Following Jorge Cruise vs. Following Dr. Simeons Pounds & Inches Protocol

Ok.  So I had a(nother) baby (Nov. 2nd)
(That's big brother with our newborn pixie)
I started 'officially' trying to diet Dec 1st (I'd gained about 60 lbs but by Dec I'd dropped 10 lbs and was down to 180.)
Aaaaaand 2 months of dieting ala Jorge Cruise later...

By Feb 1st I'd only lost 5.4 lbs.
(you can see my progress here)
So, basically that's 5 1/2 lbs in 62 days.
That's less than 1 lb per week.
That's less than 1/2 a lb per week! That stinks!!!
At that rate it would take me MORE than a YEAR to lose the 50 lbs I need to shed!!!

Ok, now let's compare that to following Dr Simeons Pounds & Inches Protocol:
I 'officially' started his protocol on Feb 11th (with the homeopathic version of HCG in a spray).
Today is Feb 17th.
I have followed his protocol for 1 week so far and shed 6.2 lbs. thus far.
So in 7 days I lost MORE than I lost in 62 days of constant dieting? Hmmm.

What this says to me, is:
a) I wasn't following Jorge Cruise's plan properly somehow?
or
b) Jorge Cruise's plan can work if you are not breastfeeding?
or
c) Jorge Cruise's plan does not work for me.

I dunno.  His plan worked for my mom, she shed a pound a day for 20 days.  (Then she lost interest.)
But me, maybe breastfeeding made me too hungry to eat small enough portions? Or maybe my overall daily calorie intake was just simply too high? (but he says you don't need to count cals!)  - I was eating full fat cottage cheese, and creamy sauces on my veggies  - low carb, but maybe too high in calories?  Funny thing is, as an exclusively breastfeeding mom, I'm supposed to be burning 500+ cals daily just by feeding my baby, so you'd think I be buffered and able to eat high cal as long as I avoided sugars and starches, which I DID!  Ugh.  Oh well. It's a mystery to me, maybe someday I'll understand more about how hormones and weight gain/loss works.  For now, I am just SO HAPPY that I had Dr Simeon's Pounds & Inches and HhCG in my back pocket and that I decided to get back on protocol!!!!

On a side note, baby is nursing fine,she's not fussing, lot's of wet and poopy diapers, and I still occasionally leak therefore I think my milk supply is fine, - all fine - and she has moved on to size 3-6 mos clothes -  and best of all I'm noticeably less hungry(!).  Hardly hungry at all except a bit at mealtimes (which is exactly how it should be, right?!) Thanks to the HhCG spray.  Normally I'm quite hungry and was snacking 2x daily (Jorge Cruise sanctified snacks like a cheese stick), but now, on the spray, I eat my 2 meals and I'm good.  Wowzers.  Seriously, ask any breastfeeding mom about hunger and she'll tell you she's pretty hungry all the time.  But we're not hungry on the spray, why? Well I believe it's because on the spray, your bloodstream is flooded with the formerly stored calories that have now been released from your fat cells.  An average of 2500 to 3500 calories per day.  So your bodily needs are satisfied plus you are eating an additional 500 cals, so your tummy is satisfied.  And, as a nursing mom, I'd like to posit the theory that I am asking my body to release even more calories - to nourish my HhCG 'baby' as well as make milk for my real baby.  I think this may be true, because I have lost an average of one pound per day on protocol, but the average for women is 1/2 a lb per day. (For women.  Men average a pound a day on protocol, the mean bastards! hahaha)
Whatever the science is behind it all, it works.  Wow am I happy it works too!
If you'd like to join me in shedding weight quickly and healthfully, email me for a link to the product I'm using, or you can buy a very similar-though not exact-spray from Suzanne at Protocol2Health -who's link is posted on the right under 'Order your HCG Spray'.

Stay tuned, I'm gonna keep on blogging and shedding! That's my promise to you AND to myself.

