Two days in, down 6.7#!

The first week on VLCD is always the best week, in my opinion. I wish we could just do a week or 10 days of VLCD (just until the releases slow to those partial pounds) and then go off into P3! :) For now, though, I get to celebrate BIG numbers.

Day 1: -3.4#
Day 2: -3.3#

Tough to beat numbers like those. I had a real headache on Day 1 this time around. That was pretty unusual for me. I FreXed the headache away, mostly, though did "cheat" and have 4 cranberry powder pills. Cranberry powder is great for reducing inflammation & I use it during my cycle to get rid of bloating, headaches, and cramps. Works brilliantly!

Day 2 & today, I'm experiencing a slightly upset tummy (not hungry, but a little nauseated). That's new for me, too. So, I decided I'd just break down and have a cup of baking soda water (1t baking soda in 1/4c water). It balances the pH in the stomach, so it works *every* time.

I'm off to the symphony today!

Happy Less of Us!

Questions and Answers: Holiday Sweets

Toni S. wrote to me and asks:

Hi what can I do for my sweet tooth party at work not sure if I can aviod the cake????? Can I bake something with almond meal on p2????????????

My reply to her may help you, too, in case you're encountering similar circumstances:

On P2, you're sort of stuck with just stevia for curbing the sweet tooth. Mostly what your body is craving when it wants sweets is the magnesium that some sweets (the ones women typically want, chocolatey). So, try getting some magnesium supplements and taking those a couple of days in advance of the party.

Be sure to get some different flavors of stevia to try out. My favorites are Tofee, Dark Chocolate, and French Vanilla. Add them to tea or drink them all by themselves and you'll get the sense of being spoiled.

I recently tried a *great* egg nog tea from the grocery store. It's a seasonal thing, so you'll only find it now, in November-December. It doesn't have any of the calories or fat that real egg nog has, but it did taste remarkably similar to it! I'd brew up a *big* cup (20 ounces) of that before the party, add about 10 drops of French Vanilla stevia to it and bring it with me. Here's what the package looks like and my review of it: http://lessofmehcg.blogspot.com/2009/10/p3-t-6-days-winter-tea-phase-2-too.html

The other thing you ought to do is make sure to drink as much water as you can hold just before the party. That way, you're just too full to bother with eating anything. It's an old trick and it's been around for so long for the simple reason that it works. :)

So, drink gobs of water, make your tea (or some White Dark Cocoa - http://lessofmehcg.blogspot.com/2009/09/not-feeling-that-creative.html) and take your magnesium supplements. You should be able to come out of this party successfully *and* be able to pat yourself on the back for doing such a great job... Remember that it's easy to put a morsel into your mouth, but it'll stop weight release for *days.* One morsel will not only cause a gain, but you'd also be paying for it for days, too.

Lastly, *IF* you do cheat, just remind yourself that you had other choices, maybe review those choices, and then move on. DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP over it. YOU are the what's important here and you're giving yourself the gifts of health, happiness, and the satisfaction of a job well done.

:)

You can do it!

~Jay

Steak Day

Well, I was away from home all day yesterday. I didn't do the steak day, as I was supposed to! However, I drank so much water I felt like I should have had on a swim suit. :)

This morning, when I got on the scale, even without the steak, I was back within my LIW limits. On the high side, but still within the 2# limit. :) Steak Day avoided, but only because I drank so much water and ate like I was following P3 with lots of veggies and protein.

Lesson learned?

You *can,* even if it's not in the P&I book, avoid a steak day on P4 by increasing your water intake to your weight in ounces * .75. So, if your weight is 200, multiply that by .75 and drink 150 ounces of water during the day. Follow the P3 outlines, going heavy on the meats.

For me, it did basically the same thing as a Steak Day. Maybe it will for you, maybe it won't... But it's something you can put in your back pocket and try, should you need to.

Reminder!

DRINK WATER!

Even if you're not in Phase II, you still need to keep drinking your water. Many sugars come from the drinks that we're drinking when we eat "normally." A trick I use is to drink 20 ounces of water before a meal or a sweet drink.

Using that trick, I went from buying a 20 ounce vanilla breve (which has 2 ounces of sugar in it!) to a 12 ounce vanilla breve (which has just 1/2 ounce of sugar in it).

