mercedes

The winter was a tough one! I moved, Seattle got hit by snow and I got sick with shingles. Two months of my life were spent recovering and now I will be starting to diet again in the next two weeks. I gained about 4 pounds but that does not bother me a bit. Being in pain and unable to do much meant that I had the opportunity to indulge in some of my greasy favorites a little, like potato chips and chocolate. I am very happy with the way I took care of my body and mind through the winter and I can’t wait for Spring!

I found noodles on line that are really yummy. I ordered them through miraclenoodle.com. They are no carb, no calorie, all fiber noodles. I just finished lunch and it was my second time cooking them and my goodness, I enjoyed having a huge plate of noodles with chicken and tomatoes, knowing that there was no grains and no calories! This is not meant to be a sales pitch for the noodles - I am just really happy about finding them! LOL!

I am learning so much about food and cooking. For instance, cooking on lower heat with coconut oil instead of olive or canola oil has been really interesting. Coconut oil has fat burning properties and actually helps raise metabolism. If I just take the extra time and cook my food slowly, the flavors become more intense and the coconut oil can be safely used. (You can’t use it on high heat).

The butcher I have been going to is cutting pork belly for me, which means bacon! Bacon without sugar or nitrates. That is going to be a huge treat. I am also learning about cooking with almond flour for deserts and crepes instead of wheat.

You see this whole diet, as I go into my next phase, is about continuing to keep sugar and grains out of my diet. It’s turning into a lifestyle change and education.

Here are some of the things that are becoming essentials in my kitchen which I never would have thought of until starting to diet:

Apple Cider vinegar

Raw Cacao

Stevia, in many flavors

Decaf coffee

Miracle noodles

chamomile tea

Yerba Mate tea

Coconut Oil

Maca powder

Almond flower

MCT oil

organic spices - cumin, italian, garlic, cayenne pepper

really rare salts, like smoked salts and black salts

cabbage

lemons

Braggs amino acids (I carry it with me when I go to have sushi out - it’s a great substitue for soy, which is also not on my diet)

Whole food multi-vitamin - made from foods and fruits

fish oil capsules

Vitamin D drops

Probiotic powder

apples

Oh my, I was craving dessert and I just finished making the most
delicious treat. I wanted to share the recipe.

heat oven to 350

2 apples, thinly sliced and peeled
powdered cacao (no sugar) (1 T)
liquid stevia(to taste- milk chocolate flavored is best)
cinnamon (dash)
coconut oil (1 t)

cook apples in above mixture and a few T’s of water, 5 minutes until
apples are cooked, set aside

4 eggs seperated
1/2 cup water
liquid stevia (10 drops)
1 dash salt

beat egg yolks with stevia
whip egg whites in seperate bowl with water and salt until very stiff
fold egg whites into yolks carefully

fold into oven safe skillet and cook on stovetop at med-high heat (you can use coconout oil or low-fat cooking spray to coat pan) for 4 minutes until bottom is light brown

place in oven and cook 10 minutes

take out and pour apples on top

OH MY!!! If you are watching egg yolk intake I am guessing you can
modify or make the souffle with less eggs - it really puffs up!

Tonight I had the most delicious meal I have had in a long while and I cooked it myself! I had chicken breast cut up and fried on med-low heat with coconut oil. Just as it was finishing I put in the frying pan, a cup of Kale cut in small pieces and then I topped the whole thing with truffle salt. Oh my! Cooking the chicken breast slowly made it so tender and the taste of the kale was divine.

I am sticking with the hcg diet for a week more than I expected to. I was on a huge snack binge for about three days and I even had two vodka sodas in that time. So, I did see a weight gain. Now I want to see a weight loss in the next few days so I can go off this diet as close to my goal as possible.  I feel great today. I also discovered cacao powder and chocolate flavored stevia. So after my amazing dinner, I mixed up a bit of cottage cheese with cacao and the chocolate stevia and had it as a whip on top of fresh strawberries.

All this while watching the VP debates. Fun!

I have turned into a snack queen. My meals have been light and delicious but I have had a huge sweet and crispy tooth. I discovered freeze dried apples, which are far more delicious than potato chips because they are sweet and crisp. I also found a $9.00 bar of sugar free chocolate today. I ate the whole thing over the course of the day. It is not good to have a new chocolate store open up in the neighborhood. LOL. I will see what the scale says tomorrow. So far all of my snacking is not doing a thing on the scale and I am staying the same weight. But I am anxious to see what it says tomorrow morning!