Feb 8, 2012 172.2lbs and a note on breastfeeding and a question of when to start the spray

Gee whiz.  This is some slow going weight loss. :(  It's been a week of Jorge Cruisin and I'm sure not moving downward as fast as I'd like!  If I was on HhCG I would have shed about 10 lbs by now, not 3-ish.  Ho hum.
At least it's downward!  I'm tempted to start to spray, I really want to see some progress before spring!  There's Veronica - she likes to see her Mama happy! :)

A note about breastfeeding - I've been waiting to start the spray because I am breastfeeding my now 3 month old baby.  No formula, no bottles...and I'd like to continue exclusively breastfeeding her even after I start spraying with the HhCG.  I did just fine before with my baby Lucy, who was 8 mos old when I started the HhCG spray, my milk did not seem to diminish at all...but that's the thing - I don't really know.  (Please don't tell me I would have 'known' if I was pumping into bottles - the pump never extracts as much milk as baby does, so that is a completely misleading way to measure.)  What I do know is she never seemed extra fussy or hungry, had zillions of wet and poopy diapers and I still had enough milk to occasionally soak through my shirt if I went too long between nursings (ugh) ...and she grew and grew and grew.  And I shrank and shrank.  Gosh I'd sure like to shrink like that again(!).Got a bottle just sitting here, waiting for me to be ready(!!!)...

Another concern some people have about breastfeeding while on HhCG is that one's fat stores are also where toxins are stored and that to release fat means to release toxins into breastmilk and thus 'toxify' the nursing baby with the weight-shedding mother's milk.  Well, bah, I say.  My body, however 'toxic' it may be, made a baby - and then it fed a baby for nearly two years, and she is big and smart and talkative and sweet - she's a good one, and I did not poison her by losing weight while breastfeeding her.  Not that I didn't worry and do a bunch of research and have her weighed at a bunch of random well-baby visits, I did.
Dr Jack Newman convinced me I was doing the best for my baby AND myself when I read his article about toxins in breastmilk.  Ultimately, he says that a baby's best defense against toxins is to be breastfed.  And I knew it was in my best interest to lose weight for all the usual health reasons - my blood pressure was high after the birth of Lucy, my mom and grandpa had diabetes, etc, but also because my 'mental health' was suffering and my family was suffering in that I was really unhappy fat and felt stuck at 200lbs - because I was stuck at 200 lbs! Anyhow, you know that story if you read around on this blog.  So I felt like, for me, I needed to lose the weight and baby Lucy was old enough to be ok if my milk dried up.

So now, I wonder...I did ok before...should I try?  I feel healthy and strong, been eating good, wholesome and organic foods...fruits AND veggies (yay for veggies) and taking vitamins...maybe I could,...and it wouldn't just be for me, but also an experiment for all you moms out there whose weight is stuck fast...hmmm.  I could lose weight for the greater good? Hahaha maybe!

Ok, lastly, I wonder if my body is even sensitized to the HhCG yet since I'm only about 3 months post partum...?  Dr Simeons would have his patients on the actual HCG hormone and they would become immune or de-sensitized to it over time and so he'd have them re-sensitize by taking longer and longer breaks between rounds...I think 90 days was the longest break he'd prescribe...

Well, if I were to get pregnant right now, I'd start making my own massive amounts of HCG anyhow, right? To nourish the growing fetus, right?  And I'd still be nursing baby Veronica of course, as I've nursed all my babies while preggers with the next, with no complications and with my doctor's approval? Hmmm.  I know when making your own HCG while pregnant, you make a whole lot between week 7 and week 16 (peaks at millions of units) and then it tapers off, but at week 40, full term, you're still producing between 3400-117,000 thousanth international units per millileter (mIU/ml) (check out the chart here)...so that's a lot to de-sensitize from...but we do, right? To sustain the next pregnancy? Oh, I'm sure I'm over-simplifying the science...
...but I think I just talked myself into starting my spray!!!

Oh my goodness!
:D

Feb 1, 2012 = 175.4 lbs

Feb 1, 2012  - 175.4  =  +1.4lbs
Felt too sick to eat really 'well' (meaning low carb, I felt like I needed some fruit), after eggs and (veggie) sausage for breakfast I didn't feel so well and snacked a bit through lunch...cheese and salami and an apple, and 2 tangerines, and later a spoonful of peanut butter (no sugar) with a banana and then a cottage cheese and banana and yogurt smoothie for dinner...and about 50 almonds over the course of the day. Carbalicious.  And so I'm up today.  Well, today's a new day, and I'm feeling a bit better - wonder if it's all the Vitamin D I've dropped on my tongue these last few sniffly days?...

