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See all the hCG interview episodes
These are in-depth conversations one-on-one with hCG ladies where you get to hear their whole weight loss story and the tips that helped them succeed.

Read short written hCG testimonials
These are short testimonials of ladies who’ve written in their hCG diet results to me for quick motivation.

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Janie is one spunky lady, let me tell you!

She has quite a story to share. Her low was pretty low – being at the point where she had decided if she found herself in a position of needing emergency help, she just wasn’t going to call 911. After deciding to give weight loss one last try to save her life, she’s gone on to lose over 120 lbs in just one year!

Janie’s Weight Loss Results With hCG Injections

• Starting weight: 279 lbs
• Current weight: 156 lbs
• Age: 62 years old
• Height: 5′ 1/2″ – she hopes to lose additional weight with future rounds still.
• Total weight loss to date: 122 lbs!!!
• Inch loss on hips alone: 16.5 inches
• Inch loss on waist alone: 17 inches
• Inch loss on her neck: 4 inches (!)

A funny little tidbit I’ll mention briefly is that her hairdresser, whose been doing her hair for over 10 years, claimed her head was even smaller.

Medical Testing and Body Fat Testing After the hCG Protocol

Another little tidbit: “My blood tests prove it. It’s like night and day and my regular doctor, my primary care doctor, they don’t endorse hCG but he just, he’s balled over. Whatever you’re doing keep it up. That’s as far as he’ll go but really I’m sure that he understands that its working and it could work for other people.”

I do these interviews a couple months in advance of publishing them these days- during the break, Janie went and had a hydrostatic body fat test after losing more weight with an additional round- her results are nothing short of astounding- check it out for yourself:

 As you will see, her current body fat percent is 23% – for a woman, this is considered lean, when compared to these charts:

Her method of timing on the protocol is different than most, but she has achieved SO much and saved her life in the process. This is a story you really shouldn’t miss.  She is currently so motivated and dedicated that she hasn’t cheated once in all 6 rounds.

She’s still on her journey at this moment and I’m looking forward to catching up with her again when she gets to her end point.

Download Episode 18 Transcript – PDF

(there’s about 5 minutes missing at the beginning where I do a follow up with Janie after she had a hydrostatic body fat test).

Or read it right here on the blog:

Rayzel: Hey guys! Hcgchica. Welcome back to the hCG Interviews. This is actually Episode 18. I can’t believe I’m getting close to 20 episodes now and of course, if you’re new to these interviews. I like to interview everyday people, just all of us are everyday people and how we’re making a success in our own way with the hCG protocol. Today, I have Janie with me. Of note is that she’s lost over 122 pounds now with the hCG protocol. You’ve probably saw her current before and after photo at the start of this interview and if you’re listening to this on podcast, you can actually go to the blogpost that goes with this and see her photos as of now and hopefully when she finishes, cause she’s still continuing her journey, we could follow up with her and see where she ends at her ultimate goal. Welcome Janie, how are you tonight?
Janie: Hi there.
Rayzel: Good to see you. We had such a lovely chat. I always do 2 calls when I do these interviews cause I get too nervous to do it in one. We already talked about everything, and we have a lot of fun stuff to talk about today. Why don’t we start with some basic stuff? Tell us what weight you started at, where you are currently, how tall are you? That kind of stuff.
Janie: Well, I started at—I’m even embarrassed to say it—279.5 pounds. In my life, I’ve been over 300 so I know what that’s like. I’m 5’1” and right now I’m at 156 and 9/10th so I’ve lost a 122 ½ pounds.
Rayzel: Wow. That is so amazing.
Janie: And I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Rayzel: Yes. Just those facts alone are so encouraging. A lot of people tell me that, like you, I’m so embarrassed to tell where I started but you wouldn’t believe how encouraging it is because a ton of women are starting at weights around that weight and they’re feeling embarrassed but when they hear people come on and share that and then how far they’ve come. It really helps people to know that this can be done.
Janie: Yeah. The other stat on this is that my age, I’m 62, so everybody always says is that older people can’t lose weight. That is absolutely not true and I’m proving it right now. I mean, I’m pushing up to 65 and I’m losing weight like crazy on hCG.
Rayzel: That is so awesome. I have to say, really, probably a large portion of my audience on hcgchica.com are in the menopause years and beyond. There’s definitely a younger subset too but a large portion of them are in that age group. Honestly I see them do very well, I think partially because regardless of whether they lose slower or not, they do lose weight and the biggest thing is I feel like there’s a level of maturity where there—cause this is a hard protocol, right—I feel like because they have a certain level of maturity, they tend to do better long term with it because they’re able to be mature enough to handle it.
Janie: And also by the time they’ve gotten into this, they’ve probably tried every single freaking diet on the face of the Earth.
Rayzel: Exactly.
Janie: It’s like nothing really ever worked.
Rayzel: Yeah, and at that point it’s like, “What do I have to lose”, you know. Share with me now just a little bit about your inch lose and your change in clothing size cause that’s a huge amount of weight so share that.
Janie: The last I measure which was about 3 or 4 weeks ago. It was 67 ½ off. And the only thing I didn’t measure which is really dumb was my thighs. So I supposed if I would have measured them, it would be in 70s as far as inches. Clothing size is like 30-32 or 4x and now I go over to Costco and buy Medium stuff and going in on the store and buying much smaller sizes and I still tend to try and get my stuff loose because I’m still a little self-conscious so when I wear anything that’s tight I kind of get freaked out a little.
Rayzel: Actually I got a really good tip from another interview. It’s not up yet but she felt very awkward at first too like changing what she wear and her mom made the suggestion to wear the clothes at home first without anyone around, wear it around the house, and so she started with that. After that she moved on to going out in public where there were strangers, where she didn’t know anybody. So she would do that and then at the very end it was like wearing the clothes around the people she knew which is what she was most nervous about. I thought that was a great tip and that helped her make the transition.
Janie: When she went out among the strangers nobody pointed at her, “Ahh, what the hell.”
Rayzel: So I thought that was great. And I think you had mentioned to me as far as inch loss, that’s a huge amount of inches all together. You have come and given me a little bit of a break down. Which I wanted to share like you said on your hips which now is even more, because you’re on a current round of hCG. You said on your hips you have lost 16.5 inches and your waist 17 inches. I had wanted to bring a tape measure but I forgot it, but come on guys! That’s like a foot and a half, half of your waist.
Janie: Yeah, it’s amazing. I held a lot of my weight in my stomach area like a lot of people do. That’s been really nice because of how I can move now and what I can even do.
Rayzel: Would you say that you have like an apple shape before you started?
Janie: Yeah, sort of. I would think an apple shape, not even a pear shape because my legs weren’t big but I did have a lot here from here down to my hips is where it all amazingly was. Although my feet have gotten smaller, my shoes are loose.
Rayzel: That’s so funny.
Janie: Yeah. I used to spend a lot of money on shoes, so that’s gonna be a real investment for me.

