Day 19: ready to be done...

16# down. Yay! Exhausted and hungry constantly. Not Yay!

Six more days 'til food....

One week 'til food!

I'm so excited! I've lost nearly 15 pounds. I can totally see and feel a difference--nice. My last injection is Sunday. Then, it's three days 'til one goes on Stabilization. That's three weeks of still no starch or sugar, but even so--it's FOOD! And oil! And cream in my tea! Woot!

Right now, it doesn't look good for my goal. I'd need to lose four more pounds. Probably not gonna happen, which is sucky. I'm dissappointed, but not mad at myself. I've done all I can do. I've run the good race, I'll finish strong. :)

I keep hoping one of these days, my rogue metabolism might heal itself and start working. If and when that happens, the weight will come off on its own, because I don't eat that much (vacation notwithstanding). But, it's all good. I'm doing what I can do and that has to be enough. I'm learning for that to be enough.

Day 17: Slowing down

As I told my friend Jack today, I'm tired of being tired and hungry. And, part of the hcg diet is a strict no oil policy (in or on food, but it also includes things like lotion, conditioner, chapstick, etc.). It's full-on autumn now, and my hands are really getting dry.

8 days 'til food. Can I get a cheering section? Anyone? Anyone? Crawling towards the finish line...I think I can, I think I can, I think I can....

Getting there...

Six more injections, nine more days 'til I can eat. Oy.

Today I went .2 below my last LIW (last injection weight). I'm constantly imploring my body to hurry up! We're almost out of time to set a new LIW (that one tries valiantly to hold until the next cycle), and I want it to be as low as possible. My revised goal (for this cycle) would be 5 more pounds. Not super likely, but I can hope!

Shot Day 15: Rounding Third

One week from today I do my last hcg injection. I'm glad, and not. My weight loss has been a bit more sluggish than I'd hoped (as always, really). If it keeps up at this pace, I won't reach my redefined objective. Ah, well. There's really nothing else I can do, is there?

Just hope for the best. Over 12 pounds down. I need to be pleased with that.

Live action blogging

Well, today's diet day 14, shot 16. My cat woke me up at 5:00, effectively ruining my desire to sleep in.

Remember I was plateaued? I'm going to go check now to see today's weight. Stand by....

The verdict is: 1.6 gone. Meh... After a couple of days of plateau, I wanted more. But, I guess that wasn't likely. Still, I'm over 12# down. Yesterday, I noticed all my clothes were looser, and that's pretty cool.

12 days 'til food

No weight loss today, which I always find disheartening. USUALLY, the next day is a big loss, but not always. Sometimes the body just randomly plateaus, despite the 500 calories (or fewer) and the medication. And that sucks a lemon.

I need to lose at least 8 more pounds to meet my redefined objectives fully. Not likely if this keeps up. This is not my first rodeo, however. I fully know the final weight count is out of my control. As long as I stick to the diet perfectly--and I do--that's as much as I can do.

Wouldn't it be nice if life were perfect?

Shot 14, Diet day 12

Still moving forward. I've lost 11 1/2 pounds. Back in the old zone! The zone is 2 pounds on either side of the LIW, or Last Injection Weight. I maintained the zone from February until the end of the summer, when my weight began to creep upward again (as always). I've now beat it back into submission and am working towards a NEW LIW to ideally maintain until the spring, when I do another diet round of hcg.

Not that that sounds appealing right now, being I'm starving all the time and if I had any less energy, I'd slip into a coma. I was complaining to a friend that I actually catch myself slumping over the sink when I do dishes. How lame is that? Well, it is what it is, as they say. A reminder: if you hear how great the HCG diet is, how it's easy to lose weight and you'll "feel great": IT'S A LIE! RUN AWAY! Seriously, this is only the most extreme measure if you just can't lose weight any other way. It's not for dabblers or the regular humans who can lose weight with diet and exercise. Oh, how I envy the regular humans!

Onward and upward!

