VLCD Day 17

I can't believe I made it 17 days.  It's amazing how the fear of gaining weight keeps you from cheating (unless you're rationalizing with yourself at the Starbucks counter...a mistake I won't be repeating again!).  It's amazing how the same food that you were bored of cooking week in and week out for your family suddenly looks like a gourmet meal.  It's amazing that I miss pasta as much as I do as normally I don't crave pasta all that much.  I can't believe I'm almost done with the drops (Thursday is my last day on drops) and then just two more days until I can start eating real food again.  I lost another 1.2 lbs yesterday (Detox bath!) and if I only lost another .2 lbs per day for the next two days,  I will have lost 16 lbs in 19 days...not too bad at all! 

P.S.  I wore my tight slacks to work today.  They aren't tight anymore and I found out today I can take them off without unbuttoning them woohoo!

VLCD Day 16

Confession time:  I cheated a bit yesterday and didn't think I'd get found out by the scale this morning, but I did.  I gained .4 lbs lol.  I was feeling so sorry for myself that everybody got to eat barbeque yesterday at Aaron's grandparents house and all I got was the same stuff I've been eating for the last two weeks, so I bought myself a Starbucks.  I had a non-fat sugar free cinnamon dolce cafe latte.  I asked the girl to go light on the milk (I should have told her 1 T of milk, but I didn't want to because I really didn't only want 1 T of milk), and I'm certain she didn't hear me because I intentionally said it kind of quietly.   So I guess now I have to believe that I'm not above the consequences of cheating (I mean really, I didn't think that an extra 3 T of milk would do anything at all) so it's back to being a good girl for me. Right after I finish this Starbucks that I bought this morning...JUST KIDDING!

VLCD Day 15

My ticker won't update this morning, but I'm down 14.8 lbs!  Just .2 to go until I get to 15 lbs which is awesome.  Yesterday was kind of a sucky day.  We got a call in the morning from Aaron's mom letting us know that the doctor said Aaron's uncle Cliff would pass away shortly.  Aaron called to say goodbye and a few hours later we got another call saying he was gone.  It was hard because I wanted to eat to make myself feel better and I couldn't.  The other day when we closed on our house I wanted to go out to lunch to celebrate and we couldn't.  I'm looking forward to P3 when I can at least eat a grilled chicken salad at a restaurant or something.  A week from today I'll be eating oopsie french toast with cream cheese and strawberries.  Oh baby!

VLCD Day 14

I lost .8 lbs last night (and think I might re-weigh myself later because the scale was kind of jumping around between 169 and 170 this morning).  Anyways, thats .8 lbs gone overnight, and I swear it had something to do with Erica's detox bath.  I think TOM is almost here, so I was certain that I was going to have GAINED some weight.  I ran to the store and got epsom salts and baking soda and soaked in in the tub with those for about 30 minutes and woke up this morning to a large loss.  I wish I knew for sure it was from the bath, but I think it was?  Regardless, I am officially at 170.0 lbs as of this morning.  The next time I lose weight I will officially be in the 160s.  I can't believe this.  I haven't seen the 160s in years.  How exciting!

VLCD Day 13

We sold our house today finally.  It's completely behind us and no more worrying that the buyer might back out.  That also meant that I didn't get to eat lunch until 2 and that sucked.  And I really wanted to go out to lunch with Aaron to celebrate but I couldn't do that either.  Depressing.  I'm probably not going to post my food since I eat the same dang thing every day.  I really wish I liked fish.  I really wish that I liked chicken. 

VLCD Day 12

Well there's only 8 days left of drops (I'm counting today in that number) and then two more days of low cal, then I can start phase three.  I'm very excited about this.  I'm glad that Labor Day falls when it does, because the Sunday before labor day is my first day of phase 3 and I'm making cream cheese strawberry oopsie bread, and then on Monday I can make a Denver omelette...oh baby!  I'm tired of the food already, despite all the wonderful recipes there are out there for p2.  I don't like fish, and I don't care for big pieces of meat so it really limits what I can eat.  I've been eating the chili because it's so good that I actually look forward to it.  Scrambled eggs because I love them so much.  I'm not fond of chicken unless it's shredded inside an enchilada.  It's hard to find things new to try because I'm not an adventurous eater by any means.  My weight loss seems to be slowing a bit but I already expected that so I'm not upset.  I lost another .4 lbs last night and I'm totally fine with that.  I'm thinking that since I'm doing such short rounds, that even if I can only squeak 15 lbs out per round, that's fine by me.  I may have to do a third round at some point, but I will probably wait until after the holidays.  I want to be on maintenance during the holidays so I can eat with my family.  I am tired of separate meals and not eating with the kids because our dinners get done at a different time. 

