Things have changed, but things are good.

I've stopped the HCG for now.  I just couldn't do it.  I felt like crap.  I hated how exercising took everything out of me.  My appetite was increasing.  My last shot was Sunday morning and I didn't feel normal until today.  Once before I tried Prevention's Flat Belly Diet, but I didn't stick with it.  I'm going to do it again, starting tomorrow.  It's really late now, so I'll give more details later.

On the personal front, my boyfriend finished school, 4.0 GPA, voted best student by his teachers and best overall from his peers, and he got his #1 choice externship!!!  He just finished an 8 month pharmacy tech program.  I'm so so happy for him.  Mama's doing tons better, and she's thisclose to having a job.  The client wants her, they just have to get details straightened out.  So updates soon! 

ALSO, I got gutsy and emailed a major big wig at my company some suggestions, and he wants to meet with me to talk about my ideas more!!  I'm so psyched!!  This is the first day I've had energy in over a week, and it was a pretty dang good day.  I'm happy.  :)

What a weekend

No weight change today.  Not 100% sure why.  I'm wondering if I'm retaining water from my workout yesterday.  In any case, we went to the park yesterday afternoon and walked around for about an hour.  It was a great exercise, and we were really glad we did it.  But the rest of the day, I felt like hell.  I was hungry, cranky, and fatigued.  I ate more than I planned to, although I still stayed at around 700 calories.  We went to church last night with some friends, then went to Chili's (I had the guiltless chicken and steamed broccoli - that's it), and to Barnes & Noble.  I didn't really have fun, and I normally really enjoy hanging out with them.  I know it wasn't them; it was me.  I was just in a bad mood. 

Then, my mom called me at 8:30 this morning and asked me to come take her to the hospital.  She'd gotten dizzy and fainted while on the toilet last night, and fell smack on the floor and hit her head.  She actually hit her shoulder and her head on the wall, then her head and knee when she hit the floor.  She had big welts and wasn't in horrible pain, so she wasn't worried enough to call me.  Trust me, she got a lecture for waiting 8 hours to call me!  But the good news is that all of the tests came back just fine.  We think she fainted because she had a little flu bug.  She's been known to pass out from being sick, even just moderately sick.  She felt crappy last night, but not too terribly bad.  I'm feeling pretty crappy today myself.  I took a two hour nap this afternoon, and I'm still very hungry.  My zero weight loss yesterday and the fact that my appetite seems to be going up is really discouraging.  I know, I shouldn't give up after a day, but I keep thinking, maybe I'd be better off following a strict meal plan, consuming 1200 to 1600 calories a day, no shot.  And it's spring, so my boyfriend and I can take a lot more walks. 

I know I shouldn't give up, but if I give up on the HCG for now, I'm not giving up on weight loss.  I'm hoping to get married in October and go on a honeymoon in Hawaii, and I want to be much more self-confidant before my wedding.  So, with or wihout HCG, I'm going to do it.  I'm done with ice cream, fried foods, etc.  But I just ate a bowl of my beef and cabbage recipe, a bowl that would have filled me up two days ago, and I'm still hungry.  That just kind of sucks.

It worked!

166.4 this morning!  I'm down 2.4 lbs from yesterday!!  Yippee!!  I'm well aware that some of that is probably water since I tinkled about 20 times yesterday, but I really don't care.  I am 2 lbs less than I was 6 days ago when I started the injections, and I had 3 days of loading in there!  My short-term goal is to get below 150; my long-term goal is to get to about 135, possibly 130, depending on how 135 looks on me.  I'm close to 5'7" so I would think 135 would be fine, and from there I'd need to tone. 

So I guess accidentally eating two bites of buttered broccoli, using 2 tsp of sugar-free coffee creamer in my coffee, and eating half of a delightful acorn squash didn't hurt me!  I went to bed somewhat hungry last night, which is really hard for me to do.  But I kept thinking about my business trip that I took to India and how I would go to bed so many mornings (we worked nights), with my stomach growling because I hadn't eaten much dinner, and I just didn't care.  I was tired, mildly homesick, and lonely.  To tell you the truth, not having my kitties with me at night was really hard.  But my bed at the hotel was super-comfortable, and all I ever wanted to do was sleep in it.  The food was sometimes good, but I found myself getting full pretty fast.  Also when it wasn't good - when it was too spicy - I could only eat so much before I'd give up.  So I lost 2 lbs in the two weeks I was there without exercising.  So I've been really trying to think of those concepts; stop eating when I'm not hungry anymore.  And going to sleep hungry isn't the end of the world; I sleep like a rock, I'll be fine. 

Oh my goodness, I'm so excited for today now!  I'm going to go make my breakfast, start some laundry, and watch my cooking shows.  Well maybe not the last one.  I do think I'll prepare a picnic for us to go to this local park we haven't been to.  Gonna get in even more exercise today and see what happens!!  Yay!

Forget pasta, I have acorn squash!

For dinner tonight, I made 99% lean ground turkey, baked acorn squash, and roasted asparagus. I know, you may be thinking "Squash??!!" but remember, I'm following the Omaha Med Spa version of the HCG diet.  It may not work, but I'm really hoping it will.  I am eating fewer calories than she recommends, but generally sticking to the foods she picked out.  If after a week or so it isn't working, ah hell who am I kidding?  No way can I get by on just spinach and asparagus and broccoli.  I need the variety to not go crazy.  Did I mention I work for a restaurant company where I get free food??  Not to mention the food that is always at the office!  I have to have yummy fruits and veggies to console me.  Anyway, I'll put the link to the Omaha Med Spa on the blog in case you want to see the menu.  And I've also linked The Daily Plate, where I log everything I eat and my exercise. 

