VLCD#4

2.2 lbs loss on the scale today. I was really hoping to lose a tiny bit more, as that would have put me under 210 instead of the 210.4 where I am right now. Oh, well. Guess I will have to wait one more day to get under 210 ;P Seriously though, 2.2 lbs lost is pretty darn good. I have lost 9.5 lbs since my highest weight after load, so not bad at all.

After two days of having chicken and asparagus, I decided to switch it up some, so today I am eating chicken and cabbage. Big change, huh? I am also having strawberries instead of apples as my fruit as well. I am not sure I am really allowed to use it, but I put some Frank's hot sauce on my chicken and cabbage meal. I figured a couple drops wouldn't hurt, especially since there is basically nothing in the hot sauce anyway. It made the cabbage taste way better and not so bland.

I attempted to blend my frozen strawberries into a sorbet, which was a pretty nasty reminder that I need to get a different mini blender. I had forgotten just how wimpy the Magic Bullet is when it comes to blending up chunks when there is very little liquid with it. Granted it works really well so long as you are making liquidy things or slushies with sugar. I hope to make blended slushies this summer that are mostly ice and flavoring with artificial sweeter, so I will need a better blender for that. I am not sure I want to fight with the bullet for the rest of the 40 days of the HCG Protocol though. It took me half an hour fighting with the bullet to get my strawberries to even puree this morning. Basically they only blended up nicely once they had thawed out, which meant I had to freeze them again and wait even longer before I could eat them! So frustrating!

To fix the blender issue, my husband is going to go to Sam's Club tonight and pick up a Ninja. The whole line of Ninja blenders have really excellent reviews all over the web, so we are going to try one. We will be getting the Ninja Master Prep Pro. On Amazon it sells for $70, but we will only have to pay $50 at Sam's and will be getting an extra small container as well (hence why we will be getting it from Sam's!). It sounds nice, so hopefully it works much better than the bullet and can actually puree frozen fruit like claimed. Just for comparisons sake, we paid $50 for the Magic Bullet when it was on sale.

Having a blender that works well (I hope!) will make it easier to prep foods for this diet. It would be kind of nice to have soup once in a while. Eating strawberry sorbet is much more appetizing to me than plain apples as well. Slushies with flavored Stevia drops might not be so bad either, and would actually be something I could have. Once I get off this and onto Atkins again I will be able to make blended coffee drinks. I like to use some ice, instant coffee, and about half of an Atkins shake to blend up into a drink. Using the bullet for that was difficult though, since if I didn't use crushed ice there would be huge chunks of ice in it still. This diet hasn't been too bad so far, but I am missing some of the foods I am used to eating. Last night it was hard to eat my plain chicken and asparagus while everyone else was eating cheesy sausage quiche, it looked so good, lol

VLCD#3

The scale read 212.6 lbs this morning. That is 7.4 lbs lost in just a couple days, and 2.4 lbs total progress so far. Over 2 lbs lost in one week is pretty good progress, and the week isn't even over yet! So far so good I'd say. Hunger hasn't been an issue yet and I have been losing weight faster than I had hoped for.

Thursday will be my seventh day following this diet, so that is the day I will post my weekly summary (so everything lines up neatly on my diet calendar, otherwise I would do it on the eighth day so all 7 days were actually counted for). I plan to remeasure waist and hip measurements and body fat percentage, as well as total weight lost. I won't be posting before and after pictures until day 40 when I will be switching to Atkins Induction for three weeks.

That's all for today, hopefully more good news to report tomorrow :)

"Need a Tan" Gelish polish.

Just finished my mani. I like the color, though I had to do 4 coats to get it opaque. Also, this is my first time using the "Structure Gel" on myself, so we'll see how it all works. :)

Just testing the blogger app.

I just wanted to test the blogger app that I just downloaded. This is a picture comparison between the two Gelish gel polishes. The small one on the left I bought at Sally Beauty, the big one on the right I bought on Amazon. I paid the same price for both of them; $13 with free shipping from Amazon (I used seller Quick E Shop) and the Sally purchase was made locally.

My adventures with gel polish.

I am a big DIY kind of person, in that I don't like paying other people to do things that I can do myself. I haven't paid for a hair cut in years, and I have never went to a salon to get my nails done. I have always done my own nails and spent a while doing acrylic nails at home (on myself only) but didn't care for it too much.

