HCG Diet - VLCD #35 - Ready for P3

Today is my VLCD #35 – I can't believe it's been already 35 days of my HCG Diet. Time really flies and so far I'm really happy with the results, with how HCG made me feel through the whole weight loss process.

In the past few days I had very small traces of Ketosis and I thought I would stop with the injections doubting the potency of my HCG solution, but no hunger, no weakness, no cravings, having lots of water convinced me to continue with HCG another couple of days or so, I think till I actually have solution to do the injections, I also noticed that the Ketones are less visible in my urine when I drink lots and lots of water before bed, which can make sense…I think.

So today I was between small and just traces of Ketosis, I'm not that hungry but I cannot be 100% sure that is not due to my long diet journey. I do feel ready for P3 though, I'm good with my weight as per today, sure I need to lose more but I'm ok on stabilizing what I've achieved so far. Most of my dresses now fit comfortably, not all maybe but enough to make me feel good about myself.

P3 will be a challenge I already know, it will be mostly about calories because I won't be any more under the easy directions of Dr. Simeons for 500 Calories and clear and concise meal plans. I'm thinking to continue with P2 food and just increase the protein dosage, maybe a bit more vegetables here and there, but without going crazy of course. I'm finding so easy prepping my meals for the next day, it takes me 2 minutes and I enjoy my spinach chicken salad as never before, I'm even loving my breakfast orange in the morning, which is odd for me that I never been a fan of oranges.  

In the morning – with my HCG injection – I'm also doing a 30IU B12 injection, in a different spot with a smaller insulin syringe. B12 is something I learned with the Dr. Bernstein Diet and, after lots of researches I came to the conclusion that it's good for energy and to keep the fat moving, how much? I don't know, but it's a water-soluble Vitamin so drinking plenty of water will eliminate it anyway with no harm for my body.

When my P2 officially ends I will be for 72 hours still on the VLCD, but no HCG injections. I'm not worried about the 72hrs I have to say, I already experienced no-HCG effects for a couple of days during my period and I was ok, maybe some cravings but those come all the times, I'm taking L-Glutamine to compensate a bit, it doesn't do miracles obviously but somehow placebo-effect or not, it helps. The most important thing for me is that my binge episodes are not going to come not now or never. I want to end up feeling normal of not eating sweets or fatty junk food and not forcing myself not to do it.

This can only be achieved with time, the body needs to adjust on this new food intake lifestyle, if that makes sense, everything would become normal, reality, not privations, no frustrations on desiring what I cannot have.

Amazed by HCG - VLCD #2

It's Saturday today and I am speechless on what's happening to my body. I woke up a bit later this morning, had my HCG injection and went to bed again, I felt kind of hungry when I woke up, but too tired to do anything else. Good news was that my scale reported a 2Kg weight loss this morning; I thought ok, that was exactly what I gained during Loading Days so no big deal. After sleeping another 3/4 hours I woke up again and wondering if I was hungry or not, I'm really trying to listen to my body, to see how this Diet is going, and mostly because I did not find any trace of Ketosis this morning in my urine, so I was worried about the overall diet. Well I wasn't hungry – at all – I tried to drink a bit of a terrible French Roast decaf coffee, I couldn't swallow and I throw it away.

Since I had to work today I prepared my lunch and snacks to bring with me in the office, with my Vitamins and Detox tea too. Since this morning I do not care about food, I don't feel hungry but mostly I do not care about eating! I felt a couple of times my stomach growling but I didn't care much eating, it was like my brain, my desires were completely disconnected by the urge to eat, to think about food, I wanted to do other things, I felt anything else would have more relevance than "eating", and trust me for a Binge Eater with compulsive desire of food and addictions, this is absolutely astonishing!

I'm speechless, HCG gives me so much energy, I feel I can go for a run, at the gym, talking even faster than my usual (wherever is possible!), eventually I had to force myself to go in the kitchen and grab my salad, I'm trying to eat an orange and I'm not even enjoying it. It's just incredible to me how this hormone is changing my body, my mind, that's what I always wanted, I'm on a 500 Calories diet and no hunger pain, no desire of sugar, not even thinking of what I'm going to eat tonight or so. I used to have food always stuck in my mind, constantly thinking: when I'm going to eat and what I'm going to eat next. Now I don't care, I can't even believe it! It's the first time since more than a year that I didn't feel like this. During my Dr. Bernstein Diet I felt always hungry, dizzy, constantly weak and sleepy, even though the doctor told me that I should've felt fabulous all the times, well it didn't happen to me, with just Vitamins B and a starvation Diet what do you expect?!

