My Personal Experience With HCG

I'm trying the HCG diet for a second time right now. It is for this reason that visions of gooey mountains of pizza will come suddenly and unbidden into my mind's eye, followed by a deep and sincere longing for bread, cookies, and all other things made of refined flour and sugar.

You've been living in a hole in the ground if you haven't heard about HCG yet, and you're probably thinking it's the biggest crock in the world simply because it's so hyped up. I can tell you that unlike most other diets (which for me includes eating healthier and exercising), it actually works. I studied it a long time before I took the plunge the first time in order to understand what it was I was putting into my body.

In a nutshell, you take HCG drops (or injections) every day for 23 days while following a very low calorie diet (500 calories/day) for 24 of the total 26 days. HCG is Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, which is a misnomer because it isn't a sex hormone (oops! Those silly scientists jumped the gun!). It's a hormone that pregnant women secrete in order to allow the body to break down and utilize abnormal fat (that fat you can never get rid of no matter how hard you try) so that the bloodstream is constantly providing nourishment to the fetus even when the mother isn't eating every single minute. Taken by injection or sublingually, HCG allows the body to break down and get rid of abnormal fat when used in conjunction with a very strictly limited list of foods eaten in a precise order. And you don't even have to be pregnant! Goodness knows I've NEVER lost weight by being pregnant, even with all that throwing up.

I take the sublingual drops, which work just as effectively as the injections for me. If you're thinking of starting the diet, let me give you a few helpful tips.

1. Do NOT start the HCG diet when you know you'll be faced with a holiday or event that traditionally involves large amounts of family and food in the same room -- especially if you are the cook. I did my first session during Thanksgiving and the Christmas season last year, and I ended up cheating constantly because of the temptation. I'm no stoic. I like fudge. And mashed potatoes. And Christmas pudding with virgin brandy sauce. Although I still managed to lose 12 pounds in 26 days, my advice to you is to pick a very dull couple of months, say January and February or April and May. You can manage to skip the Valentine's chocolates (buy the chockies on sale right after Valentine's and stash them away for when you can put sugar back into your diet. Better yet, don't buy them at all) where the long weekends of Thanksgiving and Christmas will probably do you in.
2. Sublingual drops from a reputable source are just as good as the injections, I think. At least, when I was following the rules, I was losing an average of a pound a day. Every person is different, but that's my opinion.
3. When they tell you to eat as much fatty food in the first two days of the diet as you can handle, just thank your lucky stars and dig in. Skimping on those first two days means you'll have more side-effects like headaches later. Besides, at what other time are you ever going to have a diet that encourages, nay, DEMANDS, that you shove doughnuts and pizza and hamburgers down your gullet until you're ready to explode?
4. After those first two days, when you start on the restricted, strict 500 calorie a day thing, you're going to be playing mental games every single moment. The "no hunger diet" advertisement makes me die laughing -- at least for the first week. Your brain will be shouting at you how hungry you are, how stupid you are for thinking you aren't good enough and need to go on this stupid diet for stupid society, even if you really want to get to a healthier weight. Take it one hour at a time and keep yourself busy every single moment. Drink lots of water in the morning and then have lunch and dinner.
5. After the first week, your body will actually get used to it and be much happier. In fact, you'll start feeling pleased with how light and clean you feel inside, which is probably the effect of not grabbing a taste of every delicious food that passes your nose (I am speaking of myself here). As you see the scale go down every morning -- or nearly every morning -- you'll also have the incentive to keep going. When I'm weak, I also remember the money it cost me to buy the drops in the first place and that, once opened, they're only good for 30 days. That helps a lot, too.
6. If you are not already instructed to do so, take a liquid Vitamin B12 supplement every day. B12 helps the HCG get more easily absorbed into your bloodstream. I've found it helps me immensely.
7. Recognize that your body is going to think it's pregnant. I have no idea how this translates for men, but for me, my face is breaking out, I occasionally have a mood swing (not too many), and I tear up at tender commercials. Okay, that might be normal, but I'm saying that I DO feel pregnant -- minus the morning sickness, which is its saving grace. If I was throwing up and feeling nauseated all the time, no slick advertisement or thoughtfully written scientific paper in the world could make me do this again.
8. Follow the regimen. There are books now that have great recipes for the HCG phase. I keep it pretty simple, though, and my meals take about five minutes to prepare. Example lunch: 100 gram tilapia filet fried on a hot skillet with a touch of cooking spray and seasoned with salt and pepper; one medium sliced tomato seasoned with salt, pepper, and vinegar (I do cheat there because I douse them in malt vinegar and not apple cider vinegar, which often gives me a tummy ache); an optional two slices Wasa light rye bread (when I started last year, NO STORE IN THIS TOWN had any Melba toast. I figured I'd try Wasa, and I haven't noticed a problem, except that it's completely tasteless and so utterly dry that I have to pile my tomatoes on top of it for flavor. It is easier on my teeth than Melba toast, however.); an apple; and lemon water or Pero with no sugar.
9. Endure. If you're feeling really weak or light-headed all the time, you might not have a good source of HCG and are actually just starving yourself senselessly. I'd say stop the diet and eat more calories. Otherwise, do your best to stick with it. When I had a microscopic taste of Husband's fudge (seriously, so tiny you could barely see it!), I immediately had a carb craving so badly I almost lost it. I'm the principal cook around these parts, and tonight I made one of my favorites for my family -- chicken-chili-cheese enchiladas -- but I did not succumb to temptation. Husband helps me out by pretending the food I make is absolutely disgusting and pulls faces to show me he's barely choking it down, even when he goes for seconds. It's very kind of him.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Right now I'm on Day 8 and I've lost 6 pounds. Yes, I could eat an entire football team sculpted of pizza if you put it in front of me, but it's not bothering me so much. It's mostly because I like the taste of pizza and I like to eat, but I'm again recognizing the difference between true hunger and bored hunger.