Rayzel: Also you mentioned something that your hairdresser said. What was that?
Janie: She told me that my head was smaller and she has been doing my hair for over 10 years and I figured well, if anybody would know that, she would and she could tell, cause I go to her every 6 weeks, she could tell, she really surprised me when she said that. But, it makes sense because my neck measurement that I’ve lost 4 inches off of my neck. That makes sense to me that I would lose some off my head as well. Well I’m wearing this and I couldn’t even get this around my neck before. I couldn’t wear stuff like this before.
Rayzel: Really. That really helps us visualize it. Look at how lose it is and you couldn’t get it around your neck before.
Janie: I couldn’t wear it before. I would always have to wear long necklaces that could get around me.
Rayzel: That is so crazy. That’s just so exciting. II think you even said your forearm; you lost like 2 inches off of each forearm.
Janie: My forearm, I can wear like very small bracelets now. This is a 6 ½ inches and it does {inaudible} that I’m wearing it. I’m just doing all these new things that in my whole life I could never do.
Rayzel: That is amazing. We’re going to get into that history too in a little bit. It’s a good reminder too to you guys watching to take your measurements before you start because like she said, she wish she done her thighs but you got a lot of the other stuff there’s things you would never expect like your neck. I lost an inch off my neck. Like you said wrist, forearms, there’s spots you don’t always think of that we would have that and you do and it’s so encouraging to see that. That’s awesome.
Janie: Watch it going down.
Rayzel: You’ve done hCG protocol a little bit differently as far as how you’ve carried it out. I wanted you to share what you’ve done and why you like this method of doing it for you.
Janie: Well what I’ve done, I’ve gone 30 days on the shots and 30 days off and I know there’s all this stuff about waiting for 4 weeks then waiting for 6 weeks and whatever but for me doing it this way alternated all the way along, it has not reduced my weight loss, I don’t think. I have a hard time waiting for things and I weighed so much to begin with, so I figured; hey since I’m so heavy right now it won’t hurt me lose weight faster. It just will not hurt my body. So that’s why I’ve decided to do it this way and the medical people that are giving me the hCG didn’t have any problems with it. They were kinda talking about 6 weeks early on but I kind of ignore that and then they didn’t sort of bring it up a lot. But it hasn’t hurt me at all. I’m not tired, my hair isn’t falling out. I haven’t had any weird side effects from this whatsoever. I think it just depends on how you feel about it but you can change the protocol a little bit to suit you.
Rayzel: I wanted to thank you for sharing your personal experience with that because it is true. I do have a couple of articles which I’ll link to for anyone who’s wondering. I’m talking about the basic breaks that are usually taken, can you sometimes extend a round of hCG, when might be a good idea, when it might be a bad idea. It really does vary and like you said when you start out at a very heavy weight for your height. There are so many health implications with that. It’s kind of which one is better, is it better to stay really heavy a lot longer. Probably not. So in your case you used that information along with my other interview who had lost a 127 pounds with hCG. I forget which episode it is right now but you can find it in there. She did the same thing. She ended up doing longer rounds and shorter breaks and I just want to mention for everyone here. I don’t think it works for a large portion of people because a lot of us are not necessarily that overweight and there are other issues involved.
Janie: Right. If you’re not really really heavy, then it’s a whole different ball game, I think.
Rayzel: Yeah and you do have to be careful with your adrenals and your thyroid and all that. But in certain cases, it has worked out very well. This other lady has past her 2 year anniversary from maintaining her weight loss. So you can see there was success in the whole story there. That’s why I like to share this. 122 pounds, it’s just huge, in a year.
Janie: Blood tests approve it. It’s like night and day and my regular doctor, my primary care doctor, they don’t endorse hCG but he just, he’s balled over. Whatever you’re doing keep it up. That’s as far as he’ll go but really I’m sure that he understands that its working and it could work for other people.
Rayzel: Yeah, so that tells a lot right there. So just to clarify for everybody since we’re talking about this, so you did 1 month on, 1 month off for the last year, right?
Janie: Correct.
Rayzel: So basically for 12 months, out of that 12, 6 of those months you were taking hCG, doing a low calorie diet and in between you’re like eating P3.
Janie: That’s correct. While I was on the shots, the first couple of months I was eating 500 calories and I was having my piece of Melba toast and all that. Then again, I’m kind of an impatient person, so after the first 2 rounds I went down kind of 375 calories a day. Dropped the Melba toast, you know. That hasn’t hurt me one little bit.
