All That Stuff I Said Yesterday? Scratch That (Round 2, Phase 3, Day 1)

I was going to entitle this post "Uncle," as in "I give up and cry uncle." Why? Because I've decided to stop phase 2 (VLCD and drops) and go into phase 3 (maintenance) as of 3:00 this morning when my hunger woke me for the third night in a row. But this time, I couldn't get back to sleep. I've been awake since then, thinking about the pep talks I got yesterday, thinking about my resolve (renewed only yesterday!) to give this at least another week before giving up on it. I've been awake since then thinking about how I was going to do my 10k training run this morning (70 minutes long including 45 minutes of running) on 3 egg whites. I've been thinking about how badly I want to stick with this, mostly just so I can say that I didn't quit.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought all my reasons for taking a break were better, more solid, and healthier than my reasons for continuing. And that's why I decided not to call this post "Uncle" after all. I am choosing to look at this as listening to my body and intuition rather than giving up or giving in.

Look, this diet works. I lost over 30 pounds in the first 40 days. It was honestly not even that hard. I was hungry at first, but I was losing so much weight it was worth it. I didn't feel weak or tired or low energy. I didn't feel mentally foggy or irritable or anxious. If anything, I felt better than ever. I felt bored with the food choices by the end, but not deprived. Not a single one of my fears about this diet came true, and the first round was awesome. My first maintenance went pretty smoothly; I was up and down a bit, but I feel like I "stuck my number."

For people researching this diet and stumbling across this post: I really can't say enough good about it. It has worked wonders for me.

But round 2 has felt hard and even unnatural from the beginning. It's partially that I feel less desperate, and therefore less willing to take extreme measures or feel extreme discomfort. It's partly that I'm training for this damn 10k, which I feel excited about and proud of, but which may be incompatible with the VLCD (after all, I am burning 400-600 calories in a typical training session and eating 500-700 on training days. It's just not enough fuel). It's partly that I have some strange hormonal stuff going on in my body this month (I won't bore the male readers with my lady stuff). It's partly that I have been trying (and failing)to get away with a few cheats, like a diet coke here and there or an extra fruit or protein when I'm really starving. It's partly that in the last week, I have changed up my meds (antidepressants) a bit, and that can have short or long-term effects on weight. It's partly that I feel like I am approaching what is probably an ideal weight for me, which has got to make the weight loss slower and harder.

Or it could be the combination of all those things together is making this round harder than I'm willing to put up with. Perhaps if I had only one of those things going on, it wouldn't feel so hard.

Whatever the reason, most of round 2 has been miserable. The first few days were pretty easy because I had loaded up well, but ever since, I have felt starving and sleepy and cranky. This isn't the right time for this diet for my body, and it has been trying to tell me that. Instead of trying to "gut it out" like I almost always do, I am going to gracefully and proactively stop before I have a big self-destructive cheat. This worked for me the first time, and I could tell it was working because it didn't feel like a starvation diet, but I was losing weight. This time, it does feel like a starvation diet, which means something isn't right.

This diet works. I have lost 42 pounds since Halloween! I am at the lowest weight I've seen since before my first pregnancy in early 2004, seven years ago. I can wear regular clothes in regular stores!

But most important of all, I kind of think I look decent. How's that for bragging? I like the way I look in clothes now. I like the shape of my body so much better. I do not constantly castigate myself when I look in the mirror. I give myself the occasional compliment.

So today I start 8 weeks of maintenance. I'm going to do a full round of maintenance (which is 8 weeks after the second round) even though I only half a round of HCG drops. I'm a little worried that the overtraining and undereating may have messed with my metabolism a bit, and I want to really get firmly set at this new weight in the high 180's. If I lose a little more naturally, great. If not, I'll decide in 8 weeks if I want to get the last 15-20 off using HCG or doing something else. I'm finishing up round to at 187.6, which means I have another nice, natural ceiling of 190 to watch out for during maintenance. It's a good psychological stop to have it be a nice round number that changes your tens digit.
 

Day	Date	Weight	Daily Change	Total Loss: Round 2	Total Loss: Cumulative
Starting Weight (11/1/2010): 229.6
Weight @ End of Round 1 (12/14/2010): 198.2 (loss of 31.4 lbs)
Starting Weight, beginning of Round 2 (1/26/2011): 199.6
LD 1	1/26/2011	199.6	-
LD 2	1/27/2011	203	3.4
1	1/28/2011	204.6	1.6
2	1/29/2011	200.2	-4.4
3	1/30/2011	198.8	-1.4	-1.4	30.8
4	1/31/2011	198.2	-0.6	-1.6	31.4
5	2/1/2011	197	-1.2	-2.4	32.6
6	2/2/2011	195.6	-1.4	-4.0	34
7	2/3/2011	194.2	-1.4	-5.4	35.4
Week 1: down 5.4 for the week (not counting load weight), 35.4 total
8	2/4/2011	193.6	-0.6	-6.0	-36
9	2/5/2011	193.2	-0.4	-6.4	-36.4
10	2/6/2011	192.6	-0.6	-7.0	-37
11	2/7/2011	193	0.4	-6.6	-36.6
12	2/8/2011	191.4	-1.6	-8.2	-38.2
13	2/9/2011	189.8	-1.6	-9.8	-38.8
14	2/10/2011	189.4	-0.4	-10.2	-40.2
Week 2: down 4.8 for the week, down 10.2 total in Round 2, down 39.2 overall
15	2/11/2011	188.4	-1.0	-11.2	-41.2
16	2/12/2011	188.6	0.2	-11.0	-41
17	2/13/2011	188.8	0.2	-10.8	-40.8
18	2/14/2011	189	0.2	-10.6	-40.6
19	2/15/2011	188	-1.0	-11.6	-41.6
20	2/16/2011	187.6	-0.4	-12.0	-42
Week 3: down 1.8 for the week, down 12.0 total in Round 2, down 42 overall.

