The best day ever!

Ok, that may be overstating it, but it was an amazing day.

First, I am officially at 17 lbs lost, in 17 days. That was awesome.

Second, H won tickets to an EXCLUSIVE concert by the Barenaked Ladies. Now, anyone who knows me knows I LOVE BNL. There were "supposed" to be only about 50 people in attendance, for this special 1 hour acoustic concerts. Well, there were more, but I hardly cared.

I had heard about the concert on the radio. To win tickets you were to text the radio station. H did it about 100 times. I did it twice. She won. Go figure. But when they called to get her name and confirm, her phone died. I died a little, too. I thought we weren't going to get in. We headed to Salt Lake City early, just in case I had to beg our case, but it wasn't an issue. They had us on the list. We were early so we hung out in the lobby. Just a little later, a big bus pulled up and out came Ed and Jim. Oh yeah! They hung out and chatted with us and took pictures with us (I'll post them later. They're still on H's camera.) They stood there and chatted with us as the grips unloaded their gear. Oh yeah!

When we were finally let into the room, it was clear more than 50 people were there. Apparently they always invite more than the room will hold because some people always don't show. Not this time. Everyone invited showed up. Well, yeah! It's BNL!

Anyway, since there weren't enough seats, H and I gave up our second row seats to go sit on the floor in front of the front row. It was awesome. I'm a fan again.

They were being interviewed for the radio show and they played some songs. They were so good--we didn't even miss Steve, the jerk who got arrested for doing drugs with his play thing girlfriend. Good riddance. Anyway, it was AWESOME. What a good day!

Update and a night out cheating

So it's been a while since I've written. I've been subbing and it is hard to post when I sub. Anyway, I needed to post, mostly for me to keep track of where I am on this fun ride.

Today is the two week mark on the phase 2 of the diet. I have officially lost 14.5 lbs in 14 days on the phase 2 of the diet. Not too shabby. I was able to put on a skirt I hadn't been able to wear in a few months so that was good, too. I am beginning to be able to see the results which helps with the resolve.

The biggest problems I have faced in the last few days have been somewhat comical. When I sub at the junior high, lunch is only 30 minutes, not enough time to go home and get lunch. So I figured I had to take my lunch with me. But I don't know where the teacher' lounge is so I was going to have to eat it cold. So I sat my tupperware of Hgc chilli on the heater in the room. Lame, I know, but it warmed it enough that I didn't choke. I was afraid I was going to melt the plastic and have chilli all over the heater. Ewwww.

The next issue I had was water. As I don't know where the teacher work room is, I also don't know where the teacher's restrooms are. So yeah, I got a bit dehydrated. But it was worth it to not have to use the student's restroom. A girl has to think of these things!

Next, since I can't use conventional moisturizer, I went and bought an oil free moisturizer (Neutrogenia). After using it for two days, I broke out in a rash all over my forehead and under my eyes. I am VERY allergic to it (and most other moisturizers). I hurried my sad face to Richard and had him start the allergy treatment for it, but it is going to take some time before it is gone. In the meantime, I am back to being Bran Flakes Face again--with an icky red rash to boot. Fortunately I can wear my glasses which covers it up a lot.

Lastly, I had a major hurdle to overcome. It was my Father-in-law's birthday this Friday. All the kids took him out to dinner. I was so torn as to whether I should stick with the diet or not go or just throw caution to the wind and eat like nobody's business. I read online about cheating and everything said it would set me back at least 3 days and I would gain a few pounds. I really didn't want to do that but I also didn't want to miss the party. Also, I am pretty dang tired of the same old food and I wanted a break. So I decided to throw caution to the wind.

We went to a Chinese restaurant so I figured I should be able to find something that was full of veggies and that would be okay. As I looked at the menu, I started feeling guilty. I thought I should stay as close to the diet as I could so I ended up ordering a vegetable egg foo young. I figured an egg was allowed occasionally. It was so good! So full of flavor (gosh, how I've missed the flavor!). I picked out the broccoli and zucchini and ate that, too. And I drank a lot of tea since that is allowed on the diet, as well. I ate as slowly as I could and only had one of the two egg pancakes. Heaven!

So the next morning I got up and got on the scale. I was so excited to see I had still lost .5 lbs! Woo hoo! Happy day! So now I am back on it 100% but a little invigorated that I could control myself enough to choose wisely, enjoy every bite and not overdo it.

Apple Day

Lost .5 lbs

Apple Day sounds wildly fun. If you reach a plateau, you may choose to do an apple day. On the apple day you may eat 6 large apples whenever you feel like it, but nothing else. You only drink water to slack a strong thirst. This will break your plateau.

