can be there at where she runs a music school so she’ll be there every day and they have a fridge so I’m gonna have her food down there. That way she can make sure she gets her food. That’s the report on her.

My husband is maintaining well. He’s still 185.6 I think which is like .2 up from his LDW, at one point he was almost 2 pounds above his LDW and then the next day he didn’t do a steak day or anything cause he wasn’t over 2 pounds and he works really hard so it’d be hard for him to do that. He’s just trying to make sure to stay stable but he’s just ate a little less the next day and he went right back down. He’s been under and over a little bit so he’s doing really well.

Is there anything else I wanted to share? That flax bread it was so good. Oh my goodness, I mean I’d be careful if you’ll experiment with it just be careful because it’s the kind of thing when you eat it you wanna eat more. And I even use a little less coconut oil than Rosanna. Yeah nana that’s like banana huh! Yeah.I used 2 teaspoons of coconut oil she uses 1 tablespoon which is 3 teaspoons and I could have probably even use a little less coconut oil if I had wanted to reduce the calories more I could have done that. It actually tasted pretty oily still, but it was delicious so, so good. Anyway but just a warning, if you do experiment, watch out! I had a little bit more of a craving yesterday and I think that might have been why. I’m not gonna be doing it every day may throw it in there in a rotation like every four days or something. Yesterday I think I ended up eating over 500. I didn’t mean too but I was just a little wanting to eat more yesterday so I ended up probably eating 550 or 600. Still had a good loss today and then today I’m planning on. I have an active son as you can tell he’s so good he’s very active. And today I’m planning on eating around maybe 350 or 400 I’m gonna skip my vegetables and have no coconut oil and just have my 2 fruits and my 2 proteins so for me that will end up being about actually that will be about 420 so I’m gonna do that today and then tomorrow I’ll up them again and have the coconut oil. For me, I’m serious guys, variation, that’s gonna be my keyword for this year for every round. It starting to feel like a game like okay let’s see how am I gonna vary it today and it always seems to work out. I’ve been having really good loses this second half. I’m just really pleased. I know it’s different for everybody, everyone loses weight differently. It’s so interesting how genuinelatinaHCG your weight loss journey has been so different. It’s just so interesting to watch. My mom same thing. Everyone has a different weight pattern and that’s kinda what’s nice about this first round is you get to see what your pattern is. And then I think for the second round it will be a little easier to know maybe what to expect, although I know patterns can change but- Can you say hi? Hi! Hi! Hi! I love this guy I love this guy. He was a little bit of an unexpected surprise after 8 years of marriage. We weren’t really planning but we won’t trade him for anything.

Okay that’s it. I’m sorry this got a little long. This one kinda let you know the results of a few different things and I’ll check in and I’ll catch up on you guys. It has been a little quiet but I understand it’s been hard for me lately to keep up with all the blogs so I didn’t do one yesterday either it’s just the weather is getting nice and I’m starting to wanna be outside but it has been so encouraging just sharing my journey and watching yours I think that has been crucial to my success this first round.

Update:

I’m sharing my flax seed bread experiment here (eating a flax seed bread recipe while on P2), however, this is not something I would any longer recommend.  For the most part, aside from one or two small changes that I have found don’t impede my fat loss or cause unnecessary muscle loss, I really side with sticking to p2 foods as Dr. Simeons wrote the original protocol.  While I lost quite a bit of weight my first round, I also lost quite a bit of muscle, and I’ll never know if that could have been prevented or not.  Subsequent HCG Injections  rounds I lost almost entirely all fat, which I am very pleased with, and I think sticking with Dr. Simeons instructions to keep all fat out of the hcg diet during this time is important to achieve these results.

On a side note, my mom had a 5 lb loss overnight the other night!  Wow that’s crazy amazing!

 

Round 1 VLCD 40

April 2, 2011

Hi HCGers! HCGchica here. Today is VLCD day 40 and I was down .2 so now I am 145.8 just excellent. That’s 26.2 pounds and my mom stayed the same from yesterday which she was glad about. She had a huge five pound loss yesterday so she was glad she didn’t have a gain she’s feeling that weight she loss is a stable release of weight. I’ve come to the decision that tomorrow will be my last injection. I had been considering continuing but today and yesterday I’ve been feeling weaker and I feel like I need more food. I think I’m kinda hitting the mark there for the whole nutrient deficiency thing or whatever I just- I’m ready for a change and I think I’m ready for some good food. Your body goes through a lot losing so much weight all at once and eating so little. I think it is a good time for me to stop, maintain and then I’ll start the next protocol in 6 weeks.