So bring it on, maintenance! I'm ready for ya.

What a Difference a Day Makes (Round 2, Phase 2, Day 12)

I know I must come across as totally schizophrenic. But I'm feeling positive again, mainly because I had a nice loss and feel like maybe this is working. I was down 1.6 today for a total of 8 pounds in 12 days (not counting load up weight. If I count load up weight, I'm down 13.2 pounds in 12 days).

Yes it's less weight than last time, yes it's less percentage of total weight, but it's still decent. Yesterday I had one egg + three egg whites in the morning (in addition to my regular protocol foods) because I was planning a long run. I still lost. I will do the same tomorrow.

I think I have mentioned that I am working with a local HCG coach, and she sent me an email this morning advising me to choose--I either have to stop training for the 10k or stop doing the diet. I think she made this suggestion based her read of the frustration I was feeling the last few days, but even when I said I was determined to stick it out at least the minimum of 23 days for a short round, she said she doesn't think that's a good idea. I also think that she is probably frustrated that I am monkeying around with her program--her philosophy is either do it right or don't do it at all. And it's true, I have had these small cheats almost every day--1/2 an extra grapefruit, an extra 20g of chicken, a cup of chicken broth, salsa, etc. I think those small cheats are the only thing that have kept me from an absolute binge when I am super hungry late at night. But I've still managed to lose 8 pounds in 12 days even with those cheats. Maybe I would have lost 10 or 15 if I hadn't been doing the cheats, but what is the harm of experimenting with it a bit?

Don't you love how, yesterday, I was all pissed about losing only 6 pounds in 11 days and now I am all happy about losing 8 lbs in 12 days? I fully recognize that I am ridiculous. I will be the first to admit it.

The coach's beef is not only about the cheating, it's really that she says it isn't a good idea to do any intense training during the VLCD portion of the plan. And the training I'm doing is intense (at least for me): it is training sessions 3x a week of roughly 70 minutes each where I alternate walking and running. This week was running for 3 minutes and then walking for 2 and repeating that 13 times. Next week will be running for 4 minutes and walking for 2. I am definitely wasted after these sessions, which is why I added in the egg white omelets. The treadmill tells me I am burning 600 calories in 70 minutes so it seems fine to add an extra 100 calories to my day.

I'm feeling frustrated and unsure...on the one hand, I finally feel motivated to actually stick this out for awhile, so why not just finish it, at least 23 days? On the other hand, someone who knows a lot more about this says I should stop, and I want to stop SO BAD because I am hungrier. I'm sitting here tonight thinking, "fuck it, I should just stop, finish the 10k training, and pick it up again in the late spring to lose the last 20." But I don't know. It's kind of working, even with my naughty modifications.

What to do, what to do? This diet is hard enough when you have people encouraging you every step of the way, when you have people actively telling you to stop, it's even harder to stay on the path.

It is 8:30 p.m. here on the east coast, and I feel like I would sell my soul for a handful of peanuts and a slice of cave-aged triple-cream brie on a crusty baguette.

Bizarro World, aka the Size of the Banana (P3, D3)

Well.

This is not at all what I expected.

Only three days in, I know, but this is easy! I will admit to throwing most of my rules out the window after the first day, because it is damn near impossible to get anywhere CLOSE to enough calories eating only lean meats and vegetables and fruits. So while I planned to wait weeks before adding much dairy or nuts, I did some of both on the second day. You know what else I did on the second day? I went out to a Tunisian restaurant before going to a play with some friends, and ordered a chicken kebab that was served on a bed of cous cous, and I ate some of the cous cous, which is a whole grain, but is still a grain, which is completely verboten for 3 weeks. I know, I am TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL. I ate less than half a cup, maybe even closer to a quarter of a cup, but I had some. I also had ONE of my friend's corn fritters (sweet corn deep fried), which was about the size of a plantain slice, and which was delicious.

Out of habit, I am going to that comfortable place of beating myself up for not sticking to the plan. But I really feel fine about it. This feels like adaptability and flexibility rather than failure.  My weight is totally stable so far, though who knows if it will stay that way. I am gradually increasing my calories, so even though I'm eating some new foods, I'm still eating fewer calories than I need to eventually be eating. I wonder if the composition of food (i.e. fats and carbs) will make a bigger difference when I am eating closer to 1800-2000 calories a day.

I read on SparkPeople that when you are going from a weight loss plan to a weight maintenance plan, you should increase your calories by around 200 a day. Since my plan was to count calories but not let the counting dictate the intake too much, I haven't gone at that exact pace, but I definitely haven't gone right to 2000 calories from 500.

