Riding the maintenance wave

UGH!! I cannot stand being on maintenance. I cannot do it! I have no clue why but it's so difficult for me! I met a personal trainer yesterday at the gym... it was good. He actually KNEW about HCG..which was amazing! He actually DID his homework on it and we could sit and have an intelligent conversation about it! It was great! He encouraged me to do what I am doing. He thinks it's a great plan. I do too! Now if I can ONLY get this maintenance crap down! Why is it so difficult for me? Why? He had a good point yesterday about us as humans and forming habits. Basically around 23 days (which is how long my protocol is for the drops) is as long as it takes to form a habit. SO basically I am so stuck on eating the 2 meals at 500 calories a day.. that switching it up to 3 meals a day to 1,500 calories is throwing me off so bad! It seems that it should be soooo simple to figure out. But for me it's just not coming easy to me. I gained a lb in the last 2 days. I'm not suprised. I have eaten a 6 inch sub for dinner one night and last night for dinner I had cereal. PSHHH.. I wish this could be so much easier~! I want to get back to what I know about the 500 calories but I can't! I HAVE to ride this out! Not to mention I am working my butt off at the gym almost every day.. and me coming home and eating cereal is not ideal. Throwing maintenance ontop of all that makes it so much more worse! I think I need to realize I am still on a program in this phase. I still am not allowed certain things and I am breaking the rules! I think soon as I can I am going to go over my maintenance plan in full detail and write out a few things and guidelines. I refuse to gain any weight back on my maintenance time! No reason I should be going backwards! Wish me luck today. I am going to a potluck and there will be a million foods there. I will opt out and go with nothing. I need to know that I CAN SAY NO. Anyways the day is beautiful.... let's all enjoy it!

Happy Thursday!

Yay it's thursday! I am happy, that means my husband is off tomorrow! Yippy! Been doing good since my last update. Been eating okay.... haven't eaten much really. Been working out faithfully! Last night I did 30 min of high cardio, and 45 min of upper body strength training. I love working out! Just wish I didn't have to go so late in the evening! I wish I could go at 8 every morning. Today for breafast I had 3 scrambled eggs. Right now I am eating an apple. Not sure what lunch will look like since the contractor is here tearing up my kitchen. I'm not to worried about me eating. More worried the kids get somthing for lunch. I just have to figure out my way around the kitchen floor! LOL! Anyways I am down this morning .4 lbs.. which is great. I am so excited to lose lose lose! Tomorrow morning I have a personal trainer meeting at 10am. Wonder what he will say? I am struggling more with eating correctly than working out. It's not that I am eating to much, but too little and that is actually not good for you and can put you in starvation mode which I don't want to do!

Sore!

Oh sweet baby Jesus.. (no offense to Jesus) I am SORE! I worked out last night for an hour and man... I was working it! Lower body strength training and cardio. I didn't get home till about 9:30pm. I guess I have to get used to working out late during the week days, since hubs doesn't get home till late. Anyways... today I am going to try to eat better than yesterday. I ate way to little yesterday and didn't track anything. I ate one omlette at lunch and that was about it. I really cannot have my body go on starvation mode.. it will end up biting me in the butt. Anyway, I am going to prepare breakfast (akward!) and go clean my house! I have guests coming tonight and my house is trashed! LOL

Bit the bullet

I ate a 4 egg, chopped up turkey lunch meat and a grab of cheese omllette today. Yes, thats it. I can't get over all the weight I gained in the last 2 days. Anyways I ended up going to the gym tonight and did an amazing cardio for 30 min, and lower body strength training for 30 min. Needless to say... my legs are going to be SORE tomorrow!! BIG TIME! Oh well.. it's doing it's job then! I might take a few bites of protien before I go to bed... just because I DID do alot today.. (not even counting around the house and pressure washing outside.) I have to get used to working out this late on week days. Hubby doesn't get home till 6pm, and I leave here at 8pm and go for an hour. I hope I can get set on this maintenance thing. Seriously. Gotta get a concrete plan going. Good night all.

Some other stuff to report

and planted these too.

And here's how the playground is coming along. (I have a NASTY bruise from tripping over the back boards while I was pounding rebar into them )

Anyways I have front pictures of the house I will show later.. But best believe I am getting a huge workout from it all~!

 





See the difference?

BEFORE PICTURE

 



This was me 3 days into my first HCG round. I think the date was Feb 14?