Rayzel: Thanks for sharing that too. Actually, for anyone else who wants to know more about that, well, I have a whole post on can you eat less than 500 calories on the diet and I’ll link to that and again, the answer is it varies.
Janie: If you’re smaller, probably, it’s not a very good idea. You start when you’re smaller, so it’s off-balance.
Rayzel: Right and a lot of it have to do with your hunger too. It’s not really necessary to eat more than you’re hungry for but anyway I’ll post a link to the article on that cause it kind of gives you both sides and how to figure that out.
Janie: Yeah. And listen to your body, if your body is really hungry well then maybe that’s not enough. You just got to be good at listening to what your body is trying to tell you.
Rayzel: Definitely. That’s really the ultimate key. Along with that, when you’re on your rounds did you find yourself cheating a lot or how strict have you been with kind of sticking to what you have decided on while on it.
Janie: I can honestly say that I have never cheated. I’ve never had the disturbing thing happen where I’ve put on several pounds cause I went off of it and to the point where I do not keep taking supplements are fat based like the fish oil and all that. I drop them all when I start shots but then when I’m off the shots I take them again. So just it all depends. The reason I think that I can stay on the program like this and not cheat is because currently I don’t have stress in my life to speak of. I’m retired, I’m alone, I don’t have a partner living with me with stress on people, even if you get along with the person it’s stressful.
Rayzel: Right, when they’re eating ice cream in front of you.
Janie: Yeah. That’s the other thing is people wanting you to join them to social activity and I don’t have to do that. When I’m with family, the occasions where I am, I just do my own thing and if they try to start conjoling me to eat, I just tell them, you’re not gonna be able to do that with me so don’t even continue. I’m not gonna get off the program cause that’s how bad I want to lose all the weight.
Rayzel: That’s really encouraging. You’ve been able to kind of stand pretty strong when you’re in gathering.
Janie: I take my own food. I make my own Thanksgiving, I have my salad and my chicken and everybody else is loading up on all the other food. It’s like you have to think in your mind and switch your thinking that food is not important. That health is important. If you can make that change in your mind about food then you won’t go in the fast food restaurant and you won’t eat the bag of chips and all of that.
Rayzel: That’s good to hear cause you know a lot of people will tend to feel pressured or guilty in a gathering and feel pressured to kind of give in to that. You kind of mentioned a little bit how you don’t give in. Is there anything further? How do you think about it in your head so that you don’t feel guilty about it? What is it that you think to yourself?
Janie: I just think that it’s not an important thing. That if I’m there physically with the people and I’m talking to them and interacting, what does it matter if you’ve eaten the cake or what does it matter if you’re eating all the other stuff that they’re eating or you’re in a restaurant and everybody’s ordering something. What does it matter if you’re just having a little salad? You’re still being social if you’re still there and the thing that I always like to think about is that nothing tastes as good as thin feels. I love that quote. I’m sure a lot of people have heard it and it’s so true.
Rayzel: It’s true. When you eat the enjoyment is so temporary. It’s literally like 10 minutes. I remember when I used to over indulge, there definitely was a very strong feeling that felt good while I was eating it but after 10 minutes, after that, you’re left with how you know you’re doing things that are hurting your body and that doesn’t feel good.
Janie: Plus I know that I can have my loading day or 2. I’ve cut that down, I don’t do 3. But I know I’m gonna be able to eat the things I can’t eat now or don’t want to eat now. I can have my piece of cheesecake that day. I can have a piece of pizza that day, whatever I want. That sorts of helps me on a little bit.
Rayzel: Cool. So it’s like you have those designated days and then you move on from that. Awesome. I wanted to ask you, can you share with everyone your story about the low point that you reached before you started the hCG protocol?