Day 11: flagging

This energy thing is awful! The fatigue is not improving, despite the potassium (There's $6 I'll never see again!). I'm weak and exhausted all the time. I get into bed at 8 every night. And, I have weird dreams, so sleep's not great. Last night I dreamed about the family I told you about. Not a good dream at all. I have headaches a lot.

I think today is probably my halfway mark injection, at least. The sucky part is you have three full days of the non-food diet after your last injection, so I'm not halfway done with starving.

I'll keep up the good fight as long as the weight keeps coming off. Should I reach the point like I did last cycle where I feel worse and worse and the weight stops coming off, I'll do what I did last time--pull the plug. The docs/books say to do that too; I didn't wimp out.

Not that I don't want to wimp out. I want bacon.

10# gone

Yay! Now if I can do it one more time before the cycle ends (Sadly, I'm not halfway done yet...ugh.), I'll be happy. Reasonably happy. Would be more happy if I didn't have to lose the same pounds again--not for the first time.

I am quite tired (pun intended) of being fatigued and hungry all the darn time. It's not fun.

I just told my family, I sure have more time now that I'm not bothered with silly things like eating.

Come on now!

Didn't even lose one ounce. So unfair!

One week addendum: I suck at avoiding stress

But it's not my fault! I think God heard me tell Mark that a big priority for me this hcg cycle was to avoid stress. Then immediately a dear friend got sicker and so did my dog.

Today...sucked. Ok, hang on for a little backstory. A friend's wife has been ill for awhile, with a weird autoimmune disorder. They have a young teenaged daughter. A few days ago, I sent this friend an email about something trivial, and he happened to be sitting at the hospital with his wife, who had gotten worse again. She's been in and out of the hospital a lot.

Anyway, I told him, if she wasn't feeling well enough by this weekend, I'd be happy to call his clients and tell them he'd be out of the office.

Nobody expected her to die.

It's a horrible tragedy. She was all of 52 or 53 years old. I feel just sick for them. I wasn't close to her, but I knew her, and I liked her. We were both singers who had trouble with our voices due to health issues, and we'd emailed recently about that. Being a veteran of chronic pain and illness, I tried to be a support.

So, yeah. While I know this isn't about me, it was an ordeal for me to call 15 people and tell them about her death. "Hi, this is Sandra calling from XXXXXX's office. I'm afraid he needs to cancel your appointment for this week." "Why...Did something bad happen?" "Yes, I'm afraid his wife passed away." And then the screaming and crying would start. We live in a small town. It seems everybody knows everybody.

I felt bad when I had to leave a voice mail. I did it as tactfully as I could, but talking to a dozen people who are friends of theirs was awful. They needed consoling and counsel. I did my best, but it took its toll. A few of them would catch themselves and realize this must be hard for me to make these calls (hell, yes).

So I'm feeling pretty badly tonight. Drained is an understatement. I dropped Anna off at Youth Group. I wanted to throw myself on my friends' couch and cry, but I didn't say anything. I just left and went to Safeway. Bought cake for my family.

A horrible tragedy like this makes one realize how precious life is and how important it is to make the most of every day. We need to make time for those we love. Nobody knows when it'll be too late to show you care.

One Week

Wow. Not fun! I'm still uber fatigued and hungry. I've lost 8.2 pounds, however. Sadly, that rate does not keep up as a fair portion of the big weight loss the first week is fluid. Even so, my clothes are looser and my face is thinner. Man, that's always where I show it, in my face. I retain a ton of water, all there. And that's on non-diet days, too. So daily my face changes. What's up with that?

I've also been having really long, detailed, and vivid dreams. This morning's (before I woke up too early at 5:00), I spent an annoying hour with someone I know trying to talk to them about something and figure out what's been going on with them. It was totally fruitless and I woke up very frustrated. The person was being so purposefully vague and oblique--argh! Not a good way to start the day--lol!