I've to admit it, although I read so many good things about the HCG Diet and Dr. Simeons Protocol, I was a bit skeptical about it. I thought it was too good to be true, I had to try in person and have my personal opinion about it. At the end everybody is different, someone can find Dr. Bernstein Diet perfect and be able to maintain what is lost forever. Me, I wasn't and what I read in the past about dieting in general and how human body reacts on stressful diet (see my Binge Eating Disorder), made me realize that I need more a cure than a Diet, something that will set me free from this food-addiction in my mind. I hope I found it, I'm already thinking if I could just use HCG for the rest of my life, to remove from my brain the obsession of food, to help maintain this positive and healthy approach on what I eat!

Second Loading Day

I'm approaching the official start of my VLCD – Very Low Calories Diet under HCG and Dr. Simeons Protocol. Today is my Second Loading Day, I'm definitely less hungry than yesterday and I do not want to eat much, I believe is mostly due to all the fatty food I had. I'm drinking lots of water though, I guess it's a normal reaction to all this fat I'm eating, and I feel always thirsty. I had an increase of 2.1 Kg today and my BMI was the same as yesterday, strangely my body fat was just a tiny bit less, which I think it's just a machine error! I planned to check my BMI every day, together with my weight, the inches of body fat lost I might check on a weekly basis rather than daily, I don't think I would see any substantial change every day anyway. I also want to take some pictures today, which introduces the begin of the real diet at the maximum weight I ever had in my life, I do hope to see drastic changes in the coming weeks. I planned to take pictures of my body changing on average every week; I might not do it every week if I don't see big losses. From my previous experience with Dr. Bernstein Diet often I did not have any weight loss, sometime due to certain type of food that was not absorbed by my body in a good way (see tomatoes), sometimes when I reached a former weight that I had in the past; those stalls are the most annoying ones, it might take days before you can see the scale going down again. I think I kind of know now where I might find in the future a former weight, I can be totally wrong but I bet I will have hard time to go down 62Kg, 58Kg and 55Kg; I maintained in my past those values for a while so my body could remember and stop there again.

Sometimes I wonder if this new Diet and the fact that will bring me again into ketosis and starvation mode, could somehow generate new and strong urges to Binge. That's a fear for me; because they can halts the Diet and the emotional stress will be huge. Some people reported to have actually trained themselves using the HCG Diet, to stop bingeing. For me it's a new experience with the Eating Disorder consciousness, so I will have to see myself. I did though some sort of withdrawal from sugar and carbs already. I wanted to start my HCG Diet with no sugar and very low carbs intake; otherwise the withdrawal done during a 500 Calories Diet might be super tough for me that I'm a chocolate addicted.

Today I'll go to the grocery store to buy some organic vegetables and some chicken breast to prepare my meals for tomorrow. With my previous Dr. Bernstein Diet I use to prepare lots' of dishes in advance, some of them I use to freeze, but most of the time I frozen already washed and pre-cut vegetables. This time I might not do it, I would prepare my meals on a daily basis mostly. The reason why I do not want to have food pre-cooked is because I got sick of it! Eventually the frozen vegetables and my dishes tasted very poorly and I never enjoyed eating it. I could tell the difference between meals that were coming just from the stove than one that was coming out from the microwave. I might have stated the obvious here but that's ok, it still explains my point of view…

The only thing that I might prepare in advance is the chicken breast raw meat, I can buy it and remove the extra fat – if any – weight it and save in plastic bags in the freezer. That should not be too bad once defrosted. At the end the amount of food that I eat every day it's so little that a meal shouldn't take that long to prepare, why bother to do too many things in advance?! There are only 2 meals a day: lunch and dinner, and I must to say, I'm almost happy not to have breakfast. I was tired of preparing omelet during my Dr. Bernstein Diet; I'm glad I can skip altogether or just have a tea and an apple.

From Dr. Bernstein strict Diet to Dr. Simeons Protocol

Today officially starts my HCG Diet Journey. This morning, very early, I prepared the solution of HCG and Bacteriostatic water. I decided to add 20ml to the 5000IU of HCG so the solution will go up to a 0.5 ml daily; an amount easy to draw with the insulin syringe and for me more convenient in terms of margin of error. I assumed that during my course of HCG I would have some drops of solution lost in the syringes or the bottle itself, with this ratio I figured the HCG percentage lost should be proportionally less, or at least I hope so. Dr. Simeons was somehow against the use of insulin syringes due to the amount lost inside the needle itself, but I did not feel comfortable proceeding with intramuscular injections for this treatment so I will take the chance and eventually increase the dosage along the way, if I'm feeling extremely hungry.

