Saturday 10 September 2011

Stabilized?

After 5 days of fasting,  my weight has settled in at the region of 63.5 - 64.2kg region, which I am really thankful for! I have been mixing my diet with starch and occasional sugar (limited amount for both) as suggested. For Iftar, I would have proteins and vegetables, and one or two pieces of banana fritters, one or two spoonful of rice and lots and lots of green tea with apple cider vinegar. 

Later in the evening, I would have a glass of low-fat milk and some almonds or fruits. For sahur, our early morning meal, usually I would green tea and fruits. On one or two occasions I have had a piece of wholemeal bread with curry gravy and on another occasion I just had my grilled tofu with a little soy sauce and a half boiled egg. I am glad that the scale did not show any increase in weight once I have incorporated starch and sugar into my diet. 

The KEY I now know is that, it must be a balanced diet comprising of roughly 40% protein, 40% vegetables and fruits, 10% carbohydrate and usually fat would take the remaining 10% (usually MORE!). The higher percentage of protein necessitates higher water intake to wash of the products of metabolism, which is no hardship for me. I drink it by the gallon! It also kept the hunger pangs at bay and gave me a sense of fullness.

Today is my last day of optional fasting although I have a few more days to replace. The fasting had helped control whatever damage the eating spree during the decadent Eid had caused and once this fasting is over, the  real challenge will begin. Once I started having my 3-4hourly meals, once I fulfill the open houses invitation, the hospital Eid do etc, I hope I can still eat reasonably well and maintain this weight.With exercise and gym trips, I hope to lose a little more to reach my ideal weight. I do have to shake a few more kilos and have been tossing the idea of Round 2 back and forth with MG. I guess the next few weeks weight control will let me know if I have to do it or not. What say you?


Wednesday 7 September 2011

Annnddddd,,,, We are Back on Track!

3rd day of optional fasting in Syawal and I am back in the 65kg region. Phewwwww.!.. What a relief! My appetite too seemed to be behaving itself and I no longer want to gorge and gorge. I am trying to eat more and more protein with veggies and fruits and minimize the starch and sugar. I do take them but in smaller portions. Helped with plenty of water, green tea, apple cider vinegar and clenx tea every other day, I hope to maintain a healthy weight before considering Round 2 if need be.



3 more days of optional fasting then I will take a break to enjoy Eid with my friends and then continue to fast to replace the ones I missed during Syawal! Hope that will help too

Have a good day people!






Monday 5 September 2011

The Week That Was....

Decadent, sinful, damning and fattening, that was Eid! 

A week away from home and the weighing scale ( I was not about to lug my digital scale from home to PD to JB and back again!) and surrounded by family and loved ones. In the center of it all was food, glorious food. Everywhere we go, people kept wanting to feed us and we continued to want to feed others and ourselves. Don't get me wrong, there wasn't any force-feeding required, we all fell victim to it merrily and happily, loosening the zipper of pants and skirts to accommodate food and more food. We had to simply taste this and that, a pinch of this and a pinch of that here and there and it all accumulated to the pounds and inches we've worked so hard to lose a few weeks ago. 

I gained 2kg in a week. Luckily the size S kebarung still fits nicely today when I tried it on. I had been mediocrely good, trying to stick to protein (amidst the high fat and sugar they were cooked in) and fruits all through the week but i bowed to the creamy and sugary cookies... they were just too yummy to ignore. 

Well, that was Eid and the week that was.I had a fantastic time and won't let the over-indulgence spoil it.


Let's get back on track and try to shake off that extra 2kg (66.2kg currently) or more this week. I have started fasting the optional 6 days during Syawal, am praying and hoping for His approval first and the loss of the re-gained kilos second! Insyallah!Then it will be the gym and the lakeside jog after this, back to life and the harsh reality of aging and metabolism!

Did you all have a good Eid? I hope you all did. Healthy living from now on then, ok!



Monday 29 August 2011

Eid Is Here!

To our beloved family, friends and acquaintances, Have a Blessed Eid. Please forgive our wrongdoings and lets pray that we live another year for Ramadhan Al Mubarak!

Sunday 28 August 2011

The 'another day' had come and gone. I was better today than I had been the last few days since I started my menses. The hormone had finally settled down, I think! My appetite is less fierce and the cravings are more manageable and kept banked. The weight had gone down to 64.3 this evening and not strayed beyond 65kg. Thank You ALlah!

