Sadness in Fall 2012

Yet again it has been a few months since I have posted on here. While I do enjoy writing these posts, life seems to take precedence over writing.

I don't think I have mentioned this in my other posts but my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer for almost 4 years ago. She was in semi-remission for a couple of years and then the beginning of this year she was informed that it was back again throughout her body.  My parents live in Tennessee and I am in Wisconsin, so we were only able to see/hear how she was doing via phone and Google Hangout which can be deceiving when she hides how badly she's really feeling from us. August of this year, Mom and Dad came up to go to her 50th High School Reunion and then spent a few days with all of the Wisconsin family. We saw much more clearly how she was doing at that point, but thought part of her exhaustion was more from the extreme busyness she had with all of her friends and relatives the weekend before. She was herself with us but we could see she was in pain and she slept on the couch with us around her quite a bit. She had started some new alternative treatments and we were hoping some of them would start to work but in September we were told it was in her liver and spleen which is pretty much a death sentence. We gave it a few weeks but after our monthly Google Hangout at the end of September, we decided we needed to head to TN to see her again. One of my brothers and his family was able to make it down the first week in October and the rest of us all made it down the following weekend. It was shocking how quickly she had gone down hill in about 6 weeks. In addition to the cancer mass in mom's liver, she also started showing signs of ascites and her belly had extended to the point of her looking like she was 6 months pregnant. She'd also lost about 50 pounds since January. We had a great weekend with her although very bittersweet. Mom was still able to get up and walk around for short periods of time and was fully cognizant of all going on around her. She did sleep a lot, but we were still about to enjoy sweet fellowship with her. We left TN on Oct 14th, thinking we would see her again for Thanksgiving in 5 weeks.  However that was not to be.

A week later Dad let us know that he'd gotten word she only had about 2 weeks left to live. We all started making plans to head to TN ASAP. My sister and I drove down on the 25th of October and we were able to get a couple words out of mom at a time every few hours but by Friday afternoon she really didn't even open her eyes but could respond by "blinking" if we asked a yes or no answer. By Saturday she was pretty much non-responsive. We had several didn't times where we thought she was about to let go and we would all gather around her and starting singing hymns and worship songs. Each time she would calm down and go back to sleeping peacefully. The Hospice company that helped mom was amazing and the nurses that would come would each say she would probably only be here a few more hours and yet she lasted for several days beyond what was expected. Mom went to be with Jesus in Heaven on November 1st. Her memorial service was on November 5th and my sister and I stayed a couple extra days after the funeral to stay with Dad.
Life has gone on but there is not a day that goes by I don't think of mom and miss her. I don't know how people that do not believe in Heaven/eternity with Jesus can function having lost a loved one. It is only knowing I will see her again someday and the fact I know she is finally able to enjoy her gardening and live a life without pain, that helps me survive each day.

Getting over Yo-Yo dieting

Am I a stereotypical woman on a weight loss journey or what??? I was thinking today about how many things I have tried for the last couple years, but more specifically in the last year. One thing I have going for me is that I have still not gone the usual route of yo-yo dieting where you fall completely off the diet and exercise wagon. I must be honest and tell you I have not been faithfully exercising and that is probably my downfall. I do still walk, but not as regularly as a couple months ago. I do meet with a personal trainer once a week and I love that. I am definitely feeling stronger and can see definition where it was just fat, but the pounds and inches have yet to melt off and it's been almost 3 months.

I'm tired of doing the "diet" thing. In a society where every social engagement involves food of some form, it is just too much of a pain to either skip all occasions or bring your bag of celery to snack on while everyone around you is eating chocolaty brownies. These days I pay more attention to the quality of my food, whole grains, fresh (and some frozen) produce, some dairy, lean meat and nuts. I've been limiting my refined sugar intake since the whole HCg thing, and while I still have ice cream and cookies on occasion, they last in my house for quite awhile before I finish them.