So today is my first Loading day of Phase 1, I thought – since I'm still a recalcitrant Binge Eater – that I would enjoy this Phase of the Protocol, however it's only 9:00 AM and I'm already so full that I feel I cannot eat anything else. I doubt is already an HCG's effect, way too early for the hormone to be in my body fading my hunger. Let's see how I will feel by the end of tomorrow with my second loading Day.

I joined a Community on YouTube, there are a lot of HCG-ers out there, everyone with different weight problems, different lifestyles and so on. I must to say, most of them do not use injections but drops. Homeopathic drops are way cheaper than injections, are easy to buy and I guess also very easy to use, they need to be absorbed under the tongue. I personally do not believe in drops, either regular HCG drops, even less the homeopathic ones (HHCG). It's scientifically proved that this type of hormone cannot be absorbed by the body if taken orally, it's like the insulin: it needs to be injected every day. The homeopathic one are clearly without any trace of HCG and can be purchased on Amazon….some people buy even at grocery store (absurd to me). The drops do work, because of course a 500 Calories regiment cannot fail with whatever product you are using. But the whole point of assuming HCG – which I mean real HCG hormone injected daily – is to preserve muscle mass, to rebalance the hypothalamus, to reduce the abnormal fat without affecting the metabolism. Any other Diet with this small daily amount of Calories is sure to fail, because done to the expenses of normal fat that will be regained quickly once extra food is introduced.   

Why do we play with our health to save few dollars I'm not sure, I'd rather take just Vitamins B6 and B12 like the Dr. Bernstein Diet than unknown homeopathic drops sold at Walmart.

For my personal experience what most count is a realistic maintenance, it's clear that portion control and weight monitoring is an essential part of every maintenance program, but with my previous round with Dr. Bernstein Diet I had so many problems introducing even a small amount of food, the regaining process was extremely fast, my metabolism was compromised and I had no muscle strengths for the whole duration of the Diet. That alone tell me that there was something wrong with what I was doing. I do not want to make the same mistake, but people are hard to convince, we prefer to believe in a magical drop that will resolve all our fat-problems – forever! Which it never happens obviously.

Dr. Bernstein Diet: the missing piece!

In the past 2 / 3 months I did extensive researches online about my Binge Eating Disorder, Dr. Bernstein Diet, and dieting in general. Eventually I came across another Diet using injections: the hCG Diet or a.k.a. Dr. Simeons Protocol. After looking more deeply into this protocol I found out that Dr. Stanley Bernstein (whom Criminal Records from his past are quite impressive!  – see Wikipedia) actually discovered first Dr. Simeons protocol during a congress in Las Vegas in 1972.

He started to use hCG (a hormone produced by pregnant women) in his injections and he opened many clinics for weight loss across the country. However by the end of 1987 approximately, hCG was banned by Health Care regulations for weight loss, so he stopped to give hCG and he "switched" to his B-Comp solution of Vitamins B6 and B12.

As normal reaction I had lots of questions about this hormone and the effects on a weight loss.

Dr. Simeons was a British doctor that did lots of researches for obesity, he worked last years of his career in Rome for numerous patients, continuing his studies and helping people losing weight, and – most importantly – maintain it. Apparently even Lady Diana went to his clinic once in her youth!

Dr. Simeons wrote a brief document called: Pounds & Inches (you can find it online for free on many websites). This document, which I define as illuminating to me, gives a precise description of obesity, about 3 types of FAT and in general how to lose and maintain weight resetting our hypothalamus (hopefully this is the right word).

What he discovered, working in India during the war, was that malnourished women were still giving birth to healthy babies, so he started to look into this exceptional phenomenon of human body and he found out that this hormone hCG was produced in huge quantities during pregnancy. It was the signal to the body to use any abnormal fat reserve in case of undernourishment, in order to save the fetus.

If we imagine an undernourished diet with this hormone in our system (and no baby of course) the result is a loss of only abnormal fat and not lean mass. The weight loss can be as fast as 1 pound per day with no hunger.

Reporting some of Dr. Simeons words from Pounds & Inches is extremely important to understand the 3 kinds of fat that we have:

"The first is the structural fat which fills the gaps between various organs, a sort of packing material.

The second type of fat is a normal reserve of fuel upon which the body can freely draw when the nutritional income from the intestinal tract is insufficient to meet the demand. Such normal reserves are localized all over the body.