For iftar today, we bought 2 packets of beriyani, a murtabak and fried chicken from our neighborhood-friendly Mamak shop. I had 1/3 of the murtabak minus the skin, lots of the salad (cucumber, pineapple, mango, onion)and 2 slices of the kuih bakar MG had kindly packed for me this morning. Hopefully that would be all I eat tonight and maybe another apple later before I go to bed. I drank lots of plain water, coffee with stevia and milk; and green tea as well.

It is the 29th night of Ramadhan. I am sad because Ramadhan is leaving us so soon. This year I really felt that time just flew by in a blink of an eye.I face the coming Eid with mixed emotion, spritually as well as diet-cally! Eid is a religious occasion which has a festive air about it, and that means lots and lots of food! High starch and sugar kind of food. It really will be a challenge for me to go through this one week without overeating. Well, lets hope the buffer I have had with this Hcg diet will help me through this.

Have a blessed Eid! Eat as healthily as you can!

Saturday 27 August 2011

Off the track by a million miles!

I started fasting again today. Thank You, Allah for small mercies. The weight had crept up to 65kg. A number I had not seen for sometime now. The binging! All that sugar and starch!

Yesterday's iftar was at my in-law's place in PD.Mee Kari! I made them. Coconut gravy, lots of vegetables and a few protein source. I had 2 bowlful. It was good (even if i say so myself!) and that was my first 'proper' carbohydrate meal since stabilization and I am so going to pay for it for the rest of my life! And today, suicidally I made Kuih ketayap. A Malay delicacy which consists of flour based crepe wrapped around coconut cooked with palm sugar filling!I had a few of those... Yeah I know... I keep whining but I never stopped myself, right? Suicidal is right!
coconut cooked in palm sugar filling wrapped with flour based crepe!
Introducing starch and sugar slowly is no easy feat. Although I have decided to eat the way I ate in Maintenance for a while, just the fact that you are allowed those two taboos, is enough to venture into 'debauchery' as MG put it. It is so abundant and so available!

Well, tomorrow is another day, lets hope I do better and stay on track! Aminnnn.

Thursday 25 August 2011

Hungry Like A wolf!

I gave up! I tried sleeping, staying out of the house, drinking gallons of water + acv, exercising, locking myself in my room but to no avail. I am still very ,very hungry! I have had periods before and had been ravenous before but nothing like this! So much so, I took a saucer and filled it up with whatever cookies (chocolate chips, pineapple tarts, crunchy oatmeal cookies) that I had a hankering for and sat down at the kitchen table with a tall glass of ice water and had my fill. Of course, once that stupid idiotic lust had been fulfilled I felt really stupid and also like throwing up. But it did the trick and I stopped wanting to eat for at least 4 hours after that. I am such a glutton!

My next meal was around 630pm when I fed my two tots with the Mee Goreng Mamak I made for iftar. The noodles stir fried with chili, eggs, shrimp and lots of vegetables did nothing for me though. Neither does my Fish in chili sauce. I just ate the left over vegetables my kids wouldn't eat and had a glass of warm green tea for dinner. I am still superfull. Most probably from the sugar overload with the cookies.



I am hoping to fast tomorrow. Maybe its wishful thinking as my period usually runs on for about 5-6 days but I can still hope and pray, right? Not just for stopping my eating binge but also to grasp whatever is left of this Ramadhan! 

How was your iftar? Hope it wasn't as calorie-leadened as it was mine!

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Hormone Alert!

My appetite seems to be extraordinarily voracious today. I could understand the extreme thirst as I am having my period as of yesterday but what could be the reason of such a gargantuan appetite? 

Hormone! What else could it be? It has always been like this for me, especially if I am having particularly heavy flow. Somehow the body is trying to replace whatever is loss in some way or other. I gained almost a kilo today making my current weight 64.3kg. And here I was thinking, I'd be happy if I never see the number 64 again but it was not meant to be. I am happy nonetheless, as it is at the lower range of my LDW during transition which was 65.1. Lets hope I can keep it down once this spell of the month is over.I keep looking at the newly size S kebarung I bought for Eid. Let THAT be enough motivation for me eh?!

How is your preparation for Eid coming along, friends? I am hoping to make this as memorable and fun as possible for my two toddlers. The celebration of Eid after a month long fasting is something I want them to love and grasp the right concept of. 