VLCD Day 11

Only ten more days...woohoo!  I'm so excited!  I'm SO looking forward to the Sunday after next!

Breakfast - Coffee & Tea

Lunch - Chili & Cottage Cheese, Applesauce

Dinner - Garlic Shrimp (sans legs) and asparagus, Apple.

VLCD Day 10

I lost another .8 lbs today which totally ROCKS!  It's 9:45 p.m. and I'm just now able to update my blog for the day.  I've been super busy at work, and then after work I had some stuff to handle, and then came home and had to work some more.  The good thing is that I was so busy that I was able to handle the hunger with no problem today.

Breakfast - Coffee

Lunch - Chili & Cottage Cheese, Apple, Pickles

Dinner - Eggs & Salsa, Orange

I think I've given up on those Grissinis.  They are dry and thin and not worth the time it takes to walk all the way into the kitchen to get them. 

VLCD Day 9

Ooh baby...almost in the double digit VLCD days.  That's so cool!  I'm down another .4 lbs this morning which is awesome.  I drank some more special tea (lol) and hope to be down even more tomorrow.  I'm trying grilled shrimp tonight for dinner which is a good thing.  I'm not a huge fan of the seafood, but I'm so desperate for something new that shrimp is starting to sound good.  It'd be nice to learn to like fish and shrimp so that after I'm off the diet I can continue eating them.  They're so healthy!

Breakfast:  Cranberry Pomegranate Green Tea (Kind of non-protocolish but oh well...plain green tea is gross)

Lunch - More chili with a little bit of cottage cheese.  Seriously, I can't get enough of that stuff it is SO good.  One apple.  A few teeny pickles.

Dinner:  Garlic Shrimp and grilled onions.  Not sure what the fruit will be yet.  **UPDATE**  I cooked the shrimp and it was delicious.  I ate one.  I went to peel the shell off the other shrimp and noticed it had legs on it.  I examined the rest of my shrimp and they all had LEGS on them.  I almost threw up.  Needless to say, the kids ate the shrimp, and I had to make do with what I had defrosted - an extra lean hamburger patty.  That makes beef two times today but it's better than eating shrimp legs!

I'm close to 12 lbs lost.  I'm setting these really tiny 5 lb goals right now.  The whole 40 lbs seemed so far away and unattainable.  I can do 5 lbs though!

VLCD Day 8

I can't believe I've been at this since last Sunday!  This is officially my 8th day, I lost another .8 lbs since yesterday, and my grand total is now 11.2 lbs.  The weight came off so quickly that I can tell a difference.  You know what I mean...sometimes when you're losing weight it's so slow to come off that you don't notice a difference until the difference is significant.  Well, I've been looking at myself in the mirror every day (something that would normally make me want to cry) and I can see major changes.  Heck, even sitting on the couch here with my laptop looks different.  Last night I noticed that my stomach roll no longer sticks out in front of me.  I still HAVE one, but it so much smaller and it doesn't protrude anymore.  Amazing!

Breakfast:  Coffee

Lunch:  Leftover Chili with a tiny bit of cottage cheese.  Orange.  Grissini

Dinner:  Cottage cheese & sorbet.  I just wasn't hungry AT ALL.  It's 88 degrees in this house today and made me feel sick.  I ended up "cheating" around 7:30 and eating another orange.  That's three fruits in one day.  I was so hungry that I couldn't handle it anymore.  I was hungry even after I ate that orange, and then I took the drops at 8 and felt fine again.  I wish I would remember that the drops curb hunger because I could have held out another 30 minutes I think.  Regardless, I cheated with a protocol food, and am still under my 500 cals for the day so I'm not going to cry about it (unless I gain weight from that razzle-frackin' orange tomorrow morning!)

I gotta tell you...I've only been on this for 8 days and I would really love to have some bread.  My most major cravings have been for bologna sandwiches and macaroni and cheese.  Before being on this diet, I didn't care much for either of those things and would pretty much only eat them if Aaron made them, or if that's all we had on hand and I didn't feel like cooking.  I just want a white bread bologna sandwich with miracle whip and mustard.  With Kraft Macaroni and Cheese on the side.  I'm hoping that when I get to eat cheese and different meats on p3 some of these cravings will subside.

At the store this morning I was getting a cookie for Chloe (or store does free cookies for the kids) and I opened the donut door to get a cookie and the smell of a maple bar hit me so hard.  Oh man, maple bars.  It wanted to come home with me, I could tell by the look in its eye but I resisted.  Barely.