Yesterday I tried on some clothes, which completely exhausted me. Crikey, this diet is taking it out of me. I deal with daily fatigue anyway, but having the level ramped up makes me mad. I got very little done yesterday and ended up not going into town as planned because I just felt too exhausted to manage it.

Lame! I guess I'm 1/3 done. Each cycle's weight loss is a bit different. Some cycles have gone brilliantly, some not so much. I'm hoping this one falls into the former and over the next two weeks before I hit the LIW (Last Injection Weight)I lose 10 more #--at least. That would be good. Then I'd be well and below my last cycle's LIW, which would make me do this: :).

We have preliminary plans next weekend to meet some friends in a neighbooring town to do some harvesty stuff. I hope my body's up to the job because right now it takes everything I've got to keep teaching, cooking, and cleaning. And I've got to dig deep to do that much.

Day 7: Feh

Still super fatigued. I was griping to my friend and something he said got me to look at my old blogs from last session. I thought this time was worse, but it's not. It just feels it! I looked at the previous one and I was going through the same stuff. Sadly, I didn't buy potassium then, and I haven't bought it now.

But I will. Tomorrow. Allegedly, it's partly the intense fluid loss in such a short time that can cause or contribute to the insane fatigue.

I'm on it.

I also plan to take the time and read back over a couple sessions of blogs, for encouragement. I need it.

7.5# gone, though. Again. Same pounds. Did I say again?

Day 6

Last Friday Mark was off from school and the store. Mark and Anna surprised me by having the day be a special day for me, coupled with my loading (eating like a horse)--a day where they did all the cooking, laundry, and dishes. That day was a lot better than this day. In the words of Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, "Why can't I have that day over and over and over?" That would be preferable to the day I'm living over and over and over now: hungry, weak, exhausted, often bewildered!

Not quite back down to the next weight decade yet. Nearly there. Should be tomorrow, but we'll see. There are no guarantees with this diet. Ok, there are no guarantees with anything!

I've been cold a lot, like shivering, can't get warm cold. It's a side effect of the drug. I feel it most at night. It's not fun! So far I'm down 6#. Again. Same pounds. At least it's going back in the right direction. 5# over my previous zone (the weight range from the last hcg cycle). Should be back there in a week or so!

Day 5: Dissappointing

Just a .2 loss from yesterday. Ouch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all about looking at this in its entirity, but it's still a big blow when there's no Scooby Snack for the suffering. Being hungry and extra fatigued all day sucks. So far, not to the point where this misery is worth it.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....

Avoiding Stress

So this time was going to be different. Every time I say I'm going to (somehow, magically) reduce stress while I'm on the medical weight loss plan (from hell).

The first thing that happened was we got a call from our vet, telling us our elderly and beloved Maggie (Labrador retriever) has severe anemia. The doctor wanted to do tons of expensive tests, that may accomplish nothing in the long run. A neighbor friend suggested we view it as a hospice situation and just make Maggie comfortable, and avoid all the further vet stuff (She's terrified of the vet, plus we don't have the discretionary income for big expensive tests). Good advice, I suppose, but it was enough to make me weepy and all the more worried. (Happily, she's been improving, more frisky and getting up way more since it was discovered she had an ear infection and we've been treating it; I don't know if it's connected to the anemia, but who knows? We're going to get her ear re-checked in two weeks with another vet and get a second opinion. But her increased vigor has done us all good!)

The next thing that happened was I got a call from a dear friend, who's been very ill, telling me she was admitted to the hospital with complications from her (serious) illness. (Happily, I saw her again at the hospital tonight and she's doing hugely better.)

Ok, super. So, hormoned-up, exhausted, in pain (detox from sugar), and starving, I was suddenly terrified of losing two in my life I love so much. Not cool! And no, I can't tell you how I managed to not abort the mission and dive headlong into a vat of ice cream followed by an alcohol chaser. I just didn't. Not that I didn't want to.

