My Weekend...

Saturday I slept in some and when I woke up I took my HCG, weighed myself and found that I hadn't gained or lost any weight since my previous weigh-in the day before, had some coffee and a piece of fruit. That was sort of late in the day, so I decided to skip lunch.  I took some HCG around 4 or 5pm, just to be safe.  We had some carrots in the refrigerator that were starting to grow again (seriously.  Some of them were sprouting roots and where the green leaves had been, they were starting to grow back!).  My sister said to throw them out but I said they could be used (even though I knew I couldn't eat them, as carrots are not one of the "approved" HCG vegetables) so I boiled them up and mashed them with a hand potato masher, I added some spices and stuff.  Then I took some more HCG before dinner and I had my recommended amount of everything (not extra, which I debated about doing since I had skipped one meal).  My family had rice, pork chops and the carrot soup I had made.  I had a piece of chicken and some fresh baby spinach which I had microwaved and added garlic powder, curry powder and dijon mustard to.  It was good.  My family was impressed with my made up carrot soup.  It seemed more like a lentil stew or something.  I was pretty impressed with it too (I tried a couple spoonfuls of the broth) and I would have really liked to have had some of it.  Oh, well.  It was easy to make and I can make it again some other time.  =)

Sunday I weighed myself and I had gained 4/10ths of a pound!!  =(  So depressing.  I came to the conclusion that it was either because I had skipped a meal (probably that!) or because I'd had an apple, which I've read can effect some people differently, even though it is an "approved" HCG fruit.  I really think it was the skipping of lunch though.  I suppose it could have been the couple spoonfuls of carrot soup broth too...  Later in the day I made some microwave dog biscuits that I found a recipe for on food.com.  I changed things up a little in it.  I'll maybe post the recipe sometime.  Anyway, my dog and my Dad's dog didn't eat any of them but my sister's dog loves them.  At least someone does.  =(  I tried to make them somewhat healthy and instead of adding salt, I added Bragg Liquid Aminos.  I also added some flax seed meal.  I gave some to my other sister for her to take home and give to her three dogs.  I don't know if they liked them or not because she hasn't told me.  They were easy to make though.  The recipe called for them to be in the microwave for ten minutes but the first batch started smoking after 5 minutes and then the smoke detector went off.  Needless to say, the first batch was ruined.  The other batches came out fine.  I put them in for 3 minutes and that seemed to be enough time.

Anyway, my Mom and Dad left Sunday to go to Canada to visit my Mom's brother.  So my sister and I are here and fending for ourselves.  =)  Last night I had more chicken and spinach.  That seems to be my "go-to" meal.

Today I weighed myself and I lose about 2 and a half pounds, so Yay!!  I'm so glad!!  I was getting worried - even though it was only one day of no gain/loss and one day of a small gain.  I'm going to really try not to ever skip a meal again.  =)  For lunch today I grilled a piece of tilapia (fish) from Schwan's on the George Foreman grill.  It was frozen and took only about 15 minutes.  Easy peasy!!  =)  It was good too.  I added some garlic powder and some curry powder to it.  =)  I also had my spinach staple with it.

Tonight I cut up three chicken breasts that my Mom got.  I found out that one of those giant chicken breasts can be divided in half in order to equal 3.5oz (on average).  So, I'll be having one of those pieces for dinner tonight.  The others I put in individual snack-size ziplock bags and added spices to each one.  Here's the spices (if you were wondering):
1.  Bragg Liquid Aminos, Dijon Mustard, Curry Powder, Garlic Powder  (you knew that would be in there!!)
2.  Bragg Liquid Aminos, Miami Spice Chicken Seasoning
3.  Grace's Jamaican Jerk Seasoning
4.  Curry Powder, Garlic Powder
5.  Bragg Liquid Aminos, Mrs. Dash
That leaves the other one for tonight which I've seasoned with Grace's Jamaican Jerk Seasoning and Garlic Powder and I'll grill it on the George Foreman Grill.

