And then...
I read about a diet that used a chemical, which is produced in *certain* (to be explained later) bodies, which will unlock anybody's potential to use their own fat storage. Before you start to feel like I'm trying to sell this diet to you, it's called hcg, I did one of the homeopathic versions.
Twice a day for about 40 days, I sprayed a chemical into my mouth. During those 40 days, I was on a very specific, very low calorie diet. In that time, I lost about 0.7 pounds per day, making my total loss almost 30 pounds.
Hopefully you can see the difference in these pictures:
Right now, I am in the "maintenance" phase, which means I'm not eating anything with sugar or starch (I can have most fruits), attempting to teach my body that this is the new natural weight. In 3 weeks, I will slowly start adding sugars and starches until I'm back to eating like normal.
It's been an interesting time, eating only twice a day, preparing most of my lunches the day before. As the holidays have been approaching, it's been more difficult seeing and smelling all the candies, chocolates and other assorted treats. One of the things that has helped me recently is the discovery that blended frozen strawberries make something very similar to ice cream. And the best part, I'd say, is being able to fit into some of the clothes that I haven't warn in a few years, since the last time that I was close to this weight was about 2007.
So now, the more specific details about the diet, in case you're interested. Hcg is a chemical that is produced from the placenta of pregnant women. It allows the womans body to access her fat storages so that the baby has a constant supply of fuel, even when the woman isn't able to keep any new food down. This is the chemical that, when present, causes a pregnancy test to be positive.
Scientists have discovered a way to extract hgc from the urine of pregnant women and use it as a dieting tool for any body (male or female, in fact men tend to lose weight faster, which is typical). The traditional method of application is an injection, once a day, but this is far more expensive. There are two homeopathic versions that I know of, one is drops under the tongue, the other is a spray in the back of the mouth. Please note, that the homeopathic version is the "electronic signature" of the hcg, and not the same thing that's being injected. I paid $70 for one bottle of spray that lasted me for my whole 40-day diet.
Basically, on the diet, I'm tricking my body to think that it needs to unlock the fat storage, then I eat only about 500 calories a day, which forces my body to actually use the fat storage. Note, that this is different than a starvation diet because with a starvation diet, your body will use the "normal" fat and then start breaking down muscle. With this diet, you only use the "abnormal" or storage fat and to test this, I took a urinalysis test every morning to verify that I wasn't losing protein. Also, this makes the diet self-limiting, in that if a person were to lose all of their storage fat while on the diet, they would become very hungry and have to end the diet.
The results were fast and undeniable. I'm not sure if I would do the diet again, but I am glad that I did it. Here are the links that I read before I tried the diet, in case you want to learn more.
The original ebook about the hcg diet:
The weight loss story that convinced me:
The source of the spray I used:
2 comments:
In case anyone wants to try the diet, I wrote up some of my "lessons learned" that might be useful.
Amy's Notes on HCG Diet
Scale
-Recommend buying a bathroom scale that is "accurate to 0.1 pounds". Mine was 0.2 and the rounding was annoying at times.
Urinalysis
-I used a 10-in-1 test, but only recorded 3 of the measurements. I didn't find the measurements as useful as I was hoping, but it was interesting at least. I only measured in the mornings.
Chicken
-I usually had chicken for one of my meals every day, usually lunch because it was easy to prepare the night before and reheat. I found that I preferred the chicken to be cut into bite-sized pieces before cooked, then I'd sprinkle a little seasoning (my favorite was Perfect Pinch-Mediterranean) and cook on the George Foreman grill ($17 at Target) for a few minutes. Then put in a ziplock and microwave for 30 seconds the next day.
Grapefruit
-I tried eating grapefruit in my food rotation, but found that the effort of getting to the pulp was not worth the payoff, so eventually I stopped eating grapefruit and alternated between apples and strawberries.
Stevia
-I've heard of liquid Stevia, or drops, but I only found it in packets. Stevia saved the diet for me because it helped me satiate my cravings for sweets. One packet was enough for a cup of tea, but often for other foods or drinks, I'd use 2 or 3 packets.
Strawberries
-Fresh strawberries were fine (I'd usually eat 5 or 6 with a meal), but I noticed that they would start to go bad before I could get to them, so I started freezing them. However defrosted strawberries were something I only had to eat once to learn that was something I wanted to avoid. Finally I found that I could take the portion of frozen strawberries, put them in a food processor with 2 packets of Stevia and my 1 tbs of milk for the day and after it was all blended up, I had a very nice ice cream. After I discovered this, I didn't eat strawberries any other way for the remainder of my diet.
Flavored water
-During this diet, I discovered how much I don't care for having plain water all the time, so I went to the baking section of the grocery store and found a few artificial flavorings that didn't have added sweetners (coconut, raspberry and banana). I'd take a large glass, half full of water, add 2-3 packets Stevia and a few drops of flavor. Stir it up, add ice and fill with water.
Please note, the first time I used a flavoring, I used way too much. As with any new ingredient, start small, then add "to taste".
(continued...)
Tea
-I found it nice to have a chamomile tea for breakfast. It was tame and soothing and helped to put off hunger till lunch time.
Recipes
-Some of the recipes on the myfatcure website were rather inedible. The worst ones that I tried were asparagus soup and spicy lettuce wraps. My advice is stick to eating the food in more simple forms, the diet isn't that long, really.
Sashimi
-I was only ever able to find Tilapia sashimi, which was alright, but not very good without soy sauce. I tried using Braggs Aminos, but it smelled and tasted strange. After that, I decided no more sashimi for the rest of the diet.
Lemons/lemonade
-I got a manual lemon juicer, which helped to get all the juice from the lemon, but was another dish to be washed. I found that lemonade quickly became my favorite dinner drink, prepared the same way as the flavored water. I also enjoyed "crushed lemonades" where I would put the lemon juice and Stevias into the food processor with ice, however the effort and cleanup was not worth the payoff, so usually I'd just stick to iced lemonade.
Meal times
-During the beginning of the diet, I was fine with eating meals during "normal" lunch and dinner times. However as the diet wore on, I found that I was getting hungry earlier and consequently meal times started to creep earlier and I would often "steal" my lunch apple for brunch.
Cabbage
-Not great in soup, but good when steamed till very tender, then salted.
"Miracle" Noodles
-These had to be ordered online and were expensive. The smell and taste of the noodle usually put off whatever meal they were included in. Never use the liquid that's included in the bag with the noodles and always rinse them well. I tried putting the noodles into the food processor to make a rice substitute, which was mildly successful. The best meal I had with the noodles was a spaghetti, which included processed tomatoes to make marinara and lean ground beef or bison, all put together and seasoned, left simmering long enough for the noodles to soak up the flavor.
Water
-The way this diet works is by eliminating used fat through urine, which requires a lot of water. I found that often I was not drinking enough water, which would show as "dark" on my ketone urinalysis. When I bought a $4 metal water bottle from Walmart with a flip-lid, this seemed to help.
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