Size Update

Just a quickie....I got 2 pairs of Old Navy jeans in the mail today, both size 16 and they fit!!  I actually haven't put the second pair on yet but I'm sure they'll fit.

Just before our postal strike I placed a jeans order from Old Navy and ordered size 18.  They arrived a while after the strike was done and when I finally got them, put them on and then wore them for a bit, they stretched out.  I returned the unopened pair of size 18 and reordered the 2 x size 16 jeans.  

Seriously, I can't believe it....now if only my upper half would lose as much as my lower half did then perhaps I can shop in a regular sized store for both upper and lower parts of my body.

Before, During, After

May 31/11

July 7/11

                                                                         July 17/11            

Maintenance Phase starts

Well it's been a couple days since last blogged, my apologies.

My trip to Burns Lake was fun.  Woke up at 4:45am, left the house at 5:20am, sat in a traffic lineup for about 10 min because of a single car accident, then sat in another lineup because of road work.  Got to Burns Lake at 8:10am.  My friends there were really surprised and impressed at my loss and the difference of my size.  I knew that would happen but didn't know the exact response I'd get.  Made me feel good.

My lunch was chicken (that I cooked up the day before), cucumber and a piece of b'day cake that is provided every month for those whose birthdays are each month.  I knew some gain would happen but I was ok with that.  Sure wassssss yummy.

After work I met Shelagh for a snack/coffee at New Leaf cafe and ended up having the taco salad which had gluten-free tacos in it.  Then when I got home, around 6pm, mom, Dwayne, Bev (mom's cousins) and I went to White Spot for dinner.  I had the Fajita Salad in a taco bowl which was delicious but not so carb-free unfortunately.  Oh well.

The next day I had gained 1.7 lbs....another 'oh well'.  Yesterday at work I followed the diet perfectly (500 calories) and had a small bowl of popcorn in the evening as I was quite hungry but didn't want to cook meat as I none was defrosted.  I stayed up until midnight on the computer doing geneology searches and surfing but was I ever tired.  When I woke up this am at 8:30am it occurred to me that I was still doing 500 calorie days but without the injection to end the diet.  The past 3 nites were later than normal nights because of the company, did 5 hrs of driving on Thurs to and from BL, then yesterday a low calorie day and late to bed.  Of course I would be extra tired, duh!  BUT this am I weighed myself and had lost 2.2 lbs so that put me back to my 30.3 lb loss that had occurred this past Wednesday.  Not too shabby.

Today starts the 6 week Maintenance Phase of the first 3 weeks of still no carbs/sugars and then the last 3 weeks of slowly introducing the carbs/sugars.  My vacation starts on Aug 25 and I'm in the lower mainland/island for 2 weeks.  I need to maintain or lose the weight and not gain although I will give myself a leniency of a 5 lb gain.  I hope somewhere in me I can get some exercise incorporated too to keep the weight off.

Day 43 of hCG diet

Ok, time to get my butt in gear, and by that I mean to start blogging again.

I see that day 41 really didn't get much attention but now I can't really remember what happened so guess it wasn't that significant.

Today I reached my first goal of 30 lbs lost!  Such a surreal feeling and a sight to behold when you can see the weight come off (not literally!) and notice in the mirror a change, and that clothes are too big and falling off (which is a good thing in this sense).  It's fantastic really!  I'm glad I stuck to the 40 day course (mistake: not 43 days, just 40) and made the 30 lb mark.  Now I have 3 days of the 500 calorie diet to continue then I start the 6 week maintenance phase which will be hard but I need to be good good good at least to just maintain this weight.

This Friday I go to the clinic to be measured and weighed for the last time until Sept.  My calculation of inches lost is about 25.5" all over my body.  Just losing 8 inches off the bust is incredible.

Anyways, I'm in Burns Lake tomorrow for a "last minute" shift and will have a problem with my lunch as I don't wanna cook any meat today.  I'll bring strawberries and an orange for my 2 snacks and water.  I'll drink the coffee & stevia on the way to work too......or maybe I'll just cook up a chicken breast so I don't go over the calories for the day with a salad from the health food restaurant.  Ugh.  Ok, time to sign off and get cookin'.

Day 42 of hCG diet

I know I skipped day 41 but will get back to that day in my next post....this is just a quickie as I gotta finish getting ready for work.

When I had popcorn a couple days ago, the next morning I had gained 0.8 lbs so my popcorn theory went out the door real fast.

This am, after being super good yesterday, the scale said I'm down 1.2 lbs since yesterday so that means I'm 0.7 lbs away from a 30 lb loss!!!  Wowzers batman!!  Not in my whole life did I think that would ever happen without surgery!  HA, proved myself wrong and that is a good feeling!  This weightloss journey has been surreal.