I've started noticing that when I eat too much junk, it is intentional. I know exactly what I'm doing and I choose to ignore my full stomach or my mind telling me I don't need it. If I'm able to be disciplined to have a bag of frozen chocolate chip cookies in the freezer for over a couple of months only pulling out a couple at a time every couple weeks; I can definitely stop myself from going to get more food, healthy or otherwise, when I'm not hungry.

It's time to get motivated. I have to start putting up signs and goals around the kitchen to stop myself from getting that extra food when I don't need it. I already have some pictures, on my fridge and in the pantry, of women who lost weight and now look amazing. I strategically picked women that I believe have a body similar to my body shape and how I think I will look when I lose it all. They are all inspirational stories from magazines, now I just have to reposition them and make the inspiration noticeable again.

So, the plan for this week is to get my butt back in gear. My personal training session is tomorrow and then this weekend I will be home, so I have no excuse to not exercise. I have to study for most of the weekend, so I'm not sure if I will make the time to make any more charts, but it's on my list to do in the next week.

Saturday Mornings with God and my coffee

Saturday mornings...is there anything better than the thought of curling upon the couch with a blanket and a cup of coffee? Ok, so maybe sitting on a porch overlooking mountains or the beach might be a little better, but here in the Midwest and at the beginning of fall this is what it is all about. Anyone that knows me well knows my love of sleeping in and then curling up with my coffee first thing in the morning. In no way am I grumpy, but I do love the silence and peace during this time. Beyond getting my coffee and getting comfy on the couch the routine varies some. This morning I chose to listen to DailyAudio Bible (DAB), which I listen to every weekday morning, but my weekend schedule varies, so I don’t always get it in. During the week I listen while I get ready for work and then finish it while I’m eating my breakfast. I must be honest and say that while I do listen, I don’t always hear everything as my mind can wander some while I get ready, and then I’m usually running out the door a few minutes later, so I just don’t internalize what I hear as often as I should. I am very much an out of sight out of mind kind of girl and meditating on something I read or heard in the morning just doesn’t happen like I would like it to. I have found the best way for me to even try to internalize what I hear/read is by journaling it out, either as a regular journal entry or as a prayer. Lately I just haven’t been getting up early enough to be able to take the time to journal after I listen to DAB. So, this morning I decided I should journal my thoughts on here. One of the passages Brian read from today was Is 39:1-41:16. My current life verse is in this passage and for some reason more of the verses around it really struck home today. For as long as I can remember, I have loved Is 40:31, “They that wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they will soar with wings like eagles; they will run and not be weary; they will walk and not faint. It is such a great mental picture to represent what God wants to be for me. I have always been able to see myself as that weak and faint person that God lifts up and carries to safety as well as soaring through the air. Now there is even a movie scene that can represent this a bit…Put yourself in Harry Potter’s place and picture the scene when he first rides Buckbeak the Griffin which is a giant eagle (at least from the front;-).

The thing is, there are verses that go into more detail and I was only getting a small portion of the passage by singling out just vs. 31. The verses leading up to 31 say that the Lord is the everlasting God and the Creator of everything. He doesn’t lose his power and faint or get weary. He is the provider for our strength all we have to do is lean on him. It also points out that everyone gets weary even “youths”, meaning; even those that seem like they are the Energizer bunny that just keeps going and going eventually run out of juice and need the God of the universe to lift us up and carry us to allow us to build up our strength.

It is so cool to know that there is a God who cares so much for me that he will swoop down and lift me up to care for me and give me strength. I don’t have to be the Energizer bunny, but should allow my Lord and Savior to recharge my batteries on a regular basis!

HCg Diet, The Aftermath

The Aftermath:

All of this took place between May 2010 and March 2011. Since then, I have fought to keep any weight off and have not been successful at that. I am currently fluctuating around 170 and that is all I can do to keep off. I think the 2 biggest things I have struggled with is my menstrual cycle is now extremely irregular and I have yet to figure out what the actual triggers are that my body does not like and will gain if I eat.

I don’t know if it’s psychological but mentally and physically my body is still on a 28 day cycle when it comes to PMS, bloating, crabbiness…, but the actual flow comes and go and will be 3 weeks apart or up to 45 days between. As for the weight well, that is a complete conundrum. I’m still eating extremely healthy. I eat plenty of veggies and fruit, some whole grain carbs (quinoa, wild and brown rice, oatmeal, buck wheat…). I’m definitely not saying I have been perfect over the last year and a half since I completed everything, but I am eating healthy enough that I should not be putting the lbs back on. I am also exercising ( have a personal trainer I meet with once a week) and then I do random home exercises and I try to walk and do some interval jogging.

Would I do it again…I don’t know. I have kept off about 25 lbs so that is definitely a blessing and have been maintaining at my current weight for the majority of the last year. After the severity of this diet, I mentally went into shut down mode and didn’t want to “try” to lose weight for awhile. I wanted to just be healthy exercising and eating healthy.  Every time since then that I try to do a diet plan I sabotage myself after a week or two and I just don’t stick with it long enough to truly see results or I see no results at all. I’ve tried a few of the random Dr. Oz recommendations of teas or supplements or even Complete Nutrition-trying to continue to eat really healthy just adding that supposed added metabolism type booster, but nothing has worked. Often, people try these supplements as if they were an easy button and do not try to eat healthy and exercise at the same time. I have not done this, I have “dieted” hoping they would be that additional boost. They definitely have not helped me one bit.

The one thing I can say with complete confidence that this diet did help me overcome was being an extremely picky eater. I now eat more vegetables than the average person and my fridge is full of all kinds of colors of fruits and veggies. I eat so many new flavors and spices. My entire family still shakes their head when they see foods I’ve eaten or I talk about foods I eat.

Steamed kale, swiss chard, peppers, onions, cabbage and probably a couple other things, plus a piece of toasted Ezekiel Bread...Yummy!

Well, That is my story. I’m sure I’ve left a lot out, but since I’ve filled several pages, I will stop. If you want to know something more specific you will have to ask. The only thing I won’t say are the companies I used. In my opinion,  the only potential way I might say you should try it is if you were to go through your doctor and do it the original way with daily or weekly injections done by your doctor.

HCg Diet Part 2

So, after my 40 days on HCg, I was able to add the fats and all the other fruits and veggies (although high carb/starch/fructose options were recommended we limit). There was no limit to the fats. So we could do cream in our coffee, have PB and cream cheese, cook with olive oil…This phase was truly not hard to follow in general. I still missed potatoes and breads, but it was not hard to do. The hardest part about this diet is it’s kind of hard to explain and when it lasts 3 months it’s extremely hard to be social when our society revolves around eating and drinking. I went through the entire summer either not going to social engagements or having to find inconspicuous ways to avoid the food tables. I think almost every week my Bible study would do something food related (we just do social events during the summer), going out to dinner, having picnics, going for drinks… Then other friends would invite me out and it would either be wanting to go out to eat or having a party at their house. I would usually eat on the few occasions I ventured out, before I left, that way I could honestly say I’d eaten before I came and didn’t need anything. During Phase 3, is when the body is supposed to be retraining how it metabolizes and is supposed to teach your body to maintain the weight you are currently at, only gaining  one to two lbs and then stabilizing. I however did not do that. I gained close to 5 lbs during this phase and had to be more restrictive than I should have needed to be. Then I waited until Labor Day weekend to do a second round of the HCg. The one thing I had not done that was suggested was go organic. I just didn’t want to deal with that. So, I dropped the one Tbs of milk and coffee altogether and went almost 100 % organic thinking that must have been the problem. Unfortunately, this round was no better. I still lost about 20 lbs, but since I’d put on about 10 between the time I stopped taking HCg that last time and beginning again, it was really a net loss of 10 lbs. This time I dropped it a little faster, but went into immunity by around day 30.  This was frustrating because I had been even more careful, but had been hungrier and definitely did not see better results. I decided to take a break and was not going to do anything through the holidays and I tried to stay eating healthy, but still enjoy myself during Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is extremely hard to enjoy meals when all you can think is which of these foods is going to be the one that sets me over the edge and makes me put on a pound or two. I again put on about 10 lbs and wanted to see if I could get rid of it by trying a different HCg product. I did some more research and went with another company that used a dropper and was supposed to be pure HCg, no added vitamins or nutrients (which the other one had some homeopathic minerals added). I was determined to make this one work. I chose to start at the beginning of January, probably the easiest time to do this diet, since everyone else is still on their own New Year’s Resolutions. This round was by far the worst and I didn’t make it beyond day 21 before I went into immunity. I honestly can’t remember how much weight I lost but I know I hit my lowest weight every, which was 151. I was so excited and was so hoping to drop another 10 lbs with this round.