Recently I've been getting into the gel polish. I had bought a SensatioNails kit awhile ago and have been getting used to using it. My first application looked good, but I got it too thick near the cuticle and it started to lift after about a week's time. The next application I did better, but got it too thin on the edges and it started to lift after just a few days. I have since bought the Gelish Basix kit and prefer it to the SensatioNail brand. I goes on better and it seems to last longer. I have mixed the two products in one application and have had zero problems doing so. What I mean by mixing is that I use the SensatioNails colors with the Gelish prep, foundation and top coat. The reason for that is that I don't have many Gelish colors yet ($12 a bottle, so I plan on buying a new color every couple weeks until I have a small selection to choose from).

My most recent manicure I did on myself was a french tip using Gelish "Sleek White" and "Bashful." I really like the white color, but the base color was a little disappointing. "Bashful" is shown as a pale sheer pink that is shimmery. When I get it on though, it is very very sheer beige with golden flecks of shimmer. The end result is that my nails end up looking yellowing. In some light it looks okay, and in other light my nails look just plain fugly. I will need to find a new base color for my french tips, but won't worry about that for awhile. My bottle of "Need a Tan" should be coming in the mail today. "Need a Tan" looks like a light nude color online, we'll see what it looks like once I get it on my nails.

When I do my nails today, I will not be soaking off. I will file the gel down to a thin layer then put the new on right on top of it. I hate the soaking off process as it seems to take forever and dries my nails pretty badly (during the process anyway, as they are fine after). I may have a crappy bottle of acetone (my husband got it from Wal-Mart for me) or my technique may just suck, either way I don't feel like doing it today.

One thing I feel like I should note, is that polish performs better on the gel than it does on my natural nails. I put some glitter polish and a top coat over my gel manicure to change it up some, and it has stayed on remarkably well. I didn't rough up the top of the gel at all, so was concerned about the polish even sticking. This is nice just in case I get tired of my nails and want something different but don't want to do a full-blown gel mani.

I have started doing my girls' nails with the gel polish. I am not really in favor of little girls wearing makeup, but nails can be fun and girly. I wouldn't normally put gel polish on them, but I am trying to get my 7-year-old to stop chewing her nails and my 5-year-old to learn to take better care of her nails. When their nails are painted both girls are more careful with their hands and it helps protect their nails (not as easy to break or so likely to be damaged by chewing). I have promised them if they take good care of their nails that I will buy some fun colors for them (my oldest wants bright glittery pink and my youngest girl wants really dark red, lol they are sooooo predicable).

 Here is my mani with polish on top at 10 days of wear. Today is day 11 and I have 1mm of new growth already showing at my cuticle. I will probably never know how long the Gelish lasts before it starts to chip, as I don't think I could stand how 3mm of new growth would look.

Just another shot of my nails, this one is to better show the length they are currently at. This is the length I like the best. It is long enough it looks nice, but not so long as to interfere with daily life. I like the way long nails look, but I hate not being able to use my finger tips.

This is my seven-year-old's nails. This is two coats of SN's "Pink Chiffon" with the gel mani finished. Then I painted regular polish over the top, the color used is Nicole by O.P.I. in "Love Your Life." As you can see, she picks at her fingers a lot and chews the nails down to the quick.

 Here is my five-year-old's mani. She picked SN's "Taupe Tulip" color (this is two coats). She isn't as rough on her nails as her sister, and doesn't chew her nails (you can see how much healthier looking her finger tips are). Unfortunately she got my nails; fast growing but very thin and flexible. Her biggest problem was that her nails would get long quickly, break with jagged edges, and she would accidentally scratch herself pretty frequently. The gel should help her nails to not break, and the tips won't be sharp anymore. I will need to redo her mani every week though because of how fast her nails grow.

My new Gelish "Need a Tan" just came in the mail, and it looks really great! I will update this post with a picture of it on later tonight.

VLCD#2

So the rest of yesterday went well. I only felt a little hungry twice during the day, right before supper and right before bed. All in all, day #1 went pretty well.

I had no idea what to expect my weight to be this morning, but I was pleasantly surprised that I am down 3.6 lbs from yesterday. If I lost that much every day I'd be at my goal in no time! Seriously though, that was more lost than I was even hoping for. I expected the rest of this week to be spent on getting those two load days off, but it may just take a couple days.