Sorry about being MIA!

So alot has happend in the past few days. I did make my goal on HCG of 40lbs down! AMAZING! I really love being able to say that! So I am officially off my drops and now onto maintenance phase. Which means 1,500 calories of specific foods. I slowly am supposed to add in dairy,beef, and other things. Key word... slowly. Hahaaaa... yah well the last few days I haven't been doing very well on the eating part. I have had 2 cheat days in a row.. BUT I have done great on my physical workout of my body! I have been pushing myself and even hit the gym yesterday morning for a full hour. 30 min cardio,30 min upper body strength training. PLUS the last 2 days I have been going all out on my back and front yard cleaning,raking,digging,planting you name it. I did crunches at the gym and woke up this morning with my stomch just sore as heck. YAY! I like to feel results! I might go into the gym tonight after the hubs gets off work. I really wish I could go bright and early every morning but that would look like 5am. And yah, thats not going to happen. I thought about the days when I wont be able to get to the gym.. I can do Zumba at home on the Wii. Thats always fun. I need to get my eating back under control and stop playing around. 2 days of playing around is enough for me. I don't want to set myself further back anymore. Anyways maintenance is always difficult for me. I get so used to eating on my protocol and it's so fixed that I don't really have to think. On maintenance I do... I have to add more food it.. Ehhhh.. I need to come up with a plan. I use an online calorie tracker which tracks calories and workouts..but I tried putting in my workout and it wanted to know the exact workouts I did for strength training.. I was like.... I don't know! A bunch! When I was younger I had a personal trainer that taught me alot about strength training and what areas to workout.. So I kind of just do that. I don't keep track of what I do. I usually do upper body one day.. sets of 10 or 20 each on certain parts of the upper body.. then the next day do lower body etc.... you always want to switch it up. Let your muscles get used to what you just put them through. Anyways today I will be having probably an omlette at lunch with a little cheese and cut up lunch meat. Then a regular 500 cal meal. Just because these last 2 cheat days are riding my butt. Not sure if I posted my before pics pr not, so I guess I should figure that out and post it soon. Anyways, I'm off to go clean the house and get to work!!

ME! After 2nd set of drops!

On my way to the gym in this picture... I will come back and write more later. Just thought I would share a new pic of me!

Love love love Cayanne pepper! Where has it been this whole time?

So my original HCG plan didn't have cayanne pepper on the list of spices. So I just never thought about using it. THEN out of no where last week I was like.. I need some spice in my life! Why don't I try cayanne pepper? Is it ok on HCG? So i googled around and it seems that cayanne pepper is JUST FINE! So thankfully I am using it to spice up my foods and it's helping SO MUCH. I even panned fried canned chicken with cayanne and garlic salt and Mrs. Dash... SO GOOD! I usually hate canned chicken! OHHH AND GUESS WHAT? Today is the last day of the 21 day drop cycle! BUTTT since I am still loosing I will stay on for another week or two.Now I have to look back and see how much weight I lost this time around. My last cycle I lost 21.5lbs.

I love Zuccinni!!!!

Man, I haven't had it till last night. And here I am today having it again. I panned fried it and put some Cayanne pepper on it and some salt free Mrs. Dash... YUMM!!! I don't know why I haven't used cayanne pepper till now, but I am LOVING it! I love spicey things! Here is lunch today.

Oh and we started on the ground for the play structure... it's coming along. Have to dig some more!

Happy Tuesday Morning!

So this morning I weighed in and I was down .7lbs. Hey hey thats an improvment! I am drinking water like crazy. I take 3 water bottles to bed so I can drink them before falling asleep and my husband thinks I'm crazy. I just cannot get enough water! Anyways I feel good that I am back on track and I feel that I am back in control. I stopped by Snap Fitness yesterday to talk to the lady that works there. She showed me around the gym, and we talked about my journey on my HCG, and how I soon would like to switch it up and get on a different program that intails working out. I am not sure if I will be doing the 42 days of HCG this time. I am really affraid my body will get immune. So what I really want to do is finish out this bottle, and get on maintance and start working out for a few months. Maybe get on Herbalife. All I know is that I need a plan. I do have another bottle of HCG that I plan on taking after a few months of working out. I just am wanting to switch my body up and trick it. The key is to not let your body fall into a pattern. So, I think in a week or two.. whenever this bottle is finished I may do that. I just need to come up with a plan on my calorie intake,workout plan, etc... I am excited because I do love working out, and this gym is small and open 24 hours a day. That means I can go after Hubs gets off work or even after the kids go to bed! Love it! Anyways I have alot of cleaning to do today, I am hosting a womens group here at my house tonight, so I must start cleaning. Happy day everyone!!!

