Got a few eMails and comments about the little point I made yesterday about the allergy found with the hCG – interesting that this subject even came up with the ND in the first place.

My ND has been on hCG – and her daughter as well. During her daughters first round she wasn’t losing very well, and came up with the thought that she might have been allergic to the hCG – come to find out, that was the case, how weird is that? We can be allergic to just about everything, so why couldn’t we be allergic to the hCG?

Question is why did I not experience hardships during my first 4 rounds, but then all of a sudden I did? Simply put my body underwent some changes – well, not just SOME but a lot of changes, and what I might not have been allergic to previously might have reared it’s ugly head. The allergy could have manifested itself as an imbalance of hormones, or for it to not ‘set’ the hypothalamus or a whole host of things.

My advice to any of you out there. Find a NAET Practitioner in your area, or someone that does this kind of testing to see if your allergic to the hCg. They can reverse it. Honest injun.

Update on my weight story. Now that you all know I have been dealing with the hormone problem for quite some time, it will not surprise you to find out that I had gained a total of 44 lbs since my last official round, which was in September of 2008 – most of that was part of my trip to Hawaii (stress) and then the cruise (fun stress) and then the winter break and then the subsequent try of another round in January that ended in failure because of the hormones. I was 44 lbs over LIW when I took off to Baton Rouge on February 19th – the last 15 or so pounds were put on between January 25th and February 19th. I could do absolutely NOTHING right. I would do a correction day, try to eat a normal P3 day and then bam, and I would gain more than I lost. I kinda got really tired of that. And of course, coupled with the fact that I had hormonal issues, I wasn’t doing well.

Since that Friday night, February 20, the first visit with the ND I have lost 9.4 lbs not really trying to do anything spectacular. So starting today I decided to put my nose to the grindstone and get back on High Fat to see how far it would take me. So over the next few days I will be letting you know where I stand on my way back to LIW – since I can’t go back on hCG until I see the ND again (which will be the first weekend of April) my goal will be to make a concentrated effort on working my way back down.

Here we go, on the losing train!

Beginning in early September of 2007 there was a two month period of time that I really put my nose to the grindstone in regards to this protocol.  I was reading everything and anything I could get my hands on and applied it directly to what I was doing.

In that time, there were lots of discussions I had with various people over at the HCG2 Yahoo Group, and when I look back on it today, I cannot believe how incredibly ON I was on about certain things.  That is not bragging.  That is just fact.

Over the next few days, I will be rewriting some of these observations and sharing them with you.

My Lowest Common Denominator Theory

Back in early September of 2007 JPS and I were having a discussion about how new the protocol was and that we were still figuring out all the nuances about it.  Since we didn’t have Dr. Simeons to ask, we had to come up with theories on our own.  I had mentioned to her that the Yahoo Group we belonged to at the time was basically a research study in what works and what doesn’t.  I had 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. Simeons 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. Simeons 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 though, it’s something FAR different. But you know what? NHW has been around for 18+ years and it has worked all that time with them.

Because all of these ‘case’ studies we did with ourselves was in the infancy stages, we really didn’t know what the final results will be.  But now that I have almost two years of my own research under my belt, I know what works and what doesn’t.  I know if done right and done correctly, that a good clean Phase 3 will yield good clean results, in other words, I can reset my hypothalamus to maintain my weight.

What will tomorrow bring?  More on the theory of “Lowest Common Denominator”.

Update

7.8 total for the round so far in 3 completed days (just for fun, I took my measurements – 5.75″ lost so far!)

I ate:

2 hard boiled eggs for lunch
2 hard boiled eggs, small can of tuna, lettuce, tomatoes and onions with a bit of sf relish and mustard, sprinkled with a bit of vinegar for dinner

Did I mention I was in the ZONE???

R5P2C4 Starting Weight 150.6
Yesterday – 144.6
Today – 143.6
1.0 lb LOSS Overnight
4.6 lb UNDER LIW of Round Five Cycle 3 (148.2)
7.0 lb Lost Since Start of R5C4 (VLCD) 09/02/08
107.2 Total Lost Since Start of Protocol (VLCD) 06/26/07

Another one pound loss.  Nothing really different for my menu:

• Coffee with 2% Milk – Hershey’s Unsweetened Cocoa
• Hamburger Grilled, with lettuce and tomato – just ate dinner – had a bigger portion of meat

I have something to talk about.

Cycles

I have been getting lots of questions on cycling lately. It’s not something that I can give a short answer to (is anything ever in my world?) so I decided to write an article about it. There are several things that come into play that made me decide to do what I assumed would be my “final” round in cycles.

There are more than a few things that come into play – and these are things that I have personally come up with having months on months of PURIST PROTOCOL under my belt, along with rounds that totaled 8 weeks (1st Round), 6 weeks (2nd Round), 3 weeks (3rd Round) and 4 weeks (4th Round) before I even considered doing things this way.

Why do I say that? I get questioned sometimes about my pulling away from Dr. Simeon’s book, and what gives me that right? First, I have the right because I did 4 rounds (total of 21 weeks with a loss of 98.8 lbs) following his protocol to a “T” – I have the supporting data to find out what works and what doesn’t for me and I have used that information to make informed decisions on my own “self doctoring” path that I have chosen in My HCG Journey.