But there is a third type of fat which is entirely abnormal. It is the accumulation of such fat, and of such fat only, from which the overweight patient suffers. This abnormal fat is also a potential reserve of fuel, but unlike the normal reserves it is not available to the body in a nutritional emergency. It is, so to speak, locked away in a fixed deposit and is not kept in a current account, as are the normal reserves."

 

What hCG targets during its effect is releasing abnormal fat and ONLY abnormal fat, because this is the FAT that is not promptly regained after a diet.

Hence the missing piece of Dr. Bernstein Diet: hCG

(Which I believe is a sort of scam, unless he has hCG in his B-Comp is feeding us just with B-Vitamins!!)

Again from Pounds & Inches:

"…the patients begin to look weary and drawn, feel weak and hungry and any further loss of weight achieved is then always at the expense of normal fat. This is not only undesirable, but normal fat is also instantly regained as soon as the patient is returned to a free diet."

That's WHY most of the patients regain weight extremely fast after almost any Diet, just looking at the food will make you gain weight!

I experienced this problem first; I was gaining weight with an extra apple a day! Sure, portion control, calories and weight watching should always be part of any maintenance program but a strict diet, without a hormone regulator will only alter the metabolism and gaining weight back will be absolutely guaranteed. I lost my period for months after only 6 weeks of Dieting with Dr. Bernstein.

People on Dr Bernstein diet experience hair loss, dizziness, lightheaded, weakness and so many side effects that you just wonder how long your body can handle starvation without any sort of reaction.

I'm not suggesting to switch one Diet for the other one, just as my opinion, go on YouTube and look for hCG – you will find countless videos of people using injections, drops, spray of hCG and be amazed of this Diet. 

Dr. Bernstein Diet and my Binge Eating Disorder

It's been a year now since I started my first Dr Bernstein Diet. After meeting my goal in October 2014, I gained back slowly everything I lost, and some more. Apparently this is something common for these types of diet – and now I know exactly WHY.

One important detail – that's not mentioned in the Dr. Bernstein instruction Manual – is that when you put your body into a starvation mode, chances are that you will develop a Binge Eating Disorder.

Binge Eating is a normal instinctive reaction of your brain to survive, to compulsively request all those nutrients that you removed with your strict diet for so long, that you craved for so long.

Binge Eating affects more people that you would believe.

At the begin of my maintenance I started to have episodes of binging, at the time I didn't even know what was a B.E.D., I thought I was stupid and incapable to control my insane desire of eating 8 muffins in 3 minutes or an entire package of chocolate chips cookies. I thought my sweet tooth and my chocolate addiction were the reasons I could not control myself. Well that wasn't the reason.

Lots of people assume that Binge Eating Disorder is caused by an emotional state, that for sure there's an emotional trigger that makes you binge so compulsively and with no control.

If for some people, that could be true I guess, most of the times it's not. I tried to analyze any emotional reason that could have caused my binge attack, each time. But there was no pattern; once I was sad, once I was happy, once I was tired, once not….nothing that could relate that nonsense uncontrollable behaviours. I deducted that it was only my brain screaming for food, it was just a habit that my brain developed after all I put through with my Dr. Bernstein strict Diet.

The sad part is that not only I spent lots of money with Dr. Bernstein Diet, I kept on going back to the clinic - because weight becomes an obsession when you have a Binge Eating Disorder, I kept on starving my body and frightening my brain, I kept on gaining back pounds on and off and on again, not only that but what more depressing is that I now have an Eating Disorder that kills me inside as person, I don't enjoy food in the same way, I don't think about eating in the same way. I have a food obsession that is taking my days away from what should be living a normal and healthy life.

If someone tells you that you won't feel hungry during Bernstein Diet, he/she is lying. I was constantly starving, feeling weak, dizzy all the times. That was the real feel of what starvation is. How can I possibly think that my brain does not get affected by this state of my body? We are perfect machines, being in Ketosis activates parts of your brain that we usually don't have in alarm (if taking a normal food Diet) – your brain is asking you for help to survive, hence it will start to binge as soon as it can.

I'm not here to give any advice in regards of BED, since I'm not a doctor and I'm still a binge eater myself. I've to say – from my personal experience – that realizing and accepting that I've an eating Disorder helped me to fight it back. Now I know that, with the time, I will be able to overcome this disorder. I'm practicing on breaking the habit on Binge Eating, talking to myself that it's not me compulsively desiring to eat so much, it's my irrational brain, and I stay still, waiting for the impulse to leave. Sometimes are better than others, I'm strong and stubborn so I'm not giving up, I'm conscious though, it will be a long journey.