Hey isn't it funny how these things work out? On Thursday, I ate lots of turkey and moderate amounts of all the fixings and I quit when I was starting to feel a little stuffed. Later I had a sliver of pumpkin pie and another sliver of cherry pie. The next morning, I was up 2.8 lbs. So yesterday, I still ate leftovers but maybe not so much as Thursday. Just til I was starting to feel slightly full. This morning I lost almost all the weight i gained the day before. I was down 2.4 lbs. Now I am just .8 over my LIW from my last P2. I'm pretty happy with that. Today was my first VLCD day. I made a big pot of Chili and froze all but the one serving that I had for lunch. So I will have 4 more delicious individual servings for later. Or, maybe if I'm feeling generous, I'll share them with my daughter. I gave her a couple of servings of the last batch I made and she really liked it. Tomorrow I will try to cook a few more meals ahead to make it easier during the work week. I haven't made the meatballs yet and I heard they are really good. Oops, I better stop talking about food because I am feeling a little hungry on my first day of VLCD and I've already eaten all my food for today. I may have to go brew a cup of tea to tide me over.
Oh so the other good news I got today is that our order of HCG from DD finally came today. So once I use up this "donated" batch, I will be able to smoothly transition into the new batch that my daughter and I will mix. Funny thing that we still haven't heard anything from Eurobolics who is the first one we ordered from, way back in mid October. I wouldn't be surprised it it had been confiscated but we just haven't been notified yet. Oh well, I'm glad we ordered the backup supply!
I will be busy tomorrow putting up Christmas decorations. My husband got most of the outside lights up today, but I couldn't do too much on the inside of the house since we had our 1 year old grandson here. I already have trouble keeping him out of the bookshelves and I have no idea how I'm going to keep him away from our decorations! It's going to be a challenge!
Only one more day left of the long weekend... so sad.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
Post Turkey Day Update
2.8 gain on first load day. So not so great, but not unexpected. It the end of the day here and I did eat leftovers today but I didn't go for the pie and cool whip so much. I had turkey and stuffing and a little bit more mashed potatoes and gravy. And veggies too! And I am a little worried about what I'll see on the scales tomorrow, but I am so glad to be going back on the VLCD that I'm not stressing about it. So here I go finishing one last glass of wine for a long, long time and I'll report my stats in the morning!
Becca
Becca
Thursday, November 22, 2007
My Before and after Pics
Okay, Here you go. I had my daughter take these tonight and she was kind enough to interrupt the movie she was watching to take and edit these for me. What a sweetheart! So what do you think? The first one was taken on day 15 of my first P2 and I'd already lost 15 lbs so you may not see as much difference as there actually is, but I'm pleased so far. I'll be sure to add some more when I get the last 27 lbs off!
10/18/7 - 183 lbs: VLCD 14.
11/22/7 - 172.4 lbs starting R2P2
Becca
Thanksgiving day 2007
I started the sublingual this morning. It's the first time I've ever tried it this way. Previous P2 was with SC injections. So the SL was a breeze. I think the biggest challenge will be remembering to do the second dose at night. I am due to take the night-time dose in about 30 minutes. My pre-load weight is 172.4. I will do my measurements today and I'll see if my daughter can take my pics today or tomorrow. I haven't posted any pics yet because I only had the "before" pics and who wants to see just the befores? I mean it's obvious I'm on this diet cuz I need to lose weight but until I have some progress to show I sure don't want anyone looking at my fat bod! LOL! I'm not sure how much difference I'll see in the photos because I didn't take them until I'd already lost about 10 or 12lbs and I only lost another 12 or 14 after that. But if it looks any different, I'll be sure to post 'em.
So happy thanksgiving to all. I cooked a turkey and all the trimmings and I had a little bit of almost everything. I was mostly craving the mashed potatoes and gravy and YES! they were great! I'll have another little helping of leftovers tomorrow and then it's back to the VLCD for a long, long time. LOL!
Today I am thankful for my family and all of my wonderful grandchildren who give me such great joy. I love them very much and I am lucky that they are all in good health. I also am thankful for my husband of 7 years who is a little grumpy sometimes but always makes it up to me! And I'm so glad that my daughter is joining me in the HCG protocol. Although she does not have a severe weight problem at 33 years of age, she has not been happy with her weight in the years since her two children were born. I know that HCG will be the answer for her and I hope that she will accomplish her goal with just this one round of the protocol.
