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LIW – 153.0 lbs (06.29.08)
Today’s Weight – 153.0 lbs
0.0 OVER/UNDER LIW

Once again I went MIA – what are you people gonna do with me?  OMG – I am such a FLAKE!  Really, I am NOT trying to go MIA – it’s just happening!  Oh well, I will try to do better!

Yesterday was my LIW for this Cycle – I didn’t make it to 100 lbs loss, but before I go into some LONE TIRADE about how I feel about this, let me quote something someone wrote me over at the My HCG Journey Community Forums – because quite frankly?  It put everything into perspective for me:

And B, even if you don’t make a stupid number goal, think of ALL that you have accomplished in the last year. And think of ALL the people that you have gotten to GOAL or helped them on their way to a better, healthier “them”!!!!!!!!!!!! When you have touched and changed LIVES, does a number really mean success or failure?!? I mean, isn’t it just a number?!?! And would it be any less monumental if those 100 pounds came at say a year a a day or a year and a week or a year a month?!?! I think not.

So, once again, thank you DAWN for coming to my rescue, making me realize what this is really all about and to be very happy with where I am TODAY.  Your a peach.

So without further adieu, let me go ahead and post my stats, because they pretty much speak for themselves!

I was not able to come close to Round 4 losses in Body Weight Lost Percentage – but that is OKIE DOKIE ARTICHOKIE!!!

• Round 1 (20 completed days) – 7.74% of body weight lost
• Round 2 (20 completed days) – 8.12% of body weight lost
• Round 3 (20 completed days) – 9.21% of body weight lost
• Round 4 (20 completed days) – 12.15% of body weight lost
• Round 5 (Cycle 1) (20 completed days) – 7.81% of body weight lost
• Round 5 (Cycle 2) (20 completed days) – 9.68% of body weight lost

I lost 16.4 lbs this round!  My LIW was 153 – which is 10 pounds below LIW of Round 5 Cycle 1 and 9 pounds below LIW of Round 4 – so I feel this was a great round.  Ok, so I am 2.2 away from making 100 lbs, I will do that NEXT round, which incidently will start on the 16th – because the family is going out of town!  Yes, we are headed to AIKEN/AUGUSTA!

Updates on Son and JPS:

My Son’s Stats:

• Starting Weight – 190.4 (after load)
• LIW – 174.6 (15.8 LBS LOST)
• 20 completed days percentage Body Weight Lost – 9.05%

JPS’ Stats:

• Starting Weight – 136.0 (after load, which is only like .8 over her LIW of Cycle 1)
• LIW – 125.8 (10.2 LBS LOST)
• 20 completed days percentage Body Weight Lost – 7.50%

Update on Inches:

And now the long awaited PICTURE UPDATE:

I haven’t updated pictures since my LIW of Round 4 which was way back in February (the 17th to be exact) – I didn’t take any pictures at the end of my Round 5 Cycle 1 because of not even getting to my LIW of Round 4 so I didn’t think pictures were necessary.  But I did take them yesterday because it was 9 pounds difference, and boy what 9 pounds can do!  OMG!  Lookie here!

First let me show you the differences between my LIW of Round 4 and Yesterday – Keep in mind that my LIW of Round 4 was 162 – and yesterday my LIW was 153:

Now, let me show you the differences between my BEFORES (Last June 23, 2007) and Yesterday (June 29, 2008) – Almost a YEAR and a DAY:

And then, for those of you that like to see the progression, here ya go:

Ok, so how about them apples? What do you think??? Stay tuned for the next installment of Cycle 3 to start on the 16th of July! If I can maintain an average of about 10 lbs per cycle, then I should be done in about 3 or 4 more cycles! Who knows where the HCG will take me!

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LIW – 163.0 lbs (05.28.08)
Today’s Weight – 164.0 lbs
1.0 OVER LIW

Still within the limits – just where I want to be. As you can well imagine, I have been very busy as of late. Add to everything else that is on my plate, this is the last week of school for my kids. So end of year activities are pretty much filling up my time.

