My First Week on the HCG Diet

Most bloggers do a day to day, but since I am playing catch up I will do my best to summarize my results by the week. The first week of my diet began by stocking up at the grocery store, only to realize later that I made some fatal mistakes, although I still lost a good bit of weight my first week. I work 50 hours a week, so I barely have the energy or time to cook, and I really didn't want to use the mind capacity to pre plan so I grabbed quick stuff that I didn't have to think about...I stocked up on prepackaged chicken breast (not realizing it has small amounts of starch in them) and some steaks with tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, apples and oranges. It was simple to follow the protocol. (See page below for the list of what I could eat) and it was easy to open up the packages of chicken and eat. Not the most tasty, but hey, I could do anything for 30 days right? I was a self proclaimed addict to diet cokes before the diet (about six a day) and knew I would have trouble with the lack of caffiene. So with taste buds screaming I went to black coffee with stevia in the morning to soothe my terrible headaches (which I had for about two weeks). I persevered realizing that this was a detoxing mechanism that was long overdue (chemical dependence sucks). So a couple of things I learned this first week:

• The diet was not going to be easy, breezy beautiful
• Bad headaches (for a good cause)
• Prepackaged chicken is a no no (always read the ingredients for starches and sugars, they are almost always there)
• Lipton Diet Green tea is delicious but not on protocol, just say no
• Order Stevia online stock up on flavors (french vanilla in coffee tastes really good, chocolate, etc)
• Weigh everything
• Biggest epiphany: I had no idea what real hunger felt like. Although I have never been famished on this diet, the first thing I learned is that my appetite is not my problem. Its all about cravings for the foods we have become accustomed to love. That is the most difficult thing to distinguish for me. Food was an emotional connection, a family thing we gather around, it determined what I did on the weekends, its what I looked forward to everyday. I lived to eat, and didn't eat to live. When I realized this I realized how hard this was going to be. I couldn't go out to eat with my husband, we couldnt enjoy a glass of wine or some beers by the pool. But what I realized was that I still could do those things, but my focus was wrong all along. It shouldn't have been on the food or drinks it should have been about living in the moment. This I realize is going to be tough lesson to learn, but it has opened my eyes alot.

So here was my daily routine:

1. Two cups of black coffee with stevia sweetner in the morning
2. About 64 oz. of water daily
3. Natural Lipton Green Tea brewed at home, or black tea sweetned with stevia
4. For lunch: 3.5oz of prepacked chicken with tomatoes or cucumbers and an orange and melba toast
5. For dinner: 3.5 oz of steak with asparagus, an apple or handful of strawberries, and melba toast

And here was my results:

PH2D1 191.4
PH2D2 0.2

PH2D3 1.8
PH2D4 -4.2

PH2D5 -3.2
PH2D6 -1.2

PH2D7 -0.8
PH2D8 -0.8

TOTAL WEIGHT LOSS: -8.2 AVERAGE: 1.17 lbs per day