So happy thanksgiving to all. I cooked a turkey and all the trimmings and I had a little bit of almost everything. I was mostly craving the mashed potatoes and gravy and YES! they were great! I'll have another little helping of leftovers tomorrow and then it's back to the VLCD for a long, long time. LOL!
Today I am thankful for my family and all of my wonderful grandchildren who give me such great joy. I love them very much and I am lucky that they are all in good health. I also am thankful for my husband of 7 years who is a little grumpy sometimes but always makes it up to me! And I'm so glad that my daughter is joining me in the HCG protocol. Although she does not have a severe weight problem at 33 years of age, she has not been happy with her weight in the years since her two children were born. I know that HCG will be the answer for her and I hope that she will accomplish her goal with just this one round of the protocol.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Yea! We got the stuff today! Just in time for me to start on schedule tomorrow. I'll be going with the sublingual until it is used up and then switch over to injections. I've been thinking a lot about my goal for this round. I've always planned for my final goal weight to be 145 and I will be more than happy to make that weight, but looking at the weight charts, it shows that a small frame (and based on my wrist I would be small) a 5'7" woman should be 133lb. So at the risk of sounding "GREEDY" maybe I could go a little lower. I will not make that an actual goal though, but if I just continue until the weight loss either slows or stops I should be okay.
Hmmm. So here's what I'm thinking... I'm adjusting my current weight to match what my new scale says, which is 172. Okay then, to get to 145, I need a loss of 27 lbs. I don't want to set an unrealistic goal because I know that the closer you are to your goal weight, the slower you will lose so I doubt that I could make it by Christmas but maybe I can do it by the end of the year. So that's what I'm going to have for my goal. Can you believe how awesome that would be? Biz, I agree that it's like a miracle to be able to plan our weight loss in such a detailed way and to be able to believe that we can actually achieve it!
Okay, I'm off to the movies. We are going to have a girl's day with my daughter, granddaughter and a few of her friends to see "Enchanted". So tune in tomorrow for the review!
Becca
Hmmm. So here's what I'm thinking... I'm adjusting my current weight to match what my new scale says, which is 172. Okay then, to get to 145, I need a loss of 27 lbs. I don't want to set an unrealistic goal because I know that the closer you are to your goal weight, the slower you will lose so I doubt that I could make it by Christmas but maybe I can do it by the end of the year. So that's what I'm going to have for my goal. Can you believe how awesome that would be? Biz, I agree that it's like a miracle to be able to plan our weight loss in such a detailed way and to be able to believe that we can actually achieve it!
Okay, I'm off to the movies. We are going to have a girl's day with my daughter, granddaughter and a few of her friends to see "Enchanted". So tune in tomorrow for the review!
Becca
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Thanks for the helping hand...
OMG! The people from HCG2 are soooo awesome! I can't believe how generous and caring these people are to complete strangers. Yes, we are strangers even though we have shared our most intimate secrets, mainly our WEIGHT! LOL. Cuz you know, that's something that we really NEVER tell the truth about, not even on our driver's licenses. Well, before HCG that is. It will be really great to be able to put the truth down on that form and know that it will be within 2 lbs of that weight basically forever! But I digress...
It's just that I am really excited right now because so many people in the group responded to my admittedly desperate sounding plea. We really didn't think it would have taken over a month for our order to come in. We deliberately chose a site that others had reported quick responses from. Some were less than a week. But that was then, and obviously it isn't like that anymore. So thanks to Biz and Lise, we came up with a solution and some HCG is on the way. It will come just in time for Erica to be able to continue her P2 and for me to start up again by loading on Thanksgiving day and then moderately the next before going right into the VLCD. I still have another 30 lbs to lose and if possible, I want to just keep going until I reach that goal.
One thing I am going to do now before I start again, is to adjust my weight and ticker to reflect the new scale that I bought in the middle of my first P2 round. It was about 3 lbs different than what I was using before so I just kept adjusting the figures to match what it would have been on my old scale. So if you see a jump in my numbers, it's not because I gained! It's just the numbers from my new scale... Remind me sometime to tell the story about the search for the holy "scale"! It is a little excessive but makes for a funny tale.