Janie: What drove me to look for this is what you’d say is I had a quick triple bypass and I contracted MRSA. So I was in the hospital for about 3 months, I had 7 surgeries and they were trying to clear the infection out because that’s pretty bad when it’s hard to kill. It’s in my sternal area where I had the heart bypass. Anyway, I got out of the rehab after going through all that for months and I was very very heavy and I was walking through my apartment from the bedroom into the living room and I was short of breath walking that short distance. Then when I wanted to get on the scale, the scale is like an inch off the floor but it felt to me like I was stepping up on a 6-inch stair riser. I just thought this is ridiculous; I can’t go on like this. I figured if I have a heart attack or something else happens to me because of my condition right now I’m just not gonna bother to call 911. That’s exactly how I felt and that was the decision I made. But I’m the type of person always kind of always on the optimistic side, so I thought, I’m gonna try one more step of the Atkins diet and I already tried that few times during my life but anyway I was looking around Portland for somewhere to get a B12 shot to help me with the Atkins diet and I stopped in at this place that gives the shot and the guy behind the counter asked me if I’ve ever heard of hCG. I went back and Google it, I’ve never even heard of it before so a year and a week to my 1 year anniversary I’ve never even heard of it but when I researched it on the internet and kept reading more and more, I went back and signed up and it was like a no-brainer to me and I’ve never looked back. Now I would call 911.
Rayzel: Good. I’m glad. I just thought that was such a touching story to be at such a low point.
Janie: That’s a very low point.
Rayzel: And how it’s completely turned around for you because of finding something that works, just like you said.
Janie: That’s right.
Rayzel: That’s cool, because obviously it feels like you’ve done a 180 really because you went from feeling hopeless and kind of ready to give up to once you’ve found something that actually worked it’s like you were on it. You were strict. You are doing this. You’ve lost 122 pounds in 1 year it’s not even like kind of {inaudible} [Junie?]. You’re just like full steam ahead because it works.
Janie: The whole thing about losing a pound a week? To me that’s insane. I’ve never weighed that low.
Rayzel: Technically when you started you would assume how many pounds you needed to lose? Like a 150 or more? Like you said for losing a pound a week, 4 pounds times, I don’t know it wouldn’t be very much weight a year. It would take like 4-5 years.
Janie: It would take almost 3 years to lose the weight. It would be crazy. I could never, I mean, I can’t stand that. I need to choose faster.
Rayzel: Well thankfully there is this so that is the nice thing about that. You’re diabetic right?
Janie: Yeah. I kind of have an issue with the whole diabetic thing because this whole thing about Type 2 Diabetes for very overweight people, I don’t believe this diabetes. I believe it’s something called the metabolic syndrome and the whole thing about the diabetes is you’re taking a lot of medication which doesn’t work, you’re taking insulin which doesn’t work because you’re holding all the fat on you and everybody’s making a lot of money selling you all this stuff but if you just were able to lose the weight, everything normalizes and for you people who know about A1C Test. When I started this, mine was 11.5 and now it’s 5.5. So, it’s like the blood sugar is normalize down to below where they like to see it which is around 6.
Rayzel: That would be like considered normal?
Janie: Correct. That would be like you’re not a diabetic.
Rayzel: Okay. Awesome. Wow.
Janie: Either I would consider I’m in remission or I consider, and I am really consider that there’s no such thing as Type 2 diabetes and I just needed to lose weight which now the blood test shows that.
Rayzel: That is true; I think that’s a pretty known fact that losing a lot of weight when you’re diabetic does seem to get rid of the condition.
Janie: That’s why I think there’s no such thing cause how could that happen? In type 1 diabetic your pancreas is messed up. You fix that by losing weight but the other thing is just a problem with lifestyle and not being able to eat the modern current diet.
Rayzel: Yeah and it’s encouraging to know that doing something like that especially if we can find a protocol that works can really change your health and not weigh—cause sometimes it can seem like you get overweight and you have whatever is considered diabetes and stuff. If you feel like there’s no big way to change it drastically you kind of feel like well just live with it.
Janie: And if you live with it, you’re having more and more neuropathy in your legs because you’re screen up all your capillaries and everything and I’ve had it for probably 35 or 40 years being high blood sugar, damaging my body and I do have problems with neuropathy but that’s just price I’m paying for having the bad {inaudible} this time. So now at least I’m not damaging myself anymore. That process has stopped.
Rayzel: I’d like to ask you what you do during your months off hCG. Tell me how you eat, have you just tried to stabilize or do you lose additional weight during that time. Have you done that?
Janie: I’ll have to [inaudible] by saying that I absolutely hate working on the kitchen or fussing around chopping up food, cooking it and all that. I just don’t like it. But then I can’t eat frozen food because that’s really bad for you and that’s what I used to do. Right now, when I’m not on the shots I have my 6½ ounces of apple in the morning that is my breakfast. For lunch I have 2 scrambled eggs with butter, I have an ounce of cheddar cheese and I have 3 cherry tomatoes. I scramble up the eggs, the cheese on it and I have the cherry tomatoes. That’s my warmth or hot food for the day basically, and I love that. For dinner I buy meat that is very very pure, does not have any additives, it has no salt, it’s made by Boar’s Head and I eat from about 5-6 ounces of their no salt turkey breast.
