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!