This entire post, though absolutely true, is also a keyword experiment. We'll see what happens and I'll tell you why I would conduct such an experiment later.

UPDATE: 12/04/2012
For any of you who have read this wondering if you should try the HCG diet, I want you to know I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT! Not only do you pretty much starve yourself silly during the diet, but you are putting your body into starvation mode. This means that once you quit, you'll quickly regain all the weight and some extra because you've now damaged your metabolism and screwed up your hormone balance. You're losing muscle during the diet, and when you regain the weight (it's pretty much inevitable you'll regain the weight, mark my words!), it's fat. Fat tissue produces different hormones than muscle tissue. Fat tissue encourages more fat retention. Muscle tissue burns calories far faster than fat tissue. There are no miracle pills or diets.

Check out more at this more recent blog post.

SOCKS? Oh, the Horror...

Just a quick note to say hello. I AM alive, but it's been a week full of writing work and visions of pizzas. I'll explain more about that tomorrow.

On Tuesday, a friend from our congregation kindly came over to diagnose the problem with our gas fireplace. The pilot light had suddenly been snuffed out last year during a major snowfall, and Husband could never figure out how to start it again, though he read the manual, fiddled around for hours, and went online to see if there was any information there. Our friend pointed out the shorted wire and then got the pilot lit again. After he left, we all sat around the toasty fireplace singing Kumbaya and hugging each other in our joy.

The reason we were so ecstatic is that our furnace has been acting up. Sometimes we'll wake up and the house is 57 degrees, which is toe-chilling at best, and I've had to wear socks during the day to keep working at the computer without turning into a web text-writing popsicle. SOCKS, people! I hate socks! Husband has made repairs as he could, and he actually had it going pretty well for a long time, but our friend (who is an expert at these gas appliances) told him we'd need a new part. With the gas fireplace on now, we keep plenty warm. The upside to the dodgy furnace performance is that our gas bill has been very reasonable for a winter month. Also, our hoodies, sweaters, and SOCKS (yuck!) have been put to good use.

I'm going to bed. Well, let me clarify: I'm going to bed under my heated blanket to read the rest of Love During the Time of Cholera, another of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's strangely compelling little tales of people going through life. I also read Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and half of a book by Erma Bombeck just to keep my sanity intact due to the potential for Serious Matter Overload, or SMO.

All About Hair

If, like Kimara, you're interested in making brown sugar fudge here's the recipe Husband used. Happy confectioning! Make a double batch and share with the neighbors. They'll think you're amazing.

For those of you who breathlessly follow my Facebook statuses, you already know that yesterday I tried out a homemade hot oil hair treatment designed to bring silky softness and shine back to heat-damaged hair. It worked like a charm, too. Here is the recipe and directions.

Fresh From Your Kitchen Hot Oil Hair Treatment:

1/4 cup olive oil or vegetable oil
1 Tbsp cream conditioner (not the leave-in kind)

Mix the oil and conditioner in a saucepan until it's mixed together and warmed. You don't want to dump incredibly hot oil all over your scalp unless you have serious, therapy-worthy issues, so make sure the oil is cool enough for comfort. Then, when it's the perfect temperature (which is a completely relative measurement), somehow get the oil mixture into your dry hair. I just dumped it over my head from a measuring cup, but a less messy solution might be to put the mix into a small squirt bottle.

