Today’s Stats

LIW – 175.4 lbs (12/17/07)
Today’s Weight – 178.6 lbs
3.2 OVER LIW

Yesterday’s Menu

Here is my menu for yesterday. This is what I had:

Breakfast: Coffee with Cream – a small slice of Dulce de Leche
Lunch: A serving of my Eggplant Lasagna
Mid Afternoon Snack: Praline Pecans (these need to leave!)
Dinner: Hamburger Patty with a slice of Swiss Cheese, a pickle, some mayo mixed with horseradish, and some kettle chips – 3 Miller Lites! ROFL
Dessert: Small serving of Apple Crisp and a small serving of Ice Cream, with a few more of those Praline Pecans thrown in!

A total of around 1800 calories divided this way: 100 Fat, 123 Carbs, 50 Protein (need to focus on MORE PROTEIN!!! – Oh yeah, and cut out the sweets!)

To My Commenter’s From Yesterday

On to my commenter’s – these are my responses to yesterday’s comments:

Mary – OH! I can’t wait for your questions! THINK!!!!

Lili – Hopefully you will be able to drop me a line before you go!

Becca – Can’t wait for your questions! And yeah, we have a fine line of what we can share and what we can’t eh???

B – You’re welcome my sweet. Can’t wait for your questions!

Miscellaneous Things to Consider

GO HERE AND SIGN UP FOR UPCOMING HCG NEWSLETTER!!! We are really trying to get this out, I am looking at Monday – thank you all for being patient! I think it might just get released today! WOO HOO!!!Lise is still looking for support for her Teeth Fund, if there is ANY way you can help her, please pay attention to this Preview Commercial – her date of takeoff to Costa Rica is the 8th (I was mistaken) – I will keep it up until she leaves on that day:

Dire Super Emergency Teeth Fundraiser for Lise Who is Scared Witless About Being Toothless in Ohio!

End of Preview Commercial!

Here is the eMail form for signing up for the New Book Club! WOO HOO! I did my part, I read what I was supposed to read and I filled out the post, now I am just waiting for comments! If you have a chance today, go to the HCG BOOK CLUB and join in on the fun! If you haven’t signed up for it yet, please do so now. eMail Address Form

Thank you Lili for filling out my FAQ question. Anyone else want to help me with my FAQ on TOM / Aunt Flo issues? I am leaving it up today, and by the time I update tomorrow, I will start a new one! Again, the FAQ form has only one question on it, you can take as much room as you like, it should be able to handle your response.

Please take a few moments to fill this form out:

TOM / Aunt Flo Issues on the Protocol

I would still like to get some questions from my yesterday’s post about interviews. If you didn’t see it could you go here and take a look, thanks!

Where Have All The Blogger’s Gone?

It seems we are missing more than a few from our little community. I have 23 blogs I visit daily – 23 different websites I open, only to find not everyone is updating. We used to be a hefty little community of support and suddenly, poof, the majority have stopped.

What could be the reason?

Not being one that likes to jump to the worst possible conclusion, I try to figure out from their last post if there was any hint as to issues at hand that would cause them not to post anymore. I certainly understand that life can get in the way of our online activities, so if I see something like things have been crazy around here, I usually assume they are gonna start blogging again when the craziness stops.

The challenge though are the blogs that just STOP, no hint whatsoever as to what has happened. It’s so hard NOT to assume the worst in situations like that – but I strive not to worry, knowing that things can happen in off line life that would prohibit people from coming on to give an update to their blogs.

But time moves on, and yet they still don’t come back. Then what are you supposed to assume? Again, not wanting to be one that assumes the WORSE, I just assume that the HCG Protocol is no longer for them. It’s gotten a bit disheartening to open those 23 blogs and find only 5 of those posted updates. One day, I opened all 23 and I only had 3 updated.

