Need Advice
 

I am about 10 days from completing my R1P2

I will be leaving on June 1st on a surgical mission trip, returning June 10th.

I've read everything I can get my hands on, but I cannot find the answers I seek, so I turn to you lovely ladies :)

My last injection day will be May 20th. for the first 3 days, I will stay on the VLCD...then on to P3. Do people continue to lose on P3 ? Or does "stabilize" mean just that...no gain/ no loss ? Since I will be in Peru, I am a little nervous about the food choices, and I don't know if I will have access to a scale.

Would it be OK to do my best to stabilize from 5/21- 6/10, then start another round right away ? And, if I do that, do I still get the 2 loading days ?

I want to make sure I give myself enough time to stabilize, so that I am re-setting as I am supposed to do..but I really want to get started on another round as soon as possible. Any advice would be greatly appreciated !!!

I wish I could be more help! All I have read is that you must stay away from sugar and starches - which you probably already know - and I have also heard that some people do lose another few pounds at the beginning of p3. With out a scale it will be difficult to monitor your weight - just make the best choices you can and love very minute of your trip!!

Hi there! :hiya:

Stabilize does indeed mean "no gain/no loss." P3 is for eating as much as possible to "re-set" your body's weight. Think of it as training your body to maintain your new weight at as high a level of calories as possible. You want to be able to eat as many calories as you can to maintain your new weight. That way, in P4 or afterwards, if you choose to reduce calories, your body thinks it's being deprived and you LOSE weight. :up: Make sense?

To figure out how much you should be eating in P3, google "BMR" and use one of the calulators to figure your basal metabolic rate. This is the number of calories that you would burn if you were sleeping. You then need to multiply that number by your Harris Benedict activity factor. Google Harris Benedict and it will give you the formulas. At 44 y/o, 5'9" tall, 175 pounds or so, and a moderate exerciser, my BMRx was around 2300 calories.

As far as the scale goes, I actually bought a travel scale and took it with me after my first P2. It doesn't take up much space and it allowed me to stick my first round LDW like a rock!

You didn't ask this but the main rule for P3 is no sugar (of any kind--corn syrup, cane sugar, dextrose, etc.) and no starches (rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, starchy veggies like corn or peas or carrots, or legumes like garbanzo beans or lentils). You cannot eat the melba/grissini that you had on P2 but you MAY keep fruit. Try to stick with the P2 fruits and some of the other low GI fruits like berries, melon (except watermelon), and peaches/nectarines. It may be tough to do while traveling but it's really really critical for success to follow the no sugar/no starch rule.

If this is your first round, I would HIGHLY recommend doing a FULL three weeks of P3 and a FULL three weeks of P4, especially with the injections. This allows your hypothalamus to fully rest and re-set, it allows your skin to recover from rapid weight loss, and your body to recover from near protein deprivation, and mostly, it allows you to adjust to what maintenance looks like for your particular body chemistry. That may mean low carb, it may mean whole grains, it may mean honey and not sugar--it all depends. Jumping into a new round right away after P3 (often called "cycling") works for some but it can often cause problems with stabilizing after round 2. IF you DO choose to do this, yes, you DO load. Anything more than 14 days between rounds, requires a reload before dosing again.

HTH

Thanks so much for the advice !!! I appreciate it so much :)

Any time! :D Good luck in Peru!

:goodpost: Shelbyla is the very best source of information!!! She has been my angel of info during my hcg journey.
Betty