My Experience with the HCg Diet

Someone recently commented on here that they wanted to know more about my experience with the

 HCg diet. So, I am going to try to recount as much as I can of the 10 months that I spent within the

 HCg diet and what my life has been like post HCg.

In May 2010, I heard radio ads, which I don’t generally pay any attention to, but the ads were done

by my favorite local Radio DJs who were actually following the diet and would frequently talk about

 the own adventure with it in the mornings. So, I went to the site they suggested and after discussing

 it with my sister we both decided to try it out. The product we had came in a pre-formulated spray

bottle and we were supposed to take 3-4 spray pumps 3 times a day. The diet itself is technically 3

 phases (although some companies use a 4^th phase that is essentially life/maintenance after HCg).

 Starting the very first day you take the sprays, Phase 1 consists of eating as much junk food,

specifically high fatty foods as possible. This is to allow your body to have easy access to fat at the

 very beginning before the body recognizes what is happening and lets go of the hard to lose brown

fats. This is only 2 days. Phase 2 is the HIGHLY restrictive phase (I’ll describe this in detail in a bit).

 For the next 21-40 days you consistently take HCg and remain on this restrictive part of the diet. The

 time frame depends on how much weight you want to lose and how your body reacts to HCg and

whether your body goes into immunity early. Otherwise you need to stop after 40 days and move on

to phase 3. Phase 3, you had back certain foods, but still restricts you from having refined sugar,

starches and carbohydrates. This phase is 6 weeks long. After that if you’ve lost all your weight you

slowly start adding back the rest of the foods, and supposedly you have reset your metabolism and as

 long as you don’t go back to eating junk all the time, you are supposed to live an easy life being able

 to enjoy a balanced diet without having to live on 1200 calories for a week after having a

brownie.Now that you have a picture of what the diet is (essentially 3 months) I can tell you my story. My sister and I began the journey a couple days apart. I being the typical avid dieter, was too excited to read everything thoroughly before I started, so I half hearted binged during the 2 days. Oh yes, I did binge for a person that was always trying to lose weight, but not in comparison to what I was supposed to do. I made sure to stock up on the necessities and begin pre-making my “lunches”. So, meals during the 38 days of restriction consisted of 2 servings of each: 3-4 oz of chicken or whitefish (hamburger was allowed, but some bodies don’t process it well a.k.a. gain instead of lose), your pick of fruit was an apple, grapefruit or about a cup of strawberries, vegetables had a larger option of onions, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, pretty much any kind of greens or lettuce, peppers and I’m sure a few others, but I can’t remember more, your “carb” was either grissini or melba toast again, just 2 pcs. Essentially every day I lived on about 500 calories total.

One common meal I ate:baked cod, onion strings and an apple dipped in Truvia and cinnamon.