Have a blessed night all!


Monday 22 August 2011

Stabilization : ME against MYSELF

I do not think I am going to have any problems eating during this Stabilization phase, I took to rice like a duck to water. I had the nasi impit for sahur this morning, two slices with the kuah lodeh, lots and lots of water and ACV. Then for iftar today, I did the suicidal thing and cooked rice in coconut milk (nasi lemak), chilli prawn, deep fried chicken again and lots of cucumber for ulam. I had 3 spoonful of the nasi lemak, 1/2 a chicken breast and lots of anchovies and a spoon of the prawn's chili. I also had some left over curry puff I made yesterday and some banana fritters. I think I must have overshot my daily calories requirement. I was eating like there would be no tomorow!

My period is here which partly explained my gargantuan appetite, plus I had a few guests over too. Yup, the usual excuse for over-eating! I am now feeling like a recently fed anaconda and is recumbent while typing this. Disgusting, right???

Well, I have to get up to prepare sahur anyway, so I hope I will not eat too much during sahur. and make matters worst! 

Stabilization : Just ME against MYSELF!

Lets stay healthy, friends!

Sunday 21 August 2011

1! - I have a plan!

Less than 24 hours to go to end my Maintenance phase. I am not really excited about it for I view eating now with some form of trepidations. Eating with no guidelines that is. After this, I must introduce sugar and starch slowly to my daily dietary intake. I have done without it for (roughly, cheating not counted) 49days and i haven't missed the bulk of it like rice or pasta. What I do miss is bread, whole meal ones. I told MG the first thing I am going to make that contain carbohydrate proper will be a sardine sandwich! Hehe, of all the things in the world! 

I hope and pray that I will maintain a healthy and balanced diet after this and will not gorge nor bow to any more gluttony in the future. My daily calories requirement will be 1913kCal and my basal metabolic rate is 1234kcal. If I want to shed the last few kilos to reach my ideal body weight of 59-62kg, I will have to reduce the calories intake and increase my activities (calories expenditure). Cest la Vie!  Eat moderately and eat regularly, chew slowly, include variety, exercise regularly and weigh myself daily. There! Does that sound like a plan?

I am having  a few guests over for Iftar today and have already made Nasi Impit, Kuah Lodeh, Sambal Kacang and I have the chicken marinating in my fridge to be deep-fried later. I also made Epok Epok Sardin (yes,Sardines is one of my favorite thing!) and later will make watermelon smoothie. I will just have the Kuah Lodeh with the fried chicken for Iftar and tomorrow for sahur will have the Nasi Impit as an introduction to rice (carbohydrate) again.

I don't know whether to continue this blog post Hcg diet. It has served its purpose and me well. A good place to rant and rave and let my frustrations out. I hope it has help others who read it as much as it had helped me!

 Selamat berbuka puasa, friends!

Saturday 20 August 2011

2!

Two more days to the end of Maintenance phase!

I had a bummer of a day yesterday. Well, actually I had a good day, with spending time with the tots at the mall, paying a visit to a good friend who was under the weather, baking my crunchy oatmeal cookies and a visit from MG(not-so-much-G anymore) with YD. It was the night, that got to me. For iftar, I had baked tofu with fish sambal and mixed vegetables stir-fried with fermented soya bean. All allowed within protocol! Then my daughter asked me for one of the crunchy oatmeal cookie i made that afternoon and from there onwards things went awry! I tasted one, it was yummy, crispy and crunchy, not too sweet and not too salty... then I had another and then another. I stopped at 3 and performed my prayer. Then my hubby had a taste and commented that it lacked something, so I took another one to determine what it was, and another and another... damn! I ended up eating almost 10pieces. That must be worth some 700KCal altogether. 

I tested MG about it and she commiserated. I felt really bad though, and it put me in one of the worse mood I had for a long time. I was mulling and regretting it and feeling sick to the bones about it that I couldn't concentrate on my son who wanted to do the jigsaw puzzle and build an aeroplane from his Lego blocks. My daughter took refuge with my niece who was baking another batch of chocolate chips cookie when I refused to change the TV channel to astro 611. I avoided the kitchen like the plague!

You are what you eat after all! The sugar I had consumed in one go must have short-circuited something! That and the nearing time of the month made me susceptible to mood swings. One bad deed really wiped out 46 days of good deeds.

