HCG Drops -- Day 10

First, the nifty news:

• I’ve lost 9 lbs
• I’ve lost 3 inches

Wahoo! I’d love to lose 30 lbs this first round, and since I’m on a 40 day plan, hopefully I’ll make it.

On the downside, during the last couple of days I was hungry, particularly between lunch and dinner. But after researching, I found that I can either up my dose (I’m taking 10 drops 3x a day and can up it to 15 drops max,) or possibly spread out my food choices. I opted to spread out for now, at least for lunch. I had leftover roast beef for lunch, and in a couple of hours I’ll have a tomato. I can throw in a fruit a couple of hours after that. This may not be feasible if I want to do an entree that requires a mix of foods, like chick salad, so we’ll see.

Also, although I’ve been losing inches, I’ve only lost an inch around my waist. If that problem area isn’t whittled down soon, I fear I will begin to look something like this. . .

If you’re as anal as I am, and like to track your progress, allow me to share a couple of charts.

MEASUREMENT CHART

DATE	HCG on/off	WEIGHT	LBS LOST	TOTAL LOST	BUST	WAIST	HIPS

After filling in my chart with dates, I made several copies and counted out the whole process. I did this because I have a huge writer’s conference coming up and I didn’t want to be on the VLCD or Ph III part of the diet while there.

Below, I’ll show you how I filled mine out. (Well, not the personal stuff, of course <blushing>.) Where you see a gap in dates, just imagine the full page with quote marks (or what I do is make a squiggly line down through all of the boxes until something changes.)

FYI:

• load = load days, the first two days of the round where you get to pig out
• VLCD = Very Low Cal Days, the popular acronym that you’ll see often during your research.
• Ph III = The 3-week period where you go off the drops but stay on a healthy carb/no starch diet.
• Ph IV = The 3-week period where you slowly begin to eat normally. * This period lengthens [The entire time you’re off the drops should lengthen] between each round if you need to be on the diet for longer than one round. I’ll be doing 8 weeks after round 2 and if I need to do one more, it will go to 12 weeks. I can’t find where read that, but I’ve also heard it from more than one person. *I’ve edited this as the way it was written was misleading. Go to this site for more info.
• Note: the items in green are actually penciled in.

DATE	HCG on/off
7/14/10	on-load
7/15/10	on-load
7/16/10	on-VLCD
7/17/10	“
8/23/10	off-VLCD
8/24/10	off-VLCD
8/25/10	off- Ph III
8/26/10	“
9/14/10	off- Ph IV

You’ll see that during the first two days I’m on the drops, I load my body with fat. Then, on the third I go on the VLCD. When that’s through, I go off the drops, but stay on the VLCD for two days to help stabilize my metabolism. Then, as I stay off the drops, I move to Ph III where I slowly introduce fats (only healthy carbs allowed, and no starches.) The previous information was taken from here.

My other chart helps me keep track of the food I eat. In the row with the “1”, that number is the day of the month. So, envision a full page of the first 15 days. Do another with 16-31 days and print on the back. (This is assuming you’re using a spread sheet. You can also do the whole thing by hand since it isn’t very intricate.)

p=protein; v=vegetable; f=fruit; b=bread

FOOD CHART

Month _________

Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack	Total Exchange
1  Tea	Chick salad	Roast/tomato	apple/ strawberries/ melba toast
f-          b-	p-   1      f- v-   1      b-	p-  1        f- v-   1       b-	p-          f- 11 v-          b- 1	p-  11      f- 11 v-   11     b- 1

 

Note that I don’t have a calorie count on this chart. I’m not a numbers gal. No no no no. But, I’ve had success with exchange diets before, so this works well for me. Also note that the “1” in the pfvb cells is actually a hash mark. No, I did not have eleven fruit exchanges, although yesterday, that would have sounded good. BTW, it’s 2:15 p.m. right now and I’m not hungry after eating my beef for lunch. Yea!

So, that’s where I am. I’ll update (or not) later. Oh, who am I kidding, of course I’ll update.

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I also want to mention that I’ve turned off the comments section of this blog. I was being attacked by Chinese porn spam. I’m hoping Blogger is fixing this issue as the help section seemed full of people with the same problem. I thought I’d keep it off for a month or two then turn it on again to see if they gave up trying to comment. If you know me, feel free to email me. Or you can comment on my Facebook page when this shows up.