According to the information I read, this is really just a psychological treatment for the plateau. Plateaus may be caused because your body is breaking down fat cell walls or it may be because you are retaining water. If you are retaining water, the apple day will break your plateau as you are not eating anything with salt in it and it encourages your body to let go of the retained fluid. At least that is what the information I read said. I may try it, if I get desperate. But as for now, I am not. I do feel like I've been retaining water but it may also be hormonal. Who knows?

TMI

Lost nothing today. But I feel kind of "irregular," if you get my drift, so that could be why. I get that occasionally, especially when I am eating "large" quantities of meat without much fiber. I have an herbal tea I drink to remedy the situation but since I am subbing today, I didn't want to do that to myself. I also cheated just a tiny bit. I mean tiny. I ate about a quarter of a teaspoon of taco meat. Oh yes, I am weak!

Day thirteen

lost 1 lb.

Despite having made banana cake with cream cheese frosting, I was strong. I left it all at my brother's house :)

Days Seven through eleven

Day seven: lost 1 lb.
Day eight: lost 1 lb.
Day nine: lost nothing! What? That can't be! I have not deviated the slightest from the diet. Why!!! Why the torture if there's not going to be success! Maybe it was because I was weak for one moment and I put some moisturizer on my face. Yes, that can make a difference. When you are on the hGC diet, you must eliminate all fats, even those applied topically. That means makeups, lotions and other potions. I have been using mineral foundation for quite a while, but I have extremely dry skin so I use a lot of moisturizer. Today I feel like a box of bran flakes... dry and wrinkly. Eww.

Day ten: lost nothing again. Why, oh sweet Google search, why? I got online and read about it. Apparently there are plateaus. This diet doesn't just shrink the fat cells, it destroys them, cell wall and all. That is one of the reasons why this diet is so effective. You actually loose fat cells!!! Anyway, after shrinking the cells, it takes a day or two to dissolve the cells. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sure makes it feel better. So watch me dissolve away!

It was a hard day because I had a wedding reception to attend. I knew there would be lots of food there--yummy food that wouldn't normally tempt me, but because I can't have it, it becomes irresistible. As a result, we didn't stay as long as I normally would have. I needed to remove myself from the temptation. I just kept reminding myself that I was not hungry--at all. Ahh... it is another of those triggers I didn't realize I had. Social situations = eat. Not any more!

Day eleven: lost 1 lb. That makes 10 in the 7 days on the restricted diet. Not too shabby. Also, I can take off my fat pants without undoing them. So yeah, I have definitely lost inches, too. It's a good thing, because I had to make my delicious cinnamon rolls for a family get-together. Actually, I didn't make them. I had saginaw_annie make them because I shouldn't touch the oil that I use to roll them out (instead of flour). They looked so good, smothered in the cream cheese frosting. But I was strong. Because I wasn't hungry. At all.

That brings us to today. Day 12: lost 1 lb. Good energy, no hunger, just lazy. But since I am subbing this week, I have a lot to do. Tonight will bring more temptations. We are meeting at my SIL's to work on a quilt for my sweet niece who lost her baby this past week. My heart is breaking for the whole family. I know all too well, the feeling whey are going through.

Days four, five and six

I got up on Day 4, very excited to see the results. I figured it had better work or I'd be VERY MAD because if I'm eating NOTHING, I had better loose weight. Well, I did. I lost 3.5 lbs the first day. Huzzah! I felt good, had good energy and didn't miss breakfast because I had play practice to direct first thing in the morning followed by a trip to Walmart for a new ironing board. (I asked Dilbert for one for Christmas but he said no way was he getting me that. He said I'd play with it once and then put it in the corner and never take it out again. He is probably right.) Anyway, I had all sorts of enthusiasm for the project because I'd lost FREAKING 3.5 LBS!

Day 5: down 2 lbs. Feel great, not hungry, good energy

Day 6: down 1.5 lbs.Feel great, not hungry, good energy

Not too shabby. I can do this if this kind of weight loss can be maintained. Well, it can't.

The First days...

The hGC diet is great to start. Day one is just normal. Eat as you normally would. Take the drops 3 times a day. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I felt fine and had a completely normal day. There was just one thing... I was terrified of what the actual diet was going to be like. I read my binder of "what to expect" and all the scientific stuff but I was still scared that eating 200 g of meat and 2 cups of veggies and 2 apples was going to kill me.

Day two is even more fun. It is the first of two "gorging days". You are supposed to eat as much high fat food as you can. It is supposed to make the transition from food burning to fat burning easier. On that day I went to lunch at this fabulous Indian restaurant in Layton. Oh man... anyway, I was feeling ok but low on energy and had periodic headaches. I still hadn't weighed myself. I was so terrified about how much I had really gained this year. Fortunately day two was New Year's Eve so I stuffed myself with potato chips and shrimp dip. Mmmmm.