So, the moral of the story is, DO NOT CHEAT! It'll make a monster out of you...


Stir-fried bitter gourd with prawns and bell peppers
For iftar today, I cooked bitter gourd stir fried with prawns and bell peppers, lamb curry and chicken soup!
I hope today is a better day than yesterday for all of us! Wishing all of you a Good 10 last nights of Ramadhan Al Mubarak! May we be able to reap the benefits Allah has bestowed on these 10 nights!

P/s : despite it all, i recorded a 700gms loss today. Current weight is 62.9kg. Huh???


Friday 19 August 2011

Monster

There's a monster
If you look inside your heart
You really have to be afraid
Of what you are

There's an anger
If you reach into your soul
And the sorrow that you know
Will boil away

And then a monster comes along
With the fury to carry on
And you cast your reasons aside
And you know you can destruct

So when you feel like hope is here
Look inside you and see the wrong
And you'll finally see the truth
That a monster lies in you


adapted from Mariah Carey's "Hero"

3!

Just 3 more days to Stabilization!!


Boy, do I have big plans for it! In a way though, THAT will be the real challenge to the new more health-conscious ME.Used to having guidelines and protocols from the previous phases, being let loose in the Stabilization phase is a bit daunting.It'll be just ME against MYSELF.....


Hopefully, the more health-conscious ME will prevail! If not maybe the new size S kebarung I bought for Eid might do the trick. Although it is loose and airy (as a kebarung should be), putting on weight post-Maintenance phase will make it tight and it will end up as a white elephant in my closet! God forbids! No more wasting money on such things I hope, with the help of the weighing scale and ingrained good habits developed from this diet.


It is a beautiful Friday morning here. I am off work today and plan to take the tots out for a while and maybe bake some more cookies to take home to my in-law's place when I go back for Eid. There will be an endless stream of visitors there for Eid and more people to share the calories around hehehe!

What are your plans for today and the weekend? Hope they are healthy ones! Have a good weekend!

Wednesday 17 August 2011

S is for shopping S size!

5 more days to end of Maintenance phase, the countdown begins! 

Let me tell you something about my day today, I had a little ME time today, as Ramadhan’s elective list are few and quite apart, and that left me with a little time to walk the mall and did a little unnecessary shopping today, but hey, what is money if it is not to be spent, right? 


Subang Parade was buzzing with people; I was there just before lunch time and lucky enough to get a parking spot without hassle. There are stalls all over the place and all of them are selling Eid’s stuff. I told myself that I needed to get the traditional baju kurung for my daughter, one which will fit into our color theme this year but in the end I ended up trying a few pairs for me as well. 

The sweetest and the darnedest thing happened then! I fit nicely into a size S pair of baju kurung! I had been around this weight (64.0kg) a year ago. I remembered because it was near Eid too and I also remembered that I had shopped at the same outlet that I liked and frequented in Subang Parade and had fit into M size snugly. This year though, when I tried the M size pair of baju kurung, it was loose! I asked the proprietor who recognized me as a regular customer if they had made the cut bigger this year, and she denied it. She even told me that I am slimmer now and needed size S! Woohoooooooo! Go Me!

Elation got the better of me that I bought my daughter’s pair right then and there but I refrained from buying mine. It is too much to take in. I have never been able to fit into a conventional S size before! I have been an M, L, XL and even XXL but never an S in my entire life! 

Just to make sure though, I went to two other shops at random and tried on their S sized baju kurung. Voila! Nice fit! Although I have to admit that my bum is really in dire danger of disappearing! But who cares! I am so loving it! Just you wait my friends, your time will come too!

SO, what is for iftar? I will be having prawns in chilli with tapioca shoots cooked in coconut milk with sardines. No sweets today, as I am determined to be protocol correct for the next 5 days until my Maintenance phase is over! 

Happy iftar people, hope your dishes are as nutritious as they are healthy and tasty!

Tuesday 16 August 2011

A week to freedom!

The weight is stabilizing at 63.5 to 64.5, not too bad! Being greedy, I would have love it if it goes down further to 62kg as my ideal body weight is 57-62kg but MG hinted and hinted and then said it out loud that the ‘skeleton’ look is so out of date and doesn’t suit me at all. Well, there goes my modeling ambition into smoke, poof!