VLCD Day 7

Woke up this morning to a .2 lb gain.  I want breakfast.  It's easier not to eat until noon when I'm at work because I'm busy.   I keep going over in my head that if I quit now, I can just start eating low cal again, or counting my calories again.  I know I won't stick to it though because I never do.  I feel like I've lost my motivation today and I want it back.  I didn't realize how much of a downer a tiny gain would be.  If I wake up to another gain tomorrow, or even just no loss at all, then I'm trying an apple day.  I didn't drink as much water yesterday as I was supposed to so I hope that's part of the problem.  Oh I need to get through this!!!

Update:  My body has finally *ahem* cleared up some of its issues and I weighed myself again...Down to 174!  That's officially 10.4 lbs gone in a week!  I'll be taking magnesium & potassium like Erica told me to so that I never have an issue like this again lol!

Breakfast:  Coffee and tea

Lunch:  Apple, Spinach dipped into horseradish mustard/ACV/stevia viniagrette, Chicken basted and grilled in the same viniagrette.

Dinner:  Beanless Chili (lean ground beef, canned tomato, small amount of tomato paste, onions, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, and 1/3 packet of stevia).  I actually had a 1/2 portion of chili because I cannot eat chili without sour cream, so I did a half portion of the chili and 1/3 portion of cottage cheese.  Oh man, now I'm mixing proteins!  Either way, it was yummy with some jalapenos in it, and it helped curb the SERIOUS urges I've had today to cheat.  I'm going to see what mixing the proteins does to the scale tomorrow...hopefully not much because it would be nice to have a little cottage cheese to act as sour cream. 

I feel sick to death of this diet today.  I feel like nothing tastes good, even though everything I ate today tasted good.  I am just pretty crabby I guess.  I'm only a week in, and the next two weeks seem like they'll never be over with.  Because of my terrible will power and the fact that I don't have too much weight to lose (I set my goal at 135 lbs, but I'm going to adjust to 145 since 135 almost makes me look sickly), I'm thinking of trying just a three week round this time, do the maintenance, and then re-load on Aaron's birthday and the day after, and then do another round to finish off.  If I still feel like I need to lose the last 10 lbs, I can do another short round later, but I doubt I'll have to.  When I got married I weighed 154 and was a size 10, and at 145 I'm a size 8.  I have a medium to large bone structure, and even at 185, people guess me to be around 150 lbs.  At 145 I should be pretty slim.  I keep planning on what I am going to do too far in the future and it's making me feel desperate.  I'm going to just tone it down a bit and take it one 3 week round at a time. 

VLCD Day 6

Down .8 lbs this morning.  I freaked myself out by weighing myself after I ate dinner last night.  Then I freaked myself out by telling myself that I wasn't going to lose any weight if I didn't get right to sleep.  I'm surprised I fell asleep at all under that pressure.  But I woke up and the sun was shining and the birds were chirping, and I was .8 lbs lighter than I was yesterday.  That's 9.6 lbs today.  That's only .4 lbs away from the 10 lb mark.  If I can get to the 10 lb mark tomorrow, I will have lost 10 lbs in 6 days.  I still have to say that I'm amazed that I'm not weak and starving all the time.  Yes, I get hungry.  Sometimes I'm really hungry, but never anything that I can't deal with, and every day my stomach shrinks up a bit and I'm not as hungry as the day before.  Every day it gets easier and easier to stick to only 500 calories per day.  Sometimes I enter the food I eat into my online food log and am surprised that I'm not starving, yet have only eaten 426 calories all day.  I know that means the HCG is working.  Thank you Erica for showing me this!

Breakfast - Coffee

Lunch - Iceberg Lettuce with a bit of chopped onion, and I made dressing by blending some cottage cheese and salsa.  It tasted just like taco salad (that's how sad and underworked my tastebuds have been...lol).  I also had an apple and some pickles. 

Dinner - 1 egg & 3 whites scrambled with salsa.  Sorbet for dessert.  Probably not going to have a veggie tonight because all I have is cucumbers and celery and I've had so many cucumbers lately that they make me want to barf.  And celery makes me want to barf anyways.

VLCD Day 5

So only a .6 lb loss this morning, but that's not bad at all I guess.  A little disappointing after multiple pounds lost in one day, but I knew I couldn't lose like that forever.  I also didn't sleep very well at all.  I was up several times for different reasons so maybe that contributed.  I want to hit the 10 lb mark so that I can feel like I did something.  10 lbs is a nice even number.

Breakfast - Coffee milk blah blah blah.  From here on out I'm just calling it coffee.