I’m actually excited to start p3 now. I’m actually craving savory foods. I’m craving salad. I’m craving meat. Just I wanna eat real meals. I am excited to start that and I actually really want to build some muscle. I just I feel like working out and getting some exercise. Those two things I’m just really feeling excited about that’s why I decided that it would be a good time to just stop even though it is tempting to try to lose a few more pounds. I know as many of you told me a lot of people end up losing more inches and maybe a few more pounds on p3 anyway. Really the inches are what matters to me anyway. My size 10 jeans are not truly comfortable yet and that’s kinda what I have been hoping to get to but maybe when I’m doing some muscle building and hiking and stuff maybe I’ll get some more inch loss anyway and I’ll feel comfortable in a few weeks. That is my ultimate decision. So that means on Wednesday, in four days, I will be starting p3. We’ll see what the next two days holds as far as loses and it went so fast that’s why I figure the 6 week in between will go fast too cause this went really fast. It’s already over and I can’t believe it. Alright I’ll check in again tomorrow.

So after 39 days on the VLCD of HCG Injections I’ve lost 26.2 lbs- I was pretty happy with that.  Ready to move into p3 and start exercising.

 

Before and After the HCG Diet- Round 1 only

 

LDW for Round 1, 27.2 lbs lost, 26 inches, Fruits in p3?

April 4, 2011

I’ve been wearing my young son on my back in an Ergo backpack since he was born.  However, as I gained weight, it got to the point where I could almost no longer wear the backpack as I had to stretch the belt out to the full length- now I can cinch it up quite a bit and it’s much more comfortable to wear because my stomach is so much flatter than it was.

I also mentioned in this vlog a question regarding who includes fruit in p3 and who doesn’t- definitely check out the comments section of the vlog to see what people had to say regarding what foods caused them to gain or not in p3 of their HCG Injections.

FINAL STATS ON MY FIRST ROUND

TOTAL INCH LOSS- 26 INCHES

Biggest inch losses:

bust area- 5.5 inches

waist- 5.5 inches (34.75″ waist to 29.25-” measured at the smallest part of my waist)

belly- 4.25 inches

hips- 3 inches

 

Water Retention from Exercise after HCG – R1P3Day3

April 9, 2011

With the start of my first p3 (the no starch no sugar phase of HCG Injections) I tried out a Zumba class to get back into exercise.  These days, I really recommend Crossfit for getting in shape and being strong.  Not that Zumba is bad by any means- certainly not- but if you want the most bang for your time when it comes to exercise and fitness and strong bones and muscles, Crossfit is the best thing I’ve come across so far.  Crossfit is a combination of high intensity interval training and heavy weight lifting in a class setting with a trainer.  It’s absolutely fantastic.

But speaking of exercise, it can cause temporary weight “gain” on the scale as torn muscles retain water in order to heal.  This is nothing to be worried about, since it’s not true “weight” that we need to be concerned with in the form of fat- but it’s good to be aware of this so that you don’t see a higher number on the scale and wonder what is going on or get discouraged.  Otherwise if you see a higher number and get discouraged, you could be like me where I might end up doing something self destructive as a result of my discouragement.  So when you see the scale up, before you freak out, consider that if you are exercising, it could simply be water retention as your muscles heal and rebuild, and that’s a good thing!

Transcript

Hi guys! HCGchica checking in. This is my third day on P3. I just wanted to let you know how I was going so far. As you know my LDW was 144.8 and following the 3 days of the VLCD with no injection I lost an additional 1.8 so I was 143 when I started P3 3 days ago. The first day I enjoyed getting to eat more food. I had a hamburger patty and some roasted vegetables for breakfast. I also tried out MsHCGgirl’s blueberry smoothie which I just love, love, love, love and I just generally ate like that. Also I did some lunges, some push-ups and then I took a hike with my son and then when I hike I wear this little guy on my back and he weighs 26 pounds. Needless to say my legs were really sore and my lungs got a good workout. Anyway I did that and then the next morning I weighed the same 143 which is 1.8 under LDW and then that morning I went to a Zumba class which was an amazing cardio workout. I’m pretty out of shape I think. After about 10 minutes I felt like I had probably had a good workout and I could be done there was 50 minutes left so I hung in there for the whole hour but it was a majorly good workout. My muscles are really sore and I’m gonna talk a little about water retention in a second from exercise.

This morning I woke up and I was 1.4 up which means I’m still under LDW but I’m gonna talk about that, because it’s water weight. I did a little research on retaining water after exercise and here’s a couple things I had found, for instance it says “an intense workout, like I was getting, can cause the body to retain water because water is attending to those muscles that are working overtime, strengthening muscles or muscles that have been pulled or torn are areas where water travels to in order to heal.” So in the whole workout process when you’re building muscle, that muscle has to be torn apart first and then rebuilt bigger. I don’t know the scientific but in a nutshell I think something like that. Anyway the water needs to be there in those torn muscles to help it heal. In addition to that it talks about getting dehydrated which can happen easily when you’re getting exercise because you need more water than usual. It says “When your body does not have enough water to keep the body hydrated it tends to store or collect the water you do take in because it does not know when more will be coming. Drinking enough water allows your body to stop preserving and you will notice less water retention”. That’s kind of interesting and then the last thing it says “If you did not previously have a routine workout and then started a high intensity workout, which is what I’ve done this couple days, your body can go into a sort of shock like state this extra stress has your body collecting nutrients and water to protect it. When you keep a routine workout the body will get used to this sort of exercising and adjust.” I just wanted to throw that out there because I definitely don’t feel like the 1.4 gain is fat for sure I know that I’m not over eating. Even though I’m not counting my calories yet, I just know I’m not overeating. I’m eating good and I got a great amount of exercise in those two days so I believed that is some water retention.