Dinner was totally scrumptious last night. We had “Tuna Carpaccio” – one of my husband’s most delicious meals, and I have to say it was divine. He makes it with Sashimi grade tuna with avocado, mango, papaya and green onion, with his own special sauce. We ate late, so that is why I have a feeling the weight is a bit up today. And of course it has soy sauce, and the sodium was sky high so a .6 gain is A-OK.

Thank you all for the continuing well wishes and the understanding in my absence. I go back on P2 on Monday so you know my mind will be much clearer and I will be able to pick up where I left off on my “SuperFoods” discussion. My next discussion will center around “Pumpkin” – so plan on that on Monday.

Deviations

Deviations seem to be a topic of conversation these days over on the My HCG Journey Community Forums – there seems to be a lot of this going on within the first round of the protocol. It saddens me that this is happening, but I can’t help but wonder if the vets (such as myself) are partly to blame. People that are new to the protocol could very well come to my blog and see that yes, I do indeed eat broccoli, I do have cottage cheese, I have used Parmesean Cheese sprinkled on my salad, but what they do NOT understand is that I have been on this for almost a year. I have figured out what works and what doesn’t for MY body. These people are assuming that just because it works for me, that it will work for them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Way back last year, at the end of September there was a big blowout over at the YahooGroups (both the HCG2 and the HCGDieters) about someone new coming on board and letting everyone know one that they had just discovered a miracle, they could eat “NOODLES” on protocol and still lose weight. Most of my long time readers will remember this, we all called it “NOODLEGATE” – we laugh about it now, but the points made during that time were very pertinent. I went nosing around to some of my old posts and I found one in particular that I wanted to share with you today. Keep in mind I wrote this on September 24, 2007 – but the feelings and sentiment that I shared in this post are things that I still feel today. I have grown alot in this protocol since this time, but I totally BELIEVE in what I wrote, even today. Keep in mind that I wrote this while on my 2nd Round (I have removed any names that I didn’t get permission to reprint):

****,

Where as I totally agree with *****’s post on the other board for precisely the reasons you brought out in your last paragraph, I totally agree with you also.

Some weeks ago I was talking to JPS about some things and the remark I made to her was on the same grounds as your remark. I told her that the yahoo group is basically a research study in what works and what doesn’t. I told her that with the wide diversity of people that there is on the board we are creating our own research study results.

But with like every research study results, in order for something to work for the masses, you have to bring things down to the lowest common denominator. So with the testing grounds that Dr S had in his time, he had to figure out what was going to work for every single person across the board. He had to bring his diet into a field where if anyone one did it, they were going to have similar results. He couldn’t possibly come up with a diet that would change from female to male, from age 45 to 25, from really obese to only needing to lose 15 pounds.

So my thoughts are this, and they always have been this:

You WILL have success on this protocol if you follow Dr S by the book. But you COULD also have success if you deviate for what is good for YOUR body. What is good for MY body is not what will work for YOUR body. I do believe in something NHW once told my sister in that “you will lose weight on this with whatever you eat as long as it totals 500 calories or less – you may not lose as fast as you would if you followed the menu, but you will lose faster than with any other diet” – and for some, quite frankly, this is all it is, a “diet”. To me, it’s something FAR different. But you know what? NHW has been around for 17+ years and it has worked all that time with them.

Because all of this ‘case’ studies we are doing with ourselves is in the infancy stages, we really don’t know what the final results will be. I have faith in knowing that because of the way I felt in phase 3, I feel my hypothalamus has been reset. Will these people who are deviating radically who get into phase 3 feel the same way? We don’t know because they are not there yet. I totally disagree with doing something this far from the protocol in your first round. Do the program the way it works, then make your changes if you have subsequent rounds to go.

I know I for one am not as completely anal this round as I was last round. My husband brought home a new beer a few days ago and was shocked when I told him I wanted a taste. Just a tiny sip – it didn’t hurt me. Last round I would NEVER have eaten beef twice in one day…this round? I don’t care. If it stalls me, I know what I did and will back up and try again. I can do these things because I know what to expect.