Ok, so this squash.  I halved an acorn squash and put it cut side down in a baking dish.  Then I added a few tablespoons of apple cider to the dish.  Don't freak out!!  It doesn't have any added sugar, it was really just apples and spices in that bottle.  I would really hope the tiny bit that the squash soaked up wouldn't be enough to screw me up.  We shall see!  In any case, oh yeah I salted the sqush first.  Then I covered the whole thing and cooked it at 350 for about an hour.  Divine!!!  Then I overcooked the asparagus.  Ha!  But at least I had the squash to make up for it!

Back to my day:  I'm down 0.8 lbs today.  Truly, I was hoping for, like, 10.  Ok not really but I wanted to lose A LOT.  But I realize 0.8 lbs is nothin to shake a stick at and I should be grateful, so I am.  Done. 

This morning I did another experiment:  egg beaters.  Well it's not that much of an experiment; it's on the Omaha Med Spa plan.  I had a quarter cup of that with a little bit of frozen chopped bell peppers (cooked w/ the eggs obviously) and a Wasa crisp.  It was pretty dang good. 

For lunch I met a couple of good friends at a restaurant.  I was a tad nervous, but I planned what I was eating ahead of time!  I got a house salad, just lettuce, onions, and diced tomatos.  I brought a little packet of Walden Farms Creamy Bacon dressing.  Then, at the last minute, I ordered a side of steamed veggies (it's just broccoli and carrots, and I figured I'd pick out the carrots).  Oh, also, I didn't touch the chips and salsa that my friends ordered!!  Anyway, so my salad came out just fine, but the veggies were another story.  I ate two little pieces of broccoli and realized they had butter on them!  So I sent it back and got the steamed like I ordered.  The server was very apologetic and prompt with getting the new veggies out, but I was nervous those two delicious, butter-covered pieces of broccoli messed me up!  I knew something was wrong when the broccoli tasted pretty dang good. 

After dinner the boyfriend and I went to the local park and walked around the pond.  It was really nice, we had a good talk.  I have a lot of insecurities.  All he has to do is talk about dieting and exercising, even if he's just talking about how he wants to diet, or if he's talking about people in general, and I'll get insecure.  Two people wth food issues is not a good formula.  But we're really working to understand and trust each other.  I've found that if when he tells me I'm pretty and that he likes me the way I am, if I really work hard to believe him, eventually, I do. 

Now I just gotta work on believing that I think I'm pretty enough!

Ok he's telling me to write about boobs now, so it's time to sign off.  :)

This may be working!

169.6 this morning! My starting weigt was 168.4, but after my loading days, I was at 172.8. So I've shed almost all of the loading days weight. Hopefully it keeps up at this rate!

Yesterday was definitely hard. I ended up at about 700 calories. I was fairly hungry most of the day. I went to Whole Foods at lunch to get a salad and buy some fruit to get me through the afternoon, but I had forgotten to bring my Walden Farms salad dressing, and Whole Foods doesn't carry it, so I used the fat-free balsalmic vinegarette that's on the WF salad bar. I guess it didn't hurt me since I still lost weight! I also forgot to buy the Melba toast. I think that was a mistake. I ended up leaving work nearly an hour early because I was stressed and hungry, and it didn't help that someone near me popped popcorn! That ought to be illegal - popcorn in offices. Either they pop it right and it smells like divinity, torturing everyone, or they burn it and it smells like death, torturing everyone. It's a lose-lose. Ok fine, I've popped popcorn at work before, but it's ok when I do it. Just not when other people do it.

My stress was caused by my second interview for the analyst position! It was such a hard interview! The guys I interviewed with were really nice, but they asked seriously tough questions. Thinking questions, like, "A friend comes to you wanting advice on whether they should buy or lease a new car, how do you go about advising them?" or "The marketing team comes to you and wants to know if the promotion they just ran worked, how do you figure it out?" Just open-ended like that!! I know what they were trying to do; they wanted to see how I think. But it scared me to the job a bit. I was thinking, you're really not going to just expect me to walk in and do these things, right?? I hope this isn't one of those situations where I should just sit tight where I am. I do like my job, I'm just a bit bored with it. I can't really remember the last time I learned something new. Back in college when I was a competitive speaker, we use to have this phrase that we used all the time to practice impromptu speaches: "When you are green you're growing, when you're ripe, you rot." It makes a lot of sense.

Today I'm working from home, which is awesome... I can rebuild my iTunes while I do my recons. Yup, rebuilding iTunes... my old PC crashed and burned, taking my music with it. Never, ever buy an HP, ok? I have a Dell now, and I'm pretty happy with it so far, although if I had dinero, I'd have a Mac!!

L'Chaim! :)

The big day

Today is my first day of the low-calorie diet. I'm really looking forward to it; I'm so over eating crap and stuffing myself. I totally get the mental and emotional purpose of the loading days now: to make you hate eating that crap. Plus my scale has been going up (as it's supposed to), so it'll be nice to see it go back down! I'm feeling really fat!

My shot hurt this morning, too. More than yesterday. I think I jabbed myself a little hard. :(

Also in the big news today... my second interview is today! I just found out yesterday afternoon! So now I gotta go find something to wear that I'm not too fat for already.

Mondays is so fun

I managed to get my shot in without being (as much of) a weenie today! My appetite is virtually gone. I still have hunger, but it's more like, ugh, don't care. It's like when I'm really sick, and my tummy is growing for food, and I tell it 'No, you've been bad. No food for you.' It's like that.

Haven't heard any more on the new job... oh well, we'll see...

Monday. Blech.