Jan 31, 2012 174 lbs

Howdy.  Here I am again, fat again. 174 at 5'5".
Yup, that's me last week, bringing in the cake for my 6 yr old's birthday.  Sorry it's blurry but if you think you're gonna see me standing still to get my picture taken - think again. No way.  More likely to get a shot of my rear as I hustle out of the frame. (Sheesh.) (Could be worse, but could be better!)
 It's my bodies fault, I can't seem to make a baby without making myself fat (see our new baby here) - I'm sure it's a hormonal thing - so, I'm trying to control my metabolic hormones with food, instead of with HhCG, for now, while the new baby is exclusively nursing.  Ok, so right now, since December 2011 I've been trying to follow Jorge Cruise's tenets: eat low low carbs, avoid sugars like the devil, and eat high protein and high fat.  But my weight is not dropping.  (Click to see my chart here.)  Alrighty.  So, I'm going to start tracking my foods on Fitday and then report back here with my calories - because I must be eating too many, or getting too many carbs or some such thing that I can't 'see' without getting more specific about it all.
Wish me luck! (and time and patience, and stamina, and health!  I need it!)  :D

The new baby :) and the baby weight :(

So, hello again.  I am delighted to announce the arrival of our newest family member, Veronica!

She's lovely, sweet and reasonable for a baby! Really, she's delightful.  A gift.  I'm so happy. About her.
I am less happy to acknowledge the lingering baby weight that accompanied her gestation.  Sigh.  It seems that I cannot make a baby without making myself fat.  Ok.  Happily, my baby is healthy and jolly and breastfeeding like a champ, no formula, no pumping here, her weight keeps climbing and she's outgrowing all her clothes - yay! - ...but my weight is stable.  Ugh. Ok, not exactly 'stable' like a rock, but  looking over my chart, I can see I've been losing and gaining the same 5-6 pounds for about 2 months.  Baby Veronica is now nearly 3 months old and I've been trying to 'Jorge Cruise' my eating every single day for these past 2 months.  That basically means I've been keeping carbs, sugar and hidden sugar completely out of my diet and keeping protein and fat high.  I've not eaten candy, cookies, ice cream, pizza, potatoes, bread, mac-n-cheese, or milk.   I will lose a pound and then see it come creeping back for no reason I can understand.  SO Frustrating.

Ugh.
I'm waiting to start another round of Ketomist HhCG spray till baby is 6 months old, because then I will be introducing solid foods, and though I imagine my milk supply will remain just fine, like last time with 8 month old Baby Lucy (who is now a delightful, super healthy 2 yr old!), I just don't want to risk it with such a young baby who depends on me entirely and I do not want to be forced into having to supplement her diet with formula - not that I would be, but I just don't want to take that chance.

Ok, so, yay I have Ketomist to bail me out of this fix, but why-o-why isn't Jorge's method working for me???????????? My suspicion is that I'm nursing and my hormones have 'locked' the weight on.
I'm going to start blogging on here my day-by-day progress to see if I (or you) can figure it out.
Hope to see less of me soon, but for now, I'll be here, all 173.8 pounds of me. :/

On blood sugar and weight...

 

=

Weight gain, weight loss, and maintainence: It's all about blood sugar.

Is eating fruit really equal to eating candy? Well, no, not really.  But the fructose in fruit and the sugar in candy really do affect blood sugar in dramatic ways. 

Blood sugar, blood glucose. Phase 3 and beyond is all about maintaining the happy levels of blood sugar and metabolic hormones such as insulin and leptin and ghrelin that we were able to achieve by following protocol for 6 weeks, eating no table sugars, and 'eating' (or, really, "re-eating") all those stored calories released by the spray from our own fat stores.

If a person were to eat meals designed to continue to keep blood sugar levels stable, that person will have great success in P3a+b and beyond. I think some people are stumbling onto that way of eating because it works - and if you start out P3 with level blood sugars and stable metabolic hormones, (and in finishing P2, that's exactly what has happened) then it is amazingly easy to continue eating foods that keep our blood sugar levels stable - for example, the people who report back that the nibble of cake tasted 'nasty!' to them - because we don't need the cake anymore to bring us up from a low sugar drop - we no longer ride the sugar rollercoaster! :)

Now, if a person goes into P3 with the idea that 'I am used to eating tiny amounts of food now and I'll just eat a tiny bit more - maybe a salad- and maybe I'll lose even more weight!' that person's body will sense the lack of calories right away and that person will GAIN.
Why?
Because that person's body will go into 'starvation mode'. What does that really mean? Going long periods without eating causes a dip in blood sugar. And then when some bite of food is eaten, the body overreacts with a big insulin surge. And since insulin is a fat-storing hormone, you end up storing whatever calories you just ate, instead of burning them as fuel. NOT what we want.
What we want, because it will allow us to maintain our LSW, is called glucose homeostasis— a constant blood-glucose level.

