HCG Diet Information Lose Weight Now

No matter if you are doing the HCG diet protocol, south beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers, whatever — one thing will be consistent…

DON’T DRINK YOUR CALORIES!!!

As a person who rarely drinks water and usually prefers a lovely Mt. Dew, I can tell you this for sure.  Drinking your calories is a complete waste.  That average soda of yours is essentially a meal.  That diet soda?  Sure no calories, but not really great for you.  Trust me on this one as someone who has had 4 instances of kidney stones and one surgery — soda is NOT good for you.

Whatever your weight loss plan is, I can tell you that drinking AT LEAST a half a gallon of water will make a HUGE difference.  In the days that I forget to drink water, I remain stagnant in weight loss regardless of how little I ate and saved in my plan.  When I drink a half to a full gallon of water throughout the day, I am much more effective at seeing immediate and gradual weight loss when used in conjunction with my plan.

So my tip?  I like to *see* what I consume.  So I use bottles of water from Costco.  I make sure I try to drink 3 in the morning, 3 at lunch and 3 in the evening.  This would be a gallon of water.

Hope this helps!  Drink that water!

We conquered Disneyland (and in the rain)!  Being away from the comfort of your own prepared food portions for HCG diet was tough.  We brought the following with us:

• Stevia
• Bunch of apples (Fuji/Gala)
• Strawberries

We were going to bring some chicken and the George Foreman, but realized that just wasn’t going to work being with another family and our kids, etc.  We trudged along.  It was tough…real tough.  Being surrounded by delicious smelling food was really hard for me.  Here are our tips for where we went for some options:

• Jack-in-the-Box: Get order of grilled chicken strips (4) and Chicken Club salad.  On salad, remove everything but onions/lettuce/tomato (no cheese, bacon bits, etc).  Take one of the chicken strips from the 4-piece and add it to the salad (you get 2 with the salad).  Separate the salad in half (order an extra bowl).  Cut up the chicken into pieces and put some mustard and hot sauce on it and mix it together.  Add some salt/pepper, then add to salad.  This order is for 2 people.
• In-n-Out: Protein burger, just burger, grilled onions, tomato.  Add mustard, salt pepper.  This sucked for me.  NO flavor what so ever.  But it killed any hunger pains, just didn’t taste great.
• Del Taco: 3 chicken soft tacos – order with just chicken, lettuce, tomato.  NO cheese/sauce.  Take the contents of the tacos out and mix together with hot sauce (mild).  Eat.  This was hands-down my favorite.  Better than the Jack-in-the-Box variety.  Perhaps because it was shredded lettuce.  (note: 3 soft tacos contains about 100g meat).
• Chili’s- Fajita’s – don’t get the mix, just get the chicken.  Ask wait staff to ensure no cooking in oil and no oil on the skillet.  Split the portion between 2 people.  Tasty.  Grilled vegetables were really good.  Watching our friends enjoy fried jalapeno and onion strips was hard :-(.

We made it out alive though.  Because we didn’t have a scale we were not motivated at all.  There were times we said we’d quit.  All we could think about was better tasting food (not necessarily larger portions).  Having the apples was huge (strawberries just didn’t keep well traveling).  We kept some in our backpack as we walked around Disneyland.

This morning we both got up and I was at 205 – down 10.5 overall an 4 from the beginning of the trip.  I was hoping for it to read 200, but I’m semi-motivated to keep going.  Tomorrow may be judgment day for us.  As I’m traveling next week on business it will be even harder than Disneyland.  Wish me luck!

Day 13-14: 205 pounds.

I woke up this morning after not a great day yesterday.  Nothing to do with food or weight loss, just a blah day with life and work.  Did my routine, got on the scale, 208.5!!  1.5 pound weight loss from the previous day.  This is great!  I’m starting to question myself and wonder if this initial weight loss is really HCG diet or just normal water weight loss.  Regardless it feels good.

For food yesterday, we stuck to the plan pretty much.  For dinner I put talapia resting on 2 sprigs of asparagus, coated with lemon/oregano, then baked in an aluminum pouch in the oven for about 18 minutes.  Delicious.  I don’t know why I’ve seen people claim that food tastes bland on the HCG diet plan.  We’ve been using some really great recipes that follow the protocol and add a lot of great flavor.  In fact, so far it’s been some of the best dinners we have had at home in a long while! 

We’ve also realized that the George Foreman grill is a great asset to our house.  We got it as a gift years ago and thought of it as a novelty.  Now I think we’ll be using it more.  Once you realize that you were cooking too much, then you realize that your portioned food can be cooked quickly, easily and faster using something like the George Foreman Grill.  Our family is two adults and two VERY picky children eaters.  We would always cook book recipes and end up with a TON of leftovers because our kids wouldn’t like them.  Well, I think we’ll be changing the way we cook.

Today’s meal plan:

• Mid-morning Apple (Gala variety)
• Lunch: BBQ Chicken with Tomato splashed with a homemade Balsamiq Strawberry dressing, Melba toast
• Dinner: not sure yet, perhaps another variety of fish, or a light grilled chicken salad
• Evening snack: sliced apples dusted with cinnamon

TIP: I save my second fruit for a ‘dessert’ after dinner.  It’s been working out well to quench any hunger desires in the evening.

Day 6: 208.5 pounds!

I know I’m only a few days into it right now, but I can tell you now that the single most piece of advice i think is valid is:

PREPARE YOUR FOOD PORTIONS IN ADVANCE!