Buy y'all, this feels easy and normal. I don't even know how to describe how surprised I am and how weird it feels. I have been super busy at work, but I am just going about my day, eating when I get hungry, eating food that tastes good and enjoying it. WHAT IS UP WITH THIS MADNESS?

 Do you know what happened to me today? I ate a banana and was entering it into my food diary on Spark People. Now, normally when I am entering a banana into a food diary, I can easily convince myself that every banana is a small banana. I can eat a banana that is 10" long, and I will say to myself, "yep, I'd call that a small banana." After all, a large banana can be 40-50 calories more than a small banana. So today? I ate what was probably a medium banana and found myself wanting to log it as a large banana because I'm having trouble eating all my calories. WHAT?!?!? Same thing with the trail mix. Normally a heaping 1/4 cup translates to a quarter cup; today I counted a sparse quarter cup as a quarter cup. This is truly Bizarro World for me. The lesson, I suppose, is that in both regular world and Bizarro World, I don't know the difference between a large and a small banana (insert penis joke here).

I feel like a NORMAL person around food. I had that small, quarter cup of trail mix today, and it was enough. I had the slightest compulsive eating twinge (the twinges of I WANT MORE even if I don't need more), but it was so easy to let it go.

I know this is the very beginning, and I know this hasn't gotten hard yet. I know I will have to be vigilant, and that my emotional eating issues have plenty of time to rear their ugly heads. I also know that maybe it really is too soon for this kind of eating, and I might see a weird and large gain any day now, in which case I will calmly and easily adjust back and take out some of the nuts and dairy again for awhile.

However, I am going to try very hard to stay off of 100% processed carbs and sugar for the first three weeks, no matter how well things go or how cocky I get. I may try some brown rice, starchy veggies and legumes, etc. sine the cous cous was fine, but I'm not going to mess with any white sugar, pasta, white rice, bread, etc. for at least the first three weeks and maybe the whole six weeks of maintenance. My other hard and fast rule is no eating after 8 p.m. I'm hungry right now, but not famished.

That's another thing that is so weird. I totally know I can handle hunger now. I have eaten shit so many times in my life because I was hungry and didn't have the time/ energy/ money/ whatever to eat something healthy. But dude, I just ate 500 calories for 40 days! (My friend B pointed out that was 20,000 calories more than Jesus had during Lent. Ha.) I can wait fucking 10 minutes to saute a chicken breast instead of eating a box of crackers, you know?

Meanwhile, holy shit. I thought I was amazed during the HCG phase, but I am really amazed now. If it stays like this even for a week or two, it will feel miraculous to me. It's fucking Christmas, y'all, and I don't hate myself or my family! There's a first for everything!

Day	Date	Weight	Calories	Exercise
Day 1	12/14/2010	198.2	967.0	none
Day 2	12/15/2010	198.6	1437.0	pilates
Day 3	12/16/2010	198.4	1460.0	none

The Diet in Review

I feel like my tag line (a skeptic takes on the HCG diet) requires me to do a little retrospective of the last 43 days. You know...misty, water-colored memories of the way we were.

When I started this diet, I thought it was absolute horse shit. I had seen a couple of good friends do well on it and had resisted joining them for months while I maintained a small weight loss and recovered from a serious ankle injury. But once my weight started creeping back up and I regained in a month what it had taken me 15 months to lose, I just panicked. I did my research. I talked about it with everyone I know (and most people fell into two camps: very in favor or very against). I weighed pros and cons. I carefully considered. And then I just did it, telling Shannon privately not to be embarrassed or to feel like a failure if I dropped out after a few days. I honestly did not think I could hack being super hungry.

And I was super hungry for the first week or so. I'm told it could be because I didn't load up properly or it could be because I had a lot of sugar detoxing to do. Who knows. But I was super hungry. And you know what? It didn't kill me!  I felt otherwise fine. And I lost a shit load of weight the first week (13.8 lbs the first week alone). I started adjusting my expectations and planned to lose 35-40 pounds; after all, if I could lose almost 14 the first week, surely I could lose 26 more in FIVE additional weeks, right?

Weeks 2-5 were actually pretty easy. I ate mostly chicken and lean, grass-fed ground beef with occasional fish thrown in for variety. I pan fried my meat with no oil in a nonstick pan and usually ate it over a salad of spinach or mixed greens, though I did a lot of cucumber and tomato too. I varied my fruit as much as I could considering I was only allowed to have 4 different fruits. I tried to vary the time of day I ate. I did light exercise (yoga, walking) 3-5 times a week (the advice was to exercise a lesser amount but every day, I did more but not every day). My cheats were so minor that I think they hardly count as cheats, considering I could have binged on pizza or something.

I felt GOOD. I felt physically fine, mentally sharp, and mostly upbeat and positive. I felt so good that I forgot to take my crazy pills for a week (wellbutrin and lexapro) and had a bit of a crash, which manifested itself mostly in feeling really pissed off at everyone all the time. But mostly I felt less depressed and less anxious than I have in years. My theory is that sugar really tweaks my anxiety, but it's a theory I look forward to testing in a very conscious, deliberate way either during maintenance or on my next gorge days.

I don't think I had quite as much muscle strength or endurance as I normally do, but I had plenty to do my daily activities with ease plus some light exercise. I had way more energy at night in the 8-11p.m. time frame than I usually do.