I believe that Dr Simeons, had he lived to see all the nutrional information available to us today, I believe he would have concluded that all of us were in a pre-pre-diabetic state, and over-sensitive to carbs and BECAUSE we were able to effect such drastic lifestyle/food choice changes while on the HCG hormone, we were able to stop the raging internal floods of insulin and leptin and ghrelin among others which work together to control hunger and appetite and metabolism.
(Leptin wasn't discovered until 1994, and ghrelin not till 1999. Obestatin, another hunger hormone, was even more recently discovered in 2005. All play key roles within the hypothalimus and are key factors of metabolism. Do we understand these fully yet? I doubt it, but we're trying.)

In P3, if a person is having trouble maintaining, I believe it is one of two things; either they are not eating enough calories (starvation mode=insulin surge when some food IS eaten=weight gain), OR they are eating too many carbs(sugars) in the form of yogurt, nuts, and especially fruit (fructose) (sugars in the blood stream=insulin surge=weight gain). Some people are even doing a bit of both(!) -  hardly eating enough and then when they do eat, it's with too much focus on yogurt, nuts and fruit, not enough protein and fat or vegetables.  Eat your veggies.  The fiber keeps blood sugar stable.


You can enjoy eating your vegetables by making them calorie dense - put the calories on top -
Think brocolli with cheese sauce, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, artichokes too, eggplant and zucchini grilled in olive oil, cole-slaw made with homemade mayonaisse and stevia, not sugar, celery spread with peanut butter or cream cheese, zucchini in olive oil alongside chicken kabobs, etc. When you eat chicken, eat 'Chicken Piccata'! That sauce is 304 calories alone! Or make baked chicken with mozzarella on top! Yum! 170 calories for 2 slices!

Blood sugar. Eating protein and fat helps keep blood sugar stable, and slows down insulin's entry into the bloodstream. If you avoid sugar and starch, you almost totally avoid an insulin spike, almost. But if you also avoid starvation mode and eat less yogurt, nuts and fruits and more proteins and fats, then you WILL keep blood sugar stable. And you will NOT gain.

If you were to start your day without fruit, I think you would have a better day. Fruit contains the simple sugar fructose which sends the body a signal to produce insulin to deal with the sugar load. So you get a spike in insulin, and an insulin spike = weight gain! You can slow down the insulin response by eating fructose (ok; fruit) with proteins and fats, (like an apple with peanut butter) but the higher the insulin spike, the bigger the weight gain. Body builders avoid fructose almost entirely. If we really limit our fruit intake, and ONLY eat it with proteins/fats, such as an apple WITH peanut butter, or strawberries WITH whipped cream/stevia and vanilla - and limit the strawberries to 4 or 5, then I believe we'd do much better. (The best fruit for morning, if you really love it seems to be the ol' 1/2 grapefruit eaten along WITH your eggs and all.)

A large person requires a large amount of calories to nourish that person without he or she slipping into 'starvation mode'. However, it IS possible to eat a large amount of calories without gaining weight, overeating or even feeling 'stuffed' or bloated. Check out my  'Olive oil'  post - that's a plan for how to eat 3200 calories comfortably - and that's without coconut flakes, larabars, or creamy Piccata sauce!

So, that's my theory, based on my best efforts to try and understand the 'why' of it all - My sources are The Mastering the Zone: The Next Step in Achieving SuperHealth and Permanent Fat Loss books by Dr Barry Sears, whose original focus was on helping diabetics, and Jorge Cruise's Belly Fat Cure which is all about the hidden sugars in our foods that are making us fat, Gary Taubes Why We Get Fat and What to do About it (maybe my favorite), and Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food (also a favorite)
...and my own P3 experiences, and my husband's, and in participating and learning on the Ketomist support site and also now, as I am trying to learn as much as I can as I try to help my aged parents battle full-blown diabetes. I'm doing loads of homework daily and plan to keep on updating here to share my growing understanding.
I want to get an 'A+' in this. :)