So today I wanted to talk specifically about how I lost my weight. I needed to get the pounds off fairly quickly so that I could look good during the holidays. On impulse, I bought some homeopathic HCG drops. Then I went home and downloaded the free ebook, Pounds and Inches by Dr. Simeons. The first 2 days of "loading" sounded like heaven. Who wouldn't like eating whatever they wanted in mass quantities? It was the next three weeks that sounded scary. 500 calories a day. That's it. I could eat that much before brushing my teeth in the morning! But the drops promised 1-2 lbs a day average loss. For that, I could survive 3 weeks of hell.
I'm not going to get into the specifics of the HCG protocol at this time. Maybe at a later post I will go into depth about HCG diet and various other methods available. From the end of October to mid November I religiously followed the rules and never cheated once. I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 21 lbs. But now it was time for maintenance. I could either be happy with the 21 lbs and start the stabilty diet, where you slowly up your calorie intake and no carbs for 3 more weeks. But with Thanksgiving coming up I knew I would blow that. Or I could go back and do round 2 of the HCG drops. So I planned very carefully so that my 2 loading days fell on Thanksgiving. Stuffing my face with food didn't taste as good as I remembered it. Then came another 3 weeks of starving and no exercise. The first time wasn't too bad, the second time was hell. I wasn't really dropping the weight like the first time. I had no energy and I was super crabby.
It was almost the end of the second round and Christmas was in two weeks. 11 more pounds had come off for a grand total of 32 lbs. in less than two months. I remember thinking, not bad, but I still want to lose at least another 30 lbs. I had to change my plan. There's no way I could do the HCG diet again. It was getting less effective and harder to stay on it. I hadn't cheated yet, but it was only a matter of time when only eating 2 apples, zucchini and lean turkey everyday ad naseum. But I wasn't ready to call it quits yet either. So I started researching other weight loss method to try. One friend had had great success with cleanses, another heartily endorsed Slim Quick.
All at once the cold hard truth smacked me in the face. If I resorted to methods so outside my normal routine to lose the weight, didn't that mean when the diet was finished and I went back to my regular life that the weight would either creep or jump back on? Isn't that exactly what had happened umpteen times before? Did I really want to be riding this rolling coaster and putting my body and my family through hell again in another year or two? The answer was a resounding NO! There had to be a way to keep the weight off without dieting several times a year, or putting more harmful drugs and chemicals in my body. The solution was painfully obvious, but that didn't mean I was excited to hear it.
Stop dieting.
I didn't need to find a way to lose weight, I had proven over the years that I knew lots of ways to get the fat off. It's always the gaining it back that's the problem. If I wanted the weight to stay off for good I had to change my routine into something that wouldn't keep making me fat. But it couldn't be for just a week, or month, or however long it took to get the other 40 pounds off. I had to find a new way to live.
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