Rayzel: That is a pre-cooked meat, is that right?
Janie: Yes. Deli meat.
Rayzel: So you’re able to just cut it up and eat it.
Janie: I order it like I order a pound of one kind and a half pound of the other kind and they slice it up and then I just measure everything. Everything is weighed. I know exactly what I’m eating. Anyway, I have that then I have some pickles or some cucumber and I have some cherry tomatoes, 4 cherry tomatoes.
Rayzel: Not 3, 4 huh?
Janie: That’s right because I count for every single calorie. And then I eat some 2% cottage cheese and I spice that up with some hot curry powder junk like that. And that’s basically my dinner so that’s still my largest meal which someday I want to like flip that out with lunch and make dinner a smaller meal. So there’s no snacking between meals for me. Nothing. That’s just about what I eat in addition to drinking all the water and it’s enough food. It’s a modified Atkins because I do have the fruit. It’s probably about, how much I eat, it’s probably about 800 or 850 calories. I could bump it up to a thousand of 1200 but I like to lose a pound a week when I’m not on the shots.
Rayzel: So you’re eating about the 850 in order to continue losing weight during Phase 3.
Janie: Just a pound a week. But I could just keep going.
Rayzel: It’s good to know that somebody who doesn’t like to cook can find a new or healthier way to eat that doesn’t involve too much cooking cause basically you’re really only cooking the eggs once in the morning, right? As far as pans and hot stuff.
Janie: For lunch the only thing I eat that’s cooked, and while I’m on the shot nothing is cooked.
Rayzel: So how do you do that? I want to hear about that now.
Janie: Okay. Well while I’m on the shots I eat 6½ ounces of apple in the morning. So basically, every day during the whole year I’ve been eating the apples in the morning and for lunch I use [Hostel?] can chicken breast, it sounds horrible but it’s actually pretty darn good, it’s all white meat and it’s not– it’s canned in water. So anyway, I use that 3 ounces at lunch with 2 ½ ounces of lettuce, organic lettuce that I get at a safe place, and apple cider vinegar, that’s my lunch. For dinner, I have yippee! 4 ounces of chicken and 3 ounces of lettuce and then I have 4 baby pickles, gill pickles and 4 cherry tomatoes and my apple cider vinegar is the dressing. That’s it for the day and that’s about 375 calories. And every single calorie I [inaudible] calories like if the cherry tomato they look like they’re bigger than normal I’ll just add in another 5 or 10 calories because I count for everything. I write it all down in my food diary all the time. My loading days I write down in my food diary which is disgusting because I’m stuffing myself but—
Rayzel: I’m curious how many calories would you say you’re eating on your loading days each day.
Janie: Probably 3000 or 4000. I eat a lot of-
Rayzel: It’s good. People sometimes ask about that. The only round I tracked my loading calories was my final round cause people do ask that. Sometimes people don’t realize what it means to load specially with the fats so I finally tracked it in my last round and it was about 4000 calories each day that I did. I did 2 days.
Janie: But I’ve cut down. Now I only do one day because I loaded one time for 2 ½ days, I gained 10 pounds.
Rayzel: Yeah, that’s a lot.
Janie: So now when I load it’s 1 day only. Anything I want to eat and I try to not go nuts but I gain about 4 ½ to 5 pounds just in that one day and that’s why I’ve cut it down because I don’t want to gain any more than that.
Rayzel: It gets a little depressing if it takes too long to get off, you know?
Janie: Yeah, because then you’re using up your shots and you’re not. There’s no new fat coming off and you’re losing up your time.
Rayzel: Usually in general people will gain like 3-5 pounds loading in 2 days and usually you get that off in like 1 or 2 days and I think that’s reasonable. But yeah on occasion when someone gains like 10 pounds and it take them like a whole week or even 2 weeks to get it off, it’s like, Ugh, that would be, I wouldn’t want to do that.
Janie: When I gain 5 pounds it gets me 4 days to get it off sometimes even 5 days. I guess I’m real slow loser that way because it drives me nuts.
Rayzel: Yeah cause you want to be making new headway.
Janie: Yeah, new fat off.
Rayzel: From what you’re telling me you’ve been really strict about counting all the calories, only eating a certain amount because you have a certain goal. How have you been able to be so controlled about that. About the calories, you know if you feel your tummy growling, I mean, how do you handle that? How do you think of that mentally to stick to that so strictly?
