Back in Phase 2, trying new cooking (using the new Vitamix), down 16 lbs in 11 days, WOW!

Well, so far this has been the fastest round I’ve ever had. I had some setbacks over the last several months due to surgery, stress and other issues, and put back the weight from the last round (but am still down nearly 60 lbs from my original weight).

So, decided to do a 30 day round this summer, and started on the VLCD on June 20. Dropped weight like *mad* and am still losing around a pound a day. Crazy!!

What changed from other rounds where I only ever lost like this the first couple days, then settled down to .5 lbs a day or less, with lots of little stalls? Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m eating the same foods, drinking the same water, and right now, not really exercising besides some tai chi and a bit of TaeKwonDo (but done slowly), due to my arm still healing from the last surgery, and now the *other* elbow giving me trouble! Dang, falling apart at 49, LOL.

I’m not worrying about my losses, just going with it. It is what it is, I figure, and I imagine at some point will slow down. Meanwhile, I’m loving this!

Decided I was bored with my usual pan cooked chicken, fish or beef with garlic, Cookies seasoning, and a touch of onion. So, dug out Tammy’s book ‘The hCG Diet Gourmet Cookbook’, and paged through it. Settled on Spicy Mustard Chicken and Indian Spinach. Sooo good.  Spicy and tart, with a bit of a kick. A really nice change. My daughter (who is doing protocol with me) wants to try Cinnamon chicken tomorrow.

Meanwhile, she has discovered strawberry-lemonade smoothies (strawberries, juice of a lemon, handful of ice, and some stevia to taste, put together and whizzed into a sorbet in our new Vitamix 5200. Then she’s making orange sorbet with an orange, some ice and some stevia, again in the fabulous Vitamix! This thing is a blast……

So, are you seeing the you behind your eyes yet?

In all my experimentation and long breaks between rounds, I’ve discovered one thing: The protocol works as written. If you’re messing about with changing the foods or time frame or shortening time between rounds, don’t. It won’t work and you’ll lose all the hard word you put into this.

I have had the devils’ own time losing the last 25 lbs. I got to 160 (which is fantastic for me, don’t get me wrong), and started doing short 23 day rounds, so I could fit them into my schedule. But, I’m several rounds in, and after losing 3 rounds to The Great Coconut Oil Disaster (using coconut oil in Phase 2, BIG no-no) by not being able to stabilize, I found that short rounds (at least for me) are the same thing. I can’t stabilize on short rounds. I lose fine, but then when I get to Phase 3, it just creeps back on. Sad, but I’ve learned a lot about how my body works.

The nice thing is that my first two rounds, in which I was 40 day rounds, by the numbers, losing nearly 60 lbs, is a *HARD* reset. I never go above that, no matter what I eat or drink. So it works. But there *are* variables. And they *do* work differently for people. Some do ok on hCG, but not on homeopathic. Others are the opposite. Some can do longer rounds, or shorter rounds and do ok, others not. Some ‘get away’ with small cheats or mistakes, and others can’t. It all depends on how your body is doing, what is going on, and how you react to these variables.

The bummer thing is that you’ll never know what you can ‘get away’ with until you get to Phase 3 stabilization. You’ll almost always loose well, even with small cheats. But then, you get to the 21 days of no sugar, no starch, and suddenly, you can’t maintain. And no amount of correction days will get you back there, it just creeps back up on you.

So let me give you a word of warning from someone who has spent 2 years using herself as a human guinea pig on this protocol: If you really want to lose the weight in the least number of rounds, and want to keep it off, follow the protocol. If you don’t feel like you can stick to it on your own, or don’t feel comfortable figuring it out, get a coach. It’s worth it when you consider all the money you’ve tossed away on diet pills, diet plans, and other failed attempts to get back to the weight you want.

If you decide you want a coach, drop me a line and set up a free exploration appointment to see if you think coaching might help. I’m not perfect, but I know a *lot* about what doesn’t work and how the protocol affects us. I can help you figure out the foods that work and the ones that don’t when you’re done and need to find the right way to eat for you. I can cheerlead you and and push you and give you the tools you need to succeed for life at getting to and staying at that weight you’ve been chasing all these years.

Each round is different…and nothing worth doing is easy!

Round 3 was much the same as Rounds 1 and 2, for P2. P3 was ok too….but not P4. This P4 is interesting (in the Chinese curse sense). I went into it ok, maintaining at about 1.5 lbs about LIW. But my hair was falling out, in hanks!!

Alarmed, I started on Thomasina’s suggestion of 2 L-Cysteine 500, 2 MSM 500, 2 Biotin 1500, and 2 Thymus 1000. After a couple weeks, the hair loss slowed, but didn’t stop. It was still coming out pretty heavy. Eek! Was I going to go bald? I started casting about, changing shampoos and conditioners, and worrying if there was an underlying problem, maybe my thyroid.

