How food addiction jeopardizes my Water Fast

A lot of people that struggle with extra weight (me included) very often don't eat for hunger but rather for emotional reasons. Sometimes those reasons are unknown to ourselves altogether and we just eat because food is joy, it's a reward that we deeply need, makes feel us better, loved. But food it's at the same time culprit of our troubles. It's a vicious circle that we can never get off from, there's no brain switch that would say: that's it. I had enough of you; I want to have willpower on my food intake. Unfortunately, this is a lost war that only good prolonged, extremely prolonged habits can win.

Food is my enemy and my love; I can't control my feelings when dealing with it. Yesterday I had a real pure Binge Eating episode, planned and executed perfectly. I did not have this type of episode since a while now; yes I was often overeating but never planning my binges, at least not in the past few months.

I'm thinking that the reason could be due to the refined sugar and carbs I had in the past 2/3 weeks. I had non-raw-vegan food in few occasions, including m&m's at the movie theatre and English muffins from McDonald's once I felt already screwing up everything I had achieved in the past months. Shame on me!

In these days I'm trying and trying to start a new Water Fast, and oh man how difficult is, I never had so many problems starting a Fast; sure the first 3/4 days are tough but I always came around to do it somehow. This time seems everything so hard and my belly now looks like an 8-months pregnancy! I have that moment where I hate my body.

Temptations are always around, the desire of food is always there, I'm hungry and frustrated, I have anxiety, I sleep very badly at night and nothing fits me properly now. I look so ugly and old in the mirror.

One thing that often influences me negatively with my fast is meeting people; in particular my boyfriend….that is always hungry! When he asks me to go eat something I feel bad to say no, that I'm fasting, because I know he likes to eat a lot and me too anyway, so I give up on my discipline and eat with him, happily.

But today I feel more motivated, the pictures I took of my huge belly yesterday are a great motivation; the way my face looks with all this extra fat is convincing me on stick on my fast. I also saw my ex for a coffee yesterday evening and he did not believe the fact that I did a 24 day Water Fast and he acknowledged my fat and extra weight, I know he is a jerk, he's always been like that….he likes skinny women and I'm not here to judge him, but – believe it or not – this offensive look and comment kind of helped me to find a good motivation to stick to my Fast today.

One thing I'm worried about though, this afternoon I'm going to see my parents and spend 2 days with them; I really hope they won't make me eat the usual junk food or forcing me to eat something and break again the fast. I really need to pass these first few days; once I'm in ketosis things will be easier. Also my boyfriend is already thinking on celebrating my new job in the coming week, going out in a restaurant of my choice and to have some fun together. I hope he'll understand that I finally started my Water Fast and we just need to postpone the dinner of few days; it should not be a big deal.

HCG Diet - VLCD #12 - Protein Powder for P2

Today is my VLCD  #12, the Diet is proceeding well, this morning the scale reported a promising loss and I'm now officially into the 61 Kg mark. Being over the 62Kg-s is motivating for me, although I know slowdowns and brief stalls are part of the Diet, nobody likes seeing unchanging-weight when having such a small amount of Calories.

I've to admit, today for lunch I might had way too much chicken, I had hard time to portion exactly gr on Sunday when I cooked in advance all my meat. I bought 3 packages of organic chicken breast at the supermarket and I wanted to grill and portion so I'd have ready for my salads for the whole week and more. I tried to give estimation on how many portions I will have with the amount bought, but then – since I removed lots of fat from it – I estimated a slightly smaller amount of portions. I don't think I was over that much, I'd say rather than 100gr of chicken breast I had maybe 120gr or 130gr. Cooked chicken has an extremely lower weight than the raw one, I have the proofs!

So now it's just after lunch and my stomach feels full, due to the large amount of spinach I had with the chicken too I guess, I should remind myself to be careful with my portions if I don't want to waste a week worth of HCG and hard work. I don't believe in the typical suggestion that lots of people give when dieting: "don't be hard on yourself if you cheat, it's ok", no it's not ok, I need to be disciplined, I was a compulsive eater for this reason, allowing myself to binge and thinking that would be better tomorrow….which never happened. That's the similar reason why people go to those boot-camp gym classes, to be yelled in their ears to push hard on exercise and never stop. We need strong directions on our weaknesses; well at least this is for me and might not apply to everyone.

I'm researching to buy some protein powder for my P2 Phase, I know it's not in Dr. Simeons protocol but I believe that if I find a non-fat protein blend I'd be ok with that. The reason why I want to buy Protein powder is because I know the importance for my body to have my Protein intake every day. Sometimes I find myself skipping a meal and that means skipping a Protein serving. The body gets in alarm-mode, hunting for food and it's not healthy for my metabolism and a healthy food-relationship.

I checked online which could be the best Protein Powder I could buy, and I found a brand name called Jay Robb, apparently it's a guy that makes some good tasting Protein powder with 0 Fat and very low in basically everything. I want to find it today after work, I might use it just once in a while but I thought it could be a very good habit even for my HCG P4-life Phase, learning on how to properly nourish your body is fundamental at the end.

Talking about protein I read a very interesting article about it, so true that when the body has the right amount of protein is content, that's why sometime is good having protein before bed, so you can sleep better, rather than being on alerting hunting-mode (explained the strong nap-desire after meals!).

Another thing I noticed affecting a lot my weight loss is the amount of water I have daily. If I don't drink more than 2L of water, I don't lose weight, I don't feel right either. When we lose weight we release lots of toxins that are stored in our fat cells, those toxins need to be eliminated from our system, or they will make us sick or with uncomfortable feelings. One proved way to help this elimination is drinking water, it helps a good kidney functioning so the liver (which is the main organ for the detoxification) is not busy doing double job!