What I Do to Maintain My Weight After the hCG Diet
People often ask me what I do to maintain my weight after losing fat with the hcg diet. To be honest, I’m still on my fitness journey too- I have been losing fat and building muscle and amongst this, trying to figure out the answer to that question- the best way for me personally to stay at a healthy weight for my body. I feel the answer to this question is going to be different for everyone. The following is one method that I have found to work wonderfully for me and may be a good option for you.
The program is called Eat Stop Eat, created by Brad Pilon, an intermittent fasting (IF) expert. More than an expert, he is a bodybuilder and has been intermittent fasting himself for years, so he’s the real deal.
So what does a very muscular body building male have to do with most of us most likely LADIES on the hCG Diet?
After all, if you are reading my website there’s a 75% chance that you are female, overweight, and just want to lose enough weight to feel good with your clothes on, kind of not the same thing as a male bodybuilder by a long shot. However, his program is actually designed to be used by ANYONE. It’s totally awesome. Everything Brad has to say in his book is fully researched in the most comprehensive way. Honestly, I felt so freed after reading his book. It’s not about eating tons of food, and it’s not about eating tiny amounts of food. It’s about having freedom with food in the most logical way that I’ve ever heard of.
Eat Stop Eat is a fantastic way to maintain your weight with very little thought or effort. When I read his book, I felt like it was something doable long term. While spending time crafting a wonderful homemade dinner is certainly worth our time and loving attention, spending day after day counting each tiny calorie that goes into our mouths and using up precious minutes to enter it all into some nutrition program online is NOT my idea of time well spent when you have much funner things waiting to be done like reading to your kids, or taking an evening walk with the hubs. Additionally, living my life based on a strict number of calories that I can’t go above just takes the joy out of life for me- instead my life becomes about food and how much of it I can or can’t eat. Really, the whole point of this life change is to make our lives NOT about food anymore, but about more important things, like those people in your life- you know the ones- oh yeah- that wonderful bunch of people called family and friends.
If you are like me and have been overweight for quite some time, perhaps even many years, your weight may have been this silent but deadly killer to your ability to enjoy your life and the people in it. Being overweight did that to me. I had a difficult time being fully present at social gatherings or even enjoying the company of just my dear husband because I was distracted by how depressing it was that I was so overweight and uncomfortable in my body. Now that I have a healthy, fit body that I feel good about, I’m not distracted by being sad over my body anymore. But the challenge with your new body is not to allow your previous obsession with being overweight to transition into a new i’m-so-scared-i’m-going-to-gain-weight obsession. If this happens you’ll really be in the same boat that you were before, too consumed to enjoy your life. I won’t lie and say I haven’t traded obsessions at times. It’s nerve wracking when you get off the hCG Diet and now must contend with the scary question of how to keep your new body. The hCG Diet itself is actually wonderful because it trains you while you are on it to prepare healthy foods (no frozen box dinners with words like butylated hydroxytoulene- no joke- that’s a real “ingredient”), to eat a modest amount and to learn to rely more heavily on meats, vegetables and fruits, which are all healthy, whole foods for your body long term.
But sometimes keeping that balance can be difficult in regular life. We all like to think we’ll be the perfect eater from now on, but perfection is pretty hard to achieve 100% of the time.
That is why once I read Eat Stop Eat and tried it out, I was in love to put it bluntly because it meant I didn’t have to think about what I ate on a daily basis. Yes, I do eat very clean foods meaning I don’t eat fast food and I don’t bake with or eat real sugar anymore. I’m not going to kid you- you do have to make permanent long term changes to the actual foods you eat if you want to be healthy for life, but to have enough freedom to not have to count calories or constantly check portion sizes (is this dollop of oil I want to cook with the size of a dime or a quarter?) was something very desirable to me for many reasons.
You can check out Brad Pilon’s program by clicking here or on the photo of his book below:
