hCG Diet Mistakes and Meal Advice

I was recently writing a blog article for our main JulianBakery Blog about tips for people on low carb diets.  As I was writing these Low Carb Dieting tips, there were a few of them that I really wanted to get onto this hCG Diet blog as well because, as I was starting out with this hCG alternative diet, I could have used the advice for myself.  I have posted that blog article to this blog as well, but I will use this post to emphasize some of the ones that I fell victim to so that our readers can avoid those mistakes. 

When I began my diet experiment, the first thing I did was eliminated everything that does not fit into the diet from my kitchen, and replaced it with healthy food that does.  This is a vital step to changing your eating habits.  Having junk food lying around while you’re trying to cut calories is like sitting on a pool float in a wave pool and trying to stay dry.  It’s just too easy to get splashed!  This was not the tough part for me.  The tough part for me is continuously stocking my kitchen with fresh food.  Since I have centered my diet on fresh greens and fruits, I constantly have to go to the grocery store.  The reality of it is that fresh food just doesn’t last that long.  Meat isn’t as bad because you can either freeze it or get canned meat.  I often utilize canned fish, but also eat a lot of chicken breast as well.  I have found a couple brands that make a pretty good bagged grilled chicken that can be found both refrigerated and frozen.  The problem that results from not being able to keep fresh food stocked is that I am not able to pack my lunch at times, or get stuck trying to grab a meal on the go with no luck.  This often results in me breaking the diet protocol, or settling for only a snack as opposed to eating a meal and receiving the real calories that I need.

Snacks are the easiest part of the diet, and often times my favorite part of the day.  Sometimes I find myself not feeling hungry around lunch and settling for a snack as opposed to a meal.  I like buying light cheese sticks in bulk and a lot of greek yogurt.  These items are very easy to transport, have around and eat at anytime with no preparation.  I have found that cutting out so much cheese from my diet has been tough, because I usually put cheese on everything! 

Another one of the diet tips that I wrote about and personally fall victim to is not ‘mixing it up’.  I found a handful of meals that worked well in the diet and tend to only eat those meals.  I have a tough time getting off of the few tasty meals that I created on my own and discovering new meals.  MediPro Direct gave us a sample daily menu in our introductory packets, but not quite a full 30 day meal plan to follow.  After doing some research, I found that none of the other weight loss clinics that offer a hCG program include anything like this in their service.  A number of sites like this one have 30-day meal plans, but only give you a sample of what they have to offer without making you pay for the full plan.  If you aren’t interested in paying for a service like this one, perhaps it would be wise to combine as many of the sample meals as possible so that you can get some other meal ideas and grocery shop appropriately. 

I completely understand the challenge in deciding what to eat while dieting, and the fact that this dilemma causes many people to break their diet.  For one of my next posts, I will try to put together a list of meals I use, combined with ones that can be found on the internet for our readers so that there is a free reference online for dieters.  Also, check out the previous post for more helpful low carb dieting tips.

hCG and Exercise

After our weekly Wednesday meeting, our Diet Professional, Kelly had alerted me that because I have been exercising more, my protein intake may not be enough to protect my lean muscle as much as I want to.  Immediately after discovering this risk, I purchased a Whey Protein Supplement from Quantum Nutrition to add to my MediPro Slim shake.  This was a great relief, as I have always loved supplementing with whey protein and feel that it is a very healthy supplement for anyone.  I had a good friend of mine in town over the weekend, so I did not make any time for any type of exercise, and additionally came off the diet for a couple days.  I plan on continuing a light exercise routine and have returned to the diet today.  I have had such a great response to this diet and certainly plan to continue this lifestyle change to maintain my progress.      

My body fat was reduced to below 10% after being in phase 2 for 3 weeks.  We discussed that the next step is the maintenance mode; however I do not think I am quite ready to make this adjustment.  I have decided that I would like to continue to lose body fat for a little while longer before I make the actual transition to maintenance mode.  I believe a 7-8% body fat goal is exactly what I would like to achieve from this diet experiment.  I dropped to below 10% very quickly and believe I can achieve my goal of <8% by the end of August if I continue the diet properly.

Back to exercise for a moment; last week was the first time that I tried jogging while on the diet.  Knowing that I have had such limited calorie intake, I only jogged about 2 miles, which is about 1/3 of what I usually jog.  The whole time I was jogging I felt as if my heart was a little bit out of shape from the lack of cardio.  What I began to think about was the fact that my heart is also a muscle, a very important one! 

