HCG diet - VLCD #43 Bad Drink choices and off-protocol breakfast

I registered a small loss this morning, only 200gr but a loss is a loss, if I could stabilize my losses on only 200gr each day, I'll be happy with that till the end of this round! Definitely it's been an extremely slow round for me, wondering if my body is getting used to this very low calories diet regiment after 43 days, hopefully not - because going back to healthy Calories number will be very tough otherwise.

This morning, for breakfast, I ate something off the protocol; I had a boiled egg, a small amount of mozzarella cheese and very small amount of grapes, in addition to 1/4 of an apple. With the cream in my coffees and the rest of food that I planned to eat for lunch, I'm basically already done with my 500 calories daily limit. I will not eat my protein portion tonight, hopefully during the day I can burn most of what I had out of the HCG food list.

Tomorrow I have my first Kung-Fu class and I want to take some supplements that could help me boost my energy without fainting for two minutes run. I feel fine I have to say, never weak as I was on the Dr. Bernstein Diet, however I am aware that my body is still not receiving enough calories to maintain an exercise routine without consequences. I guess I'll see tomorrow how I feel during and after the class, but my hopes are that I will have no issues so I can keep going and burn some extra calories for better results.

Oddly enough but I can't manage to get into Ketosis in these past days, I don't know what else I should do really. I know that the Ketostix might not be accurate, since I'm drinking so many liquids during the day, but this was always the case, even during my first round on HCG. Maybe all this almond milk is affecting my ketosis; yesterday I was reading the label and the sodium content is very high, just wondering if this could be the cause of all my water retention. I also had 3 coffees with cream today, which I usually never do – but my mood is good, I'm excited for my new position at work coming soon so, when I'm excited, I tend to eat more, drink bad stuff too! I should force myself to do a day off from coffees or decaf to get detoxed of all these processed drinks. Will I ever be able to do it? Be strong! You can do it!

HCG Diet - VLCD#16 Can I change my life for food?

Another check-in today to track my progress with the HCG Diet; I registered a weight loss today or - released some fat - how they say, so everything is good.

Weight loss process is usually with a downtrend in any diet: you lose a lot of weight to start with, and then things tend to slow down. Plateaus are more frequent, cravings are stronger and general motivation is not always 100% positive like the beginning. But – as I always say to myself – that's part of the game, so I try to not lose focus on what I'm doing and for what.

In the past few days I had lots of food temptations, and literally I had to repeat in my mind: food not allowed, carbs carbs, sugar sugar. I know the effect of the sugar has on me and I don't want to go down that path, plus we all need to learn to avoid junk food anyway, regardless what type of Diet or food restriction we're following. It is a life change, contrary to other diets that I tried so far, HCG Diet makes you feel so good that you learn on loving your body, in a different way, realizing that we really are what we eat.

In the past, every time I heard: it's not just a Diet but it's a life change, I've been always afraid of what I would need to do to change my life. Hey people don't change their life from dusk to down, it requires trials and errors and most importantly: determination and commitment.

With the HCG Diet is a natural process, if done properly this Diet will reward you so much that you would be asking yourself how I ate so badly till now? The fat is not just lost, is redistributed in a different way on your body. It was clear since the first few days, that my weight loss was mostly affecting those areas where stored fat gets stuck forever, so difficult to get rid of. I took measurements after a couple of weeks and I saw no changes in areas where I did not have that much to lose and great numbers on others where my biggest problems are – never happened with previous diets.

One of the biggest mistakes that dieters do very often is thinking that, when the diet is over, we will be allowed to eat whatever we want. Unfortunately that's not entirely true. For some people is ok having a piece of cake once in a while, without affecting the results; but, for most of us, and I would include myself in the crowd, in order to be successfully on maintaining the weight loss, we just need to kiss goodbye to a lot of food, all those carbs that might trigger a spiral of overeating and sense of failure. There are moments in everyone's life when food is a comfort, it's our escape from reality, it is a warm hug, and a way to say to ourselves that we need love/attention and only there…eating the whole cake can fill that emptiness. Unfortunately 99.9% of the time we always regret doing it though, question is: why then we keep on doing it? Why I can just say to myself that I don't need food to feel better, I need a healthy body and be able to look at myself in the mirror and not feel miserable.