If you are going to do the HCG diet for maximum weight loss then you are going to need to stick to the plan in a strict way.  For me, when I was hungry I scavenged.  I found anything that was ‘ready to eat’ – and most of the time it was crap junk fatty foods or fast food.  I was lazy (still am really).  There was food to prepare in my house, but it wouldn’t be done for longer than what I wanted to wait – this was my justification.

Don’t get into that trap with the HCG diet plan!  In order to stick to the 500 calorie diet, you’re going to need to think ahead.  Not in terrible detail down to the measurement of spices and such, but plan for the big moments.  You already know by reading the plan that your main meals will consist of 100 grams of some meat protein: chicken, veal, white fish, beef.  But guess what – no grocery sells in 100 gram portions!  Chicken I think will be most common for everyone on the HCG diet.  Here’s what I did (and recommend).

Go to Costco, Sam’s Club or some other large supplier.  Get their pack of chicken breast (boneless, skinless…ideally without rib meat).  Take it home and begin to portion it.  GET A FOOD SCALE!  Food scales are $9 at Wal-mart.  Unless you can perfectly eye-ball 100 grams, get a food scale!  Get your cutting board and knife ready and a bunch of plastic zip-loc bags.  For me, I found that the Costco chicken breast was about 100 grams when cut in half diagonally.  Once I measured the first two cuts on the scale, I could breeze through the preparation.  When the breast felt larger, I stopped to measure.  At the end of this task I had portioned out 100 grams of chicken individually.  Now when mealtime came, I had less to prepare, only something to cook.

NOTE: If you get the chicken with the rib meat, make sure you trim that off before you portion.

Some things might make this difficult (fish, for instance).  Since beef was allowed in small moderation, I only bought 3 filets of beef and portioned them out as well.  Having these readily available has helped already and I know will help in times of hunger.  Our time from ready to table is significantly reduced.

We also did this with our fruit – not cutting it really but having it washed and ready to eat.  When I go for my strawberry fix, I just pull 8 strawberries out of the bowl and eat them.  No fussing with washing and unpackaging things.

So two tips here: Buy a food scale and portion your food as much in advance!

I woke up this morning after going to bed early to stop thinking about food.  Got up, went to the bathroom and weighed myself.

TIP: Make sure you weigh yourself on the same scale, the same time and wearing the same clothes (or none).

I’m happy to report that I am at 213 pounds…that’s 2.5 pounds lighter than when I started on the HCG Diet.  It’s pretty motivating results.  I suppose of course if you only ate 200 grams of meat in one day you’d suspect a pretty decent drop.

I’m hoping to see this trend continue (safely and healthy) while on the HCG Diet for me.  I’m excited!

I’ve also set up a Twitter account so if you want to follow my little thoughts and daily weight updates that way, please feel free to head on over there (link on the right side of the blog here) or directly here.

Today’s meal plan:

• Morning Apple (Gala variety)
• Lunch: chile chicken (chicken cooked in spicy sauce), lettuce, Melba toast.
• Drinks: going to try some of the fruit flavored green teas with Stevia and I’ll report back.
• Dinner: Talapia fish cooking in garlic sauce, tomato, Melba

Seriously though…immediate results!  The HCG Diet could be the thing that gets me on the road to healthier sustaining eating and exercise.  I hope so!

Day 3: 213 pounds

Today was the first day on the real diet.  This day was met with the realization that I didn’t plan well in acquiring the food in my home to be prepared for the daily diet required for the HCG diet plan.  I did my drops and made a list…skipping breakfast, but not skipping bottles of water.

I went to Costco to load up.  I got chicken breasts, strawberries, oranges, apples, shrimp and a few other things.  I also went and got the Melba Toast snacks for the bread portion.  This was the first time my shopping cart looked healthy.  Ever.  It was a good feeling.

I should say that I woke up on Day 3 with a slight headache.  I am not one to get headaches at all.  This was a warning sign.  My wife, who is also doing the HCG diet with me, woke up with a bad headache and we had to skip our morning church.  My wife gets migraine headaches every once-in-a-while, so any headache is a big one.  This one was no different.  Let this be a warning to you — it seems pretty common that you’ll get a headache using the HCG diet plan.

We came home and realized neither of us knew what 100 grams of food looked like.  We borrowed a food scale — I highly recommend getting one, even a cheap one for the HCG diet plan — to measure our chicken.  Once you see what 100 grams of chicken looks like you get a little frightened.  We took our Costco batch of chicken and divided it all up into 100 gram portions.  This is a piece of advice from many — make sure you have pre-portioned food so that you don’t have to wait and can just pull something out and prepare it.

Lunch was: 100g of chicken, 2 slices tomato, 1 melba toast, water with half lemon and a Stevia sweetener.

And it wasn’t that bad.  I felt okay and moved on.  I didn’t have the snack (fruit) in between lunch and dinner and just decided to wait for dinner.

I decided to cook dinner and made curry shrimp on grilled romaine lettuce.  I took a small romaine head of lettuce and split it down and put some salt/pepper on it and threw it on the grill on a low heat.  In the meantime, I measured 100 grams of shrimp (about 5 of a 20-25 size shrimp) and put the portions aside.  The sauce they cooked in was 1/8 cup water, cumin/curry powder, garlic and onion.  When served, I strained the shrimp out of the pan, not pouring the sauce over the meal.  It was basically a warm shrimp salad.  And it was delightful.  The Melba toast was an added bonus :-).

Not soon after dinner, I felt starving (and another headache).  I remembered that I didn’t have my fruit yet and that I could take advantage of that.  I grabbed 7 strawberries, cut them up in a bowl and sprinkled Stevia on them.  Yum.  It was good and just the treat I needed to push me over the edge.

Day 1 is complete and I cannot wait to weigh in tomorrow.