It's something to keep in your back pocket!

Tool 4 You: Journaling Privately

Not everyone wants to publish their weight and "fat pictures" the way I do here on the Less of Me blog. I understand that. In fact, my Mom doesn't want to let the world know her details when she joins me in January. It's not the worlds' business. :)

However, there's GREAT benefits of reading your past thoughts and feelings while you follow Dr. Simeon's HCG Protocol and I encourage you to write those thoughts down for yourself. There's a new site out (still in beta) that is, by default, private. It's called Penzu. You can still share information with individuals OR with the whole web. But. You have to explicitly tell Penzu that you want to share because the site keeps your thoughts hush-hush and only for you otherwise.

If you look at the image of the interface, it shows that you can either email your entry to people or you can click on "Public Link" and share with everyone. That's handy, as you might have recipes you're willing to share, but not the details of how you are doing (inches, pounds, pictures).

Penzu even lists HEALTH benefits of journaling. I'm impressed!

You can even add ULTRA security for $29 a year. The proceeds of the purchase are "donated to global charities that improve literacy." That's pretty nice of them! All in all, I like this option. If I decided, in the beginning, that I wanted to keep things to myself, I probably would have gone with this method. As it is, I think I'll keep posting in the public eye, just because my bravery benefits so many people and I rather enjoy that aspect of it.

My pictures and details *are* embarassing to me. But you know what? It's the reality I created. Now I'm creating a new reality. Someone needs to share how to do it!

It may as well be me.

Want Less of Me delivered to your email?

I found a cool little service the other day and have been testing it before I passed it on. I really like it! It allows you to subscribe to a "newspaper" of your favorite RSS feeds and get it in your mailbox either daily or weekly.

It's from the makers of HP, so you know it's stable.

Gee. Stable. Just like me!

Head out to http://www.tabbloid.com/ and enter my RSS feed if you'd like to get my blog posts delivered straight your your inbox instead of having to remember to head out to my site to read it: http://lessofmehcg.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Time/Labor Savers for Phase 2

Jill, on the Yahoo forum, posted this message that I thought we should all be thinking about. Why reinvent the wheel, after all? She asks:

What are your favorite time or labor savers on this diet?

• For both my rounds of HCG/VLCDieting, I bought enough meat for all my meals for the full course in one trip. I went home and immediately weighed out the portions and put them into individual baggies and froze them.
• My proteins for this round are cube steak, sirloin tips, ground veal (mixed with fresh garlic, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme), veal scaloppini, chicken breast, shrimp, tilapia, and mahi-mahi.
• Every day at lunch, I move two protein servings from the freezer to the fridge so they are thawed for the following day's lunch/dinner.
• Bought quite a few grapefruit, oranges, lemons, and apples because they last a pretty long time in the fridge.
• That leaves a quick weekly trip for fresh vegetables and strawberries. I have plenty of spices, apple cider vinegar, and sea salt on hand. I also have excellent beef and chicken stock made by the Amish farmers I get most of my food from.
• When I am making a meal, while the protein and veggies cook I think about what I'll have for the next meal, and try to do any prep, such as marinate the meat in a mix of interesting spices and maybe vinegar, or chop the vegetables. Some large vegetables, for example a head of cabbage, I chop up and put in 2c portions in the fridge to eat over several days. Also, a few vegetables are just fine warmed up...I will typically cook a large amount of chard to have at 2-4 meals, for example.
• I'm not as big on reheating meat so I almost always cook that fresh for each meal. I cook the protein (except for shrimp) on a small George Foreman grill; pretty much anything is cooked in 3 minutes. I sprinkle various herbs on the meat before I cook it. Sometimes I put on the herbs the night before to let them marinate. (The shrimp I cook in a saucepan with equal parts water and ACV, and Old Bay seasoning. I eat it with a homemade cocktail sauce of organic no sugar added ketchup and a generous dollop of prepared horseradish.)
• I make a quantity of salad dressing out of crushed garlic mashed into a paste with Celtic sea salt, equal parts fresh lemon juice and red wine vinegar, and a generous dollop of dijon mustard.
• This round, based on my experience from last round, I bought several heads of garlic. Today when I was cooking my meal, I peeled all the cloves from one head and put them in the fridge. I like to use a lot of garlic, but peeling cloves is a drag, so I did a bunch at once. Last time I got a large container of peeled garlic cloves, but this time I wanted to use organic and the two organic markets nearest me didn't sell garlic that way. If you want to use a container like that, if you cook only for yourself you might find some of them spoil before you finish them. I would vacuum pack half the cloves next time if I bought a container. (Or you could freeze half.)
• For my first round I had already gradually switched to decaffeinated coffee. This round I am going without coffee altogether, wondering if that little bit of caffeine in the decaf is enough to slow down my weight loss and healing. I am drinking water with lemon, sea salt, and ACV; hot and iced herbal teas; WuLong tea as recommended by Trudeau (that might have some caffeine in it, I am not sure yet); and Dandy Blend, a coffee substitute made of ground dandelion roots, chicory, and I think beet roots (jar isn't in front of me at the moment). It's pretty good. I also use that in cold raw milk when I am drinking milk...it's delicious, naturally sweet...helps me keep drinking my raw milk even when it's just beginning to naturally sour (like yogurt, as opposed to pasteurized milk, which just spoils). The Dandy Blend masks the sour taste pretty well and unlike chocolate powder it's naturally sweet and doesn't have caffeine. It has kind of a chocolate/carob/coffee flavor.