Ok, so these bloggers don’t blog for me. But one has to wonder why all of a sudden do they stop? Is it just a matter of life getting in the way? Or is it something else? I wonder sometimes about the nature of the beast called online journaling. It’s human nature to want to only talk about the good times, and not the bad. So, it’s my opinion that some of these bloggers stopped posting because something didn’t happen quite right with the protocol, and they consider themselves a failure of some sort and they don’t want to talk about it.

In this little community we have here, we were all classified “overweight” if not “obese” or in my case “morbidly obese” – how much more down the ladder could that be for all of us??? Every pound we don’t have since we started is a victory for us and something to celebrate. Even if we might fall by the wayside and eat things we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t feel SHAMED by it, and shy away from the support group we have surrounded ourselves with. That is when we need the support group more than ever.

Post your successes, but post your “not so much” too – that way we all can rally around you and help you get back on that horse and ride again. Each time you get back on that horse, instead of wallowing in the misery that unwise choices can cause, you get that much more stronger. It does not make you a weak person to post your unwise choices. It makes you human.

So, if you are one of those bloggers out there that continue to read my blog, but haven’t posted on yours because of feeling inadequate, or not being able to offer anything positive, or whatever you might have in your head that has caused you to NOT post, please post. All you have to do is say, look, I am here, I am alive, I am trying hard to get back on track, I am WHATEVER, but don’t give up on us, and don’t allow us to give up on you.

You don’t have to give us your life story. You don’t have to explain they whys of what happened. Just an update.

Could you please???

Take care everyone!

Biz

LIW – 175.4 lbs (12/17/07)
Today’s Weight – 178.6 lbs
3.2 OVER LIW

Here is my menu for yesterday. This is what I had:

Breakfast: Coffee with Cream – a small slice of DR Fudge (Found out this is called Dulce de Leche)
Mid Morning Snack: A serving of my Eggplant Lasagna
Lunch: Ate at Cracker Barrel – ate from their low carb menu – Chicken Tenderloins with Bacon and Colby Cheese, a double salad with Peppercorn Dressing and green beans
Mid Afternoon Snack: Praline Pecans (these are sinful)
Dinner: At at Wild Wing – had 5 wings and a serving of nachos with chili and a salad with blue cheese dressing
Dessert: More Praline Pecans

A total of over 2000 cals (this is an estimation) divided this way: 119 Fat, 106 Carbs, 112 Protein (need to focus on NO MORE SWEETS! ROFL)

GO HERE AND SIGN UP FOR UPCOMING HCG NEWSLETTER!!! We are really trying to get this out, I am looking at Monday – thank you all for being patient!

Lise is still looking for support for her Teeth Fund, if there is ANY way you can help her, please pay attention to this Preview Commercial – her date of takeoff to Costa Rica is the 8th (I was mistaken) – I will keep it up until she leaves on that day:

Dire Super Emergency Teeth Fundraiser for Lise Who is Scared Witless About Being Toothless in Ohio!

End of Preview Commercial!

Here is the eMail form for signing up for the New Book Club! WOO HOO! I did my part, I read what I was supposed to read and I filled out the post, now I am just waiting for comments! If you have a chance today, go to the HCG BOOK CLUB and join in on the fun! If you haven’t signed up for it yet, please do so now. eMail Address Form

Thank you Jeanne for filling out my FAQ question. Anyone else want to help me with my FAQ on TOM / Aunt Flo issues? I will leave it up until Monday morning and then we will start a new one. Again, the FAQ form has only one question on it, you can take as much room as you like, it should be able to handle your response.

Please take a few moments to fill this form out:

TOM / Aunt Flo Issues on the Protocol

Let’s Play Pretend

Just for a moment or two, let’s pretend you are this big wig famous television interviewer (like let’s say Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Walter Cronkite) and you wanted to interview little ole me about my journey using the HCG Protocol for weight loss.

What would be the questions you would most want answers to?

Why am I doing this? I would like to start conducting interviews of various people that have been successful on this protocol, and what got them to that point. If I ask you, my readers what you would want to know about my journey, I would have a good set of thoughts that would lead to a great interview.