I replaced some of my bad eating habits or routines with better habits: I've been exercising with friends a lot this month (shooting for 3x a week of either walks or pilates classes at the gym). I've been knitting at night while I watch TV (mostly Intervention), which feels relaxing and productive. I know watching TV is not ideal and that reading or doing something around the house would be better, and hopefully that will work well for me soon. I have been blogging a lot here and reading up on the diet, which I think has helped my daytime cravings and habits.

Week 6, I started to get hungry again, and I started to suspect that my body was just DONE, but I stuck with it mostly for bragging rights--I wanted to be able to say I finished the whole t hing. But I lost very little weight (in the following chart, you can see I lost only 1.4 lbs in the last 10 days. That would be a pretty normal rate for me on Weight Watchers, by the way; about a pound a week.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that I didn't lose a little more. My goal was to lose 35-40 pounds (I have now learned that the MD associated with my local group says to stop at 34 no matter what, so I didn't even have a realistic goal in the first place!) and then be better positioned to lose the last 20 or so the old-fashioned way. But I have about 30 left to lose, so I feel fairly certain I'll be doing another round in late January/early February to get the last 30 off. And wouldn't it be nice if I could do it in 4 or 5 weeks instead of 6 weeks? I think Holly (a commenter) is going to do it with me then. Olivia can't start her second round until later in the spring because of various other life commitments, but I know she'll be following along and trying to actively participate in her own maintenance.

So, hearkening back to the pros and cons I did at the beginning before I knew what this diet was about, let me give a new perspective on the pros and cons.

PROS (of this diet, as opposed to diets in general):

1. You lose a lot of weight very fast. This allows you to maintain enthusiasm and will power because it gives you instant gratification.

2. You're eating super healthy food--organic meat, fruit and vegetables, which just makes you feel really good and healthy.

3. Anyone can do this--it's so short! It's only 40 days (or less even). If you hate it, you just have to hang in there for 6 weeks. Anyone can do that.

4. I had plenty of energy the whole time while still losing weight rapidly.

5. My body fat monitor says I have lost fat and increased muscle, despite losing 31 pounds in 43 days.

6. The limited choice of food actually frees you up from thinking about food all the time and figuring out how to game the system. You only have a few choices.

7. My sense of taste is greatly enhanced.

8. I understand more about the difference between cravings and hunger and hope to take that knowledge with me into maintenance and beyond.

9. This has been tremendous validation of my willpower for me, considering I haven't had much faith in it. I almost think a total detox diet like this was the only way I could get out of the sugar rut I was in. Had I done WW or a similar program, I would have cheated because I would have still been eating sugar, which would have let to binges.

10. It is relatively easy, or at least it feels easy. While I have blogged at length about how I think some of the rules are really dumb, they really aren't THAT hard to follow, whether or not you believe them. I swear. I know it looks hard, but it really wasn't. I am giving you the straight skinny here--I'm not selling drops or anything.

11. HUGE health benefits. I have lost 31 pounds, reduced my BMI from 34 to 29 (from obese to merely overweight), and some recent lab tests confirmed that this diet (probably in conjunction with the massive exercise program I undertook from January through July) has reduced my bad cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and raised my good cholesterol. The last time I had labs done was in early 2008 right after having a baby, so it's been almost 3 years, but the exercise and diet are the most likely culprits for the positive changes in my labs.

12. Discipline and confidence--it has got to be good for my weight loss efforts and for my psyche overall to really believe I can do something instead of constantly feeling like a big failure.

CONS (of this particular diet, as opposed to diets in general):

1. I was worried about the impact of this diet on my almost-6-year-old daughter, and in fact she was very aware of it. No matter how I tried to explain it to her in terms of health and shrinking my body to make intense exercise safer, she was constantly offering me food. Somewhere along the line, she learned about Karen Carpenter (probably because her horrible Christmas carol is on the radio every five minutes) and in the last few days has asked me if I am starving myself and if I'm going to die "like that singer." I look at it as an opportunity for education, but I would never, ever, recommend that SHE ever do this diet to lose weight (unnecessarily extreme, at least for anyone under 21), which I recognize is highly hypocritical.

2. It ain't cheap. The drops cost between $20-60 a pop, depending on where you get them and what you get. I needed three "pops." I am lucky to have a friend who has been coaching me to prepare for starting an HCG clinic, but some people also pay hundreds for the coaching.

3. Eating is a pain. We eat out a lot, we eat with friends a lot, and there is just no way to do that safely. The food is too specific. So I had to either eat before I went or bring my own food, either of which leads to questions and logistical annoyances. Plus, the food is so limited it gets boring.

4. I felt a little like a crazy person. I have a lot of smart, rational friends and relatives who looked on this diet at best with bemused acceptance and at worst with hostility. This diet just SOUNDS crazy, and when you tell people about it, they think you are crazy. That won't bother some people, but it was really hard for me. The social support for a radical diet like this is just not there the same way it is for other kinds of eating regiments.

5. You get sort of obsessed with your weight and the diet, which could be a bad thing for people with a history of certain kinds of eating disorders. I thought about food very little, but I thought about the diet a lot. I think it would be hard to be very successful without that kind of focus. But I will say my productiveness at work flagged in the last few weeks, what with maintaining this blog and researching recipes and such.