In looking over how I arrived at the decision to spend my 5th round in cycles, I considered the following:

Head in the Game
Minimum Course
Unforeseen Interruptions
P3 Breaks
Jump Start Losses

Let’s go over this ONE by ONE.

Head in the Game

I wrote an article way back when and in it was discussed the whole MIND GAME routine we play with ourselves and how it relates to the protocol. I have found that it is EASY PEASY to commit to a “short round” and have the OPTION of making it longer, than trying to do this long butt round and being disappointed in the results. So since I knew what the MINIMUM course was – I figured I could be on HCG for 3 weeks at a time. Ah, so then my next point logically is this:

Minimum Course

In his book Pounds and Inches, Dr. Simeon’s says this under “Duration of Treatment”:

We never give a treatment lasting less than 26 days, even in patients needing to lose only 5 pounds. It seems that even in the mildest cases of obesity the diencephalon requires about three weeks rest from the maximal exertion to which it has been previously subjected in order to regain fully its normal fat-banking capacity. Clinically this expresses itself in the fact that when in these mild cases treatment is stopped as soon as the weight is normal, which may be achieved in a week, it is much more easily regained than after a full course of 23 injections.

So it stands to reason that you can do a SHORT course as per his instructions with NO issues. In doing SHORT cycles like this, you will then ward off any possibility of “Immunity” that Dr. Simeon’s talks about in his book. In any case, I have my thoughts on IMMUNITY as well; in so much as it is NOT the factor that Dr. Simeon’s thought it was in his day. The unfortunate thing is that Dr. Simeon’s passed long before he could complete his research – but really, this is a thought for another day.

So we have established that 3 week cycles are AOK – now what about the breaks? Let’s look at what Dr. Simeon’s says about “Unforeseen Interruptions”:

Unforeseen Interruptions

Unforeseen Interruptions of Treatment

If an interruption of treatment lasting more than four days is necessary, the patient must increase his diet to at least 800 Calories by adding meat, eggs, cheese, and milk to his diet after the third day, as otherwise he will find himself so hungry and weak that he is unable to go about his usual occupation. If the interval lasts less than two weeks the patient can directly resume injections and the 500-Calorie diet, but if the interruption lasts longer he must again eat normally until he has had his third injection.

When a patient knows beforehand that he will have to travel and be absent for more than four days, it is always better to stop injections three days before he is due to leave so that he can have the three days of strict dieting which are necessary after the last injection at home. This saves him from the almost impossible task of having to arrange the 500 Calorie diet while en route, and he can thus enjoy a much greater dietary freedom from the day of his departure. Interruptions occurring before 20 effective injections have been given are most undesirable, because with less than that number of injections some weight is liable to be regained. After the 20th injection an unavoidable interruption is merely a loss of time.

In other words, he says there would be situations that would be needed to be considered where you had to take a break, you would have to have AT LEAST 800 calories and that if the interruption was LESS than 14 days you go straight back into VLCD with your first dose of HCG, but if it were LONGER than 14 days you would eat NORMALLY for two days with HCG and then the THIRD DAY would be a VLCD day with a dose of HCG. And he also tells us that after the 20th injection, you are pretty safe – so are you beginning to see my line of reasoning in my breaks?

I have chosen to keep my breaks while I am CYCLING this round to between 7 – 10 days long each. That is my choice. But you have until the 21st day on a break for it still to be considered a cycle because anything MORE than that would be an ENTIRE PHASE 3 break, and your round would be complete. A round is a COMPLETE Phase 2 and a COMPLETE Phase 3 – and then however many days you decide to do in Phase 4 – anything less than that it becomes a cycle (or it does in my world!).

So then, what happens when I am breaking for 7 – 10 days?

P3 Breaks

You have to follow the same procedure as you do with a regular P3 break; you do it with NO sugars and NO starches. This cycling thing is not for the faint of heart, no ma’am. You must maintain during the short break or your time will be wasted. Believe me, I speak from experience. This last short break I took has been the best so far since I started cycling, as I have lost a total of 7 pounds in 7 days. I started at only 2.4 over my LIW – and within 48 hours I was already below LIW and into “virgin territory”. Let me illustrate:

From LIW which was on August 18 (148.2) till today, September 9 (143.6) I have lost a total of 4.6 lbs in 21 days, of which only 10 of those days were VLCD, the other 11 days were spent maintaining and eating pretty much how I want. 4.6 lbs in 21 days on ANY weight loss program is pretty sweet. When you consider the loss of 4.6 lbs in 10 VLCD days? Well then, that is even MORE sweet. In other words, it WORKS for me.

Last but not least, as with anyone with a bunch of data behind them, they know one thing for sure:

LOSSES ARE BETTER AT THE BEGINNING OF A ROUND

Yup! I didn’t have to tell you this did I? I like those monster losses at the beginning and my head is way more into the game then, so why should I suffer? At first, I was like everyone else, afraid this wouldn’t work after the first time, but here I am over 100 lbs lost later, and it is STILL working. So that being said, that is why I chose to CYCLE.