Now, I get to add to that list with a few more shortcuts:

• I, too, bought the meat and froze it. I did it a little differently than Jill suggested, though. I used ziplock sandwich/snack baggies and bagged each serving in a single bag. Then I took a gallon freezer ziplock bag and labeled it with a Sharpie as to the kind of meat it contained. Then all the little bags went into the one big bag and I didn't have to label each individual baggie.
• Chop up your apples in either quarters or slices and freeze them for your desserts. They cook just as fast and are easier to deal with.
• Make up a lot of the Worcester sauce, ketchup, and salad dressing of your choice. Get at least 6 small 1 ounce glass bottles. Fill 2 bottles with Worcester sauce, 2 bottles with ketchup, and 2 bottles with dressing so you can just grab and go.
• Cook up at least 2 different meats, going pretty bland on the seasonings, and freeze them. This way if you get into a time crunch, you can just grab one of those, your salad dressing bottle, and head out. You can stop at a restaurant and get a lettuce only salad, add your meat and dressing, and you're set for a quick satisfying meal.

Have you got some tips/tricks for saving time/labor while in Phase 2? Please comment and share!

Tips on managing Stalls/Gains

I was just out looking for some other blogs to read to see what other people might have for recipes... While out, I found this site which had a particular post that I thought you'd be interested in.

Here's part of the post:

Tips on Managing Stalls/Gains

1. Watch what you’re eating; you should have a food journal and you might find patterns of foods that cause you not to lose, or to lose fantastically. A lot of people have had problems losing with tomatoes and oranges (but some people have no problem at all). Every body is different and you need to monitor your own body and see what works (and doesn’t work) for you.
2. Make sure you are drinking enough water (at least 2 liters a day).
3. Those that have held true to the diet and not cheated, have been rewarded with a large weight reduction when it finally drops. You will usually resume your previous average loss before the stall.
4. Each time you stall, take your measurements; you have probably lost inches (remember it is called Pounds and INCHES).
5. You could gain some weight and not have cheated, depending on your menses, ovulation, and hormones. Almost all of us have seen the scale go up due to water retention, etc.
6. If you eat more salt in the food you prepare, and your body isn't used to that sodium level, your blood volume will increase to handle the extra salt, which will translate into a gain because you're retaining water to boost that blood volume. In other words, watch your salt intake.
7. Remember what Simeons said about losing. You lose fat from the body cells but the cells do not disappear at the same time. The cell structure is still present for two to three days while the body breaks down the cellulose and fills the cell with water in order to release it (through urine). Once the fat cell is removed, the scale will drop.
8. Sensitivity/allergies to foods (like lemons) may cause weight stalls. Listen to your body. The guru is you!
9. Pay attention to weight gains, they usually signify a mishap in the protocol, like not drinking enough water, eating too many/too few calories, too much salt, or (inadvertently) eating foods not allowed on the protocol.
10. Be careful, spices have calories. As long as the serving size listed has less than 5 calories, the company can list 0 calories (even though it may actually have 4). Usually spices and seasonings use 1/4 of a teaspoon as their serving size, so BE CAREFUL...4 calories in 1/4 teaspoon = 16 calories in 1 teaspoon. Account for every calorie, no matter how miniscule it may seem. Here is an exact calorie count per TABLESPOON of various spices:

