ARGH (Round 3, Phase 2, Day 9)

The last two days, I hate this diet. I really fucking hate this diet. I am hungry, I feel deprived, I feel desperate for real food in a way that feels really fucked up and unnatural. Last week was pretty easy in terms of hunger, but this week is not easy at all. It is taking every shred of self-control not to dive into a pile of food and eat like a depraved, starved animal. We've had kid birthday parties the last two days, with positively delicious-looking pizza at each one. I've had to handle and serve pizza and cupcakes and potato chips and not have any. My kids had barbecued chicken, buttered peas, apples, and roasted potatoes for dinner last night, and I thought I was going to knock them over to get that food. And the weight loss is soooo slow so I don't even feel rewarded. Two nights ago, I was so hungry that I ate an extra apple and a tangerine, and last night, I had an extra half grapefruit. Sort of cheating, I guess, because I ate more than my daily allotment of 2 fruits, but it is the lamest and most unrewarding cheating I have ever done in my damn life.

At the suggestion of faithful blog readers Kristoise and Holly, I did some math. Math: the refuge of desperate people.

• Not counting load days, but starting from pre-load weights: By day 9 of Round 1, I had lost 5.6% of my body weight. In Round 2, I've lost 3.5% of my body weight in the same amount of time.
• Including load days in total weight loss: Round 1, I lost 6.1% of my weight in nine days, and in Round 2, I have lost 5.8%. 

Either way, it is definitely slower this time around, no doubt about it. Could it be because I have less to lose (but then wouldn't you think the percentages would be the same?) Could it be that I don't have the same slavish devotion to every rule? (I had an extra fruit and a half this week and even, GASP, mixed my vegetables one night). Could it be that I am approaching the weight that is ideal for my body, and that even if I'd like to lose more, I'm close to the weight my body wants to be? I don't know what it is, but it is fucking frustrating.  

Can you tell I am feeling testy?

I decided this morning that I was only going to do 20 days on this diet this time and then maintenance. Then I decided I was going to stop when I got to 187, no matter how soon that happened. I am just hating it so much.

But then I did three things:

1) I went back and looked at my day 9 blog post from Round 1, and realized I was feeling a lot of this stuff then (albeit with more positive stuff mixed in). So even though I was kind of miserable in the beginning last time, by 2-3 weeks in, it felt really easy. It helps to be reminded by my own self and my own experience that this will get easier soon. Has anyone else noticed a real flagging in motivation right around 1.5 weeks?

2) I went and tried on this pair of Gap khaki jeans that I have saved for ten years. I have a picture of myself wearing them almost ten years ago, standing with Holly's kids when they came to visit me in DC shortly after my 25th birthday. I remember getting that picture developed at the time and thinking, "wow, I kind of look . . . good! I look like a normal person and not a fat person!" I had been on WW for about a year and a half at that point and had weighed around 186 for many months in a row. I'm now 192.6, so I thought I'd try on the pants. They fit! They are a tiny bit tight, but not too tight to wear in public. They are, of course, 10 years out of style, but whatever. They're just khakis, right?. I also tried on a bunch of skirts I bought at H&M about 10 years ago, and they fit too, and even look sort of cute! So to be able to wear these very symbolic pants feels like a huge milestone even though (have I mentioned this yet? Have you heard?) I really hate this fucking diet lately.

3) I went back and looked at my old WW weight logs. When I first started losing weight in 1999, it took me TEN MONTHS to lose 37 pounds. And it did not feel easy, it felt pretty hard. This time around I have lost 37 pounds since Halloween, or in roughly 3  months. And yes, it has been hard, FER SURE, but it has been in 1/3 the time. And though I have been very focused on weight loss this second round, I daresay the biggest benefits have not even been totally weight related. I know, HERESY.

Day	Date	Weight	Daily Change	Total Loss: Round 2	Total Loss: Cumulative
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

I felt very committed last time, and once I actually started, I was very certain I would finish the whole 40 days no matter what. I don't feel as committed or certain this time. So, look, no promises. I'm going to keep on keeping on until 21 days and see how I feel. That gives me 12 more days, which I can certainly do. I'm going to increase my drops from 12 drops three times a day to 15 drops three times a day. Either I will lose a bunch of weight in the next 12 days (10+ more lbs would be nice), in which case that will motivate me to keep going, or I won't lose a bunch of weight, which will motivate me to stay on longer.

Meanwhile, I'll just take it one day at a time and try to be "good" so I can lose as much as I can as quickly as I can. And I'm going to a fucking superbowl party tonight, where I will furiously knit in the corner and glower at the chili, chips, and onion dip, imagining that 100g of naked chicken, a tiny apple, 2c of spinach, and a bottle of water is JUST AS DELICIOUS AND SATISFYING as queso blanco, cold beer, and honey barbecue chicken wings.

The Last Weekend

This was a challenging weekend, but I think I did well. No one will be interested in this, but I'm going to write down what I ate just to keep track, since this is kind of like an online journal. And writing helps me sort it all out.

Friday was my last day of drops. I ate like a normal HCG day, except I did have a bit of that deli chicken that had the tiny bit of honey in it (I lost both days I had that chicken). Yesterday and today, I was supposed to stay on 500 calories but with no drops. Tomorrow is my last day of 500 calories, then I start official maintenance tomorrow.

