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.

So this is what crap on a stick feels like

I thought my first few "loading days" would be awesome. On the HCG diet, you're supposed to eat extra fat for the first 3 days (2 days on some programs). I had it all planned out; baby-back ribs, guacamole, donuts, maybe some cheesecake, fettucine alfredo, you name it. Day 1, and I've had some baby-back ribs, but it was hard to enjoy them. By that point (dinner), I was feeling so full. I think the appetite suppressant has already started. That makes me feel optimistic for the coming days, but man, it makes it hard to get in the fat calories that I need!

The shot this morning wasn't much fun. I wouldn't say I'm "scared" of needles, I just don't like them. I'm okay with getting shots at the doctor's office, but I don't want to see the needle go in. Nooo way. Well, when you're giving yourself the shot, you kind of have to look! First thing this morning, I got the shot ready and examined the tiny little pointy needle. Yes, it's one of those super-tiny shots that people use for their insulin. But I could barely make myself do it! I knew I just neede to suck it up and stab, but I couldn't do it! I eased it in!! Eeew, awful, I know! I'm getting heebie jeebies just thinking about it. But I finally got the medicine in, ok, all done. Get the needle put away. Still figuring out how I'm going to throw them out so that no one gets into them. My mom said junkies wouldn't want these needles, but I bet stupid kids would. And my neighborhood is loaded with stupid kids. In any case, I got it all put away, and before I was barely done, I felt woozy. I guess I got myself too worked up about the shot, and the effect was that "I'm gonna either faint or puke" feeling. It was delightful. I sat down, took it easy, tried to make it go away, and it wouldn't! I called my boyfriend and told him I wanted to go to church tonight instead of this morning, but he said there weren't any church services tonight, just the morning. Ugh. So he offered his usual knight-and-shining armor move and said he was coming to pick me up. I don't know if it was my conversation with him or the fact that I laid down while I was talking to him, but by the time I got up, I felt better. My tummy was a tiny bit sore all day where I stabbed myself, but I'm hoping that was just because I tensed up.

Tomorrow, my plan is to focus on MUFAS (mono-unsaturated fatty acids) as my main fat sources rather than crap. So, avocados, nuts, olives, dark chocolate, etc. Plant fats, as opposed to animal fats or super-sugary fats. Cause all that junk today made me feel icky poo. And I plan to be a big girl about my shot tomorrow morning.

Oh, and my cat just jumped up on my dresser like I wasn't even here! She never does that. Must be chasing a bug or something.

Ok, that's enough randomness from me tonight!

I decided to do it

I decided today to start the HCG shots. My mom signed up for an expensive HCG program about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Although she followed the program, and she did this program once before when she was my age, she didn’t lose any weight. Well, not really. She gained the few pounds that she was supposed to in the first 3 “loading” days, then dropped it the next day (she thinks she mostly peed it off), then lost another pound over the next week. So it didn’t seem to be working, even though she says she followed the diet to the letter. We’ve also since found another HCG program that you do online that costs about $100. So that sucks.

But, on the upside, I’m going to take some of her leftover HCG. My plan is to begin tomorrow and take it for at least 2 weeks. I’m going on vacation the week of April 19. Our biggest plans for the vacation so far are to go to Kansas to see my grandmother, but I’m sure we’ll end up going out to eat with her and my aunt, uncle, and cousins. It’s really hard to eat in a restaurant on this diet, much less on the road. So I’m thinking I’ll just try to hit it hard for 2 weeks, maybe 2 ½, and then just eat healthy things while on vacation, like salads, grilled chicken, etc. My short-term goal is to be significantly smaller before I start my new job, which should start May 1. Okay I don’t actually have the new job yet. It’s another position within my company; I’ve gone through the first round of interviewing, and he said he wants me to do the second interview, but there have been a bunch of personnel switches in that department, so now I don’t know what is happening. But I’m going on the assumption that I have the job, cause I’m just a glass-half-full chick like that. And my long-term goal is to be significantly hotter before my October wedding/ honeymoon. Again, okay, I’m not engaged yet. Just, practically engaged. More on that later.

Prior to making this decision to start HCG, I was very hesitant. I’ve been contemplating HCG since my mom and I first started talking about it about a month ago. The diet is very restrictive, and while I won’t be hungry, emotional hunger can be a bitch. Not to mention the fact that I work for a restaurant company, and all we do is eat. We have meetings over lunch, celebrate everything with lunch or cake, and we have happy hours in-office almost monthly. Avoiding those things will be hard. Not just because I want the yummy stuff, but because it’s a pain in the ass to explain to someone why you won’t go to their fare-thee-well lunch or why you don’t want a margarita when last week you happily put down two of them and went back to work. Yet, as hard as that is, I think I’ve decided it’s harder to be fat. I damned near had a breakdown yesterday because I was going on a date with my boyfriend, and I wanted to wear something cute. I have a few cute things in my closet. And I’m too fat for all of it! I mean, I can get lots of it on, but I look like either a stuffed sausage or a pregnant woman in all of it. I’m so over this. It’s really easy for me to gain weight. I do a pretty good job of not gaining weight, but it feels like the work I do to just not gain weight would make a normal person lose weight. I need this jump-start to get some of my extra 30 – 40 lbs off.

I want to start my first day on the new job in a really cute outfit. I want to wear a wedding dress without a bunch of constricting, fat-holding crap underneath and still look good. I want to get pregnant, and I want it to be easy to see where my bulge ends and where my baby begins. I want to live a healthy life for me, my future husband, and my kids. And I really need this boost to get me out of this awful place that I’m in right now.

So here we go. Tomorrow is Day 1 towards a better version of me.