Today I’ve tried to drink a lot of water and I’ve been peeing like constantly so I think that’s good I’m probably gonna see this scale go down tomorrow, that’s my prediction anyway. I just read all over other places the same thing, this one person had said on the different message was they frequent most of the people who are intense exercises do agree that you retain water after intense workouts and a lot of people said that after they had a hard workout they would gain 2 to 3 pounds the next day of water weight and then it would just magically disappear. That’s just a normal part of that and I think it’s important to be aware of things like that because otherwise it could kinda get you down. Even for me, even though I feel logically know what this is, this is water weight and I know I’m eating good and I’m exercising it still it’s so easy for those numbers to mess with your heads. So that’s why I did that research today and I just want to share that with you guys as well because if you do start a workout program there is some of that that can often be involved in it. And I wanna give you one example of this, my last backpacking trip in 2005 I was actually on Weight Watchers at the time and I think I was actually about the same weight as I am right now at that time. We were gone for I think nine days. I was carrying I believe 40 pounds on my back and we were hiking, well you know I mean backpacking and there’s no car you just carry everything on your back and we were hiking in and around places for 9 days and we were only eating back packing food which is freeze dried so probably I wasn’t even getting that many calories. It was an extremely great 9-day workout. I felt very lean on the trip because even though were drinking water it was just so intense that I probably was dehydrated but the point is when I got back and I went to my Weight Watchers meeting maybe like 4 days after I got back from our trip. I had gained I believe 3 or 4 pounds and at the time I didn’t know any of this stuff about water retention and I was so discourage I couldn’t figure how I could possibly have gained 3 or 4 pounds when I had just burned 50 thousand calories or something. I should have lost weight and I was so discouraged by that but that was water weight that was not real fat. It’s important to know those kinds of things otherwise we can get discourage and give up when we’re actually doing good. I just wanted to share that and I want to let you know that my mom is stabilizing at the moment. I mean it’s only been 3 days I was surprise I see a whole lot but she is excited just to be stabilizing for 3 days because in the past she said she’s never been able to keep any weight off for any length of time at all, so that’s encouraging.

I do plan on continuing to exercise and I’ll keep you updated as regards on my weight thing and as I said I’m not counting calories right now. I’ll let you know if I do start. I know most of you do that the thing is if I can get away with not counting I would prefer to. Because the way that I cook it would be very difficult for me to figure out how many calories are in everything I’m eating. Hopefully I can get away without it but it will be a last resort. We are avoiding fruit except for the half cup of blueberries in our smoothie. My mom loves the smoothie too and I think it’s a great thing to have late at night, sometimes you know you get munchies and you wanna have some ice-cream and this seems like a really good low calorie alternative to having ice-cream and it’s very satisfying. I guess you know I’m just not one of those people who cannot do a short vlog. I don’t know why I don’t know why that is. Last thing I would did when I mention that was in the smoothie, you might have to look this up on your own but if you add a little bit of guar gum and xanthan gum, I read about it in another smoothie blog and it actually thickens your smoothie to this consistency that it’s just really delectable it makes it really thick like a real smoothie so it’s not runny at all and it’s so good and you can even freeze it and stuff. It’s very tasty you might wanna look into that. I’ve done that and it’s just really good. I guessed that was all I had to share like I said I’m still under LDW and I’m kind of thinking that my weight’s gonna go down tomorrow. I might actually be going to another Zumba dance class tonight and then I’m having my body fat tested on Saturday. I’ll let you know the results of that. No matter what the results are however much muscle I did or didn’t lose I’m glad I did this and this has gotten me motivated again that I can move forward I had gotten to a place where I didn’t feel like I could make a big change anymore. Even if I did lose more muscle than I would like. If that’s the case as it would have been in some other diet. I’ve come so far I feel so much better that I’m so motivated that that’s fine with me. I’m ready to rebuild whatever muscle I loss. We’ll find out. I will definitely give you results of that. I’ll check in again soon.