The last few days have been protocol-crazy, starting from Saturday’s baking galore (chocolate chips cookies the 3rd batch) to Sunday’s family iftar at my in-laws’ and Monday’s chocolate banana muffin feast. Granted, I had only 1 chocolate chips cookie for taste, a few non-protocol friendly spring rolls and a pinch of the chocolate banana muffin but I must have overshot my 1500 calories intake and I could feel the thickening around my waist. Sugar is so NOT good for you!

chocolate banana muffin - there are still plenty of left over banana in my house

This is my last week of Maintenance and was planning on being extra good so that my hypothalamus will only have good memories regarding my metabolism and will be very active and fierce against any fat and carbo which i may consume in the future, but as usual, the best laid plans will go awry. Today I have an iftar do at the hospital. The main course would be briyani and all the trimmings. For dessert, we are bringing potluck hence the chocolate banana muffin (I have bananas coming out of my ears from our kebun in PD). i heard there are other delicacies the others are bringing, like Kuih Buah Melaka, Caramel Pudding etc etc. I am ok with the sweets, its the savories that I can't resist! Well,  I hope they have non-oily protein and vegetable dish which is protocol friendly so I could at least do some damage control. 

Have a good, healthy and productive day ahead!

Monday 15 August 2011

A day with the Family

Whine alert! This is a whiny post, brace yourself before reading further :-D

Most times, I really feel good about being in this diet, the no-carbo, low-fat and high protein and high vegetables and fruit diet makes me feel good about the healthy choices I am making. At other time though, I just can’t wait for this diet to be over. Yesterday, at my in-law’s place where we gather to iftar together was one of those times that made me wish I could fast forward time to end of my Maintenance phase. Why? Because, almost everything that I made there, contained carbohydrate. I have no real hankering for rice or pasta or mee hoon and I wasn't afraid that i was going to gobbled up those but I did not want to offend the host by not eating the rice, which is a great thing in most Malay families. 


As per norm, when family gets together, the thing that womenfolk do is cook and cook and cook. From 12noon yesterday until around 2pm we made mini spring rolls with chicken floss filling which we then deep fried for Eid. It was a tedious and time-consuming process. Then at around 3pm I started on the food for iftar, which was vegetable and chicken spring rolls (ok, by now I am sure u would know that I love spring rolls!), fried vermicelli with chili and chicken bits, catfish in coconut milk with chili and turmeric, bitter gourd stir-fried with shrimps and shallots and durian cooked in coconut milk and palm sugar. None of these were P3 friendly and my safest bets were the catfish and bitter gourd. Try eating that without rice in front of the whole family! You were sure to get some serious stare and snide comments which I just let whizzed by. When desert time came, I told them I was stuffed and prefer to sit it out and maybe have it later but let myself be cajoled into having the vegetable and chicken spring rolls, the lesser evil, rather than the durian porridge which was sugar-loaded. I hated being the focus of attention and ate a few more of those spring rolls just to stop the tongue wagging! Duhhhh!!


In a way though, I think it will be a good practice for me to prepare for the life post-hcg diet, where it is just you against yourself. No more protocols of the phases! I can’t be avoiding carbohydrate all my life; it is not healthy as we need all the food component to make a balanced and healthy meal, but I can control the when and the how much. We just need to know which portion to take more and which to take less. It all boils down to the simple math of calorie input and output, just like our charts of the monthly income and expenses!


Speaking of which, I better get to work and earn my living for now, have a good day people!

Saturday 13 August 2011

Rumination:

Something for a friend who might be embarking on this diet soon:


As anyone with an ounce of brain will know this diet is full of challenges. I am beginning to accept that it looked deceptively simple and yet it is so complicated! Well, the only simple thing about it, is the loading phase in which you are encourage to eat. Not just eat, but to eat as much as you can, foods which are rich in fat! The mind boggles but there it is, the simplest phase. When you enter the core phase, the protocol is the only thing that is simple, 500calories or less per day with HCG drops/tablets/pellets or injections. Two different proteins, two different vegetables and two different fruits at two different times. There is more than just what you DON’T eat that brings the weight loss but it is the chemical reaction between food and food as well as the interaction with your body with the HCG. Huh? Yeah, huh is right!

If you are good and perfect on protocol (POP), weight loss occurs. You smile every morning after you have voided and stand on the scale. Sometimes you might stall, with the same weight for three days then on the fourth day you will be rewarded with a 1kg loss! 