Janie: Mentally I sort of flipped my mind around to not feel that I have to reach for food every time I get hungry or every time I get stressed out. So, because being a stress eater, which a lot of people are stress eaters, a lot of people. That’s what they do, that’s what I did. The minute that I felt any kind of stress, happy or not happy, I reach for something to eat and put into my mouth. I was eating all the time and not thinking about it. Now, I’m conscious about what that is and so when I do get hungry or I do get stressed out, I just tell my body, calm down, forget about it. It’s gonna pass. I actually speak to it and it does. It passes in about 15 minutes and you can read all sorts of different books or on the internet where people will say it last for maybe 20 minutes and then you’re really not hungry anymore. As long as you’re not ravenous and I have never been ravenous. So having a more stress free life because I don’t have to answer to an employer is very helpful because working not all jobs but a lot of jobs are extremely stressful.
Rayzel: It’s nice you kind of have the training ground that you’ve been able to do now so that if in the future you’re working or you’re with someone or there is more stress in your life. Hopefully, it’s like those tools you’ve learned and now in a more peaceful scenario you’ll be able to carry with you.
Janie: And plus if you research a little bit. Your hormones are driving you. There are a couple of things that people can look up. One of them is a book, now the book is called the Leptin Diet.
Rayzel: Do you have it there? You want to show it? That way people can see how it looks like?
Janie: You can get it on Amazon, it’s only about 7 or 8 bucks specially if you get it used. But this is by Byron Richards and he’s a clinical nutritionist. He doesn’t really give you an actual sort of diet in here. He kind of does but the big thing is he talks about Leptin which is a hormone they just pretty much discovered it the last 10 years or so and it runs your whole body. And it explains how the hormones interact. Another thing that you can do without buying any book is go on YouTube, pull up Dr. Robert Lustig and he’s series is called The Skinny on Obesity. Neither of these guys ever mentions hCG, unfortunately. I don’t know why. They’re bald –
Rayzel: Too risky.
Janie: Yeah, I guess. But they’re both fascinating as far as talking about the hormones and being driven by your hormones and what happens when you eat. What happens when you don’t eat? Why you can’t lose weight. All of that kind of stuff. So it’s really good background information.
Rayzel: Good. Thanks for sharing that. I do find which is why all my blog post are so long. People either love them or hate them but it’s that thing where I feel until you get the details of what’s going on in your body and why and how to address it. A lot of time you’re just not gonna end up making a success of a big problem you’ve had in life which for a lot of women, the gaining weight and keeping weight off is a huge problem and I feel that it’s so valuable learning like this research, like how things are—what’s happening.
Janie: Start reading what this guys’ are writing and you’re applying it to yourself and saying that’s why that happens all the time and here is what I can do to stop this from happening and it’s just so motivating and freeing to be able to know why in the heck you feel like this and why you want to do this things that are sort of mindless things.
Rayzel: Often times there is that kind of scientific actually reason behind it that you can actually adjust so it doesn’t feel so hard.
Janie: Exactly.
Rayzel: I wanted to ask you real quick a little question about dosing because as I talk about on my blog there’s a general range of dosing that works for most women for the least hunger and not everyone knows that dose really does affect hunger on hCG. You could be starving on hCG and so many people will email me and then I’ll kind of try to be “this is what I might do base on what I do based on what you said” and then they’ll feel so much better. However, you’re a little different, you ended up being in a very different dose that normally would feel pretty bad but you felt good on. Tell me what dose of hCG you’ve been taking and why you feel it might have been good for you and not made you hungry.
Janie: When I first started this I was totally clueless about anything, about hCG and about the dosage because I never saw any information out there really about that. So the doctor who prescribed it for me prescribed 325ius for the first round and he prescribed 325 for the second round. So they gave me prefilled syringes and I just took what I was supposed to take and I felt good and I lost weight. Then they gave me my 3rd prescription and it was only 300 and I thought What? Why did they reduce it? But then I figured, oh they probably did because I’ve lost all this weight. My 3rd round, so I took the 300 and it worked okay, that was for the next 4 rounds I was taking 300 and I wasn’t hungry. So this time, this is the 7th round, I’m experimenting a little bit and I’m taking 175 because when I mention 300-325 people go, Oh, it’s so much. So I got, Oh dear, I better reduce it, so that’s what I’ve done and I feel like I’m hungrier now that I’ve reduced it but I’m not so hungry that I’m not gonna stay on the program so I guess I feel like well, what the heck, I’ll do the 7th round at 175 and just sort of extend it out a little longer and then see what happens with this round. So I’m kind of doing a big experiment.