 

Veggies for Breakfast in P3 and P4- HCG R1P3D5

April 11, 2011

Sometimes it can be hard to figure out what to eat for breakfast when you aren’t eating starches and grains after finishing a round of HCG Injections.  One thing my family and I have done that has worked well is to chop up a whole bunch of veggies- usually a mix of purple onion, squash, zucchini, tomato, bell pepper, okra and mushrooms, toss them with some salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, and seal them in a 2 gallon plastic ziploc bag in the fridge.  Each morning we barbecue these vegetables in a metal basket that goes on our grill, along with a grass fed burger patty.  If you don’t want to barbecue you could probably also saute them on the stove.  Barbecued it’s very quick (7 minutes) and very tasty in the mornings.

It’s an idea anyway.

Transcript:

Hey everyone! HCGChica. Today is Day 5 of P3 things are going well. I can’t believe it’s only been 5 days I feel like I have been eating more food for longer but it hasn’t been that long. I’m getting addicted to those blueberry smoothies, they’re really good. I have been stabilizing fine today I’m exactly at my LDW. I was down .6 the before yesterday and then I was up 1 pound as of this morning so now I’m exactly at LDW. I went to a Zumba class this morning and it’s such a great exercise. I don’t know if any of you are looking to do a little  exercise in P3 see if there’s a Zumba class in your area because I think it’s spreading like wildfire it’s like a new thing. It’s like doing high intensity salsa and all kinds of different Latin dances but it’s a great workout and it’s so fun, so fun, it’s not at all like an exercise class. I wouldn’t go if it was because I find those really, really boring and I hate them. It’s like torture but this was so fun and I’m pretty sure I burned about maybe 400 calories. I kinda like to get one of those things you wear in your body that tells you maybe how many calories you’re burning I might look into that.

The exercise really puts my mind at ease as far as not being as worried about eating too much. I feel like by having that extra activity that it gives me a little bit more leeway with what I eat. Even though I’m still of course not having really almost any carbs and hardly any fruit at all. It just makes me feel a little more calm and not worried about it as much. But I do think there is a little more variation with weight from water weight with exercise so it is good to be aware of that. My mom is stabilizing good too at the moment she has stayed within 1 pound of her LDW for this whole 5 days, so she’s really excited. I mean it may not seem like a big deal to most people but to her she feels regulated about that, that she was able to maintain such a large weight loss at all for any length of time, she’s really excited about that. I really do think that all your advice that you gave about the fruit was good I think that’s probably a big part of why we’re maintaining well so far. Because there’s actually are a good amount of carbs in fruit. I haven’t really thought about it too much because you know, we think oh! Fruit, fruit’s healthy. But they do have a lot of carbs and sugar so you know even though  it’s kind of a healthy food I think if you’re not really active that those carbs and sugar don’t get used in your body could be stored as fat. I think I maybe a little more lenient with myself with fruit if I continued to do high intensity exercise because before exercise you are supposed to have a carbs before you do something really high intensity like that so you don’t feel too tired and say you’re body doesn’t start using like lean muscle mass. I don’t wanna lose lean muscle mass from exercising and not having any carbs. There are carbs in vegetables even the low carb vegetables, they do have carbs so I think I could probably get away with just having the vegetables.

I wanted to show you guys what I have been eating for breakfast lately. We’ve been having grilled vegetables with a protein. I like to be time efficient, I cook a lot all at once so that things are easy. I’m just not one of those people who can start cooking at 5 o’clock every night kind of thing, I don’t know it’s just hard for me to do that. I’d rather do something in the morning and have it be ready later or do something like a big amount of something and just reheat for the next days. That’s just how I like to do things. I just want to show you what I have been doing, I cut all these vegetables up. This bag here is 2 gallons, a 2 gallon size of flat bag, I don’t know if you guys ever seen those but they do exist. It took me about half an hour to wash all this vegetables, cut them all up, toss them with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, later on you can add other things like soy sauce or vinegar or whatever and then to dump it in to this bag, and this bag will last us for four mornings which is 8 servings for my husband and I. I know it seem like it should last longer I mean 2 gallons of vegetables but they really shrink on the grill.

Anyway I just wanna show that to you guys because if you just spend a little time on a Sunday for half an hour and getting all this ready you’ll have all this vegetables ready for you know, if you’re just one person, for over a week. And we’re eating so many more vegetables now since I started doing this last week. Both of us love it. If you don’t have a grill you can just sauté them in a pan but they’re delicious and I it only takes like 7 minutes in our grill for them to be done and that’s really easy. In this bag I put okra, yellow and green squash, tomatillos, purple onion, mushroom and bell peppers and that’s it. That’s my little tip, you could do breakfast or for dinner whatever you wanted but it’s just nice because it’s all there you don’t have to do any prep work at all for four days with it. That’s my little tip there. I guess that’s all yeah we’re doing good so I’ll check in soon and I had to record this video like 3 times because the first time the sound cut out and the next time I mess up and since I keep re-recording I start forgetting like if I told you guys what I wanted to tell you where if that was on the last blog that I recorded so hopefully that was everything. Alright I’ll talk to you guys soon.