Once the oil mixture is in your hair, wrap a towel around your shoulders and comb it in for even coverage. My hair only goes to my shoulders and I don't dye it, so I didn't wrap my hair up in plastic wrap; but if you have long or really damaged hair, you can wrap it up for 30 minutes or so. I think it nearly goes without saying that you should avoid plastic-wrapping your entire head. There are dire consequences to that.

I left the oil mixture in my hair for about 10 minutes, after which I hopped into the shower and shampoo-ed twice to get it completely out. I might leave it in for longer next time just because I got to sit around feeling pampered and a little like I was in a spa, except this spa needs constant maintenance and there seem to be a large number of kids who live in it who frequently get hungry...

This morning before church, I cut the boys' hair.

No, I didn't touch the girls' hair. I don't do girl haircuts unless they want to look like well-shorn missionaries, which is seldom (read: never) the case. Besides, who wants this little gymnast to look like Sinead O'Connor?

For the next two weeks, Husband is off-track, meaning that his class has a two week break. Husband does enjoy that part of the job -- especially when his off-track time coincides with our kids still being in school, which means he can write during the day without a lot of interruptions. Believe me, when they're home, he hangs out with them and they love it, but he does take advantage of their absence, as well. His heart grows fonder by the minute.

Blood Sugar Spike

For the last year, Husband has been on a quest to make the perfect brown sugar fudge. He got it right once, and then suffered failure after failure as his fudges turned out crystallized and crumbly.

Today, I am happy to report, has been a red-letter day in his quest. Today he has found the perfect recipe and created the perfect brown sugar fudge. Right now, I'm just a wee bit sick of brown sugar after sampling his fudge and then sampling some more just to make sure it was still perfect.

Husband mostly confines his cooking ventures to the sweet variety. Whenever I make cranberry cake, he makes the cream/butter sauce that goes on top. He is great at mixing up custard, and he once made the best bread pudding I have ever eaten. Unfortunately, despite evidence to the contrary, he continues to be convinced that he is no good at cooking and that since I am better at it than he, I should be the one to make dinner.

Gabrielle is just fine with her daddy cooking up sweet stuff. Husband has passed along his British sweet tooth to all of his children.

Colors and Cunning Plans (Sans Turnips)

In the continuing saga of choosing a paint color for the main floor, we went back to Home Depot and sorted through some more blues. Husband wants something bold that can't be interpreted as white, so the lighter, barely tinted silvery blues were out in favor of these three: bleached denim, French country, and Cayman Bay, from left to right.

As soon as we put them up, we loved the darkest blue, which is deeply pigmented with hints of purple. Husband was so enamored, he decided to paint a bigger swatch to get an idea of how it would look over a large area.

It's dark. But maybe with high-gloss white trim and white sheers on the windows, it would be gorgeous, we thought. We lived with it for a day or so, staring at the wall for long moments while getting a drink or cooking meals. Yesterday at church, Husband nudged me about halfway through the first meeting. The back of the pew in front of us was covered in a material that is very similar to the Cayman Bay blue we liked. We looked at each other and nodded. It's too dark.

So, Southern Breeze it is. That's the green one we first put up. The paint swatch looks a lot grayer in the store and much greener on our wall. It's very soothing, and it will look good in a semi-gloss finish (paint test pots only come in a flat finish, which reminds me of milk paint). All the trim will be high-gloss white, and eventually, we'll replace the current baseboards with a much taller baseboard. I like tall baseboards.

Speaking of boards, are you bored yet? I told you not to get me going on decorating ideas and colors. It's too late now. You didn't stop me in time and now I will tell you about my cunning plan for extra storage (and it does NOT involve a turnip. (That was a reference for you Black Adder fans out there.)) (Are double parentheses even legal? (and do I care?))

Here is the kitchen island as it currently stands. Blah, boring, builder's grade:

My cunning plan is this: At the end of the knee ledge, where the chairs are, I will add a vertical board and a new, higher eating ledge for people sitting at the counter. Not only will this better hide the island mess from people in the living or dining areas, but I will be left with a space under the counter for pull-out shelving units on each side.

If that doesn't make any sense, it's because I didn't explain it very well. Just trust me that it's a very cunning plan.

I'm going to go immerse myself in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. I'm nearly done, and I have found it an incredibly compelling book, even if I have to keep looking at the family tree at the front to keep track of who's who. I may or may not also be involved in cleaning things around the house. I can't promise anything except to fold some laundry because it gives me an excuse to watch a movie.