6. There remains little or no scientific evidence of the validity of this diet, which can make it hard to power through when motivation is flagging (which is why the quick weight loss is such a good reinforcement). There are very few case studies out there on the interwebz of long-term, successful weight loss. There are very few studies of any kind either about the HCG diet in general or the homeopathic HCG drops in particular.

*******

On balance? Not the slightest regret. I am so glad I did it. It started out as an experiment, and now I am 31 pounds lighter in 43 days. The real proof will be whether I have kept it off in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. I feel like I have some things in place that will help me succeed on the maintenance plan, and I have learned a lot about my own body that will serve me well in the next round.

Would I recommend it to someone else? A qualified yes. If you have at least 20 pounds to lose, if you have a history of issues with food, if you feel like you have tried lots of other things and failed, and if you are prepared to really commit to this 100% for 6 weeks of weight loss and 6 weeks of maintenance, then yes, I would recommend it for you.

If any of these conditions aren't true, I would consider a more traditional weight loss program first.

Thoughts? Comments? Agree or disagree with any of my pros and cons?

My Maintenance Plan

The super structure of this diet has really helped me, and while I need to learn to eat like a regular person eventually, I think that maintenance is where the real work begins and is an opportunity for me to stabilize this weight loss physically, emotionally, and psychologically. I think I'll do better if I have some rules.

So. Here's my plan. This is based on a few versions of the official plan that are out there floating around (with my own twist/sanity check on things).

Week 1 & 2: eat similar to P2 with a few changes: all lean meats allowed (still organic, still no sugar or honey involved). All non-starchy veggies allowed (basically everything but potatoes, corn, peas, etc. All fruits allowed in moderate quantities. Eggs allowed. I'm going to shoot for eating 5x a day--3 meals and two snacks. Tiny, minuscule amounts of cooking fats (butter and healthy oils) only so I can start eating with my family again, but still no other fat (like salad dressing, mayo, etc). Still no fake sugar. Still minimal amounts of dairy (a few spoonfuls a day). I'm going to ramp up my calories slowly and not try to eat 2000 in the first week. Today, for example, after breakfast and lunch, I have eaten about 500 calories. No way I can eat 1000+ just in a snack and dinner, especially with the food restrictions I still have. So I think I'll try to increase my calories to around 1000 today and then increase by 200 or so a day and see how it goes.

Week 3: add in dairy (more milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, small amounts of regular cheese on salads, etc.)
m, diet soda if I want it, but I'm going to really try to stay away from fake sugars most of the time. Add salad dressing and more normal amounts of healthy oils and fats. Add mayo (for chicken and tuna salad). Add most soups that do not have sugar in them.

Week 4: add in small quantities: the starchy vegetables, hummus, beans and starchy legumes, nuts and nut butters, ketchup

Week 5&6: add slowly and carefully: whole grains and starches, popcorn, pretzels, still stay away from sugar and refined grains

No promises, but I'd like to try staying away from sugar and gluten just for maintenance. If I do have any, I want it to be very limited and deliberate, and I want to pay attention to how it makes me feel. I really, really, really don't want to be someone who can't have gluten or sugar--I cannot even stress how much I don't want to be that. But I'm trying to open myself up to the possibility that I am without prejudging it one way or the other.

But as I said, I think maintenance is going to be as much about the head game as the food game.  So here's the other stuff I'm gonna do.

1) Count calories, for at least the first few weeks. They don't want you counting calories on maintenance, but I think I want to just keep track. I won't let it dictate my eating...if I'm only hungry for 1200 calories, I won't force feed myself, and if I have an odd day of 2500 calories, I won't sweat it. But I just want to keep an eye on it. Since the point of this phases is resetting my metabolism so I can maintain this weight at a higher caloric intake, it seems important to have some vague idea of caloric intake. I'll be using Spark People for this. They recommend 1800-2200 calories to maintain my current weight.

2) Get strong and tone up. I think now that I'm eating more, I'll have more stamina for more exercise. I don't have specific exercise goals yet, but I know I'd like to do Pilates a few times a week and maybe start running again. I don't want to set goals that are too aggressive, because the next few months are crazy at work. This is something I'll think on in the next few days and try and set more concrete goals. I might start running again, but I might just wait until I lose the next 30 pounds (which will coincide nicely with warmer weather outside and spring triathlon training season). Thirty pounds overweight is still a lot of stress to put on your joints for high-impact exercises like running, even though obviously my stats are vastly improved.

3) Weigh every day, and try not to let this make me insane. I do want to try and closely monitor my weight so that I can act quickly if it goes up too much. I do not want to sweat it and feel miserable and like a failure if it does go above 200 briefly. Not sure yet if I want to allow myself to lose any weight. I thought the whole point was to stabilize your weight eating as many calories as possible, but lots of people are reporting losing a little more weight on maintenance (1-2 lbs per week or less). This is another reason I want to track calories. If I end up losing while eating enough calories (1800-2000 a day), then that's cool. But if I'm losing because I am slipping back to eating fewer calories than I need, then that's not cool. I've gotten so used to eating so little that I think it would be easy to slip back into that. So how about this for a goal: keep my weight between 190 and 200 over the next 6 weeks, preferably between 195-200, but I just might not be able to pass up the chance to lose more pounds if it happens for me easily.