Saturday was our trip to Washington, D.C. for the Christmas show with my in laws, my husband, and my daughter. A big fancy dinner before hand is part of the tradition, and because of travel time and other factors, I couldn't bring my own food.

The whole "get the HCG out of your system for three days" is one of the rules that doesn't make sense to me. If the homeopathic HCG is not potent enough to turn a pregnancy test positive and is not potent enough to cause immunity the way the drops do, then how is it potent enough to requite three days of withdrawal? Doesn't make any sense to me. So my plan going into this weekend was that I would try to eat 500 calories and I would stick to the basic protocol, but I wasn't going to worry about chicken vs. turkey or mixing vegetables.

Saturday night, I ordered a chef's salad without the bacon, cheese, dressing, or croutons. So here's what it had in it: lettuce, two whole hard-boiled eggs (I ate one), 6 cherry tomatoes, and about 100g grilled chicken, which they said was prepared with no fat, but who knows. Then I had decaf with about one thimble full of real cream (they had no milk). So I think for the day, I probably had in the range of 500-600 calories, counting lunch. I had almost no water, because we were traveling and in a performance for 9 hours of the day, and I didn't want to have to pee all day in public bathrooms all up and down I-95.

My day was crazy today. We got our tree up with the in laws, and then at noon, I went to my book club holiday book exchange. It was a brunch with delicious food: quiche, french bread, beet salad, seared tuna and cannelloni beans, chili, papaya and raspberries, coffee cake, and prosecco with blood orange soda. What did I eat? NOTHING. I had water. I didn't think any of it was close enough to protocol to risk it. So I had NOTHING because I am VIRTUOUS. Can you feel my virtue seeping through the interwebz?

Right after that, I had to dash to a 60th birthday party we were hosting for my father-in-law at a local sports bar (so he could watch the Browns game, play pool, and drink beer with his friends). There were chips and dip, veggies with ranch dressing, hot wings, beer, etc. I ordered a plain chefs salad, hold the cheese and croutons. It did have mixed veggies in it, and it had turkey and ham, both of which are off protocol. And I had water. For dinner, I had greens, chicken, and apple.

I feel kind of bloated tonight, and I can't figure out why unless it's because the food I ate today at the bar was probably more processed than what I have been used to (deli turkey and deli ham).  Or it could be some kind of normal, monthly hormonal thing. I stepped on the scale (always a mistake at night) and I am up four pounds. I know that's the end-of-the-day weight, but I think it means I will be up a little tomorrow. So who knows if it is water or dieting failures or hormones or what.

I really think my body is just done with this. I lost very little weight the last two weeks (though still 2+ pounds a week, which is the healthy rate of weight loss). If I'm up tomorrow, it will be a bummer and I will flagellate myself for not staying perfectly on plan this weekend, but I mean, I did stick with the 500 cals a day and I did stick with healthy meats and veggies and fruits, I just ate a little egg, turkey, and ham two days earlier than I am allowed. I think given the fact that I am soon transitioning to real eating and that I had some challenging and tempting situations this week, I did very well.

I haven't been very hungry the last few days, even less hungry than I was at some points last week.

I have to admit, I'm nervous about maintenance. If I have been barely losing anything the last couple of weeks on 500 calories, how am I going to maintain weight eating 3-4x that much? The math doesn't make sense to me. But my body is done losing for now, that much I can tell. I think if I stayed on the 500 calories another week, I would lose very little additional weight. I think it needs a rest and a break.

So tomorrow, my last day of 500 calories, I will follow the plan perfectly. I will go to pilates in the morning. I will drink all my water and try to catch up from the drought that was this weekend. And then we'll see what happens. Whatever weight I am on Tuesday morning, that is my last HCG weight, and I'm supposed to stay within two pounds of that weight for the next 40 days.

Day 36	12/6/2010	200.8	0.0	28.8
Day 37	12/7/2010	199.2	-1.6	-30.4
Day 38	12/8/2010	199.2	0.0	-30.4
Day 39	12/9/2010	198.8	-0.4	-30.8
Day 40	12/10/2010	198.4	-0.4	-31.2
Day 41	12/11/2010	197.6	-0.8	-32
Day 42	12/12/2010	198.2	0.6	-31.4
Day 43	12/13/2010
Week 6 summary: down 2.6# this week; 31.4 total

Phase 2, Day 2 (P1D1)

Umm, yeah. Today was hard. It was my first day on the lo-cal, and I was not feeling great. A stomach bug has been going around my family, and I was up with the two year old all night. So when I felt queasy today, I wasn't sure if I was hungry, overly tired, getting sick, or some combination of the three.


It wasn't agonizing, it wasn't terrible, but I hope I will be less hungry once my body adjusts to this.


Also, we went to a Day of the Dead party on my very first day! I just brought my ground beef and spinach and told them I was on a special cleansing diet. This is a very hippie dippie crowd, so they didn't ask any questions and took the "cleanse" excuse at face value. I just didn't feel like dealing with the skeptics.


I was also very headachey today.


So tomorrow, hopefully the scale will be down a pound or two and it will motivate me to push through this beginning part. How many days will I be hungry before it settles in?