 

Savoury Almond Quiche Recipe was great! – HCG – R1P3D9

April 15, 2011

Inch losses for my mom after her first HCG Injections round.  I Increased my thyroid medication a little while on Round 1 of the weight loss protocol as I was feeling quite tired, and found this gave me more energy while on the protocol.  This may not be an issue or an answer for others on thyroid meds while on the diet but looks like for me, at least on this 1st round, it was a good thing to do so I wasn’t so exhausted feeling.

Tried a recipe “Savoury Vegetable Quiche” from the Gluten Free Almond Flour Cookbook.  It’s delicious and an easy reheat p3 recipe that good for breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack.

 

HCG R1P3D12

April 16, 2011

So far my stabilization for this round of HCG Injections has gone better than expected.  I did what I would call “overeating” a few nights- still healthy foods but higher calorie and higher amounts, and surprisingly I didn’t have a gain.

A simple discussion of anaerobic conditioning by means of short intervals of high intensity training.

Transcript:

Hey guys! Today is day 10 on P3. Sorry the lighting keeps changing here. I’ve been doing well I’m 145.8 today so I’m still 1 pound above LDW it seems to be hovering around. I seem to be hovering around that weight this whole time pretty much so my body seems to like that weight so that’s a good thing and that is even considering that a couple nights I ended up doing what I felt was overeating , where I was concerned about having a gain but I didn’t have a gain. A couple nights I waited too long to eat so I got hungry and got a low blood sugar and I ended up eating a lot, you know how that goes. I had the full fat Greek yogurt and nuts but I didn’t have a gain the next morning when I’ve done that so that’s encouraging. I also want to mention something that I’m looking into that I’m gonna be doing. There’s probably different names for this but what I’m reading is Dr. Ricola a lot of you may know who that is online he has all kind of holistic health articles and videos. He talks about something that he’s calling Peak 8 fitness and what’s new about it is it involves exercising only for 20 minutes 3 times a week but the way that it’s done is very efficient and it does something different that normal  regular exercise doesn’t do. And to get all the full details you could look it up, he’s calling it Peak 8. I know there’s probably other names for people who have done this in the past. Basically its types of interval training but in a nutshell I guess we have different muscle fibers in our bodies, we have slow action, fast action and super-fast action muscle fibers something like that. Regular exercise only uses the slow reaction and fast action muscle fibers but our super-fast action muscle fibers when they’re stimulated they actually either produce or stimulate the production of human growth hormone which is really important for muscle building and for metabolism and losing fat and all kinds of stuff like that keeping you young. The only way to stimulate those super-fast action muscle fibers are through really short anaerobic style energy burst of activity. Base on that principle, like what Dr. Ricola is doing with this other guy who kinda originally talk about it in some book is doing 30 seconds of kind of all-out exercise, whatever it is your on whether it’s on a bike at the gym or stairs machine or elliptical or just outside doing a sprint or whatever it is you do 30 seconds all out and you could like can hardly breathe at all and your heart beat is really fast and then you slow down, you completely slowdown for 90 seconds and let yourself recover and you do this cycle 8 times total so you end up only doing this extreme pushing yourself for 4 minutes total. And the whole thing that being about 15 minutes and then you do a couple minutes warm-up or down it’s like 20 minutes. They have been finding that doing this really is increasing people’s lean body masses and lowering their body fat percent and because it’s stimulating human growth hormones. I just want to share that with you guys because it’s supposed to be really effective really much more effective than doing hours and hours of just regular exercise because it’s getting to something that you wouldn’t normally get to which is really fast action muscle fibers. It’s kind of exciting I’m doing it, my husband has been doing it already at the gym, we’ve been doing this stairs machine it’s not actually stairs stepper like actual stairs that go around. In the past he’s gone on that for like a continual 30 minutes at the same phase and yeah he did get stronger but he is noticing now that he’s doing this 30 seconds on-90 seconds off thing in just 15 minutes he feel so much stronger so much faster, it’s pretty interesting. It might be something for you guys to check into, that’s it for today I’m doing good, nothing really interesting going on except for that little exercise thing but I’ll check in again soon.

 

Sugar Free Chocoperfection Bars – HCGR1P3D14

April 20, 2011

I have to admit these are pricey, but these Chocoperfection Bars are delicious in every way for a person who is trying to avoid sugar.  They have only 2 net carbs in the whole bar, and they are sugar free.  The sweetness comes from Oligofructose, which is a pre-biotic fiber, and Erythritol, one of the higher quality sugar alcohols that don’t usually effect your digestive tract the way that Xylitol sometimes does.  I have gotten to the point where I totally avoid Aspartame (I used to be a diet coke fanatic), as well as Splenda (makes me feel horrible- for awhile I was buying those Diet Hansen sodas at Trader Joes and couldn’t figure out why both my tummy and head started hurting daily- realized it was directly connected to the Splenda and it literally only takes a few minutes after ingesting it for me to start feeling the effects).