As far as hunger goes this morning, it hasn't been too bad. I felt "empty" when I woke up, but there was no gnawing hunger. I used my Melba toast (my husband went shopping last night and actually found some!) for the day and one apple as my breakfast.

My meals today will be chicken and asparagus. I am not a huge fan of asparagus, but that's because I have a hard time buying and cooking it so it turns out. I am going to experiment with steaming it in the microwave. Hopefully it turns out and I don't just end up with inedible green twigs. Hopefully today goes as well as yesterday did.

VLCD#1

I am frustrated. I had a post all typed out on my Kindle, and it crashed. My entire post is now gone, and I get to start over, oh hooray (insert obvious sarcasm here).

I am partway through the day. It wasn't too weird not eating breakfast, seeing as how I usually end up doing that anyway, so not much of an adjustment there. It hasn't been too bad pushing the fluids either. I got out the tea brewer and made some iced tea. I have drank about half of my daily requirement of liquids so far.

Lunch was weird. I am so not used to eating chicken. Low-carbers typically don't eat a lot of chicken because of the low percentage of fat in it, so this is the first chicken I've had since Thanksgiving. I am using a few diet tracker apps to track my calories and nutritional intake as well as my daily weight. The one for my calories keeps reminding me that my calorie intake is way too low, lol DUH! I didn't put in 500 calories per day goal on accident. The apps are pretty convenient so far.

Speaking of apps, I am encouraging my husband to start using the Atkins app for his iPhone. He has problems tracking carbs, and having it on his phone would make it much easier for him. The reviews for the Atkins app give it a pretty bad rap, but from the little I played with it it didn't seem so bad. It seems kinda dumb that people complain about having to add some of their own custom entries, which if you are used to tracking your carbs on a piece of paper using the app seems like very little work. I hope he stays on track and uses the app to make sure he doesn't go over his carb limit. This morning he stuffed his omelet with cheddar and cream cheese, and I think he is unaware of how many carbs he added by doing that.

I did get my husband to help me with the calipers and taking a before picture (which turned out horrid since I was super bloated from the pizza we had eaten for supper yesterday). We finally settled on my body fat percentage being 30%. That isn't much higher than I had gotten on my own, but it is enough that I feel a bit better about it. I am darn certain that I am not in the normal range, given that I am obese and probably 4 jean sizes too big for my ideal weight.

I probably won't update again today. I have a few things to do that will keep me pretty busy, and there isn't a whole lot else to say. Hopefully I will have a smaller weight to report tomorrow (I am not expecting anything, but am hoping for maybe a pound this first day before things really get rolling).

hHCG day#2

I am ready for the loading day to be over. I am actually looking forward to barely eating anything tomorrow.

I was sure that when I weighed myself this morning I would see a 3 lb gain, wrong! I ended up only gaining .2 lbs, even with eating in excess. I am not quite sure what to expect when I step on the scale tomorrow morning. I was so sure that I would gain a lot too.

I have tried using the fat calipers myself, and have come to the average measurement of 18-19mm, which according to the included chart equals 27.6% body fat. I am not really sure that I am doing it right, but my husband hasn't gotten time to help me yet. Hopefully I can get him to help me with it soon, as this was one more way I hoped to track my progress.

The brand of hHCG I am using is called "The HCG Solution" made by NiGen BioTech, LLC. I haven't been able to find any definite instruction on how to take the hHCG, so I've been taking it like it is sublingual rx HCG. I hold it under my tongue for 4-5 minutes then swallow it. I really wouldn't say that this stuff tastes very good. It is flavored to taste like mint chocolate, but I really am not convinced that was an improvement. It has a sweet flavor with a bitter aftertaste, though once held for a couple minutes the bitter seems to disappear. I have noticed that I feel really stir crazy both yesterday and today. I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night because of having such an intense feeling like I needed to jog or move a lot. I am not sure if this is from the drops, or because of the forced over-feeding. Eating more than your body needs does lead to "energy to burn" but I don't think I have ever experienced that before (not surprising as I've never put myself on an intentional gorging spree for a couple days). I think it may be a combination between a stimulant in the drops and consuming much more food than I am used to. We'll see if the phenomena lasts once I am a couple days into eating only 500 calories a day.

