I've struggled with weight all my life. I don't know that there was ever a time that I was not overweight. Maybe the preschool years? Seriously. I've always been fat. I look at that sentence and just want to delete it, because the stark reality of it is so unpleasant! But it's just plain true. I was fat in elementary school. Fat in high school. Fat in college.
In college I did start experimenting with exercise. A few classes here and there, and then some workout videos I'd do at home sometimes. I lost a bunch of weight in college, but it was never a permanent thing.
The summer after my first year of teaching, I lost quite a bit of weight. But again, it wasn't a permanent thing.
Before I got pregnant with baby #3, I had been working on losing weight. That was the beginning of a huge loss--it probably took more than a year, but I lost 114 pounds, going from 304 to 190. Then I got pregnant with number 4. I did a lot of exercising through the pregnancy, but I also did a lot of eating and not making the best food choices. I came out of that pregnancy at 225, and over time it got back up to 250. And then I just got out of the weight watching mode, and let life happen.
We moved to Hawaii in the summer of 2008, and right away I was pregnant with #5. At my first doctor's appointment, I weighed in at 293. !!!!! So just by not paying attention, eating what I want when I wanted and however much I wanted, I pretty much gained back everything I had lost.
My husband was in Iraq pretty much all of 2009, and then we had a crazy 2010, plus my pregnancy with #6. So after all that, I had just had enough. Sick and tired of being so incredibly overweight and out of control and never feeling good, something had to be done.
Enter HCG. To make a long story short, I've done HCG for a year now. Six weeks on, six weeks off. I don't know if I've ever felt better in my whole life than I felt when I was on HCG. I followed protocol religiously, and it didn't disappoint! In the past year I have lost 111 pounds. So I feel great!!
But I do feel it is important to note a couple of things:
First, after each 6 weeks of being on, I was supposed to maintain my weight in order to regulate it. Basically, to reset my body to the new weight. I've never been able to successfully maintain for the 3 weeks called for in the protocol. After the first round of HCG, we moved and were on the road and visiting people, and I totally went off. That first six weeks off, I gained back 29 of the 41 pounds I had lost! Each time it has gotten better...meaning only that my gains have been smaller each time. But I still have not successfully stayed at the same weight for 3 weeks. The last time I did that, I was over 300 pounds. That means, essentially, that my body has never reset to a lower weight. The bad thing about that is that I have no room to breathe, because my body will pile the pounds on so fast, until it gets back to the 300 pounds it's set at.
You know--people go on vacation for a couple of weeks and come back having gained five pounds from all the crap they ate, and all the exercise they didn't get. If I did that, and ate the same as what they ate, I'd come back having gained 30! So the reset is pretty important.
Second, I am not using this blog to promote the HCG diet. I did a lot of reading up on it, thanks to google, and decided to go ahead with it. I do not profess to be an expert on all the details, and while I feel that it was a good thing for me, it may not be a good thing for everyone. And it's not FDA approved or anything, some even say it's illegal. (?) So please don't just see that I did it for a year and lost 111 pounds and decide that it's for you. Read up on it, and make your own educated decision.
Along with that, HCG is not a miracle cure. Some people see things like HCG, gastric bypass, etc., as cheats for awesome weight loss. But the reality is, they aren't cheats. You still have to learn discipline, develop a healthy relationship with food, and build yourself into an active lifestyle, or it won't do you any good. Anybody who is successful on HCG, or with surgery, or anything else, has had to work for their results, and work to keep those results. It's not a cop out or an easy answer.
So as of this morning, I weigh 193. I wish I had blogged or journaled through the other phases of weight loss I've experienced in my life, but I didn't. So I guess now's as good a time to start as any. I have enjoyed perusing through a few weight loss blogs I have found on the internet, and I can see that they will serve as a good source of encouragement and motivation for me. I'm not sure if this blog will ever do anybody else any good, but I know it will do me some good. And I'd love to have a record of this journey...
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