Been a long time since my last post

Sooo I screwed up. I ended up cheating after 4 days of sitting at no weight loss... and I think I even gained like .3 of a pound out of no where. Well, my sister was having a house warming party and I decided screw it... I am going to cheat. So I did. I ate cheese,crackers,artichoke dip,fruits,chilli,meat, all sorts of stuff. Even a cookie! Needless to say I woke up and had gained 3 lbs~! YES 3~! I got right back on the 500 calories, and then yesterday's weigh in I gained another pound. 4!! All from Sat night! DANG! So yesterday I decided to do an apple day. I am glad I did because I lost 1.6 lbs. Whewwww.. so it look as if I am back on track so to speak. I still have some weight loss to make up for (another 3lbs) but I will get there. I wish I never cheated Saturday. What a sucky thing. Instead of being up 4 pounds I could have been DOWN 4 lbs! I got so impatient! I just couldn't stand to see that the scale wasn't moving while I sat here and did all the work. I learned my lesson though. No more cheating for me! I am just going to stick with it and do what i do. Ontop of all this I am having a nice cold going on, and we have a million projects going on right now. Tomorrow I start a womens group from Church at my house. My kitchen is still tore up. *sigh. And to top that off, Hubs didn't measure the playground out exactly right.. so we are stressing on what to do next. We really really want it up for the kids. We only get so much sun here in the PNW.. and each day really does matter. Anyways, I will keep trucking along with my diet till this bottle runs out, and after that I am contemplating if I want to switch it up for a few weeks and do another program with working out. I need to trick my body. I don't want it getting so immune to the HCG. Well I am off here to go clean my house! Lots to do! :)

Been a rough couple of days.

So the scale isn't moving,and I have not experienced this before. I started tracking calories again, and drinking more water. I hope that I can figure this out. I think I have been eating under 500 calories.. and thats whats messing me up. I don't know but I guess we will see soon! Tonight I am having dinner a little early because I have a hair appointment around dinner time. I had 4oz of chicken, half an orange,8 asparagus spears,and 2 stoned wheat thins. This morning for lunch I had 5oz of shrimp, 4 strawberries,2cups of lettuce, and 1.5 stoned wheat thins. Total calories today 494. Close enough. If I don't lose in the morning I guess I will consider doing another apple day. Like I said, this has never happend before. Not sure what is causing it!

Good morning!

So this morning I weighed myself and am down .9lbs that is good I guess. I know I shouldn't be upset over losing almost a pound but I was expecting somthing dramatic like 2.7 lbs! lol... Oh well I am thankful I am losing! I am only 4 pounds away from 40lbs down. WOW. This is awsome. TodaI am taking off and getting out of the house. Have a great day!

Millions of apples.. apples for me. Millions of apples.. apples for free.

Apple day today. Here is 3 apples. Tonight I will bake the rest of them.

Not really too happy right now.. Me and the kids are cramped in my bedroom while this takes place for the next 2 weeks in my kitchen.

AHHH sorry for it being sideways, but you get my drift. :(

UGH What did I do wrong?

Seriously? Was it the bell peppers? Was it not drinking enough water? I don't know but today is an apple day for me either way. My scale keeps bouncing back between no weight lost over night to only .2 lbs. Again... an apple day for me. For those who do not know what an apple day is, it is consuming 6 apples in a day. Thats it. You still take your drops morning noon and around dinner (5pm), and you start eating them around noon. Sometimes I bake them because eating 6 whole apples is alot harder than you think. What I do is slice them up, sprinkle stevia (only sweetner allowed) and cinnamon (on seasoning list as an ok seasoning.) and bake them for 30 min. at 400 degrees. And there you go! They go down much easier and taste great! I will put some pictures up later today.

Winner winner, chicken dinner?