I hope I can portray this next part as well as I want to:

Thinking about heart health during this time made me want to tell all of my followers that if you are attempting the hCG diet, taking your heart health seriously is very important, especially because you are restricting calories from your diet.  Unsaturated fats are great for heart health, and these fats are allowed on the MediPro diet plan in the form seafood.  I believe that continuing a small amount of cardio exercise is also extremely important to ensuring heart health.  I would not push any cardio activities as hard as you normally would while on calorie restriction, but I have the feeling that many people take advantage of the hCG diet because they do not want to exercise.  Staying completely stagnant and cutting out an extreme amount of calories can’t be good for your circulatory health, nor your respiratory health for that matter.  I’m not saying that everyone has to go on 2 mile jogs, but getting out and walking around, maybe playing some tennis or even golf would go a long way in getting your blood flow going and some fresh air in your lungs.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the yoga classes I have been regularly attending and would suggest this activity to anyone.

Elisa and I will have another weigh-in this week, so it will be interesting to see how coming off the diet for a weekend affected me, as well as to continue to see Elisa’s progress.  Thanks for reading, and keep checking into the Julian Bakery and MediPro Direct hCG Diet Experiment!     

MediPro Direct: Magic Drops!

As I get deeper and deeper into this hCG Alternative Diet experiment, the more and more I am absolutely sold on this method of losing weight!  Both Elisa and I are seeing great results in just the first week of being on these drops.  I am down to under 187 pounds and losing only fat content!  My muscle mass has stayed the same, and by doing a minimal amount of exercise, I am seeing a great muscle tone starting to appear around my abdominal section. 

                                     

It has certainly been tough to stay away from foods that are not on the list.  Not only because I find myself craving some of the old unhealthy food that I have always eaten, but also because I don’t always have the food on the allowed list in my pantry or on me at work or when I am out.  In those cases I have seemed to settle for something small, yet it’s nearly impossible to find something as healthy as what is on the list.  Another situation that also makes this diet tough is when I hang out around my friends.  They are always trying to peer pressure me into going to grab food somewhere, snack on something unhealthy, or go drinking with them.

Sometime this week we will take another round of physical measurements, and also take another step on the scale for those measurements.   

Fat Loading: Almost Over!

Today is our last day of fat loading!  Yesterday we started out the day extremely excited to eat donuts, and eat fatty all day.  After each stuffing down a donut from Krispy Kreme, we both regretted having donuts for breakfast immediately!  We were even warned by the wonderful MediPro Diet Queen, Kelly, from MediPro Direct Slim that we should try to stick with only healthy fats.  After recovering from our ‘Dough(not)’ mistake, we quickly learned to stay away from sugar.  The remainder of my day included a steak burrito and pizza; each topped an entire avocado.  After the breakfast mistake, the rest of my food digested stomach ache free.  I am generally a healthy eater, so it was very nice to splurge a little bit before beginning such a challenging diet.  We also started the oral drops yesterday so that the homeopathic substance can begin building up and working in our bodies.  Other than the slight vodka taste, they are fine, and actually seem to have already started working.  Today by lunch time when I am usually ready to scarf down a salmon sandwich or steak burrito, I wasn’t hungry at all!  I am going to have to force myself to eat some healthy fats for the remainder of the day, as those fats will be necessary in helping me throughout the diet process.

One thing I want to clarify that greatly improves the value of this blog is that Elisa and I have two completely different goals in this diet experiment.  As you have seen from our measurements, the two of us differ vastly in our body compositions.  From what we have been told by the ladies from MediPro Direct, Elisa is the epitome of the typical person that attempts the hCG Alternative diet program.  Elisa has jumped on board to lose some weight and get into what I call ‘bathing suit shape’. 

I on the other hand have only 11% body fat, and am generally in pretty good shape.  I consistently exercise and stay very active, which is why I chose this particular MediPro Direct program in the first place.  So a lot of people have been asking me, “Why are you doing this?  What are your goals?”  I am doing this for a few reasons.  One of the biggest ones is because I was so intrigued after reading all of the information on hCG diet programs that I wanted to write about it myself.  However, because the original hCG diet is rather controversial I couldn’t recommend doing it unless I actually tried it myself to see how it works.  Furthermore, due to my body proportions, I believe I am a perfect candidate to determine if the hCG really does direct my body to start burning the 11% fat, or if I begin losing muscle mass.  Lastly, in my opinion, there are a lot of guys similar me, who seem to plateau in their body shape goals.  It’s not too tough to lose weight, gain muscle, and stay relatively thin in terms of body fat, but it has proven very tough throughout the years to really get to that next level of being ‘ripped’ and having a solid 6 pack.  If this diet really burns off the small amount of excess fat that I have, I will have a great lean muscle base to then improve on and begin gaining healthy muscle mass while maintaining a healthy diet.