4) Begin working through the Beck Diet Solution, which is a 6-week cognitive behavioral therapy approach to weight loss. I'll be using it for maintenance rather than weight loss, but I think it will address the brain part of my weight issue. It has an assignment to do every day. I'll try to do one every day, but I'm not going to get to it every day. I'll write about it here when I do it. I guarantee you that if I do nothing but this diet the way this diet is written, I will gain the weight back. I'm not saying everyone will, I'm saying I will. I overeat for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with the reasons this diet supposedly addresses. I have got to get other coping tools in the toolbox so that I don't go right back to eating when I have a fight with R or a stressful day at work or a night of no sleep.

5) Keep writing about this when I can. I doubt I will feel the need to write with the same frequency, but I'd like to keep up at least a few times a week.

6) Sleep: try to get at least 7 hours of sleep every night; preferably 8.

7) Pay attention to my food and its taste. I had eggs for breakfast and olives in my salad for lunch. They were amazing! The longer I can hold on to this appreciation for the flavor of relatively healthy foods, the better off I will be.  The more I can pay attention to the flavor of less-than-healthy foods, the better I will be able to decide which ones I should make room for (mint chocolate chip ice cream) and which I shouldn't (Kraft mac and cheese).

I think I'll probably add to this as maintenance goes on. This is just what I'm thinking about for getting started. These are the things I'll be tracking in a chart and sharing here at least a couple of times a week.

Day	Date	Weight	Daily Change	Calories	Exercise	Notes
Day 1	12/14/2010	198.2	START

 So that's the plan! Wish me luck!

Holding Steady (P2, D38)

Holding steady at 199.2 today; down 30.4 pounds. Ready to be done.  Ready to eat eggs, cheese, oil, nuts.

Two more days of drops (Friday is my last day of drops). Then I have to stick to the 500 calories for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Then Tuesday, I wake up and start 6 weeks of maintenance, maintaining my last HCG weight (Tuesday morning's weight) within 2 pounds. If I ever go more than 2 pounds over my last HCG weight, I'm supposed to do a steak day or an apple day.

Let's blow this mutha out.

What My Skepticism Looks Like 30 Days in to the HCG Diet

Two posts ago, I blamed a recent home-stretch gain/plateau on eating ONE ELBOW of macaroni and cheese and on failing to take the proper dosage of drops for about a day and a half. For some of you, this seems like utter horse shit, and you have a hard time buying into a diet that would make such ridiculous claims. For others of you, the evidence that this is a bad idea is SO CLEAR that you cannot understand why I would make such a reckless and libertine mistake.

And this we return to my constant HCG diet theme of "some people think I'm crazy for this reason and other people think I'm crazy for that reason."

The truth of the matter is that no matter how much you love this diet and no matter how much it works for you, it seems you have to admit that there are a lot of strange, specific, and seemingly random rules that have no real scientific evidence behind them. In fact, some of the rules that were insisted upon when I started this diet 37 days ago are now being rethought, as more medical personnel and homeopaths are brought on board to the local team in an official capacity (ex: now they're saying you don't need to wait 30 minutes before and after drops; you can shoot for 10. You can have mint. No more grape tomatoes; they're too sweet. Etc.) It is very much an evolving, trial-and-error process. 

Conversely, no matter how much you think this diet is stupid and ridiculous with stupid, nonsensical rules, you have to admit it works pretty damn well and that the people who are actually doing it report that some of these weird rules really help them. All the people who were worried about me passing out, fainting, and freaking out have now seen that I haven't. It's safe, it's sensible, it's healthy, it's effective.

So I've just been thinking in the last few days about what makes sense about this diet and what doesn't; why I do some of the things that don't make sense (and will continue to) and why I don't do some of the things that do make sense.

In short: I'm ornery.

In long: I also have a strange combination of willing suspension of disbelief when it serves me, right along side relentless insistence on evidence when I want it. I can see how this could be frustrating for anyone coaching me through this process. This is why my scientific friends and family members are perplexed that I could "fall" for any of this voodoo, and my HCG friends and compatriots are frustrated that I don't fall for all of it. :)

Examples of HCG diet rules that make sense and/or that have some scientific proof behind them:

1) Eat 500 calories a day. It is a well-accepted, proven, scientific fact that eating fewer calories makes you lose weight. If you are a healthy person with extra weight to lose, it ain't gonna kill you to be hungry, and you will lose weight. Guaranteed.

2) Drink lots of water. Water is healthy. Drinking more water makes you retain less water, which helps you see a "truer" weight loss on the scale. Drinking water helps fill you up and can make you eat less. Water also helps your cells and metabolism function more efficiently.

3) Eat only organic foods (only grass-fed, hormone-free beef, organic chicken and other meats, pesticide-free veggies, no artificial sweeteners except for Stevia). Pesticides and chemicals and fake sugars are bad for you and can prevent weight loss, maybe even cause weight gain. There is some evidence that a lot of chemicals can wreck your metabolism. Believe it or not, one of the best metabolism/endocrinology books I have ever read is Jillian Michaels' Master Your Metabolism. Whatever you think of JM herself (I kind of love her), she knows how to hire experts who really know their shit.

4) Get plenty of sleep (there are lots of studies about this, but here is one). The general principal is that when you are tired, your body actually produces more ghrelin, a hormone that makes you hungrier the next day.