HCG Diet - VLCD#15 Food cravings and weight gain

Today is Monday and it marks my fifteenth day on the VLCD. Believe it or not I registered a gain weight this morning. Who gains weight eating 500 Calories a day? But this is part of any diet I guess, some days we can be a bit constipated or TOM is on its way, factors can be many. During my Dr. Bernstein Diet for me tomatoes were making me gain weight! So I'm not much worried about it, especially since I had small traces of Ketosis this morning, that means I'm still burning some fat, I wonder if drinking too much water/decaf makes my Ketostix inaccurate.

Overall I can say that HCG is a miracle hormone for weight loss. Anyone can tell me the dangers or other silly explanations on why this Diet is so not-healthy but my reaction is always: have you tried it?

Because until you actually do the Diet, experience how HCG "fixes" my binge eating desires, how not-hungry I feel every day, how energetic I am – despite the 500 Calories intake; well until that I will not accept any comment or opinion in merit.

I did the Dr. Bernstein Diet many times; he has clinics all over the country – a 600 to 800 calories diet that leaves you starving and weak all the times, that puts you in starvation mode. So if there's someone to blame first, should be all those clinics that legally leave their patients go through this type of strict food regiment.

Yesterday I went do some shopping at Marshalls and HomeSense and every time during this Diet I get so many cravings looking at the organic healthy section where they sell of those different types of nuts. Ok, I should admit that I love love any type of nuts discovered on this planet and most likely if you bring me some more from Mars, I would like those too. But apart from that, I crave a lot peanut butter, the crunchy one. So much that I cannot have any in my apartment if I want to sleep at night without suffering for the desire of eating the whole jar! Anyhow, I had a revelation yesterday thinking about this – it might be obvious for many of you but it wasn't for me, till yesterday. My cravings are messages from my body that's craving fats, since the HCG Diet is a very low fat Diet, this would make sense. I recall thinking, during my Loading Phase, to eat the whole jar I have in my cabinet, to load healthy fats, but really it didn't appeal to me, so I didn't even open it. While, on the other hand, I would have eaten 2lb of Nutella with no problem. Too bad I was trying to load clean – due to my sugar addiction.

HCG Diet - VLCD #40 and P3 on the way

I'm officially out of P2, in the 72 hours that precede my Phase 3, I might classify this stage as P3 too I guess, not really sure since I'm still on a VLCD regiment till the end of tomorrow. And as VLCD today's the #40, I cannot believe 40 days have been passed by for my HCG Diet and I'm stunned on how I feel, how my diet and weight loss was. I think it's something that you need to experience to fully understand, this is really not a Diet it's a cure, a revolutionary weight loss journey that changes perspective on how I see food and fat in general.

I'm still not feeling hungry most of the day, sometimes in the morning I've some cravings; I feel a bit hungry around mid-morning, but usually a decaf coffee or my lovely chamomile fixes the problem.  I will set my LIW (Last Injection Weight) as 56.6 Kg, I feel comfortable in this weight and I'm happy to stabilize it at this level, hoping I will never go back on where I was. Of course I still need to lose some fat but I will do it in the next round of HCG, I'm still waiting for my solution to arrive from US where I ordered. I do have at least 6 weeks of P3/P4 anyway, not in a rush definitely.

In my P3 I'm not supposed to gain or lose any weight, just let my hypothalamus reset on my 56.6 Kg, I'm a bit scared I've to admit it, maintaining is the most challenging part of all for any diet. But I also think that 40 days have passed as a breeze and I'll try to be disciplined and follow Dr. Simeons advice, checking every day my weight on the scale and trying to correct any big variation that I can encounter.

I'm thinking to introduce new food very slowly, I'll continue with P2 food for now (which I love anyway), if tomorrow my weight is going down I maybe take some fat free Cottage Cheese and some extra celery to compensate with the Calories, going forward I think I will have a better idea on how my body reacts when introducing more food.  I am aware already of some type of food that I can have easily and some other not; I need to play with this to be successful.

The list of food items that I can have on P2 is so limited that makes everything really easy, you don't have to think much: it's either A or B, not much choice here. So after 40 days having baby spinach chicken salad I still love it! I look forward every day to eat it, I like my dinners too, I was never been able to have regular dinners before, always concerning that I will see the scale going up the next day, and that how it was all the times! Now the scale goes down; I cannot believe I'm eating roughly 500 Calories per day and not feeling weak, dizzy, hungry, and grumpy. HCG is changing my life and I look forward already for my next round. I'm just wishing a smooth P3!