Day three is also a gorging day. I got a bad headache early in the day. It was so bad, I could hardly force myself to eat. Dilbert took pity on me and let me lounge on the couch and complain. He took the kids out to dinner and brought me back a hamburger, fries and a pumpkin shake. I ate it all, even though it about made me retch. I don't like ice cream, by the way. Anyway, it made the headache go away for a few minutes but it came back with a vengeance. Apparently it is a common occurrence. When I called Richard to chew him out, he said to eat more fat so I made popcorn and saturated it with butter. Again, I felt better for about an hour but then was miserable again. Also, I had no energy. I was so glad I didn't have anything I had to do because it wouldn't have been done. One curious problem was I had no appetite. I wasn't hungry at all so it was hard to force myself to eat, especially eat fat stuff. My kids pledged to be super supportive so they planned menus for the next few weeks so I wouldn't have to cook and they put all the Christmas decorations away while I reclined on the couch like a slug, eating everything fat I could find. Heaven is something like that, sans the headache.

Sunday was day one of the phase 2 part of the diet. On the diet, you can have tea of coffee for breakfast. Since I don't drink tea or coffee, I don't eat breakfast. Fortunately It was fast Sunday so I didn't have a problem with having nothing for breakfast. One very good benefit was I wasn't hungry at all. And my headaches were almost entirely gone. And I had significantly more energy than the two gorging days. By the way, this is not usual. Usually the headaches and low energy begin on this day, lasting for a day or two. For dinner I had my spinach and my 100 g of beef. Yumm (not). Since you can have no fat, you have to be creative as you cook your meat. Herbs and salt and pepper are allowed, so I season it up a LOT. I figured the more flavor, the less I will feel I am missing. I also eat VERY slowly so I can enjoy the time at the dinner table with my family. It is the time we do the most of our sharing with each other so that was really important to me. Oh yeah, I weighed myself and it was worse than I thought. I weighed more than I had ever weighed before. It was very disheartening.

But that soon changed.

I'm coming clean

I have agonized over whether or not to start posting again... I have been pretty busy since October so I haven't posted. But now I have a bit more time (at the moment) so I thought I'd start again. I hope someone out there still checks on me occasionally.

What made me decide to write was elle_cosette . I told her about the diet I started and she encouraged me to document my journey. I have felt like I needed to talk about what was happening with the diet because it I have made some pretty amazing discoveries as I have started the process. It is very personal and kind of difficult to write, but I think I need to get it out or I will fall back into my same habits again as soon as I am off it. I will talk about the diet eventually, but first I have to give some background...

I have been suffering for almost a year with a severe foot problem. At one point I was almost entirely confined to my bed because it hurt so much to stand. I went to every doctor and podiatrist to see if they could find the root of the problem and nothing they gave me helped. I'm sure you've had foot pain first thing in the morning before... That is what it was like. Only it never went away. It just got worse as the day progressed. I tried everything from pain killers to anti-inflammatories to cortisone to ultrasounds. I bought orthotics, new shoes, and inserts. I even went to a holistic chiropractor for voodoo drops. Nothing came close to knocking the pain. So I sat in bed all day, watching TV, trying to parent in absentia.

I ran into my cousin Richard, a chiropractor, while we were getting our parent's house ready for their visit after Katie passed away. He mentioned (as he fixed my kinked neck) that he had started doing his own voodoo. He was doing allergy testing and treatment. He invited me to come to his office and get tested. I figured it couldn't hurt... I had tried everything else. I went in and he tested me and found I was allergic to wheat. He treated me for a few weeks and the pain became more manageable. The allergy was gone, but the pain was not completely gone. He tested me for a few other things and treated them. Then he tested me to see if there was an emotional component to my pain. There was... He did his voodoo and asked me if there was something emotional that happened to me when I was 21. I told him yes. He did some more testing and said it wasn't something with my parents or husband or siblings... What was it? Well... I lost my baby when I was 21. He tested me again and sure enough, that was it. So after he treated me for that, my pain all but disappeared. I can finally wear cute shoes again! I can hike and shop and visit Temple Square to see the lights! I can't tell you what a difference it has made! Yeah, Richard!!!

So anyway, I have put on a LOT of weight in the past year, since I have been practically an invalid. I was disgusted with myself and nothing seemed to make a difference. I considered having bariatric surgery but was hesitant to do anything so drastic. Besides, the young sister of a friend just passed away from complications of the surgery, so I was very reluctant to take that chance. So I decided to try the HCG diet. Richard had a lot of success with it and all my aunts and uncles were doing it. But I was EXTREMELY scared because it is such a restrictive diet. Basically what you do is eat 500 calories a day while you take drops (or injections) of the hormones produced in the placenta during pregnancy. It tells your body to burn the fat in your body for fuel, rather than the calories you ingest. It also completely takes away the hunger. The way I saw it, there was no way to fail. If I am eating 500 calories a day, I WILL loose weight. There's no way to not loose weight because I burn more than that every day, just by sitting at the computer.

So I started it on December 30th.