5) Eliminate carbs and reduce fats during reduction. You can probably lose weight eating 500 calories a day, even if you eat 500 calories on M&Ms a day. But getting rid of carbs and severely restricting fats will result in a healthier, more filling 500 calories. [note: I always forget that the purest form of the diet includes two melba toasts or grissini bread sticks a day. So I guess that makes it a low-carb rather than a no-carb diet. I forget because I haven't been eating them at all, and haven't missed them]. Recent studies show that it is not good to reduce fat and carbs forever though...most bodies need all the food groups in moderation, which means they need protein, carbs, and fats to stay healthy.

6) Get some gentle exercise. When you're on a VLCD (very low-calorie diet), it's probably not wise to exercise like a maniac, just so that you're protecting your energy level. But you don't want to do nothing, or you'll be at higher risk of losing some muscle mass while you diet. So walking, yoga, and light weight lifting will help you retain/increase muscle while losing fat.

All of these rules make perfect sense to me; they are sound, well-researched dieting truisms, and whether or not you agree that they are the best/safest/most effective way to lose weight, they are clearly linked to weight loss. I bet that anyone doing just those 6 things would lose a decent amount of weight in 40 days with or without voodoo drops and the rest of it. Did I miss any HCG rules that are sensible and research-based? If so, leave them in the comments.

And yet there are all these other strange, specific, and seemingly random rules that make no sense to me, but that HCG diet proponents swear make a huge difference in weight loss:

1) No mixing vegetables (You may have spinach OR tomatoes OR onions OR cucumber at each meal, but not more than one at any given meal, though it is preferable to mix it up from meal to meal). This makes no sense. I have not seen any good reason why mixing or not mixing vegetables at individual meals has any impact on metabolism or weight loss.

2) No oils at all, either inside your body via food or outside your body via oil-based moisturizers, bath products, or lip balms. You can't even touch oily/greasy food you're serving to someone else. This makes no sense. No one has been able to explain to me scientifically why HCG would make you so sensitive to oil that touching your kid's tater tot without a glove could cause a two-pound weight gain and a three day stall.

3) Some vegetables are allowed, and some aren't, on a seemingly random basis (example: asparagus is allowed; broccoli is not. Cucumber is allowed, cauliflower is not). It makes a modicum of sense to me that the starchy vegetables (corn, peas, etc.) and the sweet veggies (carrots, sugar snap peas) are verboten, but the super fibrous, healthy, low-carb and lo-cal veggies? NO SENSE.
4) Some lean, organic meats are allowed and not others (example: chicken is allowed, but turkey is not). Again, I understand why they ban fatty meats like pork, but the ban on turkey? NO SENSE.

5) Some fruits are allowed (strawberries, oranges, grapefruit, apples); others are not even though they seem similar in nutritional content to the allowed fruits (tangerines, clementines, blueberries, cranberries). Say it with me now: no sense.

6) The diet claims that if you take drops of homeopathic HCG and you will be less hungry, you will lose weight from the right places (hips, butt, waist) instead of the wrong places (face, boobs), you will lose weight faster, and you will actually cure the hypothalamus. There were two studies done on these claims. The first showed that injected HCG did impact hunger, body shape, etc. The second failed to corroborate the first's findings. In science-land, that means there is no proof. And that's for injected HCG. I don't think homeopathic HCG has even been studied. I do not deny that there is ample anecdotal evidence for the wonders of homeopathic HCG, but there are good reasons why research is not based on anecdotes (scroll down to the section of this post called "What is the difference between anecdotal and scientific data?" for a brief overview.
Read any HCG book, ask any expert about the food restrictions (no mixing veggies, no turkey, etc.) and they will tell you "Well I'm sure Dr. Simeons thought of that, and if he says it's not okay, then it's not okay" OR they will say "well whenever I didn't do that stuff, I gained weight." But to my knowledge, no one has any scientific proof of any of these things. They have case studies and they have anecdotes, which are not totally irrelevant, but are not the same. Especially when you're talking about proving something that doesn't make sense.

Okay, here I am, having lost nearly 30 pounds on the HCG diet, hating on the HCG diet. Except I'm not hating on it! I really am not. I think this diet has given me a lot of gifts. I just want to be honest about my experience with it. I have to live up to my subhead, man.

I have developed my own theory of why this diet's strange, specific, and seemingly random rules work and why I'm doing them anyway, even though I don't totally believe in them all.

I think it's because this diet provides a really strange and successful blend of being able to pay almost no attention to what/when you eat while also maintaining an almost hyper focus on the details that keeps you from falling off the wagon.

If you are eating 500 calories a day without following any of the HCG protocol (as Kristoise is*), then you have endless options. If you are also someone with a food problem (which Kristoise is not), then you would be constantly tempted to work in "danger" foods while still staying under 500 calories, e.g. "how many M&Ms can I have for 500 calories? If I have one pancake, can I skip dinner to make up for it?"  This kind of approach for problem eaters or food addicts makes it harder because you are constantly trading and bargaining with yourself and you are thinking about food ALL THE TIME. One of my main issues with Weight Watchers (FOR ME) all along has been that I think it encourages a different kind of eating disorder (FOR ME). To be successful on WW, I had to literally count every sip or bite of anything that I had. So WW may have cured an overeating disorder, but it fostered a new kind of obsessive eating disorder. The latter may be physically healthier (MAY be) but I'm not convinced it's a psychological improvement.