Lunch - Cottage cheese, an apple, and a single serve pack of Mt. Olive leeeetle teeeny tiny dill pickles.  The texture of those pickles is just amazing, and there weren't any no-no's in the ingredients list.  Yum!

Dinner - I'm going to make Chick-UN Noodle Soup.  And that's what I'm going to call it.  I'm going to grill some chicken and toss it in some broth with some spinach that way I won't miss the noodles.  I might even throw some onion in there just to buck the system.  I like onions on almost everything, and almost consider them more of an herb than a veggie.  If I gain 87 lbs tomorrow because I ate spinach and onions together in the same meal, then so be it!

Dessert will be more of that sorbet.  I ran to the store today and got a whole package of frozen strawberries (don't worry...I checked the ingredients list and the only ingredient in there was strawberries) and six lemons.  I'm going to make up a big old batch of it and freeze it in a large container and just scoop it out when I want some.  I'm pretty certain that the portion size I got last night was just a little over a half cup, so I'll probably stick to 1/2 cup to be safe. 

I want enchiladas.  With sour cream, and dripping with cheese and green chili.  That's what my family is having and I want want WANT....

VLCD Day 4

Oh baby...another 2 lbs gone (that's 8.2 total in 3 days)!  Aaron says he can already tell a difference.  Normally, 8 lbs would take me 3 or 4 weeks to lose and by that time I'm sick and tired of dieting and exercising and not seeing very many results.  I don't care what anybody else says, I can see the difference!

Breakfast - 1/2 cup coffee, 1 T milk & 2 stevia packets

Lunch - 3.5 oz cottage cheese, leftover apple crisp, and 1/2 of a cucumber

Dinner - 1 egg plus 3 egg whites scrambled with a tiny bit of onion and jalapeno, and a tomato chopped on top.

Dessert - Strawberry Sorbet (I am going to try a new recipe that I found)

VLCD Day 3

Another 2.6 lbs gone...that's 6.2 lbs in 2 days!

Breakfast - Coffee with 1 T milk and 3 packets of stevia.

Lunch - 3 oz cottage cheese with a handful of strawberries sliced on top.  1/2 of a sliced cucumber.

Dinner - 3.5 oz extra lean ground beef mixed with garlic powder, salt, and liquid aminos to make a hamburger patty.  I cooked that on the George Foreman grill with about 5 small stalks of asparagus.  I ate the hamburger with mustard and a tiny bit of chopped onion, and one baby pickle sliced and 1/2 tomato.  I know I ate way too many different kinds of veggies in one sitting.  I knew it when I was preparing it.  Somehow I felt sorry enough for myself that I was eating dry bun-less ketchup-less burger for dinner while I had to make some delicious wagon wheel spaghetti for the rest of the family that I just didn't care about veggie mixing.

Tonight I'm trying the grapefruit with stevia and cinnamon microwaved for a few seconds for dessert.  Oh I hope it's good because a bag of 3 musketeers minis sounds great right now.  In fact, I'd settle for a big old pot of mac & cheese.  I'd eat it in the bathtub with the door locked so that nobody could see me.  And I'd be crying the whole time I stuffed my face with those crummy yellow noodles...lol

VLCD Day 2

I am in shock.  3.6 lbs bit the dust overnight last night.  THREE POINT SIX.  That's 15 sticks of butter.  15 in one day.  I'm starting to think this might work.

Breakfast - 1/2 cup coffee with 1 T milk and three stevia packets.  Tasted a bit better than yesterdays did.  I also ate my orange that I'm supposed to have with lunch.  I just couldn't hold on any longer...I was hungry and pissy!

Lunch - 4 T cottage cheese (I didn't have a scale, so I tried to make sure I was WAY under the 3.5 oz) with a handful of strawberries sliced on top.

Dinner - 3.5 oz lean grilled beef with home made bbq sauce (oh I found the best recipe for that today and now I can have BBQ sauce!) , 1 grissini breadstick, and either pickles or cucumbers.  I haven't decided which sounds better.

Well, I went with the pickles.  Not very satisfying at all.  Tomorrow for dinner I may try an extra lean ground beef patty with mustard and pickle and bbq sauce (homemade of course) between a few lettuce leaves.  If not that, than I may make a home made spaghetti sauce with some ground beef and serve it over shredded cabbage leaves for "noodles."  Hmmm...what to make what to make?