The problem starts when you cheat, especially if you were me. I cheated on a spoon of kuah rojak, and my weight stalled for 3 days. I cheated with a bite of chicken beriyani and I went up half a kilo. Some people are luckier than the others I guess, they cheat with 3 pieces of chicken, kuih this and kuih that and they only stalled AND there are others who would still LOSE!  

Cheats are the constant challenge that you have to face throughout this diet. If you are at home and your family has been informed that you are on this very serious diet, not much temptation will challenged you. Well, maybe a few stares and bemused smile your other half shot at you from time to time. Sometimes it could be a pitying smile when he saw that you are slurping on your cabbage and shrimp soup while he was tucking in plain white rice, lamb curry and stir fry mixed vegetables with shrimp etc, which YOU prepared for him! Those are minor challenges and you could brush away that one with a nonchalant wave of your hand. 

The real challenge for me was, I think, when there is a social event like the time I went back to my mum-in-law’s for a pre ramadhan do. It wasn’t the food that really got to me, it was the socializing and the constant urging and questioning to eat and eat and taste and taste! Too much explanation and too much advises to take then. 

Anyway, by now you would probably know what a weakling I am so I succumbed. I tasted and I ate. And I paid! Then comes the more complicated part of correction day. An apple day or a mini steak day, and it worked too! Whatever you gained would drop again, albeit a little slower but you would be progressing instead of stagnating. I don’t know what the chemical reaction in that correction but I am thankful that there is such a thing!

Then suddenly your core phase is over. You’ve breezed through it with the help of your fellow-sufferers and sifu. Being used to eating 500kcal and losing weight, you are suddenly supposed to increase your calories intake. You can eat anything EXCEPT starch and sugar. That means double the protein; add milk and oil into your diet. It sounds simple but actually, at least for me, it was not! After 26days of eating fat and carbohydrate free diet, my system protested at the re-introduction of fat, so much so I feel nauseous when I look at deep-fried stuff. 

But that too shall pass; the trick is to re-introduce it to your body slowly. Don’t rush it, fat is everywhere and it is definitely easier to eat more fat then less. 

Now at Maintenance Day13 and at a weight that I am happy with, I could look back and say, I’ve done good! So can you! Happy eating healthily friends!To a slimmer and healthier you!

Another phase awaits...

12th day of Maintenance and I weighed in at 63.5kg. Happiness! My weight loss is going on to 11kg. I’ve surpassed my target but I am happy to lose more because with Eid around the corner it is better to have a good weight buffer! So far I have been taking 800-1000kcal per day but today I have increased it to almost 1300kcal just 200kcal shy of the allowed limit of 1500. I will do that tomorrow, and think of something sumptuous which is starch and sugar free.

MG came by to collect some things and she was looking great! Slimmer and younger too! Way to go MG!

I made beef soup with lots of celery and parsley today, chicken paprik and fried mee hoon. I ate the beef soup mostly but the temptation of the mee hoon proved too much and I had 3 spoons of which was yummy. 

After iftar, tired from the long night yesterday, I gave terawih a miss and stayed back to  rest while my niece, Nurul and the tots made another batch of chocolate chip cookies. The smell of it is so sinful and so heavenly at the same time. I am going to cheat again, I just know it… Hmmm.. I wonder if it will be nice to use stevia in choc chips cookie… yucks!
the sinful chocolate chips cookies
I am viewing the stabilization phase which I will be entering in another 9 days with trepidation. I need to make sure the calories intake is adequate so I can eat more after this diet is over. I can’t wait to get back to the gym again, and go jogging and do some serious strengthening exercise. But all that has to wait until Ramadhan and Eid is over. Hopefully the weight stays in this vicinity and don’t creep up anymore. . In the meantime, I have to still watch my diet as closely as I am now. Healthy eating and living must go hand in hand!

Friday 12 August 2011

Go Figure My Figure(s)!


This is a true story, please bear with me:


A sales representative who has been dealing with me constantly dropped by yesterday to deliver a Hari Raya hamper, complimented me on my figure. She told me I looked leaner, slimmer and like ‘anak dara’! (a-never-been-pregnant-lady) and wanted to know how I did it.(ok, gag all you want, but I'm telling my story!). Yours truly were smiling temple to temple with the compliments but in the true fashion of a Hollywood celebrity, just smiled mysteriously and said “No comment”. 