We were allowed to have coffee, but with no cream (actually I think we were allowed 1 Tbs a day if we had to have it) and could sweeten it with stevia. Then we were encouraged to drink a minimum of 100 oz of water, squeeze lemons in it as much as possible and drink as much herbal tea as we wanted. We were supposed to vary each for every meal, so we were getting a “variety” each day. We were supposed to not feel hunger after the first week because the HCg would be turning the bad fats into nutrients and causing the body to feel full from that. Unfortunately, my sister and I both have unique body chemistry and neither of us ever truly felt that way. My sis was considerably worse off than myself and we contacted the CEO of the company on many occasions to discuss our problems throughout. She was great about helping us through, but still our bodies just did not respond as expected. I would lose for a couple days and then would put some back on. Something should have told me it wasn’t working, how can someone sticking 100% to the diet gain weight while only eating 500 cal a day, but still I persevered.  Thankfully my job made it easy for me to make tea all day long and drink as much as I needed to. I would drink hot tea all day because that helped at least make the hunger be faint. For lunch would eat one serving of each and then again for dinner would have the second serving. It truly was all about discipline and the first 3 weeks were exciting enough because I dropped so quickly it made it worth it. I dropped a total of 22 lbs in the 40 days, however about 17 of those were in the first 30 days, the next 10 my weight fluctuated up and down which was soooooo frustrating when I did not cheat even once in the entire 40 days. My sister had extreme headaches and severe hunger pretty much from the beginning and lost about 20 lbs. She had to stop early because of the extreme weakness (which signals the body is no longer registering the HCg/immunity).
          to be continued...

 

Life is almost on an even level!

I know, I know...it's been months since I have posted. Life has been just a little busy over the last few months. Here's a quick rundown.

January: I started my new job as an assistant for a Financial Representative with Northwestern Mutual. Began doing double duty with school-studying for taking Intro to Computers DSST test and being enrolled in an actual class. Nothing like completely overwhelming myself completely new occupation with a million details to memorize, while trying to memorize a bunch of useless facts about computers and writing papers for the class as well.

February:Passed the Computer DSST test, began studying for Introduction to World Religion DSST test, finished my January class and began the February class.

March: Passed the World Religion test and began studying for a 6 credit Natural Science CLEP test. Unfortunately the material I used to study was nearly in depth enough to pass the test,so I am stuck taking the science class.

April; began studying to be licensed to actually work with insurance products we offer at Northwestern Mutual, and began my very last class with Ashford University. On May 13th I will officially be finished with my BA in Healthcare Administration!!! I am so excited to finally be finished and finished 6 months early thanks to passing 3 of the 5 CLEP/DSST tests.

As for the weightloss, yeah, that's not been the greatest. I was doing really well through the beginning of the year, but then hit a plateau what I was ok with b/c I was not able to do any exercising while I was studying intensely and still completing actual classes. Now that I'm almost finished with school and the weather has been nicer, I have at least been getting out on walks and trying to push myself to do some jogging occasionally. I'm going to have to get serious about dieting again. I have been eating healthy, but I think I need to monitor a little better if I want to lose.

My current goal is to lose about 15 lbs by June 29th, when I go to Harrisburg, PA for a reunion. I'm so excited to go and even if I do not lose a lb between now and then I will be proud to go back and show off my new body. The majority of the people have not seen me in 10 years other than a few random pictures on facebook. I've still maintained 40 lbs off my body and that is definitely something to show off. I just know I'm more comfortable at the weight I was at when I finished the HCg diet. I am still dealing with the effects of that diet, so just the fact I've kept my weight off at this point is a miracle. The next two weeks I will be putting in as many walks as I can, but then once school is officially finished, I will be putting in some serious time at Gold's Gym as well as figuring out what diet I want to follow. Belly Fat Cure, Reshape the Nation something new...? I've also been thinking about doing a 10 day juice fast. I watched Joe Cross's "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" and it inspired me to try juice fasting. CSA and Farmer's Markets will be kicking up again soon, so having enough affordable fruits and  veggies for the 10 days would be fairly easy. I just want to make sure the fuzziness that is talked about at the beginning isn't going to effect school and work. We shall see what I decide.

Anyone out there have any suggestions. I would love to actually get a comment on this blog. So far I've got a few people that read it, but no one comments. If it's something to do with my lay out try emailing me!

Well, I need to sign off, but hopefully I'll be on a little more regularly in the near future!