Okay I'm so excited that I forgot what else I wanted to say on my blog for today. So I'll leave it at that for now and put in an update if I missed something important.
Becca
It's just that I am really excited right now because so many people in the group responded to my admittedly desperate sounding plea. We really didn't think it would have taken over a month for our order to come in. We deliberately chose a site that others had reported quick responses from. Some were less than a week. But that was then, and obviously it isn't like that anymore. So thanks to Biz and Lise, we came up with a solution and some HCG is on the way. It will come just in time for Erica to be able to continue her P2 and for me to start up again by loading on Thanksgiving day and then moderately the next before going right into the VLCD. I still have another 30 lbs to lose and if possible, I want to just keep going until I reach that goal.
One thing I am going to do now before I start again, is to adjust my weight and ticker to reflect the new scale that I bought in the middle of my first P2 round. It was about 3 lbs different than what I was using before so I just kept adjusting the figures to match what it would have been on my old scale. So if you see a jump in my numbers, it's not because I gained! It's just the numbers from my new scale... Remind me sometime to tell the story about the search for the holy "scale"! It is a little excessive but makes for a funny tale.
Okay I'm so excited that I forgot what else I wanted to say on my blog for today. So I'll leave it at that for now and put in an update if I missed something important.
Becca
Monday, November 19, 2007
Back from my travels...
Hi All,
We got back from our trip to Ohio late last night. I was able to continue reading the digests from the HCG2 site during the past week, but I wasn't able to post the whole time I was gone, either because I didn't have access to the Internet, or the privacy or the time. So I have a lot of stuff to talk about so BEWARE, this may be a lengthy post!
Although this trip was for a very sad reason, I think I'll go with the good news first. As you may know, I decided to transition to P3 two weeks early for this trip, so that I didn't have to go through the difficulty of managing the P2 diet that I suffered through on the trip earlier this month. I stopped the injections on Thursday morning and continued with the VLCD through Saturday, which was our travel day. I brought diced chicken and sliced cucumbers for my travel food. It was late when we arrived and we were all hungry but I just snacked on an apple, knowing that i could eat a good breakfast in the morning. So we wake up Sunday and someone is in the kitchen cooking pancakes! Arggh! I had to wait until it cleared out a little and snuck in to make a couple of scrambled eggs with cheese. And it really did hit the spot! And that's kind of how it went for the next 4 days. There were so many family members there that someone was always in the kitchen cooking. I was usually able to eat some of what they were cooking, but always had to skip the goodies that I knew I couldn't have. Fried potatoes, fresh muffins, cinnamon rolls, etc. Plus all the nearby relatives and friends were bringing the family so many delicious dishes. Stuffed pasta shells, cheesy potatoes, lasagna, brownies, homemade cookies, and breads of all kinds. Luckily they also brought some homemade sausage and peppers, meatballs, and roast pork, so I had many dishes that made my mouth water and kept me filled up with good protein. So did I ever cheat? Well, yes I must admit that I did a few times. I had a few little bites here and there of some homemade breads and once a small bit of an onion roll, but the closest I came to cheating with sweets was the homemade applesauce. I had a bowl of that with some sugar free cool whip. MMMMM! So how did I do with my weight? Well, I didn't bring my scale, but I did weigh myself on my MIL's analog scale when I first got there. I weighed every morning and I saw that it did go up and down a little some days, and one day it looked like it was up close to 2 lbs but it being an analog I couldn't tell for sure. So the next day, I just stuck to lots of proteins and veggies and fats and WATER and I was back down the next day. So late last night I get home and first thing, I go weigh myself just to see what the damages are. And..., drum roll please!... I'm .4 over my LIW! And this morning, I'm on my LIW exactly! Oh man, you could have knocked me over with a feather! Well, no, I'm not actually that skinny yet, but WOW! This means to me that I really feel that i can maintain the weight loss after HCG just like Dr. S and KT told us we could! Our miracle cure is true, not just a dream!