Days 39 & 40 of hCG diet

So yesterday (day 39) I behaved food-wise, and had some popcorn and butter when mom & I got to 10 Mile Lake to visit my sister and her family who were camping there.  I didn't have much of a dinner so my menu compiled of:

Breakfast:  coffee & stevia

Lunch:  2 scrambled eggs (which I can have as a break to meat)

Snack: popcorn & apple

Dinner: melba x 1 and strawberries

Today (day 40), I've been good again.  I weighed myself and injected myself as usual and was down 1.8 lbs!  I sure liked seeing that since my past 1.5-2 weeks haven't been so hot in the losing aspect.  I'm now 206.6 lbs and have lost a total of 28.9 lbs!  This is the lowest I've been since starting this diet.  I only have 6 more injection days and I'm totally ok with not being at my goal weight of losing 40 lbs.  I cheated too many times and sabotaged that goal.  Oh well....when I do the next course in Sept I'll get to the 50 lb loss goal as I'd only need to lose 20 lbs which is easy.  I think that doing 2 courses consecutively has caused a bit of an immunity to the hCG which is expected, but won't be doing 2 in a row in Sept.


I had some popcorn tonite so am hoping for no gain tomorrow am.  What I don't get is that I pep-talk myself to NOT do certain things yet I still do them.  Ugh.  No more popcorn, darn it!

Days 37 & 38 of hCG diet

Today is day 39 but am just writing about days 37 & 38 as it's only 9:07am.  

Well since that 3 lb gain, I have been able to be good and lose 0.8 lbs on day 37 and 0.2 lbs on day 38....I'm suspecting the popcorn I ate on day 37 contributed to the small loss on day 38, so no more popcorn from now on.  Air popped popcorn has a small amount of carbs but even so, a small loss or gain will still happen.  It's insane to see how sensitive this diet is to the smallest cheat.....and you'd think I'd have learned by now.  Well this am (day 39) I went down 1.6 lbs with zero cheating yesterday.

My diet is still the boring normal stuff but I'm gonna decrease or get rid of all-together the fish part.  I don't mind the same way of preparing it every time as it does mask the fish flavour but I just don't like it....chicken or beef is the way for me.

Yesterday mom and I went to Walmart and I bought lots of meat.  I got:  ground lean chicken, stir-fry beef strips, skinless & boneless chicken breasts, and extra lean ground beef.  I have a newly acquired 'chicken taco' recipe to use the ground chicken in.  I'm supposed to wrap it up in a lettuce leaf but iceberg lettuce doesn't wrap very well and butter lettuce is the best but most expensive.  I did that once with a 'beef taco' recipe but the iceberg lettuce tasted funny, so may have to use romaine as the other cheaper alternative.

My co-worker has done this diet 4x and has been talking to me about what I can have during the maintenance phase.  She said to order a latte from Starbucks but with whole milk as it has less carbs than lowfat milk....go figure.  So I'd probably have a tall, sugar free vanilla, whole milk latte and see how that goes....what a treat that would be!  I've been drinking 1 cup of black coffee with stevia for 38 days now.  That in itself is quite the feat but to go back to Starbucks would be like the prodigal son coming home...haha.  

Mom and I are planning on heading to 10 Mile Lake to meet up with my sister's family as they camped there last nite.  Oh the temptation to grab a subway sandwich for my dinner but after checking out the nutritional info on their website, there's NO way I'll be eating a sandwich with the huge amount of carbs and sugars in their bread and flatbread sandwiches.  How did Jared lose weight with that much carbs/sugars ingested?  Obviously not a no carb/sugar diet.  So if we do go to the lake, I'll bring a seasoned chicken breast and tomato basil salad for my dinner.  Woop-de-do.

Until then.....

Getting Smaaaaaller.....slowwwwwwwly

This is a new outfit I bought today from Reitmans.  I'm super excited to say the top and cardigan are from the regular sized part of the store and the pants are 2 sizes away from regular size part of the store!!  It helps that all 3 pieces have stretch in them, otherwise I prob wouldn't fit into many other tops/cardigans in that part of the store......so let's here it for STRETCH!! yay!  I'm sure there are thousands of females out there that agree with me on that.

So when I put this outfit on at home and showed mom, she was, first, surprised I was wearing a 'dressier' outfit, and, second, that I looked smaller and in regular sized clothing.  As she was about to walk downstairs, I said "you have to take a picture, this is a milestone".  

Days 35 & 36 of hCG diet

Yesterday I had a day off from work and the diet was going well....I was down 1 lb from the day before (yay)....only 7 more lbs till 200 lbs!  Then I drove to Quesnel, for no major reason except to go for a drive and kill time as I had nothing else to do.  I got my oil changed, went to Fabricland for mom and picked up some fabric for her, SOF for some groceries when I was leaving town and went to BP cause I wanted something good to eat.  I had pep-talked myself just the day before about not doing what I was just gonna do and what I happened to do.  I ordered a starter caesar salad and my fave appy, Cactus Cut potatoes.  Man was it ever goooood....and I was full after that.