    1TB Onion Powder =	22.54 calories
    1TB Garlic Powder =	27.91 calories
    1TB Chili Powder =	23.55 calories
    1TB Paprika =	19.94 calories
    1TB Poltry Season =	11.36 calories
    1TB Oregano =	13.77 calories

Meat Department @ Safeway

Mom went through the meat department at Safeway last night and discovered that they give out free spices! They're just sitting there on their counter and you just have to ask for it... Tell them which one you want and they serve it up for you. You have to stick with the dry spices, as the liquid ones have oil in them, but Mom got about half of the spices free from the butcher as was in the container she had in her cart. That little container was $5!

Savings is savings! :)

Low Blood Sugar Troubles

I've been struggling with my blood sugar dropping out the bottom while following Dr. Simeon's Protocol. It's really because I'm detoxing right now, but it doesn't help the fact that it happens. :) One way to keep that from happening is to make sure you've always got some kind of protein around handy.

That doesn't work on Protocol, though.

What DOES work, however, is cinnamon. I take two cinnamon pills per day now, one in the morning during the "starving time" and the other mid afternoon. Those are the two times during the day that I'm most likely to experience the problem.

If you find yourself in the same spot, give that a shot and see if it works out for you, too!

Questions from a fellow hCGer (and my answers)

NOTE: I researched Walden Farms products and found some disturbing things about Splenda, which is in the Walden Farms products. See the research here:http://lessofmehcg.blogspot.com/2009/10/walden-farms-quick-study.html

Jan F wrote and asked:

Jayme, I noticed u use WaldenFarm dressing and you suggest baking in alum foil packets... No extra fat from baking in those packets? I mean from the meat?? Also where do I get these dressings? Girl you have great food ideas and I'm lookin for flavor so I don't get bored and cheat this time around... Also that jello looks so amazing... I'm making it for tomorrow.. I'm working on an east Indian dish... I'll let you know how it turns out... Also thanks for the info on mensing... That will really help my friends out!!! You rock!!!

My reply was a little long winded, but I think it'll be beneficial for everyone reading my blog, as it's got some great places to find some of the products I use:

Hi Jan,

I got the dressings and ketchup from Rosauers - it's a store in Hood River, OR. I checked with our local Safeway store, too, but they report they don't carry it. You can get it from http://waldenfarms.com, though! Their website, of course, has lots of things that you might drool over, but make sure that it's no calories, no fat, and no sugar of any kind before you buy... I suppose you could buy it and just use it for phase 3 or later. :)

If you're looking for flavor, my site is the place, for sure. That's the way to stay on any kind of diet. Flavor.

That jello was amazing, but it was soooo filling, too! I only ate half the portion I was allowed - so my portion was 8x5 And I ate 4x5. Hahahaha! I only got 21 calories out of it. ::grins:: The worst part of that was that I ate light the whole day so I could have the whole portion. I came in at only 438 calories that day. Oops. Heh heh heh.

As far as the foil goes, I don't get any extra fat from cooking in them - but it does seal the meat and spices in so it's tender when it's done and flavorful all the way through.

And you know what? You have GOT to get some of the dark chocolate stevia. I got mine at vitacost for $8+change a bottle here: http://www.vitacost.com/Wisdom-Natural-SweetLeaf-Liquid-Stevia-Chocolate When on menses, I CRAVE chocolate. This time, Tami, my nutritionalist at Daniel's Health Store said that if I took a magnesium pill, the craving would go away. That sort of worked. What really worked was taking the magnesium pill with the White Dark Cocoa I made up with that stevia. It answered the craving perfectly. The other trick I found, all on my own about 12 years ago, is for cramps. I get them to a dibilitating point and couldn't stand to take aspirin for it, so I started experimenting. It turns out that cranberry powder pills will get rid of cramps, generally inside of 20 minutes, and it helps with the bloating, too! As soon as I feel cramps coming on, I take 2 cranberry pills. If it's not completely gone in 20 minutes, I take 2 more. Once or twice, I've had to wait another 20 minutes and take 2 more cranberry - but that was when I didn't take them right away after getting the sensation that I was cramping. I tell all the women I can, because they don't need to take drugs - just cranberry.