The other great part of the trip was having most of our grandchildren there with us. Most of the kids from my husband's side of the family were able to go and they all brought their kids. My husband and I travelled with our 14 month old grandson on the trip there and he was a great traveller. He was very excited about the plane ride and loved to slide the window up and then slam it down. The take off thrilled him and he was laughing out loud. Later, when it got dark, he loved looking at the city lights below. We kept him happy during the other times by letting him have a bottle whenever he got fussy. He had been transitioning to sippy cups but the bottles were comforting to him so we indulged him and it worked great, other than the few overfilled diapers we had to deal with later, LOL! We didn't have him for the trip home since we stayed a little longer than the kids, but we heard he slept most of the way. Lucky for them!
The viewing and funeral for my sister-in-law was every bit as emotionally draining as you might expect. My BIL broke down sobbing several times throughout and their three daughters and 8 grandchildren were all very heartbroken. Two of the daughters read letters that they had written for their mother that were supposed to have been given to her at a tea party that was originally planned for the Saturday after she died, so they read them at her service and there wasn't a dry eye in the place. And one of her son-in-laws stood up to say that there are countless mother-in-law jokes out there but not one of them would ever apply to Linda. He went on to say how she welcomed him into the family and always made his favorite homemade pie when they came to visit. My husband and his siblings and mother also took it pretty hard. She was the first of the 5 siblings to go and she was always the caretaker and organizer of the group. It is hard to see what direction the family will take now that she is gone. And for me, it is devastating too. I had grown to love her very much in the 12 years that I've known her. She and her husband are about 8 years older than we were, but we always said that when we retired, we'd be snow birds together. We'd go to stay with them in the summers and they could come out to Arizona with us in the winters. I'll miss her cheerful disposition and common sense ways. Her deep love for her family and her husband were always evident and we all don't know how we will cope without her. And for me, it also brought back the pain of losing my mother and my brother several years ago, because as unlikely as it sounds, they all three died of pancreatic cancer. And the first time I heard the word "pancreas" when they were trying to find out what was wrong with her, it was a dagger to my heart. Because even while I was fighting the panic and the sense of doom, I knew I needed to keep an optimistic outlook for everyone's sake. I knew that there were some cases of survivors although they were very much the minority, and I knew she wanted to fight it with everything she had. So I held out the hope that she would be the one who would beat the odds and I rejoiced in each step forward. Because for a while it did seem as though she was responding very well. She breezed through her first surgery and the radiation treatments that followed. The chemo was a little tougher, but she didn't seem to get as sick as many do with the treatments and although her hair thinned a bit, she never lost it all. So it was a big blow when we found out that the cancer had shown up in other organs and that there was no further treatment that would be feasible to eradicate it. Now it was just a waiting game and a push to give her the best quality of life she could possibly have. She looked into many alternative treatments and was using a "Vibe Machine" and various supplements that were aimed at healing on a cellular level. She also told the doctors that she didn't want anyone to tell her how much time they thought she had. She said she wanted to get stronger and live and that's what she would continue to work towards. So when my husband detoured through Ohio on the tail end of a business trip early this month, he became very alarmed when he found her so weak that she couldn't sit at the table and eat with the family and was sleeping for hours during each day. When she was in the room with other people she would nod off during conversations. So he called me and we immediately decided that I should come for a quick visit right away since it looked as though she was fading fast. So we arranged for me to come out within a day or so and by the time I arrived, they had discovered that the sleep medication she had been given was at a much larger dose than she should have been taking and that she had been prescribed two different pain medications by her doctors when she should only have been taking one. So once I arrived, they had already backed her dosage off enough that she was coherent and quite a bit more active. So that visit turned into a very nice chance for us to spend some quiet time with her. She was able to laugh and joke and talk about good times. She was still able to walk under he own power although the tri-level house made it very difficult for her to get up and down in because stairs were beyond her capability. Towards the end of our stay however, she started experiencing some swelling and bloating. This is always a big concern because the water retention can cause congestive heart failure and they had to put her on some medication to help her. Which it did for a day or two, but within days of our return to Arizona, she collapsed and was hospitalized. She died that same morning with her husband and girls at her side. So back we came for the second time this month. But so many times we remarked at how glad we were that we had made the first trip and were lucky enough to spend those few good days and that we were able to say goodbye to her properly before she died. I will be forever grateful for that opportunity. And another positive thing that happened this past week, I was able to spend some time with her daughters and my brother-in-law and talk to them about how lucky she was to have the really remarkable quality of life she did in her final days. I told them about how different it was for my brother who had been confined to a hospital bed and was in a lot of pain for the last two months and who had lost so much weight that at 54 years old, he looked like a 90 year old man. So I believe they were comforted by those thoughts. She was alert and actively participating in the world around her up to the end and she was even strong enough to hold her 4 month old grandson and have her picture taken just days before she died. So yes we are very sad, but we also feel very blessed that we had her for as long as we did and that she had a merciful ending to her beautiful life.