I still need to weigh the chicken into acceptable portions then cook it for later this week. I really am not looking forward to handling the raw chicken. I wonder how many days until I am sick of chicken? All I have for a vegetable right now is lettuce, and I still have to pick up Melba toast, which I doubt I will be able to find locally.

Anyway, that's about it. We'll see where I stand tomorrow on my weight and where I am at the end of a week's time.

hHCG Day #1 and why I am even doing this.

Yup, that's right, I am starting the hHCG diet today. The HCG diet is harder to get than I first thought it was. In order to get the HCG drops or injections you either need a Rx or to buy from overseas (namely India). I didn't really want to wait until I find a Dr. (there is apparently a several month waiting list) and my husband was completely against me buying the stuff from India (oddly enough, I would be fine with that option, even though I would be mixing and injecting it myself). There is a third and more expensive option, and that is going to a weight loss clinic. They tack on additional fees for "coaching" and "guidance" so they end up being even more expensive than going to a medical doctor. From what I could find, the cost of going to a weight loss clinic varies in price from $500 to $2,000 per round (40 days/injections or 34lbs, whichever comes first).

Since the real HCG diet is not really an option for me, I will be doing the homeopathic HCG instead. I find it odd that the stuff claims to be HCG and 100% hormone free, odd because HCG is a hormone. Obviously the stuff isn't real HCG, but more or less is just an appetite suppressant with other herbs and who knows what else. Coupled with the strict 500 calorie diet, this is basically just a semi-starvation diet that gets pretty darn close to fasting. It is extremely low calorie, carb, and fat. Basically it is no breakfast besides tea or coffee (sweetened with Stevia) lunch and dinner are the same (you have to eat exactly the same thing for supper as you have for lunch that day) and consist of a 3.5 oz piece of extra lean protein and one vegetable. There are two snacks a day (can also be eaten with a meal if preferred) each consisting of one apple and one bread stick or Melba toast. Before you start this super low everything diet, you have a two day period of what is referred to as "loading days." During this time you are supposed to stuff yourself with as much fatty foods as you can. I understand the reasoning behind this with a true HCG diet (to build your stores of structural fat, iron, and protein), but am not convinced it matters much when not even taking the hormone.

Why am I choosing to do this? Good question! Honestly, I am doing this to get myself on the right track again. I don't seem to be able to control my eating habits when I get depressed, which is kinda crappy since eating junk further depresses me. When there is a lot of stress in my life or a lot of strife within my marriage I become extremely depressed. When I am in that state I crave sugar and starches like my survival depends upon me consuming that junk, which in a way it does. What I mean by that is that when I am extremely depressed the endorphins and "high" that comes from eating those "comfort" foods is about the only thing that brings me relief from the depression (albeit for a short period of time). I can recognize that these cravings help steer me away from suicide and self destruction, even though they are damaging to me at the same time. It is kind of like the lesser of two evils at the moment when my depression is severe. I have survived for many years through some very traumatic situations through the comfort of starchy and sugary foods. I try to rely on other comforts and coping methods, but they only work for a certain amount of stress and pain. Once I fall into the spiral of toxic eating, it is very hard to climb back out again. The more sugar one consumes, the more you crave. Sugar is addictive and actually stimulates the same area of the brain that heroine, alcohol, and smoking does. I am doing this diet to break myself out of the spiral or bad eating, kinda like a dietary slap to the face.

My plan is to do this diet for 40 days then switch to Atkins. I will go straight from this super low eating to the unlimited eating with no sugars or starches of the Induction phase of Atkins for 3 weeks (the induction phase of Atkins is nearly identical to the next stage of the HCG diet) then I will move into the OWL (ongoing weight loss) phase of Atkins (which again, is nearly identical to the lifelong maintenance stage of HCG). I will stay in OWL until I reach my goal weight of 150 lbs (or until I can't lose excess weight anymore, be it 130 lbs or 160 lbs. I want to be healthy.)