I can't wait to try out your East Indian dish - I love spicy food. In fact, I just bought about 12 jalapaneos!

Then I started doing some more research and found something new, so had to reply again!

I also just discovered (thank you products.google.com!) that AllStarHealth.com has Walden Farms products at about a dollar cheaper per product than Walden's website does... http://www.allstarhealth.com/li_b/WALDEN_FARMS.htm

Asian Garlic Chicken

NOTE: I researched Walden Farms products and found some disturbing things about Splenda, which is in the Walden Farms products. See the research here: http://lessofmehcg.blogspot.com/2009/10/walden-farms-quick-study.html

Last night's dinner was mostly compliments of Walden Farms, as far as taste goes. I found their salad dressings & ketchup in a store in Hood River after visiting my nutritionalist, Tami, at Daniel's Health Store. (daniels at gorge dot net). I bought my hCG there for the usual price of just $25 per 2fl oz bottle and picked up a few vitamins and some stevia.

Anyway, I headed up to Rosauer's and found Walden Farms salad dressings on sale 2 for $6.

They were sold out of the one I really wanted, Dijon Honey, but I got one of each of all the rest. Asian, Ranch, Creamy Bacon, 1000 Island, Balsamic, Raspberry Vinegrette, and Bleu Cheese. I went searching then for the Ketchup. It wasn't on sale, but it was there! :)

When I got home, I immediately pulled out the chicken I was planning to have but had no idea what to do with. I also grabbed some cabbage and talked my Mom into trying the salad dressings with me last night. She often helps me come up with recipes and taste tests them with me. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the sharesies:

Asian Garlic Chicken (110 calories)

100g chicken

2T Walden Farms Asian dressing

1 clove fresh garlic, minced

In center of 8" foil, place chicken, top with garlic and spread Asian dressing over all of it. Fold into packet and allow to marinate in frig at least 1 hour. Put in 350* oven for 25 minutes or until chicken is done.

We served this up on two separate plates. One (mine) had cabbage tossed with the Walden Farms Balsamic dressing. The other (Mom's) had spinach tossed with the Walden Farms Creamy Bacon dressing.

Mom reported that the dressings mingled very nicely together and that if she were working outside the home, she'd probably make the chicken up the night before, take the spinach and Creamy Bacon salad dressing (in separate containers), warm up the chicken at lunch time and just dump it all over the top of the spinach. Just a thought. :)

Herbs and Spices

I've been watching some of the posts on the forums that I frequent and people are bored of what they're eating. One of the BIGGEST things that you can do for yourself when you're on a diet of any sort is to get a full stock of all the different kinds of spices and herbs that you can before you begin.

But just having them in your cupboards doesn't really do the trick. You also need to do your research and find out which of the herbs and spices go with your proteins. You could certainly experiment and find out which one goes with which on your own, but there's lots of resources out in the world to guide you - you just have to go get them. Books, websites, friends, family (try your Grandma!!) - they're all there and would love to help you make your meals more interesting. You could even have a get together with some of your friends and ask them to make up recipes for the diet that you would enjoy. They can taste test for you and you get a whole host of new ideas.

In fact, a quick reference can be found at this site. It's certainly far from complete, but it'll get you started if you're unsure of yourself in the kitchen. :)

Happy meal creating!

For the ladies

It turns out that when we crave chocolate, we aren't actually craving the chocolate, per se. Rather, we're craving the magnesium that's in it. Since chocolate is definitely off the Protocol, add a couple of magnesium tablets to your diet a few days before your cycle and all throughout your cycle. You shouldn't have the craving for that sweet confection any more!

Not feeling that creative

Lunch was a wasabi chicken soup with yellow squash. I'll share the recipe a little later - got sick kids today!

Dinner is to be with Herb the Halibut. :) I'm not feeling that creative today. However, I come up with a lovely cup of "hot cocoa."