Meanwhile, Michele on hcgdieters mentioned again that she had found her hair loss stopped *dead* when she started taking Pro-Gest from Emerita, a yam-based natural progesterone. I’ve seen elsewhere that it also can help with nasty TOM, and I get the screamining meemie cramps every month. So I ordered some from VitaCost.com.

And so, after this arrived and I started taking it, my weight started slowly creeping up……I did a steak day, dropped 2 lbs, stabilized for a couple days, then crept back up again. Now what? What the heck? I’m eating all the same things as last round, exercising more, sure, but the eating was increased to compensate. And contrary to popular belief, muscle does *not* weigh more than fat (a pound of fat and a pound of muscle weigh the same, a pound), so it couldn’t be that, could it?

With this running through my brain on an endless loop, and the weight creeping on slowly (though my clothes still fit the same), I stopped off at Harmony Farms in Raleigh after my Tai Chi class today. My personal trainer, Fred Blango, who is beating me into shape, gave me the ‘prescription’ to meet Miss Nancy, the naturopath at Harmony Farms.

I dropped in to the shop, because I needed more hair color (my Surya henna job was faded badly after 3 months), and asked to speak to Nancy. I told her about the Pro-Gest, and  how in past times, hormone scrips had caused me to gain weight, and was the ProGest causing the problem? We discovered that I’m a ditz, I’d been dosing it once a day, and its supposed to be twice! So I’m upping that to what I should have been doing.

She also asked me about what I had been doing when I was last at this weight. It didn’t take much thought, that was my freshman year of college. I went a bit bananas then, drinking, eating junk, doing drugs, and gaining my freshman 20 (not 10 like most people). My body was riddled with junk and crap, and if I wasn’t high, I was drunk. Not a Good Thing. She pointed out that likely the adipose fat I was reaching now, was very toxic (I’ll bet it is, too!!). And that toxicity was causing my body to retain water, and to react oddly because of the releasing of the toxic nature of the fat from then. I’d never considered that!! But it makes sense. Funny how your body is like a tree, you can tell the story of your life in the ‘rings’ of fat that are exposed as you lose.

So, long story short, Miss Nancy put me on Green Food, with probiotics, and told me to increase veggies and fruits and lessen my fat intake, to allow my body to detox and cleanse itself, as well as resting it while it deals with this ‘episode’ resurfacing from my past. I also made an appointment with her to meet next week to review my current supplements and eating, for testing, and to go foward into the next 2 months of P4 before tackling Round 4.

Miss Nancy had heard of the protocol, but wasn’t familiar with it. I gave her some hCGLoss cards, and asked her to look it over, as she gets a lot of folks asking about it in her store.

I’m excited! Finally someone who listens, and can help with health issues and is willing to look outside the box most doctors live in!

Finally, the before and the (nearly) after!

Before starting the hCG protocol - January 2009. Weight: 211 lbs. Stats: Neck: 15in, Bicep: 14.5in, Forearm: 11in, Chest: 42.5in, Waist: 36in, Hips: 45in, Thigh: 29in, Calf: 16.5in Clothing size: 18

I’m 3/4 of the way through my journey to become not fat. I’ve lost 54 lbs of the 75-80 I wanted to lose, that I packed on eating bad foods, making bad choices, and generally through not caring enough to DO something about it, for nearly 30 years, and went from an 18 to a size 10. Now, I am in maintenance until after the holidays and plan to do my 4th (and hopefully last) round in January 2010. With luck and perseverance, I should be down to my goal weight by mid-February, overlapping my first round with my last, a fitting ending, I think.

I’ve come a long way from my old fat self. Along the way, I’ve finally decided to pursue a black belt in martial arts, and have taken up TaeKwonDo. To fulfill my need for a more Zen approach to life, I am also taking a class in Tai Chi. And now, a friend who is a personal trainer needs a website, so I am trading one for training. So the plan is to be a HardBody by the time the last ounce of abnormal fat falls away!

I can’t wait, since my 30th high school class reunion is coming up the summer of 2010 in northwestern Michigan, and I will be seeing all my brewing buddies at my mead competition in March in Boulder, CO.

And my daughter is graduating high school and headed to college next fall, so I’ll need all my strength!! LOL…

This journey this year has changed me body *and* mind, and has mushroomed from a quest for physical health and wellness into a total mind-and-body makeover that stretches from losing weight to quitting my profession and striking out in an entirely new direction for a job and career. Where? Don’t know yet, but the hunting will likely be interesting, and maybe even fun.

This search for personal fulfillment has changed the way I see *everything*. As I have spent the first 2/3 of this year reading thousands of emails in the groups and in my email from others trying the protocol, I am struck with a number of things I see others talking about as they embark on *their* hCG journey.

This is me after 3 rounds (no cheating with non-procotol foods) in October, 2009. Weight: 157 lbs. Stats: Neck: 13in, Bicep: 12in, Forearm: 9.75in, Chest: 38.5in, Waist: 31.5in, Hips: 37.75in, Thigh: 22.75in, Calf: 15in Clothing size: 10 54 LBS GONE, AND 40.25 INCHES GONE FOREVER!!!