Since these bars only have 2 grams net carbs they are definitely super low carb and having no sugar, this means you can have them on p3!  I did after this first round, and there were definitely a bit of a savior when I wanted something yummy and sweet.  Like I said, they are definitely pricey, and I haven’t needed to eat them lately, but I really feel for someone just coming out of bad habits, after a first round of HCG Injections, that these are a great tool to have in your box for those tougher days until the food changes you are making are more set.

 

Stabilized my New HCG Weight! R1 End of P3

April 29, 2011

My experience from this first p3 after HCG Injections is that my body really does have a new set point now.  The first week my weight did fluctuate a bit, so definitely expect that when you start P3, but I watched it and made sure to keep everything in control, and the last 2 weeks of p3 I found my weight remained very stable!  I was in shock actually to be honest.  That Dr. Simeons really knew what he was talking about when he discussed his whole weight loss protocol in his book Pounds and Inches.  I didn’t count calories, I ate heartily (no starches or sugars still of course though- including fruit for the most part aside from some berries in my smoothies), and I exercised with Zumba classes and gardening. It has been very exciting to see how my body works and how the process of stabilizing one’s weight works.

My body stabilized 1.6 above my ldw- that is definitely where my body seemed to like being- so I didn’t fight it to keep it right at ldw- it has been very stable at the 1.6 over so I’m totally happy with that.  I’m concerned more with my weight being stable than I am about being one or two pounds less.

Transcript:

Hi everyone! HCGChica here. Sorry I haven’t checked in in a bit, I’ve just been busy I have been watching your vlogs though as much as I can. I just want to give you an update. Today is the end of p3 for me I can’t believe it’s been 3 weeks already and it makes sense to me now why Dr. Simeons kind of designated a 3-week period for stabilization. That first week was a little iffy and scary and had a few more fluctuations but this past 2 weeks has been wonderful I just feel like every day that I continue to be the same weight or around the same weight it’s just one more day showing me that my body is adjusting to its new weight and that it wants to be there and so I have stayed basically 1.4 above my LDW as what my body seems to like and I have been 146.2 almost the whole time the past  2 weeks with just a couple variations. I just think that is really exciting to see that your body really can create a new set point. I feel like it’s really doing what it says it does. I eat a plenty of food I eat full fat foods and I even eat late at night. I told myself I wasn’t gonna do that I thought oh! That was the one thing I said okay I’m gonna start not eating after 6pm anymore since I’m kinda doing that on this protocol and it’s starting to feel easy. But you know when you do have access to more foods that are good and they’re more appetizing you find yourself wanting to eat them at night. So I’ve been eating full-fat Greek yogurt or one of my smoothies or nuts or cheese, you know what? Every time I do that I think I’m probably gonna have a gain tomorrow and then I don’t. I don’t have a gain so that’s pretty exciting. One thing I haven’t done is eat out at a restaurant yet but I did attend a function in honor of myself and my husband the other day. We had our 10 year anniversary and we went to a party for ourselves. So I planned ahead that I was going to go ahead and indulge and eat the food everyone brought and so I had ice-cream, I had toppings, I had rice and bean dish thing, I had some bread so I indulge a bit and I felt very dehydrated that evening as I was eating I was trying to drink some water but I could tell that I was retaining water because I also went to a baby shower a few hours before that party and I ate some of the food there. I didn’t have any major carbs at the baby shower but I did have some different salads and kind of pre prepared things that were salty, like a Hudson deli meat and stuff like that. By the time I was at the party I had eaten other food, I was definitely feeling dehydrated so I knew I was gonna retain water so I already expected it and the next morning I was up I think 2 pounds but again it’s like I knew in my heart that it was just water retention and so rather than do the steak day for myself I decided to wait 1 day and see what happen, and sure enough my weight went right back down to 146.2 so that was exciting because I did have carbs and not just one carb. I did go to my Zumba class that morning to help compensate and I had planned on going on Sunday morning after the party but I came to sleep really late I’m so tired so I didn’t end up doing that but anyway I haven’t exercise since Sunday so this is the 4^th day in a row that I haven’t exercised at all, my weight has still stayed the same so that’s exciting.