If you were also wondering, I still have my period.  It's still pretty heavy.  Definitely heavier than it has been in the past.  It seems to be heavier during the day rather than at night.  I also seem to have cramps every other day (on average) that hurt enough to require me to take some Advil.  I wish that it would all just go away.  Grrr.

Some Weight and Calorie Ramblings...

I lost two pounds since yesterday!  Yay!!  So, now I'm down almost 14 pounds.  I don't think I've mentioned how much I weigh and I hate to do it because I'm so embarrassed by it but I'm going to just get it out there.  When I started this whole thing, I weighed about 380 pounds.  I know.  WOW!  Disgusting!  Repulsive!  etc.  Get it over with.  I'm doing something about it now.  I know I just let myself get to that point because of my depression and not wanting to live, etc.  My depression isn't gone but it's under control somewhat, so that helps. It's really hard to get motivated when your mind is pulling you down.  So, now is probably the better time to do something about this.  A few years ago I lost weight too...  70+ pounds but I ended up gaining it all back because my depression got bad again and I just gave up.  I was also on the protein diet, so it was very limiting (granted, you could eat all the meat you wanted to eat but that get's really disgusting after awhile).  I know this diet is limiting too but it has a way to get out of it slowly that should (if done correctly) allow you to eat about 2000 calories once you're done.  We'll see.  I read somewhere that, in order to maintain your weight, you should figure about 100 calories for every pound.  So, I would really like to get down to 190 pounds.  Therefore, I could eat about 1900 calories a day and maintain my weight.  Another website I went to gave two different websites to figure what your caloric intake should be to maintain your weight and they were different.  Out of curiosity, I entered my current weight (before the diet) and the one site said to eat 2'450 calories while the other site said 5'182 calories.  I took the two numbers, added them together and then divided by two to get the average.  The average was 3'816 calories, which was basically my original thought of 100 calories for every pound.  =)

For lunch today I had 3 hard-boiled egg whites (I gave the yolks to my Dad) and spinach with the dijon mustard and Bragg Liquid Aminos on it.  This time I didn't heat the spinach in the microwave.  It was still good.  =)  I don't think I could eat that meal every day but it was nice to have for a change.  Besides, I was all out of chicken at the moment.

I still have my period.  I know, it has only been a few days but it's so heavy that it seems like longer.  I have to  wear a tampon and a pad, just to be safe.  I'm sure you wanted to know.  =)  Usually the heaviness lasts for a day or two and then it's just fairly light to average for 5 or so days.  I wonder when this is going to go away.  What if it never goes away while I'm on this diet?  Yikes.  That would be horrible.  I suppose, if that really happened, I'd have to eventually go off the diet.  Though, that would suck big time because I'm actually losing weight.  Oh well.  I'm not going to worry about that unless it happens.  =)

I'll probably add more later tonight...  or just tomorrow.  We'll see.  =)

Still on the Diet

I know a day or two have gone by since I was last on so I didn't want anyone to think I'd gone off the diet.  I'm still on it.  Still losing.  =)  So far, 10 days on it and I've lost 11.6 pounds.  And that 10 days includes my 2 days of "loading".  So, technically I've only been "dieting" for 8 days.  When you think of it like that, it's even more impressive!!  =)

Today the family had Subway for lunch.  I got a salad from there with grilled chicken.  I only ate half of the chicken and I removed the mushrooms and olives that were on it because they're both canned and I didn't know if those were allowed, since most canned veggies are not allowed on the diet.  I put Bragg's Liquid Aminos and some Mrs. Dash salt-free seasoning on the salad and it was pretty good that way.

For dinner the family had chimichangas (sp?) and I had 3.5oz of chicken breast on a bed of baby spinach.  The spinach was fresh and the chicken was from a couple days ago.  I just put the spinach all over the plate (probably about 2-3 cups of loose spinach leaves) and then I put the chicken breast on top, popped it in the microwave for 1 minute and it was done.  Then I put a little dijon mustard on the spinach and on top of the chicken breast as well as some Bragg's Liquid Aminos and some more Mrs. Dash.  It was really good!!  I'll have to remember that for other things when I want to season them.

Anyway, that's it for now.  I just wanted to bring you up to date.  =)