Thank you for taking the time to share these thoughts. Good bye for now.
Rebecca
We got back from our trip to Ohio late last night. I was able to continue reading the digests from the HCG2 site during the past week, but I wasn't able to post the whole time I was gone, either because I didn't have access to the Internet, or the privacy or the time. So I have a lot of stuff to talk about so BEWARE, this may be a lengthy post!
Although this trip was for a very sad reason, I think I'll go with the good news first. As you may know, I decided to transition to P3 two weeks early for this trip, so that I didn't have to go through the difficulty of managing the P2 diet that I suffered through on the trip earlier this month. I stopped the injections on Thursday morning and continued with the VLCD through Saturday, which was our travel day. I brought diced chicken and sliced cucumbers for my travel food. It was late when we arrived and we were all hungry but I just snacked on an apple, knowing that i could eat a good breakfast in the morning. So we wake up Sunday and someone is in the kitchen cooking pancakes! Arggh! I had to wait until it cleared out a little and snuck in to make a couple of scrambled eggs with cheese. And it really did hit the spot! And that's kind of how it went for the next 4 days. There were so many family members there that someone was always in the kitchen cooking. I was usually able to eat some of what they were cooking, but always had to skip the goodies that I knew I couldn't have. Fried potatoes, fresh muffins, cinnamon rolls, etc. Plus all the nearby relatives and friends were bringing the family so many delicious dishes. Stuffed pasta shells, cheesy potatoes, lasagna, brownies, homemade cookies, and breads of all kinds. Luckily they also brought some homemade sausage and peppers, meatballs, and roast pork, so I had many dishes that made my mouth water and kept me filled up with good protein. So did I ever cheat? Well, yes I must admit that I did a few times. I had a few little bites here and there of some homemade breads and once a small bit of an onion roll, but the closest I came to cheating with sweets was the homemade applesauce. I had a bowl of that with some sugar free cool whip. MMMMM! So how did I do with my weight? Well, I didn't bring my scale, but I did weigh myself on my MIL's analog scale when I first got there. I weighed every morning and I saw that it did go up and down a little some days, and one day it looked like it was up close to 2 lbs but it being an analog I couldn't tell for sure. So the next day, I just stuck to lots of proteins and veggies and fats and WATER and I was back down the next day. So late last night I get home and first thing, I go weigh myself just to see what the damages are. And..., drum roll please!... I'm .4 over my LIW! And this morning, I'm on my LIW exactly! Oh man, you could have knocked me over with a feather! Well, no, I'm not actually that skinny yet, but WOW! This means to me that I really feel that i can maintain the weight loss after HCG just like Dr. S and KT told us we could! Our miracle cure is true, not just a dream!
The other great part of the trip was having most of our grandchildren there with us. Most of the kids from my husband's side of the family were able to go and they all brought their kids. My husband and I travelled with our 14 month old grandson on the trip there and he was a great traveller. He was very excited about the plane ride and loved to slide the window up and then slam it down. The take off thrilled him and he was laughing out loud. Later, when it got dark, he loved looking at the city lights below. We kept him happy during the other times by letting him have a bottle whenever he got fussy. He had been transitioning to sippy cups but the bottles were comforting to him so we indulged him and it worked great, other than the few overfilled diapers we had to deal with later, LOL! We didn't have him for the trip home since we stayed a little longer than the kids, but we heard he slept most of the way. Lucky for them!