My mom is still stabilizing well too she has a few more fluctuations the I do due to some salty meals I think at times but her weight does go back down when she eats her normal food and salt intakes so I think that’s good too. I also noticed that it seems like your body does find a way somewhere within 5 pounds of where you were, like some of you I noticed have stabilized under your LDW’s by 2 or 3 or even 4 pounds which is kinda neat for you because it makes you feel that you’re ahead. I know that ChunkNoMore you did and also socalplum I think you guys both had stabilize under your LDW. It does seem like your body kinda find something nearby that way that it likes and it’s good to be comfortable with that, even if perhaps it’s not quite the 2 pounds, well that just my opinion and I’m just saying that because if your body seems to like being 2.2 pounds over and you might be kicking yourself and feeling terrible but if you look back and you figured it out and see oh your body wants it like I’ve been the same weight for 2 weeks actually you should be glad, to me, because you have stabilize a weight very close to your LDW it’s just a food for thought. I’m not telling you guys that you shouldn’t do a steak day or that you should not rave up the 2 pounds I’m not saying that okay! I definitely if I totally over did it and I knew that it was from being something really wrong I would definitely do a steak day. I’m just saying you know, trust your body and see the pattern and don’t beat yourself up over something when maybe you’re actually accomplishing something good, anyway I have to clarify that. So what was the last thing I wanted to share? I’m gonna be starting a new round in a month or so, in about 4 weeks I think I’m at around May 24^th is my plan. I may wait even a little longer I’m not sure but that’s kind of the plan is to start Round 2 then my mom will start around the same time. I’m going on a vacation right before that for a few days with my husband and I don’t wanna be loading on our vacation because I know that I’m gonna feel really crappy when I load. I know from the last time I didn’t wanna eat at all, once I started the HCG like right away it was hard for me to eat a lot and I am looking forward to loading as far as this time I wanna do it better. I kind of wanna indulge a little more than I did and have all my favorites since I don’t get to have them hardly ever anymore and I don’t wanna feel crappy on my vacation, were gonna be hiking and things like that so I’m not gonna worry about loading. I will do that when I get back like on a Tuesday and Wednesday that’s the plan. Other than that nothing else is new I think I am gonna start adding in a few carbs since it’s the end of p3 for me. I had an apple last night I didn’t affect me bad so that’s good, my body seems to like this weight and I just think that’s encouraging and I wanna share that with you guys so that you guys can feel confident going into P3 as well and just to know in advance that while the first week will be a little iffy and fluctuating it does seem like those last 2 weeks your body does start picking a weight It likes and sticking to it. Just to be expecting that and don’t think that first week is how it’s always gonna be in general. I know we all have different experiences some of has have more struggles than others with p3, we’re all so different I myself actually didn’t feel so great on p2 I was pretty tired. It’s always different but that’s just been my experience and you know maybe an experience for you too. That’s it, I don’t have anything else to say I’ve been trying to catch up with you guys and read your blogs and I try to comment when I can and I hope to talk with you all again soon so I’ll check in later.

 

Sticking to Low Carb 1 Month into P3

May 4, 2011

Hi guys! HCGChica. Today, it’s been 4 weeks now since I ended p2. I just want to tell you all that I’m doing well. I haven’t added in too much in the way of carbs because I’m noticing that I really just feel better without too much carbs I have added in a couple higher carb vegetables like peas. Basically things like peas are my carbs now for the moment, besides the yogurt and some dairy those have some carbs too but I am eating a little more fruit mostly just like before I go for exercising I might have an apple but other than that I’m still not really having any carbs. I’m just pretty happy where I’m at I feel good where I’m at and I think carbs make me tired so that’s what I’m sticking to. Anyway I feel great I have a lot of energy I’m doing a ton of stuff and can’t believe it’s been a whole month. I’m maintaining perfectly I keep staying at the same weight 146.2 or so. I did actually lose a little weight, might have just been water for like 3 days? The last 3 days or so. I was actually 145.2 and then 144.8 which was my actual LDW. I think I had been doing some particularly hard exercising or something and then today I was back up to 146.2 which is where I’ve been for like 3 weeks. It’s cool I’m doing good I’m not trying to lose weight now because it’s so much easier to lose weight on the protocol so I’m happy to maintain. I’m happy to eat what I want. I’ve been having plenty of fat, my smoothies, wish I could kick my diet coke habit but I can’t, that’s probably the one unhealthy thing that I still have every day.

I wanted to tell you guys that I made a pizza but the crust was obviously not flour and it was really good, I mean it taste enough like pizza to me. It doesn’t have the texture the crust is not the texture of a regular but anyway the taste of it to me felt like pizza enough that I probably ate too many pieces. What it was, was a ground-up sunflower seeds, ground-up pumpkin seeds and flaxseed meal. Actually combined 2 recipes so I guess I can say that it’s my recipe and it turned out really well and then I just top it like a regular pizza and it was delicious it was so good and I just cut them up into little pieces and put them in the baggies. It’s like there is 2 small pieces per day for each of us in our lunches but it’s delicious and it’s really a nice satisfying snack because you know other than that I pretty much just eat vegetables and meat and the smoothies or dairy too I guess. It is good I’ll try to maybe do a vlog about the recipes sometime and show it to you guys or at least with the recipe yet perhaps. I’m so busy lately because I’m feeling so good that I‘m just like just getting so much done. I just want to let you know that I’m still maintaining well and I’m really happy about that. I’m not sure again when I’m gonna start my next round my plans were to start around the 24^th of May but it’s coming up soon. I’m just really enjoying my exercise right now and I’m enjoying eating. I know I wanna be mentally prepared for the food abstinence. I know if I’m not mentally prepared it could be hard. It’s just going so fast that I’m not sure if I’m gonna be ready for the next round that soon so we’ll see. But anyway I just want to let you now I’m doing great, alright talk to you soon.