VLCD Day 1

Yesterdays gain of only 1.4 lbs seems like nothing in comparison to this morning's gain of 3.2 lbs. In one day. IN ONE DAY. That HCG better be the culprit of such an atrocious gain or else! I hear that if you cheat even a little bit on this diet, you can gain some serious weight in the course of one day, so I hope the fact that I gained so much in one day is just because of the drops. I looked in the mirror today and could see the gain in my butt and my waist. It's so disappointing! Oh well, I guess that means when I lose 5 lbs I'll see that in the mirror too.  Right?  RIGHT?  Today is day one of my very low calorie diet.  I'll post later on about what I ate.  I'm so glad it's not another loading day.  I'm not sure that I could make myself eat like that again knowing that I gained 5.6 lbs in the last two days.

Breakfast:  1/2 cup coffee with 1 T milk & 1 packet of truvia.  Didn't taste that good.  I hope I can somehow get myself to like black coffee eventually.  Adults take their coffee black.  :O)

Lunch:  4 oz extra lean ground beef stir fried with 1/4 onion, 1 cup cabbage, garlic powder, ground ginger, and liquid aminos.  Tastes a little like chinese food so I'm happy!  Also, one very thin very DRY grissini breadstick and an apple.  I've not even finished the stir fry yet and I'm already full.  Don't know how I'll stuff this apple down.  It might end up being today's snack.

Dinner:  4 oz chicken breast sprinkled with Chipotle seasoning and cumin cooked on the George Foreman with part of a grilled onion, and 1/2 a grilled hatch chile.  After that was cooked I put it into two butter lettuce leaves with some fresh chopped tomato.  I just now realized as I typed this out that I mixed three different types of veggies.  Since I'm so new to hcg I'm not sure whether or not to be worried about this. I also ate my apple and breadstick.  I'm going to try some green tea with stevia a little later on when I feel like having a snack, and I've drank about 1.5 liters of water so far.

All in all today went well.  I was definitely hungry in between meals, but nothing unbearable.  All I can think about is food though, but I was always like that anyways.  Hopefully not being able to eat whatever I want whenever I want will break me of this obsession with food.

Well, I'm off to watch the Broncos kick the Bengals' butts!  GOOOO BRONCOOOOOOS!!!

Loading Day #2

It sure is hard to get on the scale and see a 1.4 pound GAIN in one day and tell yourself that it's okay. All day yesterday I kept thinking that maybe I didn't load right, or wasn't eating enough. I guess with a gain like that, I must have done alright. :) Today I have to go shopping for regular food for the family, and shopping for my food afterward. I'm so happy to live in Denver sometimes. I live 4 blocks away from a Sunflower Market (it's technically a farmers market, but indoors like a grocery store, and set up just like a grocery store) and 2.2 miles from TWO Whole Foods stores. I'm excited to go look around today for stevia.

Wow, I went to that Sunflower market and got a TON of fruits and veggies, and the grand total was less than 12 dollars. I was completely blown away. I will definitely be shopping at that store whenever I need produce. They had flavored liquid stevia there for only 12 dollars a bottle, but my budget (I only have $100 per week to grocery shop for my family, and for the diet) wouldn't allow any stevia this time. I have some truvia (same thing as stevia) packets to tide me over. I think I'll probably be skipping the coffee on this diet, and just drinking green tea. I'm not a huge fan of tea, but as I'm not used to tea tasting a certain way, I think it will be easier to drink than drinking coffee that doesn't taste the way I like it to.

Loading Day 1

When I was reading everybody's posts about how sick and full they felt on loading days, I figured I'd have no problems pushing through that and eating anyways.  After all, that kind of eating (eating when I'm not even hungry, or sometimes even when I'm full) is what got me in this mess to begin with.  Well everybody was RIGHT!  Oh my gosh, it's so hard to eat today.  I feel like a hog.  I haven't really eaten that much, but made myself snack on banana chips (which aren't dried at all, they're deep fried) all day.  I'm about to go to Arbys and get a big old roast beef sandwich and a milk shake.  Normally that would get my innards all in a quiver just thinking about it, but right now it sounds horrible! 

I'm ready...I'm ready...I'm REEAAAAADDDDYYYY

I got my drops today!  I am so excited (thanks so much Erica!) and ready to get on this.  I spent at least 4 hours last night ignoring my family and reading blogs and now I am PUMPED.  Tomorrow is my first loading day.  I'll weigh and all that jazz tomorrow morning.  I'm going to try to find my flexible tape measure to get some measurements, too.  Oh, and before pictures for sure (not sure that I'll post them though, it's kind of embarrassing).  Wish me luck!

Getting Ready

I'm going to start the HCG diet on Friday (as long as my homeopathic drops get here on time).  That's all I have to say for now!