As usual, I count on all of you, my readers, to help me put a framework of intelligence into a simple process. What would I do without you all???

Some guidelines to follow:

1) Post as many questions as you think are relevant – you can use any form you like, either by using the comment section here on the blog, or the tag board located on my left side bar, or my web submission contact form on the right side bar, or you can write me directly at bizadventure at comcast dot net

2) Even if you feel that your question might be repetitive (such as someone else has asked it), please ask it anyway.

3) You will have until Wednesday Morning to come up with some questions. At that point I will gather them all and then put them into a coherent order.

4) Anyone who participates in this little assignment will receive a special little thank you gift from me (this will be something tangible and sent to you through snail mail – so I will need your snail mail address – if your comfortable doing that sort of thing – sorry, I have to limit this little thing to USA residents only). Please do not post your address here, I will write you personally for any information I might need from you. If you prefer not to receive anything via snail mail, please post questions anyway. This part is NOT a requirement!!!

5) Have fun with this, please don’t think any question is too personal – if it’s something that I might not want to answer, I will let you know, but keep in mind that these questions will be used as a guideline for future interviews.

This ties into what I wanted to talk about today anyway – my history of the protocol.

On to my commenter’s – these are my responses to yesterday’s comments:

Lili – OMG – you are way too funny! I enjoyed chatting with you yesterday on my way out of town, you are seriously a funny, funny lady! I have added that link to my favorite recipes, as this stuff is truly divine, I have to say! I love this line “Envisioning success creates success” – AWESOME!

Mary – You are so welcome! I enjoy it, seriously! But I really enjoy it when YOU folks blog better! ROFL

Winston – It’s SO good to have you back my friend! I know I am not the only one that can say, WE MISSED YOU! How utterly COOL that you made it throughout the holiday’s UNSCATHED! I hope you updated!!!

Jennifer - it is MOST important that you blog, you are the perfect candidate for this medium. Your energetic, fully of bubbly information, and you are surely inquisitive and desire information. By blogging you will fulfill ALL of those things my sweet! I will DEFINITELY help you start! Can you get on some sort of IM message thingie? I even don’t mind calling you to help you get started, just let me know. If you want me to call, don’t post your phone number here, write me an email ok? I am so glad yesterday’s post was what you needed. I felt compelled to write it, there was a reason for me to do it eh?

Becca – as time goes on, I find more and more similarities between us. I am a step parent as well! I have two step sons and my daughter is OURS. I don’t like sharing things about my personal life either, some things need to remain “mine” ya know? But I don’t mind sharing things as they pertain to the protocol. But I try to stay “vague” – my family hasn’t asked to be a part of this internet community, so I only share tidbits as it relates to MY journey using this protocol…make sense???

Take care people, sorry this was so late today!!!

Biz

LIW – 175.4 lbs (12/17/07)
Today’s Weight – 178.2 lbs
2.8 OVER LIW

Here is my menu for yesterday. This is what I had:

Breakfast: Coffee with Cream – a small slice of DR Fudge (Found out this is called Dulce de Leche)
Mid Morning Snack: An apple with Smuckers Natural Peanut Butter
Lunch: Large Lettuce Salad with Chicken with Feta Cheese and Kraft House Italian Dressing
Mid Afternoon Snack: Cottage Cheese and Strawberries – Two Small Peanut Butter Drops
Dinner: Eggplant Lasagna with two Miller Lites
Dessert: Small piece of Apple Crisp with a small amount of Vanilla Ice Cream

A total of around 1860 cals divided this way: 94 Fat, 163 Carbs, 93 Protein (need to focus on less carbs and more protein!)

GO HERE AND SIGN UP FOR UPCOMING HCG NEWSLETTER!!! We are really trying to get this out, I am looking at Monday – thank you all for being patient!