On this diet, I never think about food. There are only 2-3 proteins that I enjoy, 4-5 veggies, and 4 fruits. That is a pretty limited number of combinations. There is no thinking about what kind of salad to have, can I have extra red peppers instead of green, etc. There are no choices. Not thinking about food all the time frees me up to think about what makes me think about food. Ha. Does that even make sense? What I mean is this: if I never have to think about food, then when I start to really want a specific food or a specific feeling of fullness, I have more space to think about why I want it, what I would normally do, and what I should do. On WW when that uncomfortable feeling of WANT WANT WANT arises, I just eat 3 skinny cow ice cream sandwiches, still manage to stay under points, and call it a day. I learn nothing and make no real behavior changes.

For that reason, I think the strictness of this diet related to food (no mixing, only certain foods) is a huge advantage for someone who struggles with food even if it doesn't make chemical sense. I do not believe that the freedom to mix cucumbers and tomatoes in a single meal would stop my metabolism. I do think it would make me think about food a lot more.

So that's the bit about the diet being almost completely thoughtless when it comes to food. Yet there are so many other rules--no mint**, no gum, no artificial sweetener, no oil on your hands or face or body--that you end up thinking about the process of dieting a lot, which keeps you honest. It results in a situation that is unique to any diet I have ever tried: you rarely think about food, but you are always thinking about what will make you successful, and you are always thinking about self care. It's a very interesting approach.

I bet you almost anything that my stalls and gains were not actually caused by Thanksgiving turkey, one elbow of macaroni and cheese, or oil-based lip balm. Shannon, I know you are going to hate me for saying that, but I really think they were natural fluctuations that were caused by who-knows-what and resolved by who-knows-what. I bet when someone is eating 500 calories a day, they will have plateaus no matter what they do, and they will break plateaus. But when you're on a diet with silly and specific rules, you give credit or blame to whatever you did last. It you pet a horse on the day before you gained, someone, somewhere would be blaming the horse petting.

I BET that if you structured a similar diet with the same basic core principles (low cal, low carb, low fat, healthy foods) but changed the details and insisted with the same rigor on new rules (like no hair brushing, no nail polish, no chicken, no petting horses or other hooved animals) that you would have similar success.

The point is not what the rules are, the point is that you pay attention. That's why it works. Because once you start to slack on paying attention to silly, irrational rules, maybe you are also slacking on the food and exercise that is helping you lose.

My scientific brain (small as it may be) believes everything I am saying in this post. But my fear-based brain suspects that I will do this the exact same way if I do a second round in January because it has worked, and why mess with something that works? So why am I taking drops that I might not believe in? Why NOT? If someone told me to take arsenic to lose weight, I wouldn't do it. But when someone tells me to take something that is at best effective and at worst a placebo, WHY NOT? Why not follow the rules about mixing vegetables? Why not stay away from turkey? It costs you nothing to follow the rules, and they just might be onto something for some reason you don't understand.

The funny thing is, I have apparently gotten a bit of a reputation in our local group as a rebel; a doubter; a skeptic. I think Shannon thinks I am breaking rules left and right, willy nilly. But though I ask a lot of questions, I have broken very, very few rules. I have actually followed this protocol just about as closely as anyone. Turkey and one elbow of macaroni and lip gloss are hardly the kind of cheats that sink diets.

And if someone else were doing this diet, I would tell them to follow all the stupid rules too. Because why not? What have you got to lose? It's 40 days. You can do anything for 40 days.

So see what I did there? You thought I was going to write a big post about how stupid the HCG diet is. And I sort of did. But I still think it works and will probably still try it again.


*Kristoise chimed in the comments of my last post that she was doing a 500-calorie a day diet (inspired by this one) but without all the voodoo. It still works, even without the voodoo. She is a vegetarian, so she is eating eggs, grains, dairy, etc. and is still losing an average of 0.7 pounds a day. I will point out a few things:


1) people doing HCG usually lose a lot more than one pound a day in the first week
2) K only has 5-10 pounds to lose total, which should mean she is losing at a slower rate than someone with a lot to lose
3) K has no symptoms or history of food addiction or binge eating
4) She's been doing it for a full week
5) She says she is not starving or miserable, in fact, she reports less hunger in her first week than I did, and that was without the loading days or the HCG
6) the only element of the diet that she is mimicking is the 500 calories. No drops, no restricted foods, etc.

I asked K to write a blog post about what she's doing, how she's finding it, what she thinks, etc., and she demurred, worried that readers who have a lot emotionally invested in the HCG diet will find her post insulting or upsetting (because basically, she'll make the case that all you need to do to lose weight is eat 500 calories a day whether or not you take drops and mix vegetables.) I would not be at all insulted and think it would be interesting to read. She is a real scientist, yo. Besides, there are enough differences that I don't think her case or experience necessarily translates to other people who feel desperate for a weight loss solution. Anyway, chime in in the comments if you would be interested in a guest blog post about what it's like to do this diet without the drops and food restriction. Or chime in if you would actively not like to read that.

**no mint: as of last night and according to a new HCG book and a new homeopath that has been brought on board locally, the mint rule is now rescinded. Long live mint!