My first week on Maintenance

I'm almost at the end of my unofficial Maintenance Program, yesterday I had my single weekly injection and today my weight was somehow less than what I was expecting, could this be connected with my injection? I was happy for my weigh-in anyway.

I'm not really following the Maintenance Program to be honest; I'm still more towards the strict Diet with an open mind on my vegetable intake. Saying unlimited vegetable does not seem realistic for me, I don't think eating 5 avocados a day or 2 Kg of zucchini will help maintaining my weight, quite the opposite. Everything should be in moderation and I think they should have a limit for the vegetable even during the Maintenance Program, maybe increasing it with the weeks but not let people go nuts eating Dill Pickled or cucumbers all day, and trust me when you've been on a Diet for so long you want to eat whatever it's allowed to.

Yesterday I had a couple of concerns to tell to the nurse, since I went down with my Potassium I'm experiencing dizziness and I had light headache for the whole weekend. Asking the Dr. Bernstein doctor is pretty much useless; he comes back to me always with the same answer/question: why don't you ask your family doctor of why you have this dizziness, headache, weakness feeling... Why are you here exactly? And why am I even talking to you? Those would be my questions to him.

I went downstairs in the PATH today to look for some herbal teas and I finally found a whole package of my Celestial Black Cherry Berry Herbal Tea, I use to find it only in a multi-flavours package, now I've the whole deal, I also purchased a full package of blueberry herbal tea from the same brand. I'm getting addicted to these herbal teas and they are delicious, I don't really need anything else to drink in the morning, well actually through all day, they help me a lot with my desire of eating a snack or something.

I decided to go for brunch this coming Saturday as well, I am actually thinking to go for brunch every Saturday from now on, if I don't see sensible weight gain during the week, I'd like to be always in the 53-something Kg for my weight and keep it to this level for the whole Maintenance Program and obviously even after. This is the weight where I feel more comfortable with. I thought if I can manage to have this weight for the whole week I can reward myself with an unhealthy brunch with French toast, Pancakes and sunnysideup eggs with a cup of coffee!

A month is passed for my Diet

My latest updates on my Dr. Bernstein Diet are all positives. I'm almost there in terms of goal weight, although in the past 3 days I didn't change not even for one single gram but it's ok, I don't want to pressure myself too much. I'm having one or two more Jell-Os in the evening – it is just 5 Calories at the end but it's my only treat for my extreme-sugar-tooth – and sometimes I put a bit more vegetables than the allowed amount, not too much like 10/20g more. I'm still eating less than 600 Calories per day at the end. But hey, this believe it or not could affect my weight loss.

My weight is down to 55.2Kg (124.4 lb based on the scale at the clinic) as per this morning. I can see myself skinnier in the mirror, sometimes a bit too much, I guess my eyes were used to see my big butt and now I'm kind of deflated, of course the gym would help eventually. I have only traces of ketosis lately, I'm not sure if it's because of the low amount of fat to lose left, or because I'm having so many herbal teas during the day. They really help me to fight the hunger, I'm discovering a total new world with those herbal teas; my favourite are the berries' ones.

Last weekend I was really busy and basically I had only a good breakfast and a good lunch, both Saturday and Sunday I had supper with just a bunch of sliced zucchini warmed up in the microwave, oh well of course my 2/3 Jell-Os – even if I'm dying I will never miss my Jell-O!  I had both days 100g of Cod Filet with mixed vegetables for lunch, I lost lots of weight in those 2 days, it might be the fish, it's very light and I was also pleased of the taste of my meals. To bring it in the office it's a bit difficult for me, I'm not really crazy of the idea of Microwaved Cod Filet, neither of the day-before-cooked Cod Filet, so I've to stick with something easier to warm up and bring at work. If I could only work from home sometimes, it would help me to manage my meals in a better way. Let's hope for better days.

Since I didn't reach my goal weight yet, today I purchased another 2 weeks of the strict diet – so for $310 I'll have 3 injections per week. Hopefully I'll be done soon; I won't lose my injections in case I reach my goal within 2 weeks timeline. Today I asked the nurse to do the injection on my hips instead of the abdomen; lately I didn't see any improvements on my belly fat, so I decided to switch somewhere else where needed, although the injection was not nearly painful, now I've my right hip all sore.

Sometimes I think on how will be my Maintenance program and how my body will react with the food amount change. I hope I won't gain weight or I would need to start again the strict Diet. At the begin I thought I would only need the single month of Maintenance included in the Plan and after that I could go forward by myself with all the insights I learned with the Dr. Bernstein Diet. Now I see things differently. I don't want to lose what I achieved with so many sacrifices, if this means staying in Maintenance for 1 year, I'll do it. But I'll decide on my way I would say, roughly I think I'll be on Maintenance a minimum of 3 months.