I am all about snacks today! I can’t seem to get enough. I had a workout in the morning that really felt good and then I came home to an empty house (my boyfriend is in Boston right now). Monday is my day off and I usually fill it with doing things with him or helping him at his business. Today, I watched the tube and thought about snacks all day long. The man who is painting part of the house wanted brownies so I made him some and I did not have a single one despite my overwhelming urge to devour every morsel. Instead I went out and bought dried apples and ate these amazing crackers that I found at the store last night.

On the hcg diet you have to eat 500 calories a day, today I am way over after all those little yummy tidbits. I think the workout and the boredom led to my hunger or I could be getting close to my set point. In total I have lost 22 pounds. I picked up a 20 pound weight at the gym today - my goodness, to think that much weight has come off of me. I might float away! I better eat more dried apples!

I wen to the gym yesterday after three weeks of very little excercize (you can’t excercize for the first few weeks of the hcg diet) and man did I push way too hard. It’s a new gym for me so after 20 minutes on the bikes, I asked the woman at the desk what kind of classes the gym offers. She told me there was one starting right away and that it was geared to women over 50. She seemed to imply that it was slower or easier than other classes. That was perfect for me, so I went and joined. It was one of the most difficult aerobic classes I have ever done. I am so out of shape! I ended up in the back in the class, huffing and puffing and ready to fall down at any minute while the instructor barked “Don’t stop, Don’t do that!, etc” I left early as she yelled after me, “Don’t give up!”. I was one of the youngest girls in the class and the least fit.

It wasn’t always this way. I was a yoga teacher. I taught Bikram yoga for 5 years and went to class almost every day. My back went out in 2005 and a dog bit me in the face that year. I learned that I have a genetic condition in my back and the years of yoga, while keeping me a size 6, was destroying my back. The dog biting me in my face meant no work for me. I was up for a position on TV at the time, had my first solo theater show planned, and had started my own business (giving walking tours). I could do none of those things for 6 months as I healed and had my face worked on. It was devistating. That is when I started to gain weight. Mainly from drinking. I felt emotional about yoga, it had been such an important part of my life, how could it hurt me? I was insecure about my face, I saw the scars and the pain, even though no one else did.

Now years later, I still can cry easily about both the yoga and the dogbite when I sit and think about it. My life changed quickly after both events. I now have a successfull company of my own that is beginning to be financially stable. I employ people. I am learning about how to support my back. I am working on getting the weight off. I have a wonderful man in my life. I have a pair of Italian brown leather boots I would never have bought for myself, that he gave me as a gift, and it’s getting to be Fall, and they make me extreemly happy. Especially when I think about putting on a tight black dress, smart coat and those boots and walking out into the world, smiling. I have my confidence back finally, and in total I gained 40 pounds in the last few years and lost muscle, but I gained way more than that in ways I can’t measure. Despite what weight we are at, wonderful things come to us. Being thankful for the small things, viewing life as an experience and not accepting the ways things are, rather making choices and seeking change, allows us to have all the things we truly want in life.

A few of you asked what this diet is that I am on, well it’s not a traditional diet by any means and there is some cotroversy around it. I am under the care of a doctor and nutrionist and am on the hcg diet, which uses the hormone hcg to release stored fats in the system. I first found out about it as a way to restore hormone levels in the body, estrogen. A friend swore by the hcg protocol as a way to increase her bodys ability to produce estrogen. That and the promise of a “pound a day” coming off, well I decided to try it. It is not for everyone. The diet is very restrictive and the followup 3 weeks must be followed to the letter. I am really enjoying it and learning alot about my body and food at the same time. I am in my third week, have lost 20 pounds so far and will be through with the first phase in 3 days. I feel fantastic, full of energy and I am going to work on getting the rest of the weight off the old fashioned way - with a trip to the gym in the mornings and not having starch or sugar.

I am on the hcg diet and doing very well at it. I started at 171 and am down to 153 in a very short period of time. This fast weight loss has happened once before in my life when I trained to be a Bikram yoga teacher so I am not concerned with taking the weight off quickly and I supplement my diet with whole food vitamins and omegas. I feel great. Lots of energy. I don’t have the physical stamina to work out the way I was doing before starting the diet, but that allows me to relax and enjoy my time. My goal is 135 but I don’t want to get there just on this diet. My true goal is to get close to 140 and stabilize my weight for several weeks and then start a workout regime. I gave up yoga because of some low back issues and then put on weight wich has only made the low back worse, so after the weight comes off I am excited to start working out.