If for some reason I do not manage to lose the weight I hope to (about 30 lbs is my goal) then I will seriously consider going to the weight loss clinic as long as the prices are not extreme. I need to break the cycle and I need to get healthy. If I could have managed to stay on the low carb lifestyle I would have been fine, and I never would have had any problem with it if it hadn't been for a string of very bad fights with my husband. Low carb is actually very easy to stick to and a satisfying lifestyle, however nothing can withstand the depression that fallows a huge blowout with my husband.

I would say I am optimistic about losing my goal weight. I will be aiming for .75 lbs per day, which is a lot but not unfathomable. I will not be disappointed at all if I lose half a pound a day, or even a little less than that. I don't really expect this to be easy at all, so it helps that this is a short term thing. I know that I will be losing muscle and structural fat as well as abnormal fat. I hope to restore the lost muscle and structural fat during the induction phase of Atkins. It doesn't matter a whole lot if I lose some muscle mass, because it's not like I am trying to build muscle right now anyway. The worry comes from the possibility of organ cannibalism, but that shouldn't happen in such a short amount of time (otherwise I wouldn't even attempt this. Also I feel it is important to point out that using real HCG protects your muscle and forces just the excess fat stores to be burned for fuel). Some people claim hHCG is no better than snake oil, other people claim it is just as effective as the real deal. Who knows, but I'll find out how it works for me at least.

Before getting started today, I weighed and measured myself. Tomorrow my order from Amazon will get here, so I will have fat calipers to measure my body fat %, as well as a food scale for measuring my proteins. I hate measuring myself, it is always so depressing. I hadn't weighed myself in a while either, and the poor eating really packed on the pounds. My weight starting this diet is exactly 215 lbs, yikes! On this plan, I will be weighing myself every day to track progress and help correct stalls and whatnot soon. I won't list all of my measurements, just the basic two, waist and hips. My waist measurement is 42" (keep in mind that I am pretty bloated at the moment, and this measurement will likely go down quickly because of decreasing the bloating and not because of fat loss) and my hips measure 46" around. I will be measuring weekly and hopefully seeing good progress during the 40 day period. I doubt I will update every single day, but I hope to update on my progress often. I may end up posting a couple times a week if I hit rough patches, though my aim is to post daily (see, I am being realistic here in doubting I can stick to daily posts).

Sunday will be my first day on the low calorie part, otherwise known as VLCD#1 (very low calorie diet, day 1). At the same time my husband plans to start back with low-carbing. We are going to see who loses more weight, though I already know it will be him since he always loses weight faster and easier than I do. I already know it will be torture eating grilled chicken and lettuce while he is eating meat loaf, lol I hope to have him help me with my before picture either tonight or tomorrow. I am always confused when it comes to taking before pictures. You see other people taking theirs in their underwear, which I really do not want to do, lol Also don't really have any workout clothes to wear, don't want to wear leggings as they shrink my legs some and it wouldn't be a fair representation of my fatness. I'll probably just end up wearing what I do most days in the end, but it seems like there should be a good choice that I just don't see yet, lol

It is near the end of day one, and I feel like a pig. I was looking forward to eating whatever I wanted, but it actually has just been sort of gross. Not sure why, but the cheese burgers don't even taste good, and I really really like cheese burgers. I almost don't want to do tomorrow as a load day, but I am committed to following this to a T, so I'm just gonna have to suck it up and do it anyway. I think I will go drink a bunch of water now, that is the only thing that sounds good at the moment and I need to start increasing my water intake anyway. I will try to post more tomorrow about the hHCG drops I am using and how I am using them. I am predicting my weight will be at 218 tomorrow; that's just what I am expecting to see on the scale.

January's weight loss.

This will be just a short update on my progress during January. I started the month at 217.6 lbs and ended it at 206.8 lbs. I lost 10 lbs during the first two weeks then struggled the rest of the month. I lost the 11th pound very near the end of the month during this week. Actually my loss for this week is only that one pound.

11 lbs lost during a month isn't too bad. I did lose more than 2 lbs for every week even if I didn't lose it steadily through the month. There were (nearly) 4 and a half weeks in January, so that puts me at 2.4 lbs lost each week. It doesn't sound so bad when you think of it that way!

I have a lot going on right now, so weight isn't my biggest worry at the moment. I am still trying to lose weight, and am doing well sticking to my diet. I am hoping to have lost another pound by my weekly weigh in on Sunday. Anyway, here is hoping for another 11 lbs lost this month!