Rayzel: Right. And I had told you, cause originally, wow, that’s higher than usually someone would be ravenous but at the same time obviously you’re not hungry and you’ve lost a hundred pounds so keep doing what works, so—
Janie: This is just all another thing that’s individual.
Rayzel: Yeah. And you have mentioned too cause I was trying to figure out why that was because it is true most people, for anyone out there who’s new to the whole dosing part, most women feel the least hunger somewhere between 125iu and 150iu which is like half of what she was taking or less than half, so a very tiny dose and some people have the mistaken belief that more is always better like the more you take the less hungry you’ll have or the more weight loss but really it’s both too high and too low a dose that will cause hunger.
Janie: And the people that were giving me the 325, nobody ever said to me, okay, if you’re hungry on this dosage we can adjust it. Nobody. So I didn’t even know that it was like actually an option. I was just going along like a dummy just doing my thing and I didn’t have any bad side effects.
Rayzel: That’s the thing is that it seems like actually it was the right choice for you because you didn’t feel hungry cause to me that’s the biggest indicator that the hCG’s doing what it should in your body and actually accessing your fat because you won’t be feeling that annoying hunger. And you know even though most people do better on a lower dose, there are occasionally people who will email me and I actually have this same problem with my own mother. We tried almost every dose under the sun but always less than 200iu we just could not seem to find a dose that she wasn’t hungry at. And on occasion I’ll get an email from someone saying the same thing. So it appears that in some cases people actually either need an even higher dose than would normally—
Janie: Especially if they’re really large.
Rayzel: Yeah, could be. Also you mentioned something about that you’re very—you have a high tolerance to drugs in general.
Janie: Yeah, like if I’m needing pain med and somebody gives me a prescription for Vicodin, forget it, I might as well be taking aspirin so I’m very resistant to medications in general and I don’t seem to get hooked on things either. I don’t have the part of my body that gets addicted to things like cigarettes and stuff like that. I don’t know. I think that’s part of it maybe is that I am pretty resistant.
Rayzel: I just thought that was pretty interesting, if there’s anyone else who you’re trying the regular dosages and you’re really starving and maybe you have a high tolerance to drugs or something, you never know, maybe you should try something way higher because perhaps it’s like your body maybe it’s not up taking the hCG in the same way so it requires more.
Janie: And I also think it’s not harmful to take a higher dose, I don’t think, because I think it’s just a hormone that is used for nourishment for a fetus and your body that doesn’t need it all, I believe that your body is just going to excrete it so it’s not gonna save it up in your cells. It would just—if it doesn’t need it.
Rayzel: Can you tell us a little bit about your history with how you became overweight? Were you overweight most of your life or for just a number of years?
Janie: Yeah I was kind of like a pudgy fat little kid. I was heavy. Heavier than I ever should have been and I have a weight problem ever since then for my whole life and I did lose weight, one time, it was a good weight loss but I was going to a doctor and getting, it was like an Atkins type of program and he was giving me B12 shots once a week and I was able to lose on that but then when I stopped going to him, he retired, there was no other doctors doing that kind of program cause it was frowned on those days. This was back in the 70s. So then I gained it all back and then some. For my whole life I’ve tried Nutrisystems, I’ve tried all, everything you could think of, Weight Watchers, Atkins, [the whole bit?], Zone diet and nothing has ever worked for me or maybe it started to work but then I just couldn’t stay on it, something like that. It’s been a whole life time of resenting food and resenting the fact that I couldn’t be normal, what I would consider normal. It’s not really true, everybody’s normal but not being able to do things or being too self-conscious of myself because I’ve always been that way too. People right now treat me entirely differently when I go to the store or I’m walking in the grocery store or I’m in a clothing store or anything. People treat me so differently n ow. Like when Im cheking out, they make eye contact. People around me will actually look at me and joke with me like strangers will and before, everybody just sort of averted their eyes and never made eye contact and it was like they were afraid I had some horrible disease or something that I shouldn’t be there. It’s very very noticeable to me the difference in the way I’m being treated.
