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Yesterday’s steak day did what it was supposed to do. This morning, I weighed 141.0#, down 3.8# from yesterday and 1.4# below my last dose weight.

I must say that while I enjoyed the steak, I did not enjoy the rest of the day much. I did not have much energy, and I felt real hunger.

I am currently reading The China Study by T. Colin Campbell with Thomas M. Campbell II. Americans will find the findings highly controversial. The authors are saying that animal protein causes heart disease and cancer. The milk protein, casein, has been found to activate carcinogens. Plant protein from whole foods is fine.

Friday morning, my weight was 142.6#, up 1.2# from Thursday and up 0.2# from my lowest dose weight. This morning, my weight was 144.2#, up 1.6# from yesterday and up 1.8# from my lowest dose weight. I was a little too close for comfort to needing to do a steak day.

I’ve been snacking way too much, I think, and the foods I’ve been snacking on may be causing inflammation. I think my problem is that I’m no longer following any kind of plan. I’ve decided that I need to get back to planning. Part of planning will be a fall-back plan, a small set of planned meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for when I haven’t put together anything in particular for the day.

I also need to take a look at what I’ve been eating yesterday to see what might be causing inflammation. It could be the nuts or the dairy, neither of which I was eating while on the 500 calorie a day phase of the HCG Diet. I think I need to back off on the higher fat things I have been eating anyway.

I found an old issue of First for Women from January 18,2010, on South Beach dieting that I had been saving. There is a centerfold of beautiful low-carbohydrate snacks that would be perfect for the stabilization phase and beyond. I plan to add those recipes to my recipe database. First for Women is a rather funny magazine in a way. The front cover always boldly features some diet plan, and there’s always a photo of a gorgeous dessert. The juxtaposition is almost ironic.

Yesterday, I went back into my menus page and added the loading days. I must say, any other time, it would be insane to eat that way. It seemed to work well with the HCG Diet, though, because it got me off to a good start with the diet. Those who don’t load well often experience a lot of hunger during the first few days or week. I did not have any hunger. The weight gained those days came off quickly enough anyway.

This morning, I weighed 144.8#, up 0.6# from yesterday and 2.4# over my last dose weight. That means I will be doing a steak day today according to the following:

“The moment the scale goes beyond two pounds, even if this is only a few ounces, they must on that same day entirely skip breakfast and lunch but take plenty to drink. In the evening they must eat a huge steak with only an apple or a raw tomato.”

I probably could have prevented today’s gain. I had to order fries at a restaurant shop yesterday, and I had to taste them, but I didn’t have to eat so many! Otherwise, it was a perfectly fine meal.

In general, I wasn’t very hungry yesterday. I would have liked to have had a better lunch, but there was a cleaning crew in the house at the time, and I didn’t want to get in their way.

I decided to compare measurements to a time when I weighed the same before. I found a set of measurements from last year for which I weighed about the same as my last dose weight. I did not see any particular remodeling benefits. I’m a little concerned about the Abdomen measurement, actually.

This morning, I weighed 141.4#, up 0.2# from yesterday and 1.0# below my last dose weight.

Today, I begin the stabilization phase of the HCG Diet. During this phase, I can eat anything except sugar or starch. The goal of this phase is to stay within 2# of my last dose weight. Last night, I went to the grocery store to get a few snack items for the new dietary requirements and came home with a selection of nuts (cashews, macadamia, and brazil) and a carton of full fat cottage cheese. From the looks of my list of what I want to eat, it would seem I’m really missing the fat. I looked at the nutrition facts for the nuts that I chose, and they’re all mostly fat. I really like cream cheese, too, and have some plans to make stevia-sweetened cream cheese-based treats.

One of the medications I take is an anticonvulsive for bipolar disorder. It works very well for me. As it happens, epileptics, for whom anticonvulsants were designed, tend to do well on a ketogenic diet, which is predominantly fat with very little carbohydrate. There is some thought that those with bipolar disorder might do well on a ketogenic diet as well since anticonvulsants help them, though that theory has not yet been tested.

Omega-3 fatty acids are helpful for bipolar patients, too, particularly of the EPA type. (You can read more about that in The Omega-3 Connection: The Groundbreaking Antidepression Diet and Brain Program by Andrew Stoll.) I was hesitant to remove my Omega-3 supplements from my regimen at the start of the VLCD phase, particularly since I had already seen dramatic results with my vision from it, but I did not want to impair my ability to succeed with the HCG Diet. So out it went. I added Omega-3 capsules back into my medication tray today.

If the HCG Diet had the potential to be dangerous for me, it would probably be from the lack of dietary fat. Hopefully, the hCG liberated enough fat to compensate. I did feel good during the diet, though I did have some tingling recently. First thing I ate this morning as I entered the stabilization phase were those nuts. I may need to be careful with those, though, because nuts have caused me to gain weight in the past. We’ll see soon enough.

This morning, I weighed 141.6#, up 0.6# from yesterday. Today is my last day on the 500 calorie a day part of the hCG diet.

Yesterday, I bought an unsweetened iced tea at a fast food restaurant. It turned out to be bitter. Normally, I would fix bitter tea by adding a little sugar, no more than a packet. Since I’m on such a strict diet, that wasn’t an option. The only other sweetener option was aspartame. They did not have saccharin, which would have been my first choice of commonly provided sweeteners. I went ahead and used the aspartame this time. I decided that it would be a good idea to keep packets of stevia sweetener such as Truvia in my purse in case I encountered bitter tea again in the future.

In the evening, I portioned out some chicken. As I was putting chicken into the baggies, I realized that I was portioning out more servings than I would need to complete the 500 calorie a day part of the diet. The feeling was, “Ooh! How cool!” I had little scraps of fatty bits left over from the portioning. I cooked those up in coconut oil for the dog. Tomorrow, I will be able to fry my meat in coconut oil if I want to.

This morning, my weight was 141.0#, down 1.4# from yesterday. I took only the morning dose of hCG yesterday. Now I just need to make sure the hCG is cleared out of my system. I’m still feeling good with no significant hunger.

My weight Sunday morning was 142.0#, up 0.4# from Saturday. My weight this morning was 142.4#, up another 0.4# from yesterday. I seem to be correcting for the large losses last week.

This morning, I took my last dose of hCG. That means I must stay within 2# of 142.4# from here until the next round.

I am looking forward to the low-carb part of the diet. I am already making plans for what I will eat. I am planning to attend a networking meeting Thursday morning where I will get a free breakfast. I will be attending a BBQ on Sunday. I am scheduling restaurant shops as well. (For more on that, see Mystery Shopping Information.)

This morning, I weighed 141.6#, down 1.4# from yesterday. I’m losing weight faster now than I did at any other time during the diet with the exception of the first few days. I’m not sure why I’m losing the weight so fast now when before it was slower. It makes me wish I had more hCG, but I will be running out of it tomorrow.

I did not sleep well Thursday night. I ended up going to bed early last night and not eating my evening fruit.

This morning, my weight was 143.0#, down 1.2# since yesterday. I have been on the hCG diet for six weeks now, and I’ve lost 20.8#. That’s almost half a pound a day.

I’m not sure why I am doing so much better the last few days. I’ve been doing everything pretty much the same.

For comparison, I had lost 9.6# at the six week mark last time I did Medifast in 2009. The six week number for NutriSystem in 2007 was 7.6#. The first time I did Medifast in 2006, I had lost 13.6# at the six week mark. The hCG diet has by far given me the best results.

This morning, my weight was 144.2#, down 0.6# from yesterday.

I am definitely feeling like I am ready for this diet to be done! I’ve been drinking lots of fluids the last few days.