So tonight we got out of Church around 5pm and got home around 5:30. Ding ding ding.... caution. I am over 30 min past due eating and I need to take my drops! (thats all I could think of when driving home). SO we got home and I realized I never took or pre-made any meat. :( So sad when that happens. It means I have to prolong my meal time even more.. ugh. So I took an easy way out. I grabbed a can of chicken. (usually yuck I don't prefer it at all!) and heated it up. It was exactly 4oz. and enough for me. I didn't drink enough water today.. and just got done busting my butt cleaning my house, for tomorrow. Did I tell you? I have a contractor coming over at 11:00 am to re-do my kitchen flooring that just got done a few months ago. Apparently he did not let underneath the flooring dry long enough, and after about 2 weeks of new kitchen flooring it started bubbling up. Yay. This should be so fun to have a non existant kitchen with 2 kids and a dog and cat. Especially when my 3 year olds room is on the other end of the house and you HAVE to go through the kitchen to get there. Oh well... we will make the best of it! Here again is a picture of dinner tonight. Nothing fancy.

I told my hubby that I needed lots of cucumbers. And he replied.. "Well you said you only wanted a couple. I thought I would get you bellpeppers to give you more variety. You eat the same thing alot." I explained to him that this journey for me is not about food. It's about me. It's about me growing and taking power back over food. At this point I don't say, "YUM! Look at what I am going to eat!" I see what I have to do to reach my goal, and to keep control. There is no enjoying food right now. And I am ok with that. I always have the option to choose to stop, but right now I have a long journey ahead of me and I am not stopping till I reach my goal. I don't care about eating to feel good! I am realizing that it's a false sense of security and I have been a victim too long. I feel empowered right now and will continue too for as long as it takes to get down to where I want to be. This journey is so eye opening... it is like fasting in a way. I am giving up everything..surrendering it all. The Bible even states so many times about eating. How we are not here to "Live to eat." but we are here to "Eat to live." Which I am doing! I am taking in whats necissary for me to live. I am on an eye opening adventure and I'm not stopping anytime soon. ;)

Mmm I am gonna chance it.

So I originally was told that bell peppers were fine on my HCG protocol. But others said that it's a no-no. Well I guess we will see? Here is lunch. I am on the run.. gotta get ready for Church!

*honeslty today I don't even feel hungry or even have the desire to eat. I could not eat this and be perfectly fine. But maintaining 500 calories a day is a must.

I LOVE WAKING UP TO AMAZING RESULTS!

I am super pumped this morning. As you might know.. Hcg does it's magic at night while you are sleeping. So you are to weigh yourself every morning as soon as you wake up. So of coarse I rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth and made my way to the wii fit. I dragged out the wii board and as I was yawning I was going through the little questions the wii fit has at first. Finally, we got to the point where I step on the board. I say, "Honey! Cross your fingers!" )yesterday I only lost .6 of a lb. and that isn't "enough" in my eyes. I love to see BIG results. I know losing a .6 of a pound over night is nothing to cry over and alot of people would LOVE to do that overnight.. but I have been on Hcg so long I am so used to seeing big results.) As I said that the wii fit tallied up my weight and center of balance. Of coarse it is always nice to hear the little chime of the voice telling you your obese. Yah I think I know that about now thanks. BUT low and behold... I was down 1.6 pounds!!! OVERNIGHT! That puts me at 35 pounds down so far! 35! I am just so happy this morning. I still have to wonder if it was somthing I ate yesterday. Was it the shrimp? The cucumbers? The combination of the two? Heck... I might just keep that as my loosing big day meals. Either way I am so excited. I can jump for joy!

Soooo tired...

Went shopping for over 4 hours. I am pooped! All in the name of my boutique I have online called Little Luxury Couture. I picked up alot of things.. just so tired now! I needed to hurry and get home because it was dinner time. Which is very important for a person doing HCG. I rushed in the house, took my 10 drops of hcg and started preparing my dinner. Here it is..

As you might figure out I duplicate my meals alot. Anyways I am sooo tired so I am going to finish eating and relax!

Lunch for today

So I weighed out 5 oz. of shrimp (tails off, and for shrimp I add on one more ounce. Usually I take 4oz. of protien, but shrimp is one of those that you can have an ounce more.) 1 peeled and cut up cucumber, half an orange, and one stoned wheat thin. There ya go!

And of coarse WATER!! And lots of it!

What a beautiful morning

I weighed in this morning and I was down .6 lbs. It's not exactly what I wanted to see, but how can I complain about losing more than half a pound over night? So I will take it! My hands are bugging me this morning from the blisters on them from working in my garden. (*Note to self: wear gloves next time.)