Rayzel: Yeah, cause you’re coming from two different total places so you can tell.
Janie: O yeah, and I’ve come from it so quickly that I keep pinching myself now because people are so nice to me.
Rayzel: Like friendly?
Janie: Yeah. Just nice. It’s too bad that it’s like that. It is crying shame that it’s like that. But that’s the reality.
Rayzel: It’s kind of nice, now that you have that perspective and feel that difference. It probably helps you know how you want to treat people. You don’t want to perpetuate that.
Janie: So now if I see- well I kind of was like that before but now if somebody is near me and they’re not- you know they’re heavy or they’ve got a disability or something, I say something to them and I make eye contact because I know how it feels to be ignored. It does not feel good. And there’s always something nice you could say to anybody. You can find something to say to them. “Oh I like your blouse” or you know, you could say something.
Rayzel: And it will mean so much more too to people like that because you said they deal with probably on a daily basis almost, the negative thing, so to have someone go out of their way and say something positive probably does a lot more for a person like that than to someone else who always get a positive feedback.
Janie: Exactly.
Rayzel: That’s good. I’m glad you shared that. Actually one of my other interviews she mentioned the same thing. I think she went from like 200 to 130 or something, about 70 pounds difference. She said she noticed the difference between how people, like you said, basically just they notice her and they talk to her whereas before it was like she was invisible.
Janie: Yeah. They were hoping that you wouldn’t talk to them because they didn’t want to have a thing to do with you.
Rayzel: Yeah. That is so interesting. So you’ve done how many rounds now total? 6 or 7?
Janie: I’m on my 7.
Rayzel: You’re on your 7th.
Janie: This 7 round it’s gonna last me about 40 or so days.
Rayzel: So where is it you’re hoping to end up? You see you’re 5’1”, you started at 279, so where are you hoping to kind of end up around in the end.
Janie: Well, my original goal was 130. Now it’s around 120-125. And then I’m hoping to have some skin repair done. I plastic surgery if my budget will allow that because I’ve already got a lot of stuff here to be self-conscious about and the rest of me is horrible so I’ve got to go in and get an estimate just like you have to go in and get an estimate for your car or something.
Rayzel: How much extra would it cost to do a lift over here? I feel like that’s like the icing on the cake for people that have lost a huge amount of weight because it’s true, like you said, the more you’ve lost the more excess skin there’s gonna be and so sometimes it can probably take away a little bit from your satisfaction of your results but being able—
Janie: Especially the part that shows like this and the upper arm, I can’t even wear anything without sleeves down to my elbow right now because people would be running for cover if they saw my upper arm. And I know that my skin will eventually fix itself but because there’s so much of it and I’m already 62 and I’ve lost the elasticity it would take like 50 years for my skin-
Rayzel: To right itself- It was funny the other woman that I interviewed that lost the 127 pounds, I think she joked about how someone had made a suggestion because she was showing how she had excess flab in her arms like in the wings- and yeah she suggested like to work out like pump iron like somehow and she’s like I have to have Arnold Schwarzenegger arms in order to fill up all that skin. Not something a woman wants.
Janie: To tighten up the skin.
Rayzel: And it would only fill out a little bit. You don’t want to have muscles those big to fill it out. That’s really exciting prospect and I think it’s a neat too like you said your original goal was a little higher and you kind of changed it.
Janie: Now I see that it’s possible to get into the 120 mark. It’s very possible since I’ve already gotten as far I’ve gotten.
Rayzel: Yeah cause it’s true when you first- I kind of did the same thing when you first start the diet, all you know is the history with all the other diets, so you’re kinda like not wanting to expect too much and you’d spent so much of your life being overweight that you’re like hey I’d be happy to just be a few sizes smaller again. But then it’s like Wow, this works so good I could actually get to where I really want to get.
Janie: Yeah, get down to size 12 and then you’re thinking I can get down in maybe 8 or 6, you know, whatever. If you got small bones you can start talking about 2s and 4s.
Rayzel: Yeah cause it becomes very doable once you see.
Janie: But to get into a size 4 probably I’d have to have the plastic surgery cause I have to get all that skin removed.
Rayzel: Yeah that affects that too. Well, cool, I’m really looking forward to checking base with you again in several months maybe and seeing how things are going and for everyone else.
Janie: I’ll keep you posted.
Rayzel: Yeah, that sounds really good. Thanks for being on here today with me.
Janie: Thank you very much.

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