Pew

Well, I swapped over to HCG 2.0. I found that I was losing well the first couple of days. Then blammo. Four days of no losses and even minor gains. I started researching heavily and discovered that forcing my fat grams lower than my carbs likely kicked me out of a state of ketosis.

So I upped my fat gram intake to higher than my protein grams and whoosh. I was off again after a couple of days. Since then, I've stopped meticulously tracking stuff in myfitnesspal and I wake up to find losses pretty well.

I LOVE this version of hcg. I'm getting to eat CHEESE again. And butter. Oh my goodness! Just as long as I limit my carb intake, and watch out for starch/sugar, I get to eat well and lose weight.

I've looked into continuing ketosis in P3 to lose more weight and how to stabilize weight when I'm ready (add more carbs slowly until you neither lose/gain). I think I may do that versus the hcg moving forward. We shall see!

My daily diet is a strange one. I try to eat within 30 minutes of waking and pop my first hcg dose. Second hcg dose mid-day, and final in the evening.

A typical day in my life looks like

Breakfast: 2 hard boiled eggs, 1 colby jack string cheese

11:00ish: Butter Coffee (2c fresh coffee, blended with 1 TB coconut oil, 1 TB kerrygold butter, liquid stevia to taste)

Lunch: 3-4 slices of kirkland roast beef (no sugars!), 1 slice of tillamook cheddar cheese, handful of black olives (I often wrap my beef and cheese in romaine leaves, sometimes add 2.0 mayo on it).

3:30pm: 1 colby jack string cheese, couple pinches of organic roasted pumpkin seeds, maybe some more olives

6:00p: Some protein (chicken/fish/beef) with a veggie of choice or no veggie at all. Cooked in butter for the fat grams, and cheeeeese.

If I'm hungry before bed, I have a small snack like olives, pumpkin seed, or sugar free jello/gelatin/stevia ("gummies"). I'm not typically hungry at this time though.


I may do some trial and error with intermittent fasting. Basically, you shove your daily food into a smaller window and just drink water through the rest of the day. I've seen people give themselves a six hour window to eat during the day and then fast through the rest and overnight with amazing losses. I'm not interested in going so extreme, but I do wonder if I cut myself off by like 4 or 5pm, what that would look like. There is a lot of studies that show the benefits of IF, especially on a ketosis diet, which is what 2.0 is, so I may play around with it just for curiosity.

At this point, I have gone so rogue from the OP, but I love it. I truly think this a satisfying way to eat and I could enjoy it on a long-term basis, minus the hcg.



I have also found that I can adapt my family's dinners for myself on 2.0 easily. I think this is better for our lifestyle while I'm on the diet. OP was less forgiving or my family was eating whatever I was and that was not satisfactory to them.

Examples below:

Taco Night: I took a tiny bit of chopped romaine, tossed a small handful of chopped tomato, grated cheddar cheese, seasoned ground turkey, and a dollop of sour cream. It was heaven! My family of course got shells for their tacos.

Spaghetti: We always prepare our sauce/noodles separately and allow people to add on what they want. I plan to make zucchini noodles for myself and top with cottage cheese.

Chicken Noodle Soup: I'll pull from the soup pot for myself before adding noodles to cook.

Turkey Stroaganoff: As with spaghetti, we've long left sauce/noodles separate so people can dish their portions themselves. I'll put the meat sauce over riced cauliflower.

Breaded Chicken w/ steamed veggies and quinoa: I'm going to just make an unbreaded piece of chicken for myself, grab minimal amounts of steamed veggies, and skip the quinoa personally.

Stir Fry: Frankly, I'm skipping this one. I don't want to mess with the noodles or the sugary sauces. I'll eat something completely different on the side. I COULD pull some meat and veggies before adding noodles/sauce, but that's okay.



Onto weight and measurements check in!

I did have a period of about a week where I had thrown myself out of ketosis and didn't figure it out, had some minor gains, and then the waiting period to kick my body back into ketosis. Ugh. BUT, my current weight this morning was 201.2 which puts me at a 16 pound loss so far. I'm not shaking my fist at that since it's about half a pound a day. I typically ran about that much on long rounds with OP and while I'd love to go faster, I do find this version of the diet so much more satisfying and better for my lifestyle, so I'm happy that I'm drawing about even!

I wonder what my losses could have been had I not knocked myself out of ketosis. Lesson learned! True ketosis has your healthy fat grams higher than your protein, your protein moderately high, and your carbs extremely low. This is working for me!

Measurements:

Neck: 13.25" (-.75")
Chest: 41.5" (-1.0")
Under Breast: 35.5" (*)
Waist: 33.5" (-2.0")
Belly (above button): 38" (-0.25")
Belly (over button): 39.5" (-1.5")
Belly (under button): 44" (*)
Hips: 50.5" (-1.75")
Butt (center mass): 50.5" (-3.5")

R Upper Arm: 11.75" (-0.50")
R Wrist: 6.25" (-0.25")
R Upp. Thigh: 29" (-3.50")
R Mid Thigh: 24" (-0.50")
R Low Thigh: 18" (-1.0")
R Calf: 15.5" (0.0")

L Upp. Arm: 12.5" (0.0")
L Wrist: 6.25" (0.0)
L Upp. Thigh: 29" (-2.25")
L Mid Thigh: 23" (-2.0")
L Low Thigh: 18" (-0.75")
L Calf: 15.25" (-0.75")

*Previously unmeasured areas. Not sure if more inches would have been tracked had I measured before.

Total Weight Loss: -16.0 pounds
Total Inches Loss: -22.25"