Lise is still looking for support for her Teeth Fund, if there is ANY way you can help her, please pay attention to this Preview Commercial – her date of takeoff to Costa Rica is the 6th – this will be the LAST day I announce this, then you will find it in my side bar:

Dire Super Emergency Teeth Fundraiser for Lise Who is Scared Witless About Being Toothless in Ohio!

End of Preview Commercial!

Here is the eMail form for signing up for the New Book Club! WOO HOO! I did my part, I read what I was supposed to read and I filled out the post, now I am just waiting for comments! If you have a chance today, go to the HCG BOOK CLUB and join in on the fun! If you haven’t signed up for it yet, please do so now. eMail Address Form

Anyone else want to help me with my FAQ on TOM / Aunt Flo issues? I will leave it up until Monday morning and then we will start a new one. Again, the FAQ form has only one question on it, you can take as much room as you like, it should be able to handle your response.

Please take a few moments to fill this form out:

TOM / Aunt Flo Issues on the Protocol

Why Do We Blog?

That is a question I ponder quite often – let me give you a little history of my total blogging experience which will most likely lead to a better understanding of why “I” blog.

Back in the late 90′s there was this little upstart company called MP3.com (it’s actually still around, but that is a story for another day) – my husband is a musician and forever and a day I just knew that he had the talent enough to get noticed. While surfing the net one day, my husband and I stumbled upon this site (MP3.com) and were amazed that this website was promoting indie artists. WOW – it seemed made just for someone like my husband.

Since I was on bed rest with my pregnancy, I had lots of time to figure out the ins and outs of the site and got myself involved wholeheartedly with promoting my husband and his music. I seriously got involved in the forums, which led me to an off site forum of a group of artists that I pretty much just fit right in.

Enter My First Experience With Blogging

Around the end of 2000 – another little upstart company started – this time it was called 1sound.com – they were going to be the little “David” going up against the “Goliath” (MP3.com) – by this time, MP3.com had gotten a little TOO big and they were starting to treat their indie artists pretty badly, so in droves indie people flocked to 1sound.com – enter the blogosphere.

Blogging was already pretty big, although still new, but it was around this time that I discovered it and went to work on blogging about my husband’s music, among other things. What I noticed about blogging is that it was a great way to create a support group of your own, right from your own home. I found that I could basically write about anything, and I would get comments, ideas, and create a little controversy as well, all in the name of fun.

Sadly, that community fell by the wayside almost as soon as it begun.

Making a Turn to Journal About Myself

At the end of 2002 – I had decided to do something about my weight, and I joined up with a friendly and informational Bulletin Board on Atkin’s – they had an option on their board to basically “blog” about your experience and so I took up residence there.

Blogging then became a necessity for me. It became my way of staying accountable to the program at hand, and the blogging was very personal. It was only available to a small group of like minded people, and not to the ‘masses’.

I was on Atkin’s for a little more than a year, but then I temporarily had to help family out (out of state and for a period of 2 months) in the Spring of 2004, and my journaling stopped, along with all of my motivation to ‘stick to plan’ – I let the stress of handling the family crisis get to me, and without the cozy little support group I have surrounded myself with for all those months, I wavered and I started gaining my weight back.

A Dry Spell

During the months that followed and up until around January of 2006 I didn’t do a thing about my weight, nor about my online journaling. I was so mad at myself, so angry that I put a whole year of hard work and determination on the back burner, that I couldn’t even go to look at my online journal, or go back to the BB that I had once frequented. So embarrassed that in such a short time I had become a failure with following the Atkin’s plan.

It was SO bad that I forced myself to get involved with another online community that had absolutely NO relation to weight loss. It was a craft site of all things! Now people, as your reading this, please don’t think any less of me because I am so “DOMESTICATED” – if you folks only knew. Ok, that is a story for another day!

Dry Spell is Over!

So I dove in head first into this community – focusing my efforts on being the best that I could be in this craft. Beginning spring of 2006, I started blogging my experience with this craft. I started right here on Blogger, moved on over to WordPress, and then finally purchasing my own website in October of 2006! I was SMOKING!