The viewing and funeral for my sister-in-law was every bit as emotionally draining as you might expect. My BIL broke down sobbing several times throughout and their three daughters and 8 grandchildren were all very heartbroken. Two of the daughters read letters that they had written for their mother that were supposed to have been given to her at a tea party that was originally planned for the Saturday after she died, so they read them at her service and there wasn't a dry eye in the place. And one of her son-in-laws stood up to say that there are countless mother-in-law jokes out there but not one of them would ever apply to Linda. He went on to say how she welcomed him into the family and always made his favorite homemade pie when they came to visit. My husband and his siblings and mother also took it pretty hard. She was the first of the 5 siblings to go and she was always the caretaker and organizer of the group. It is hard to see what direction the family will take now that she is gone. And for me, it is devastating too. I had grown to love her very much in the 12 years that I've known her. She and her husband are about 8 years older than we were, but we always said that when we retired, we'd be snow birds together. We'd go to stay with them in the summers and they could come out to Arizona with us in the winters. I'll miss her cheerful disposition and common sense ways. Her deep love for her family and her husband were always evident and we all don't know how we will cope without her. And for me, it also brought back the pain of losing my mother and my brother several years ago, because as unlikely as it sounds, they all three died of pancreatic cancer. And the first time I heard the word "pancreas" when they were trying to find out what was wrong with her, it was a dagger to my heart. Because even while I was fighting the panic and the sense of doom, I knew I needed to keep an optimistic outlook for everyone's sake. I knew that there were some cases of survivors although they were very much the minority, and I knew she wanted to fight it with everything she had. So I held out the hope that she would be the one who would beat the odds and I rejoiced in each step forward. Because for a while it did seem as though she was responding very well. She breezed through her first surgery and the radiation treatments that followed. The chemo was a little tougher, but she didn't seem to get as sick as many do with the treatments and although her hair thinned a bit, she never lost it all. So it was a big blow when we found out that the cancer had shown up in other organs and that there was no further treatment that would be feasible to eradicate it. Now it was just a waiting game and a push to give her the best quality of life she could possibly have. She looked into many alternative treatments and was using a "Vibe Machine" and various supplements that were aimed at healing on a cellular level. She also told the doctors that she didn't want anyone to tell her how much time they thought she had. She said she wanted to get stronger and live and that's what she would continue to work towards. So when my husband detoured through Ohio on the tail end of a business trip early this month, he became very alarmed when he found her so weak that she couldn't sit at the table and eat with the family and was sleeping for hours during each day. When she was in the room with other people she would nod off during conversations. So he called me and we immediately decided that I should come for a quick visit right away since it looked as though she was fading fast. So we arranged for me to come out within a day or so and by the time I arrived, they had discovered that the sleep medication she had been given was at a much larger dose than she should have been taking and that she had been prescribed two different pain medications by her doctors when she should only have been taking one. So once I arrived, they had already backed her dosage off enough that she was coherent and quite a bit more active. So that visit turned into a very nice chance for us to spend some quiet time with her. She was able to laugh and joke and talk about good times. She was still able to walk under he own power although the tri-level house made it very difficult for her to get up and down in because stairs were beyond her capability. Towards the end of our stay however, she started experiencing some swelling and bloating. This is always a big concern because the water retention can cause congestive heart failure and they had to put her on some medication to help her. Which it did for a day or two, but within days of our return to Arizona, she collapsed and was hospitalized. She died that same morning with her husband and girls at her side. So back we came for the second time this month. But so many times we remarked at how glad we were that we had made the first trip and were lucky enough to spend those few good days and that we were able to say goodbye to her properly before she died. I will be forever grateful for that opportunity. And another positive thing that happened this past week, I was able to spend some time with her daughters and my brother-in-law and talk to them about how lucky she was to have the really remarkable quality of life she did in her final days. I told them about how different it was for my brother who had been confined to a hospital bed and was in a lot of pain for the last two months and who had lost so much weight that at 54 years old, he looked like a 90 year old man. So I believe they were comforted by those thoughts. She was alert and actively participating in the world around her up to the end and she was even strong enough to hold her 4 month old grandson and have her picture taken just days before she died. So yes we are very sad, but we also feel very blessed that we had her for as long as we did and that she had a merciful ending to her beautiful life.
Thank you for taking the time to share these thoughts. Good bye for now.
Rebecca
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