Ok…now I have written a novel. I hope I don’t get flamed. I am still a “purist” – but I am also, if you got 100 pounds or more to lose, you gotta make this protocol your own. Just my thoughts, and I am sticking to it.

Biz

So there you have it. Even 8 months later, I feel the same way. Don’t mess up your first round, do it BY THE BOOK – that first round teaches you SO VERY MUCH it’s not even funny. It teaches you your attachment to foods, it teaches you how your emotions are tied up in your eating. It teaches you how to be content with little. It teaches you how to appreciate MIXING VEGGIES! Ok, I had to throw that one in.

When you get to be in Round 5 like me, then you can experiment with different things, see how they work for you. But let the process work like it should. You will be happy you did.

LIW – 163.0 lbs (05.28.08)
Today’s Weight – 163.4 lbs
0.4 OVER LIW

Wow! I have to tell you folks, you are the best. I cannot believe the outpouring of concern that was shown to me during my absence. Please understand that it was unavoidable – and know that I missed my readers so terribly much. I am sincerely sorry for any cause of concern during my absence – there were a few people that knew I was not available, but evidently not enough.

Please know that during this time I and my family have been fine. It was a case of things happening around me that were not fine and that had to take precedence. That all being said, I am totally ECSTATIC to be back! I also have to tell you that I stayed true to the protocol, even tho everything around me was falling apart. WOO HOO FOR ME!

Ok, let me bring you up to date on how my days went while I was absent – what can I say? My last post was on the 22nd of May and at that time I weighed 163.0 – I stayed that weight until my LIW which was on the 28th of May – I even gave myself ONE MORE DAY past my original day scheduled to finish to try to break this INSANE stall I was in – LONGEST stall of my protocol history – and it wouldn’t budge. I had too much happening in my life to really care about trying to do an apple day or some other day, I was doing really well to stay on protocol so I just let things happen. I can imagine that the stress I was under contributed to the stall and that is why I didn’t make my goal of 160 this cycle. It’s ok. I am VERY OK with where I am.

I proved to myself that I am most capable of handling myself under pressure. And that pleases me to no end. For the first time in my life I didn’t allow an extremely stressful situation be an excuse for me to lose control of my eating. WOW – looking back on that, I am most proud of myself, I must say.

Saturday the 31st was my first P3 day for this cycle – and since then my weight has been fluxing a bit. Believe me, I was happy to see the scale move, no matter WHAT direction! So here was my fluxes since Sunday morning:

• Sunday – 0.2 over LIW
• Monday – 1.0 over LIW
• Tuesday – 2.4 over LIW
• Wednesday (Today) – 0.4 over LIW

I ate late on Monday night and I really attribute the 1.4 gain to that, but I promised myself for my last round that I would follow the strict “over 2 lbs” rule and so yesterday I did a “chicken day” and I lost 2 lbs. So I am well back into the legal limits of the 2 lbs.

We are starting again on the 9th, going straight back into VLCD on that day with no loading or anything. Our break will be 9 completed days long. I am hoping to stay within 3 lbs of LIW by the start of VLCD on the 9th of June – I figure at only 3 lbs above LIW then this cycling thing is definitely WORTH IT – just an experiment – I am the guinea pig.

Update on JPS – she ended at 135.2 – that was a 10.4 loss for her in 22 completed days.

My update – since I ended up at 163 – that was a 13.8 loss for me in 22 completed days. Not quite where I wanted to be, but excellent considering the circumstances.

A couple of interesting things. At this weight I am 12.6 pounds away from having lost 100 pounds on this protocol. My one year anniversary is this month, June 23 was my very first injections – I am so hoping that I will be able to make my 100 lbs lost in one year goal by then. It will all depend on how well I handle this break!

Once again, thanks SO MUCH for the outpouring of affection – I think I am up to date on all my emails. If you wrote me and I didn’t write you back, please write again. I had SO MANY emails to answer!

Until tomorrow – yes, people, I AM BACK!