My website for this craft was basically just a blog of my experiences in life. I did TRY to focus on my craft, but my life was a definite part of it. I would blog about ANYTHING that hit my fancy. I had LOTS of support, and it kept me very active and focused, on everything but my weight! ROFL

I was doing LOTS of charity work with my craft and the blog did focus on that alot. I say I didn’t focus on my weight, but if you went to that blog, you would see a page dedicated to my many stops and starts with going back on Atkin’s (the Atkin’s community always said you have ONE GOLDEN SHOT with that program, I believe them).

Bring in the Summer of 2007

This is when it all changed for me. In May of 2007 I was told by my sister to do some research on something that she had just found out about. What is with all these people thinking I love to do research? OH YEAH! I DO!!! THAT IS WHY!

She told me that I needed to get with this girl she knew in California and ask her some questions about what she did, and then go to work finding out more about it. I wish I had recorded the conversation between my sister and I that day, because that was the day that my life changed in a way that it had never changed before. Although, that day I didn’t know it was going to be so remarkable, but today, I look back, and I see it was.

My experience of finding and doing the protocol will be the focus of tomorrow’s post, so stay tuned on that.

The Progress of Biz and the Reason I Blog!

So now that you see a bit of history of my blogging experience, you will see that this is something that I needed to do, it keeps me involved and it keeps me focused. It also keeps me very accountable.

In the beginning, I only “blogged” on the Yahoo Group – each day I would post what happened the previous day. I wouldn’t do it for anyone but myself, I was incredibly selfish in that regard. I really didn’t care if anyone read it, I just knew, based on previous experience, that if I didn’t post daily, something would happen.

It wasn’t actually until July 17, 2007 that I decided to get this “blog” started. If you go back through the archives, you will see that this blog started then and my posting was actually just direct copy and pastes from my posts over at the Yahoo Group. I was just using the blog as a “docking station” at that time for a one stop place that I could refer people to if they had any questions.

It wasn’t until the beginning of September, when someone was kind enough contact me by eMail and ask me if I was going to focus in on blogging more. I was on my first P3 break and I pretty much had not posted about that experience, and it was disappointing people. Wow, I felt a rush of positive vibes after getting that eMail and so that day I started using the blog for my “journaling” instead of the Yahoo Group, I would just point the Yahoo Group to my blog when I posted my “updates”.

That was September 9, 2007 and I have striven to keep my blog updated every day since then. I go through the good times of this protocol, and the not so good times. I have shared with the world everything about my experience from TOM issues to BATHROOM problems, to negativity from people to positive affirmations. I have shared with “my little support group” things I have found interesting, the lessons that I have learned, the research I continue to do, and the growth I have experienced.

You all pay me back by being there for me. You laugh when I laugh, you cry when I cry. You listen to my rants, you let me come up with crazy butt theories. We get into deep dark emotional psyche things and then in the next moment, we laugh about some of the stupid stuff we do.

I love my little support group. I love my readers. I love being a part of YOUR lives. I love you being a part of MINE … for without all of you, I wouldn’t be here today.

So Why Do I Blog?

Because I have to.

So tell me why YOU blog???

On to my commenter’s – these are my responses to yesterday’s comments:

Mary – thank you my sweet!

Ann-Marie – thanks for sharing that darlin’!

Tracey – I go back to my chiropractor at the end of this month. I am actually doing quite well, I will ask him if that is something I might be able to consider. All the classes are saved on a note here on my computer, so all I have to do is SIGN UP! Thanks for sharing your BMR!

B – We have ALL been there, done that. I am wondering tho if this time will be different because we actually are learning so much about ourselves with this protocol. I am thinking YES! It will be different!

Becca - You are not only cracking YOURSELF up, but you’re cracking ME up as well! HA! Thanks for sharing your BMR – lots of interesting numbers floating around eh???

Have a WONDERFUL day peeps! Cya tomorrow!

Biz