Oh well. They aren't big blisters but they are annoying. Anyways today is going to be a great day! I must admit that I am wondering about my meals yesterday and if somthing in them effected my weight change. Or have I just reached the point where I stop drastically losing? (ususally the first week you lose over a lb a day) Which is fine with me.. but I must say I am in a rush to get this weight off. I will be taking pictures of my 2 meals each day starting today. I think it will help me see, and also look back and what I actually consumed and put in my body in 42 days! I have lots of friends on this Hcg journey too. They are all doing amazing. It's so fun to see so much weight loss. It's so awsome to be eating to live not living to eat. I am in control now, which I once wasn't. Food controled me. Not anymore! I feel liberated now. I choose what happens now. I have consequences for my actions now. If I mess up and eat somthing I am not supposed to.. well I answer for that and deal with what comes next. Speaking of that let me just get into who created HCG protocol Dr. Simeon Long ago... here is a link to his original findings on this diet, and everything about it. Of coarse this was many years ago and there has been many tweeks to this. THere are hundreds of Hcg companies out there now with different protocols all stemming from the original text from Dr. Simeons work. Here is a link

(where is my LINK?) I will figure this out.. I will be back with the link.

Of coarse this is the very first protcol made. I use somthing similar but not exactly the same. It truely is just an expirement on your body because everyone is different. We all take to foods differently. I will be back in a little bit, the kids are calling! :)

Wrapping up today

So today was a busy one! My husband got off early, so we were able to head over to home depot and get gardening supplies. Of coarse I already talked about digging up the garden, but we ended up going back for a water fountain. We had one.. but... well see?

And that just wasn't fixable. So we went and got this..

I took it at a funny angle but you get the just of it. So tonight I was unprepared to cook dinner for my family or even for myself. I ended up making puney old hot dogs for them and cut up some cantelope. Wow, tasty. That is one issue for me since doing HCG. I have a very hard time cooking seperate meals for the family. They don't eat the same things, and on this diet your 2 meals a day are your #1 priority in your head. At least for me it is. I weigh everything out, I measure how much of everything I use.. it's become such a habit that I can eye my food out now, and rarely use my food scale. Here is a typical meal that I consume in a sitting.

or this

Although I might cut out bellpepper. I heard that it stores fat longer.. but I will look into that. Tonight I had 4 oz of chicken,2 cups of lettuce,half an orange,and 1 and a half stoned wheat thins. Yum. Ok looks like it's time to call it a night! See you tomorrow!

A little work will do me good

So on hCg your really not supposed to workout unless you already used to it. Which I am not. LOL. But I just worked my butt off in my garden ripping it up and cutting through 2 years of dirt that hasn't been touched. It feels great to be able to get out in the sun and do some labor. But I heard you have to be careful with sun on hCg. Anyways after about an hour and a half I had enough and was ready to come inside. My hands are blistered, and my back hurts but hey.. I cannot wait to have my garden up and running! How awsome it will be to have it full of yummy veggies,fruits and herbs.

It's been way too long, but I am glad I am back!

Only good things have happend since my last posting. I am going to start dedicating myself more to blogging here. I have lost a total of 33lbs. Since Feb 12th. Yes you heard right. I started taking hCg. If you don't know what it is.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin <~~ there you go. I started taking drops from a great company out of Utah called Super Charged HcG. http://superchargedhcg.com/index.html and it comes with a free Ebook to tell you what your protocol will look like, and what to do. Basically while on these drops I eat 500 calories daily. Your probably thinking.. Only 500 calories?! How is that even possible! Well I am telling you it is VERY much possible and I am a testament to it! I love it! I am currently on my second round of drops. My first round only lasted 23 days, and I went to the second phase which is maintance for a few weeks after. Then I started my second round of drops. In the first 23 days I lost 21.5 lbs. I accidentally lost 3 on my maintnance phase (I was sick) and have lost the rest on this cycle of drops, it's been a little over a week! I plan on losing as much as possible, because I have a long way to go. But I know I have the secret to my success now! I am not afraid anymore, I am not doubting that I can do this. It's all in my hands and I know that I can make this happen. I am doing it! It's amazing. I have already lost 2 pants sizes, and 33lbs. I will try updating daily here, and writing this all out is a huge deal for me because then I can see what all I overcome!