I must have intrigued her enough because she called on me again a few hours later and pleaded, cajoled and threatened for the secret of my new figure. Well, actually it didn’t take much pleading or cajoling to get me started on this HCG thingy. I believe that health, belongs to everyone and if there are means to achieve it, it should be shared freely, with informed consent, that is. The only thing I worry about constantly when I dispense information about this diet is that by being a doctor, the listener would take it as a professional advice from a health provider. Therefore I started my story with the usual disclaimer: I am not giving you this advice as a doctor!


To cut a long story short, her response to VLCD was “ Haaaaa? Can live ah like that?” So I told her I am a living proof that one could live on that and function normally, without dropping dead anytime. Then she went again “But I ate rice since I was a baby, u know Doctor… How can I just stop?” I was ready to give her good and proper but then I saw she was really distressed by the fact. So, I told her to start slowly reducing her intake of the said grains until she could. After all, to embark on this diet you must be mentally, physically and emotionally prepared for it. If leaving rice out of her diet is going to make her all teary and moody, she is not ready for it! And so we went on back and forth until I have to attend to another case and told her to go, Google and read everything she could about the diet, study the figures (the numbers as well as the body!) and get back to me when she has any inquiries. As the final kick into her subconscious, I left her with the fact that my friend MG has lost 16kg to date within a month! (Ok, I exaggerated a bit, but it is for a good cause!), that caused her to gasp with her mouth in a perfectly rounded-O. 

After delivering that punch line I stood up to go and as I left her pondering over the facts and figure, she must have studied my figure from the back and shouted at me “your bum now almost disappeared la Doctor!” I grinned and decided to take it as a compliment and in the spirit that it was given rather than be offended by it and told her to go figure it out, what exercise and diet program could make your bum disappear within 30days? Go figure  the effectiveness of this one!


She will be reading this blog and those linked to it from now on. So I figured why don’t I publish the figures regarding my weight loss journey for her perusal (and yours). She is after all in sales, and figures ( I meant the statistics one) never lies (although they can be manipulated). It would be helpful and encouraging to see the grams dropping within a few days. So here it is my friends, the figures or numbers or statistic or whatever you might want to call it! 


Date
Weight (kg)
Note 1
Note 2
2/7/11
74.4
Started HCG drops-Loading day
Chocolates chocolates chocolates cheese
3/7/11
74.4
Loading day
Chocolates chocolates rice cheese
4/7/11

74.3
started vlcd with Hcg drops 

5/7/11
73.5

Ohhh La La!
6/7/11
72.3


7/7/11
72.0


8/7/11
71.2


9/7/11
70.3


10/7/11
70.4


11/7/11
70.6


12/7/11
69.9


13/7/11
69.5

Cheated
14/7/11
69.8


15/7/11
69.6


16/7/11
69.6


17/7/11
69.6

Apple day
18/7/11
69.0

Oooh La La!
19/7/11
69.0


20/7/11
68.4


21/7/11
68.4


22/7/11
67.7


23/7/11
66.9

cheated
24/7/11
67.4


25/7/11
68.0

Ministeak day
26/7/11
67.4


27/7/11
67.1


28/7/11
66.3
Lasthcg vlcd
Ooh La La!
29/7/11
65.9
trans1 vlcd

30/7/11
65.7
trans2 vlcd

31/7/11
65.1
trans3 vlcd
Cheated
1/8/11
66.0
M~500kcal

2/8/11
65.8
M~650kcal

3/8/11
66.3
M~600kcal

4/8/11
66.1
M~600kcal

5/8/11
66.1
M~450kcal
Ministeak day
6/8/11
65.2
M~750kcal

7/8/11
64.9
M~870kcal

8/8/11
64.3
M~1000kcal
Broke 10kg barrier!Go me!!
9/8/11
64.1
M~960kcal

10/8/11
64.4
M~1050kcal

11/8/11
64.0
M~940kcal

12/8/11
63.5
M-1250kcal
cheated


My memories are hazy on the things I cheated on, but when the note up there says cheat, means I cheated big time. The smaller cheats I chose to ignore or pretend that it was allowed. Yeah, I am a sucker that way hehehe!

Peruse all you want! Happy dieting my friends!