White Dark Cocoa

30 drops Dark Chocolate Stevia (made by NOW Foods)

20 oz HOT water

Mix the two and drink up - it's a freebie!

It's clear, but it tastes so good that I'm getting LOTS of water down my sick niece and nephew with it. Heh heh heh.

Apple Day & low blood sugar

So, I've got two apples left today and one tomorrow morning upon waking. I had some trouble with the blood sugar trying to drop out the bottom, so I grabbed some cinnamon powder pills (300mg each) and took one of those each time I ate an apple. I suppose I could have cooked the apple and made them the Baked Cinnamon Apple, but this was just faster. I was busy today and didn't want to bother with cooking. :)

And, I discovered something this morning! I did my previous Apple Day incorrectly. I was supposed to eat 5 apples during the first day, the 6th upon waking the next morning and I'm NOT to drink water unless I absolutely feel I must. Last time, I ate all 6 apples in one day and drank as much water as I could stand, as it was 95* out. So, oops. :) No wonder the plateau didn't break!

Forgetting your hCG?

If you forget to take your hCG drops, my nutritionalist, Tami, says you should just take the missed dose before you go to bed. I take mine 3x a day - morning, noon, and just before supper. So, if I missed the morning one, I'd just take it before I hit the hay for the night.

But better yet, don't forget! Use your cell phone's alarm clock feature and set the times you need to remember to take your drops. My cell phone has enough save spaces for 6 alarms - how 'bout yours?

Dry Skin Solution

I have horrid dry skin that's really coming out with a vengence: peeling, cracking, bleeding fingers. It's not fun and trying to play cello with fingers in that state. :( I'm allergic to the soaps that the protocol allows, as they all have SLS in them. So, I started looking for something else. Where I've not been successful on the shampoo scene, I have switched from Ivory to Hand Sanitizer. No oils, so it's allowed.

Today, I was searching for solutions for a replacement lotion. I found an hCG group on Facebook who had a suggestion for me that's old as the hills: Corn Husker's Lotion. Upon looking at the ingredients list (I have some here at home already), I see there's no oil in it, either. So, it's allowed, too! And now I have my solution. Hope it helps you, too.

Tips for mint or gum replacements

We've been doing this for a few days now, but I forgot to add it to the blog so you know about it, too. My family is big on mints and minty gums so when we discovered that we couldn't have that with the hCG Protocol, we started hunting for some other things we could chew on to freshen our breath. It's bad enough that the Crystal things don't work all that great with body odor, but to have bad breath after eating too was just to much!

Mom is the one to credit with these...

• Fennel seeds to chew on, obviously, with a licorice taste to them.
• Cinnamon sticks work out well - just break off a piece of them and sort of chew/suck on them.
• Mint leaves, but they leave little bits of green leaves all over your teeth, so only do that if you're someplace you can swish!

Iosol Iodine Tea

Drinking Iosol Iodine straight, or even in water, is just yucky. Last night, I tried adding some Vanilla Stevia to my water and Iosol Iodine mix. Not only did the mix turn blue, but it still tasted awful. There's something about the Stevia that made it turn blue, as just the water and Iosol Iodine together were an orange-red color.

This morning, I tried something new. I added the drops to my pot of tea. Luckily for me, the amount of water in the tea diluted the blue color of the Iosol Iodine and Vanilla Stevia mix so I was still drinking something that still looked like just tea. I couldn't taste the iodine in it at all and was impressed.

Want to know another great thing about the iodine addition to the diet? I'm NOT tired this afternoon. I don't feel like I need a nap to make it through the rest of the day. There's just nothing like immediate results like that.

The only problem with drinking the iodine in tea is that I need to get down at least two pots of tea in addition to the daily water intake. I'm going through a *lot* of TP, let me tell you!

Any way, here's the sharsies on the tea recipe:

Iosol Iodine Tea

1 T loose leaf tea (I use Rooibus, a red, but you could use black, too)

8 drops Vanilla Stevia (or what ever flavor you prefer)

2-4 drops of Iosol Iodine (depending on your tastes)

Add dry tea, iodine, & stevia drops to a teapot; set aside. Bring a pot of water just to the boiling point, but not quite to a full boil. Add water directly over the tea in the teapot, let steep 5-10 minutes and sip.