It reminds me of a scene from a very sweet movie, Letters to Juliet. I'm paraphrasing here, but at the end, the grandma finds her long lost love, 50 years later, and they get together. Her grandson said something like, Great! You get your happy ending without all the messy bits in between. She looked at him and said something like, Life IS the messy bits.

Day 3: Rolling

Sorry I missed a day. I had fully intended to update daily, but Mondays are our crazy days, and I wasn’t feeling well at all, so that didn’t help! Sunday was horrid, but I made it through. Yesterday was quite a bit better, though that’s not saying much. I was tired, hungry, and achy all day. Today ought to be better.

I’ve already lost the loading weight and two more. In a week or so, I should be back to my last-cycle LIW (Last Injection Weight), which is good—but still galling. I need to remember, for me, it’s a journey, not a destination.

I have a really odd metabolism. I did indeed feel vindicated when I had an appointment with a top notch doctor in Seattle (a noted endocrinologist who also specializes in things like pituitary, etc.) who said I’m just, “…one of those people we can’t figure out.” If they can’t figure it out, that sort of lends credibility to my belief that my body just doesn’t WORK right, and it’s not my fault.

Even so, fault or no, I can’t just throw up my hands and not try. If I did that, I think I’d just gain and gain and gain until I popped like that girl on Willie Wonka. So, it comes to this: The Diet from Hell. Sadly, it’s the only thing that works for me…mostly.

Yeah, it sucks. It sucks a lot. I suffer and no mistake. But I don’t want to die early because of obesity and its related issues. So I keep trying.

Day 1: All Pain, No Payoff

While I'm telling myself it gets better, and from six cycles before this I know it does, but I feel awful. I liken it to having a fever. I feel exhausted, dizzy, weak, cold, then hot, starving, etc. The biggest accomplishment of the day (besides not saying f**k it and shoving four cookies into my mouth at once) was taking a shower. And it took me until 2:00 to get the energy to do that.

Earlier, I tried to finish prepping for school tomorrow. I spent a super hard hour before putting it aside and slumping back in defeat. I just can't focus. Even my eyes are blurry.

But I know it gets better. I hope it gets better quickly. MEDICAL WEIGHT LOSS IS NOT FOR WIMPS.

HCG Cycle 7, Loading Day 1

Well. Oh, yeah. HCG are hormone shots! How could I have forgotten? Hormone shots and I=natural enemies in the wild. I already have hormonal challenges; this does not help. Thankfully, it’s only for three weeks. But if you’re in my “real” life, be aware, and be kind. We’ll get through this…together! We’ve done it before.

Time to come clean. Yeah, I gained some back since this summer. I went on vacation eating for California, and, erm…, forgot to get back on. And with my really bizarre and evil metabolism, I gained back around 10# from my LIW (last injection weight). LAME!

So, I’m feeling a bit bummed. I had marvelous plans about how low-low-low my weight would be after this cycle, but now, I’ll be back where I was before, at the end of last cycle in February, maybe a little better if the diet gods are smiling upon me. I’m rather relieved, actually (though don’t quote me to me on Sunday when my blood sugar is crashing, I’m starving and detoxing or I will smack you about the head), to get back on the straight and narrow.

It sucks, but for me, I HAVE to live in a state of near carblessness to maintain my weight from these diet cycles—forget about losing like a normal human. It’s not in the cards for me. So I wish I had of powered up and forced myself back into my monastic food existence before now.

I’m a bit disappointed in myself, but it’s life. And although I’m a natural idealist, even I know life doesn’t go how one plans all the time. Or any of the time. I’m not giving up, so I’d like to think it’s not failure, it’s redefined objectives.

T Minus One Day

Tomorrow I start the first HCG shot of cycle 7. Loading Day! Sadly, the last month has been a series of loading days, so it won't be that special. Oh, how I loathe losing the same pounds again. As my husband put it, two steps forward, one step back. At least I'm going in the right direction.

Okay. Bye for now....