Now here's where it goes bad.....the next morning before work I weighed myself and went up 3 lbs! Man was I pissed at myself, pretty much disliked myself for being so weak and not listening to myself's pep-talk.  Time is really flying by and I have 10 days left to get to my 40 lb mark. So off to work I went with my proper menu in my lunch bag and a proper menu for dinner at home ready for when I got home.  

I realized today that I need a routine such as work in order to be disciplined to follow my diet.  I don't like days off, although I've been very good on many of the days off, but when there's a moment where I go off and do my own thing there's always a chance for me to fall off the wagon. I'm glad to say it's only happened 2x where I've gone to an actual restaurant and blew it.  I really do like food toooo much and need to get a strict handle on this problem cause what's the point in a short time of contentedness when shortly after the meal I feel like crap and I don't mean physically but rather mentally?  Vicious cycle I say!  

I need to find another outlet for myself that doesn't involve food.  Food is bad and if I didn't need to eat I probably wouldn't as I see the results of eating all the good but very bad stuff.

Today's menu:

Breakfast: coffee & stevia

Snack: apple

Lunch: chicken & celery

Snack: orange

Dinner: cod & tomato basil salad

Possible Snack: popcorn with a little bit of butter (which has no carbs or sugars)

Days 33 & 34 of hCG diet

Ok, I've given up the attempts to blog everyday so every second day will have to do. Yesterday I lost 0.4 lbs and today another 0.4 lbs  As of this morning I was down 28.8 lbs....I'm liking that number getting bigger.

I worked in Vanderhoof today and took a lunch with me, my usual chicken and tomato lunch with strawberries and an orange for snacks. BUT and I do mean BUT I went for lunch instead because I didn't want to sit in the cafeteria by myself for 45 min.  I ended up at North Country, a local restaurant in a log house style building next to a motel.  I'd been there once before a while back but didn't remember what I had.  Anyways, I looked over the menu and wanted the zucchini sticks, onion rings, fries & gravy...you name it I wanted it but I thought I'd not overdo it on the grease....so I had chicken strips, fries and side of gravy....see, less grease was ingested.  Haha.  Man I devoured it, partly cause I was running out of lunchtime, and cause it was gooood.  I even burned the top of my mouth.  But afterwards I thought that I shouldn't have done that....guess I just didn't want to sit in the cafeteria so thought I'd treat myself....BUT I've been 'treating' myself too often lately. Popcorn 3 days in a row (with a little bit of salt) and now today's lunch....and when I drove into PG this afternoon, I went to the clinic for my weekly weigh-in and I gained 3 lbs since the morning.  

There's a couple reasons for that though....it was about 4:30pm (late in the day) and after a larger than normal lunch of unhealthiness. I'll pay for it tomorrow on the scale (again). I'm back to my old behaviour of eating cause I want to and not caring what I ingest.....and then regret it afterward.  (**Gross thought warning: I guess puking it up is too late now**).  

I don't have much time left till the end of my diet (July 16) and I'm losing way slower than in the first course.  I need to ship up NOW! (technically tomorrow am I'll start)....but still....ship up now.  (sigh)  Ok....I think that's enough pep-talking and berating myself for tonite.

Yesterday's menu:

the usual boring stuff (no dinner except popcorn though)

Days 31 & 32 of hCG diet

This post will be shorter as I'm not really in "blog" mode and gotta really buckle down and do some homework.

Yesterday (July 1st) I had my usual diet and treated myself to some steak for dinner....flank steak that is.  It's really muscley with next to no fat on it.  I topped it with 1 fresh crushed garlic clove and some Montreal steak spice that after looking at the ingredients figured it was acceptable for my diet.  I portioned out the steak (3 meals) and bbq'd it and it was quite good....a bit chewy but I think that's expected of this sort of cut.  My weight-loss in the am was down 0.6 lbs....odd since the day before it was 2.4 lbs lost.

Today (July 2nd), same ol' diet and went to work.  I had an interesting conversation with a pharmacist about the diet.  She's amazed at how strict it is and she first thought I actually didn't eat.  When I stated what the calorie value of pieces of meat were, it made more sense to be able to have decent meals and still be within 500 calories/day.  I have done days within the 300 - 400 calorie range as well.

Nothing too exciting about today's menu either but I may have some popcorn tonite....I've been craving it for days and days....I'm not expecting a 50 lb loss during these two courses because already in my second course, the loss has slowed down so I'm hoping for a 40 lb loss.  That would get me below 200 lbs forsure....I'd be about 195.5 lbs....I can't even imagine!!