Flippin' 'Eck! I'm Still Going on About British Stuff!

I waited too long and the light was bad by the time I took this picture, but you can kind of get an idea of the color I plastered all over the kitchen wall. I really like it, but Husband is always more careful with his heart. We'll be trying some other colors before we come to a decision. Fortunately, one of my friends suggested some colors she has used in her house, and since they are in the right color family, I'll be checking those out and painting them on the wall.

I finished 12 pages of web text today. It took hours because I either had so much information it was a huge job to edit and turn into original content or too little information, which means I had to come up with something clever and marketable and related to whatever the website sells. My brain was sweating by the time I was finished. Well, it's a lady's brain, so it only perspired, of course. Delicately, and with ultimate feminine grace.

By the time I finished writing, I realized that the only thing I'd eaten all day was a chocolate chip cookie. No wonder my head was swimming. A quick meal of beans and cheese on toast fixed me right up. Some British things were never meant to be forgotten, and beans on toast is one of them, even if American baked beans are a world apart from British baked beans. I'm not saying one is better than the other, mind you. They're just different.

I remember buying cans of baked beans for 5 pence each and a loaf of bread for 20 pence at the grocery stores in England. When you're a poor missionary, that's a good, cheap meal. I ate a lot of beans on toast and rice with soy sauce during those months. I didn't know how to cook then. I also ate a lot of ramen noodles, but never the tomato flavored ones. I don't understand tomato-flavored ramen noodles. I may be judging an entire culture unfairly, but tomato-flavored ramen noodles are just wrong.

On the other hand, pickled onion-flavored potato crisps are so, so right!

In one of the areas I lived in, we used to pick blackberries from the wild bushes along the roadsides and apples from the tree in the backyard, which belonged to the people we lived with. We made pie with them. Doused in custard (another British culinary star), it was delicious.

I still use my knife and fork British style. It's so much more logical than the American style, which involves a lot of picking up and setting down of the knife. That's time wasted when you could be eating.

Well, let me get my old bones out of this rocking chair. I've been settin' a spell, and my fingers are just a-ramblin' on with all these memories.

P.S. When you say "tuna" in England, it always sounds like "chuna." Whenever I cook with tuna, I always see the face of the British missionary who pointed that out to me. I also see his face whenever I hear Prince on the radio. He really, really liked Prince.

Alter Ego

I know, I know. I'm lacking in the picture department again. I do plan to remedy that with an entire blog post dedicated to me making faces. Or not. I was thinking about doing a sort of "My Day in Pictures" idea, but you'd all be very bored to see 100 photos of me sitting at my computer cranking out web text. I might still do it but just pretend that my life is crazy and adventurous -- even a little dangerous! (cue Mission:Impossible theme music. Doom, doom, DOOM DOOM, doom, doom, DOOM DOOM, BAH dah yah! BAH da ya...)I'll be sure to add the pictures of me cooking against all odds in the kitchen and making my bed on the very cusp of danger.

I should be careful. Being flippant about my fairly calm and mundane daily tasks might just jinx me with some horrible surprise or other. Goodness knows we don't need another one of those weeks like the one when we found out Husband had leukemia. Calm is good. Though I wouldn't mind the sudden announcement that we were going on vacation to somewhere lovely and completely catered, I like the ability to easily predict what will happen in my day.

Don't believe a word of it! She has the wanderlust so bad she has to make a conscious decision NOT to drive to Las Vegas every time she gets near the freeway.

Husband and I went to Home Depot and bought a test pot of paint. When we got home, I put a whole bunch onto the wall in the kitchen that isn't visible to anyone unless you walk all the way into the room. It's a gray green/blue, and I love it. It's so soothing.

She wants to paint the floors black, but Husband won't let her.

I had the remains of a roasted chicken in the fridge, so I made a homemade chicken-vegetable soup with whole wheat spiral noodles. It was pretty good because I put enough pepper in it to give it a kick. A buttered slice of sourdough bread made it a treat.

She fooled herself into thinking the kids would like it, but she found a bowl full of someone's rejected soup sitting on the floor for the cats, who didn't like it, either. She should have gone for pizza and blown every last cent in her checking account. C'mon! Throw caution to the wind!

All right. I guess an introduction is in order. Meet my alter ego, Aggressa.

That is the stupidest name I have ever heard. I prefer Isis. I call you Molly. And if you let me out more, we wouldn't have separate names. Remember when we were one and the same? Good times.

Anyway, I'll end this now before we have an argument and people think I've got a split personality.

Let's go to Las Vegas. Then we'll just keep driving until we hit the ocean.

Good night.