Water Fast Day #8

Thursday – Water Fast Day #8
2:00 PM
Yesterday I had the chance to go 40 minutes to the gym for few laps in the pool. It doesn’t seem much but, when Fasting, is a lot, well at least for me; I know of people exercising and doing strenuous activities even further into a Fast, but I tend to become weaker and weaker with the days, it could be a lack of electrolytes, I’m not 100% sure.

I’m still on day #8 though and my energy level is very good, I really don’t feel that I had no food for a week, except for my arms; they are – as usual – the weaker point in my body. The swimming was nice, I had no breath, maybe for my anxiety but most likely because I’m out of shape, but I want to keep on going, I enjoyed after all.

This morning my weight was exactly as yesterday, not even 1gr less! It might be due to the gym and water retention, I don’t know. I checked my Ketosis and it was good, with a purple Ketostix reporting 80md/dL of ketones in my urine, that’s comforting. I have also a little machine to check my body fat and my BMI, but I don’t think it works very well, it seems just doing a calculation based on my weight and age, not really evaluating my body fat; but I guess it doesn’t hurt keep on monitoring through the Fast.

Yesterday I started to add a bit of lemon juice to my hot water, I’m not drinking too much really so I think it will not impact my fast. But this morning I had a sense of acid feeling in my throat after drinking some hot lemon water, and after having a good 2 cups of it I had to rush to the washroom, I’m guessing this lemon is not really appreciated by my GI tract and it’s rejecting it right away! I’ll try to be more disciplined from now on and stick only with water. This weekend though I’m still with the idea on doing a Dry Fast, the weight loss is way faster and I cannot stress this thing more.

Today I feel that my brain activity is improved, I talk differently, I make more elaborated sentences, even at work; for me this is a sign of being deeply into the Fast, getting all – or almost all – the benefits of abstaining from food. I do miss food though, I guess it is such a big part of our lives, a pleasure that it’s impossible to miss. If someone would tell me that in the future we will feed ourselves with pills, I would be highly disappointed; I love to cook, I love to mix new ingredients and trying new recipes, who doesn’t?!

Talking about food, one thing I’m strictly avoiding at the moment is shopping for food, to save in my pantry. I have enough already and, I know I love to shop, but I should not even think about food for now; my journey is still so long that I would own the entire isle 5 of the grocery store if I keep on buying stuff. Plus, looking at food, watching videos, buying ingredients, it’s unhealthy for me when fasting; it creates a stomach-food-cravings expectation, if that makes any sense; so when I’m done fasting the wolf’s appetite will come and hit me so hard to delete completely all my sacrifices fasting – which I definitely want to avoid this time around. God help me!

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.