Some of these things find me gnashing my teeth in frustration, because guys, it just isn’t that hard!! I’m in serious ‘tough love’ mode here. so if you’re offended that I’m being honest, then stop reading now.

• If you keep asking what foods on P2, read the protocol! That should be your first step, before *anything*. It tells you what to eat, in simple terms! Don’t expect others to do your research, this is *your* health. Get involved!
• If you are not sure what to eat in P3, read the *labels* on the food, and check http://www.nutritiondata.com for information on foods that don’t have labels. If you see carbs, and subtracting the fiber give you a positive number, that is sugar and/or starch. Phase 3 is no sugar or starch. So asking if you can eat peanut butter, or hummus or drinking low fat milk (lots of sugar!) is out. Take charge of your food!! Know what you’re eating! You can read more about P3 on my P3 page.
• If you’re crying that you’re not losing fast enough – what the heck? Have you *looked* at how much you’ve lost? Have you *measured* yourself? How much did you lose in that period *before* on other programs? Please! Get over yourself, stop freaking over this, and just stick the to protocol. It will come off when it comes off. You’ll have stalls, small gains and slow downd. That is LIFE. You didn’t get FAT in 40 days, did you expect to get thin in 40 days?
• Wanting to know if you can eat Miracle Noodles/broccoli/insert non-protocol food here on P2? OK, the answer to that is *NO*. If it isn’t on the list, don’t freakin’ EAT it. Are you in this to lose, or are you just messing around? If you’re serious about this, then stick to the protocol, it works the way it is. STOP TRYING TO CHANGE IT if you don’t already know *for sure* that whatever won’t affect you. Because dude, I’m here to tell you that even if you lose eating Miracle Noodles, it might cause a reset problem in P3, or even mess up another round later! Unless you are at least as knowledgeable about this protocol as Dr. Simeons, non-protocol foods are a risk. Are you ready to take that risk and the consequences (possibly gaining it ALL back plus some?). Later, when you can’t stabilize because you just *had* to eat mushrooms or Miracle Noodles or whatever, you’ll be back and wondering why. And honestly, if you can’t stick to a simple (if a bit boring) protocol for 40 DAYS, how the heck do you expect to maintain your weight after this for 40 YEARS? Did you think this was magic and you could just keep eating like that? Did you think that your eating habits would stay the same? Um, no. It doesn’t work that way. There is no magic pill. Getting thin, and staying there, is HARD WORK. So if you’re serious, stop messing around and do what you need to do. You won’t be sorry you did.
• Cheating? WHY???? Dude, if you can’t resist temptation for even a few days, you are NEVER going to get and stay thin.  Don’t whine about how you can’t stop yourself or couldn’t resist that pizza. Please. That unwillingness to just suck it up and say NO to pizza is how you got here, how you got FAT. Thin is WORK. I don’t cheat. No matter how tempting. I’ll go hungry before I eat off-protocol. Why? Because I’m damn-shootin’ gonna not EVER BE FAT AGAIN. No matter *what*. Even if it means being hungry. No pizza, wedding, family gathering or whatever is worth jeapordizing my long-term health. There will be other opportunities to eat loved foods, or have family gatherings.
• Hungry? I see so many people saying ‘I’m so hungry! How will I ever stand that?’. OK. Have you ever gone weeks without food? Seen your belly pouch out because you haven’t eaten in so long? Wondered where your next meal was going to come from? I’ll bet not. Most US citizens haven’t a *clue* what it is to be hungry, truly hungry. Myself included (though I did end up in the hospital for starvation once). We have plenty to eat here. So much so that you, me, and most other people (over 70%) in this country are *FAT*. The protocol, done properly, will suppress your hunger. It takes a few days, sometimes a week. But it happens. Suck it up and drink more water and tea. You won’t starve to death. The hCG is pulling 2000 calories a day from your fat. And you’re not *that* hungry. Not really. That is the FAT talking. That is your pizza habit talking. That is your HABIT OF EATING talking. So suck it up. It will stop. And you will lose. But only if you DO IT.

OK. I had to rant a bit. We are a bunch of coddled people in this country, and we have *no idea* how good we have it, compared to so many others. You’re reading this because you want to lose weight. That means you have it good enough that you GOT FAT. Does that hurt? Its not meant to, and I’m not dissing on you, I’m making the point that you have it pretty good, and are so well off that you got fat (whether that happened because of food, drugs, etc., you had access to stuff that people in most places don’t), and now have to lose weight because it is affecting your health and well being, yet you gripe about being hungry, and don’t want to make the commitment needed to do this 40-day process, so that you can offload the fat.

Wake up call, folks. You got fat. You did it. Not McDonalds, not the government, not the medical community. You. And now you have the chance to fix that, to undo the damage that your body has, and to get back to a healthy weight. Are you strong enough to do it? Are you willing to jump in and do it *RIGHT*?

Only you can answer that question. But be prepared to face a lot of truths in the process. I have, and many of them are ugly truths. But I think I’ll come out of this a better person, knowing myself more completely.