 

6 weeks since end of P3, Hydrostatic Body Fat Test discussion

May 13, 2011

Decided to take a longer break between HCG Injections rounds because I was feeling so great- I’ve been able to eat the amounts of healthy that I want, exercise, and have energy.  Basically I was enjoying this point and wanted to continue enjoying my new body and maintaining my weight while eating lots of yummy healthy food.

Also in this vlog I talk about the fact that my first round of  the protocol, my hydrostatic body fat test results show that I did lose a significant amount of lean muscle- at first this was pretty disconcerting to me.  However, I couldn’t worry to much after seeing how easily my body stabilized and easily I kept the weight off.  Additionally I never had that ravenously hungry feeling as if I had been starving, and I still have a high amount of lean mass for my height.  I’ve given a lot of thought as to the possible reasons for this muscle loss.  I can’t say for sure.  I tend to lean towards the idea that a very overweight person is naturally going to lose some muscle until they end up at a normal amount of both muscle and fat for their body height.  If that is not the reason, it’s possible the deviations to the protocol that I made caused excessive muscle loss (diet coke for one).  But I know this diet doesn’t cause unnecessary muscle loss when you do the protocol properly, because all of my subsequent rounds of the protocolI have lost 75-90% fat which is superb, considering the fact that we are only taking in 500 calories a day on the weight loss protocol.

 

Gluten, Thyroid, and Cytomel

June 2, 2011

As a person with Hashimotos, which is an autoimmune condition having to do with the thyroid, I have found that gluten really affects my condition and energy.  If you have any autoimmune conditions, it’s well worth it to try removing gluten from your diet completely for 3 months.  HCG is what actually got me to have the self control to actually do this.  2 or 3 weeks of being gluten-free won’t cut it folks- I tried it.  Apparently the gut lining takes 3 months to heal from inflammation- so trying to reintroduce gluten before that time won’t tell you much.  That proved true with me.   The first time I tried to remove gluten from my diet, it was tortuous and I only lasted about 3 weeks.  After reintroducing gluten (if you can call it that- it was more like just giving in to the  “give me some real cake now!!” feeling I had),  I didn’t notice “squat”  as far as side effects go.  Didn’t seem to affect me.  So I figured gluten wasn’t part of the picture for me and that the gluten-free train was being ridden a bit too hard by the different health sources out there.

Being on HCG Injections for 6 weeks and then p3 for another 4-6 weeks (I chose to stick to p3 longer) meant that I inadvertently went without gluten for 3 months.  It was easier to do this time since in the process I lost almost 30 lbs and making that huge change in my body really felt worth it.  When I tried eating a normal sized portion of gluten again following this period……well lets just say it felt as if my intestines were literally on fire.  It was excruciating.  I’ve had this experience about two more times since that first one after eating gluten, so I know it wasn’t a fluke.  Wow.  I made a discovery- my body does not like gluten!  I have stayed away from it ever since.

So, if you have an autoimmune condition, you owe it to yourself to try going gluten free properly, for the full months.  It’s not easy to do, I know!  I wasn’t able to successfully do it myself until I went on the Diet.  It worked out perfectly- lose a bunch of weight and go gluten free at the same time.

Another thing I wanted to mention is regarding thyroid meds and the protocol.  Most people who are hypothyroid take t4 meds like synthroid.  I take something very different- t3 meds, one brand known as Cytomel.  Cytomel or T3 is active thyroid hormone- it’s like taking your metabolism in a pill.  When I take the pill, it immediately works as usable thyroid hormone in my blood stream.  Being that it’s so powerful, I started to wonder if taking my t3 while on the protocol could have a caused the seeming excess muscle loss I experienced only on my first round.  I am doubtful of that now in retrospect because my subsequent rounds of the diet plan I lost a high percentage of fat on the Diet, while still taking my Cytomel/T3.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be sure what caused the muscle loss on Round 1, or if it was preventable at all.  I did have quite a bit of coconut oil on Round 1 (I no longer recommend this), and I included the coconut oil calories in my 500 calories a day, so I was taking in very few other food calories that first round (which I also don’t recommend!).  This could very have caused some uneccesary muscle loss.

Read/Watch my own hCG Diet Journey As It Unfolded:

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