After discussing these goals with the MediPro Direct Certified Nutrition Consultants, they mentioned that they actually do work with a good amount of body builders and athletes, who come in and use their programs to balance blood sugars levels, among other things.

We will be taking one more set of measurements tomorrow to determine how much weight was gained during our fat loading phase, and we also officially start step two, “The Weight Loss Program”.  Dun-Dun-Dun!  

End of Detox

As the detox phase comes to an end, Elisa and I have reflected on our detoxification experience.  For the past seven days, upon rising, we took two pills and drank a powder mixed with water, and then two pills before dinner along with the same powder mixture.

After only the first day of detox, I noticed a great difference in my overall feeling and energy levels throughout the day.  I also felt more trimmed and toned around my abdomen region which I was rather surprised about.  I thought for sure I had lost a little bit of weight and was surprised to see that I hadn’t at all when I stepped on the scale.  My only complaints were that the powder that we had to mix with water and drink was not as soluble as it probably should have been, and that at some points through the week I would get stomach aches after eating meals.  The stomach aches seemed to go away in the last two days of detox, however that absence was replaced with a little bit of fatigue in the afternoons.  I have read before that while on intestinal detox programs you do not absorb vitamins or minerals as well, so I credit the slight fatigue to that possibility.

Elisa noticed similar feelings of fatigue and periodic stomach aches.  Her body rejected foods high in fat, specifically french fries.  She also had to stick with a specific time schedule for the detox intake or else she felt off throughout the day.  Elisa lost two pounds while on the detox program.

Here are our scale measurements from our last day of detox, as well as the first physical measurements taken with a tape measure:

                                       Ricky

Weight (lbs):                  191.4

% Body Fat:                    11.5

% Water Weight:             63

% Muscle Mass:              42.9 

Bone Mass (lbs):               6.4

Neck:                               15 in

Chest:                               40 in

Arms:                               13.5 in

Abdomen:                        36 in

Hips:                                39.5 in

Thighs:                             22.5 in

                                       Elisa

Weight (lbs):                  150.2

% Body Fat:                    29.7

% Water Weight:             48

% Muscle Mass:              39.1 

Bone Mass (lbs):              4.8

Neck:                               12.5 in

Chest:                               35.5 in

Arms:                               11.5 in

Abdomen:                        32.5 in

Hips:                                38.5 in

Thighs:                              21 in

We both start our fat loading days tomorrow and are both very excited to splurge before starting our challenging diet.  Elisa has already made plans to pick up some donuts for us in the morning, and we were instructed to ‘hit the drive-through at burger town’ for lunch.  I have explained to Elisa the difference between saturated, and healthy unsaturated fats and will try to stick to the healthier fats for a majority of the fat loading days.  We will also be starting the oral drops tomorrow which apparently take a few days to get into the body and begin working properly.

The theory behind the ‘fat loading’ is quite intriguing to me.  I have read before on low-carb dieting sites, including one of my favorite low-carb bloggers, Dr. Michael Eades, that eating foods high in fats will actually force your body to start using the fats and ketones for energy.  Dr. Eades compares the transition to the low-carb, moderate fat diet to converting a gasoline burning car to one that runs on biodeisel.  This process helps your body produce the necessary chemicals to break down fats, getting you in fat burning mode.  It’s a great theory that makes a lot of sense in my mind. 

My issue is that cholesterol can be deadly.  Saturated fats cause your LDL (bad cholesterol) to rise, and your HDL (good cholesterol) to lower.  Therefore I try to stick to unsaturated fats which do the complete opposite. Although I can’t resist eating red meat on occasion, which contains saturated fat.

So far we have had a handful of questions regarding the diet process.  The ladies at MediPro Direct have been right on point answering our questions in a timely manner.  We have been put in contact with MediPro Direct Slim in Auburn to help answer any questions we have regarding the details of the diet program.  As I have read more about this intriguing MediPro Direct diet, and asked more in depth questions to these diet experts, I have grown to realize that what Elisa and I will be doing is much different from the original Dr. Simeons hCG Diet protocol.  The homeopathic drops that we will use are vastly different from the hCG injections, and the calorie intake is up to double what has been used in the traditional hCG diet plans.  I certainly feel much more comfortable starting this hCG alternative, focused low-carb diet that uses homeopathic supplements than I would on the original hCG injections.