VQ's Big hcg Adventure!

[bacon bit]

Jessica, I had an electrical problem yesterday involving a limb, a hole in my roof and $1750 (plus no power-no internet). I thought about you all day! But, you weren't here either lol I hear what you are saying about winding down. I think you have stuck with it so well with such a positive attitude this far, and I think it's that one certain set point number that might be your problem. I am just wondering...you hit that number and suddenly you're feeling like maybe giving up. Well, I know this diet is hard at times-from what I've read from you and others-but my challenge to you is to fight now like you've never fought before. Easy for me to say, right? I'm not the one doing it! But your attitude has been so creative and I admire you so much for all of your progress. I don't want you to feel like you've failed because you didn't just PAST that number. And I don't want you to think that you can't get past it, so why bother trying? I am probably way off base here. I think you've got the best support team right here in this little thread of the internet. Remember all of the people who thought you looked awesome the other day? You DO! You're beautiful and doing so great! I agree with the ladies here about the woosh! You can do it! I so believe in you! I'm kind of attached to your journal, too. You encourage me! Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

[CherylB]

I love your post, Bacon bit! I second all that she said! "Just keep swimming" is right! And I guess the old "fear of failure" is playing into feeling like you want to call an end to the round. But I promise you that you will bust right through that number after several days of hanging out there. Do an apple day if you hit 3 or 4 days without a loss. Then you will see something miraculous!

I almost forgot! I'm so sorry you had that happen to you yesterday, Bacon Bit! I hope it gets fixed and everything gets back to normal soon!

[privatediva]

man, baconbit! what an awful day! You write such inspiring words for having taken such a hit! And you're absolutely right. Miss Jessica...you can do this We all KNOW you can. The hardest part is these dumb "set points". I think my next one will be 145 (if I don't hit one before that) and I expect it to be a DOOZY. I'm actually planning on not weighing for a week when I get there so I can try not to obsess over it and be relaxed during the time the scale isn't moving. There is no way that one is going to to be easy, so I'm thinking I'll ignore it until it isn't an issue. Y'all remind me...I'm getting forgetful in my dotage

[bacon bit]

Thank you girls-my issue got fixed. It just went on for eight days-without power in the entire house just yesterday, but in part of the house for eight days. UGH.

I know that I get so set on a number on my damn scale. I love getting down into the next decade (I'm 160 today, but I forgot to weigh until after I ate so I'm kicking myself because I was excited to see 159). I am all about the number. I'm not about measurements or how my clothes fit. I'm a scale girl. Not that the rest doesn't matter, but really, I love when those numbers move-ANY movement downward is awesome. I'm addicted. My next number is going to be 144. It feels really far away though.

Anyway, I can't wait to hear how your day went!

[privatediva]

oh that 144/145 thing...that number is gonna try and kick my butt, I just know it. It won't win though. I'm getting to goal even having to break the most stubborn set point I have ever had. I'm almost 5'7" and if I'm around 140-141, I will look and feel wonderful. Heck...I already feels tons better. My knees feel a LOT better without carrying around the 26.5 lbs I've lost all day. My bras aren't killing me anymore (busty...and when I'm heavier, my straps and bands kill me) and my feet don't hurt when I get out of bed in the morning. I cleaned under my bed this morning, which entails quite a bit of rolling around on the floor....small room, king sized bed...can't move it to clean under it. It's a wood floor so I vaccuum and mop on the ground. It didn't even seem like a big deal and it usually wears me out completely and I hurt all over the rest of the day. I feel at least 60 years younger than I did. No lie...I'm pretty sure I felt at least 95 when I started this thing.

All of which is to say...145 can come at me. But it better bring its best game, because I am ready for the fight.

[bacon bit]

*the crowd roars* Awesome!!!

[verbqueen]

Awww, you guys. You are the loveliest group of people imaginable. I wish we could all be sitting around in person having a cup of coffee and gabbing. But I suppose we are, in our way! In some ways, friendships on the internet are better and more "real" because outside stuff doesn't get in the way. You really get to know the essence of person when you read her writing, I think.

Anyway, I apologize for the glum tone of my post this morning. I'm not quitting. I'm just afraid. When I stalled out at 177 in December of 2009, I had been losing well, a good 1 to 2 pounds a week, for months. And suddenly it just STOPPED, and nothing would make it go again. Month after month after month went by. I tried EVERYTHING (Cheryl "witnessed" my struggle.) I cut carbs, raised carbs, cut calories, raised calories, tried a refeed, did seven days a week of intensive cardio (which I swear caused me to GAIN weight), did crazy fad diets. I spent over a thousand dollars going outside my insurance network to an endocrinologist someone on LCF swore by, had extensive blood work and thyroid testing, and got nowhere. Absolutely nothing made any difference. EVentually I started regaining weight because it was just not possible to stay focused with no results. I'd catch it, re-lose it, think "this time I won't do whatever I did wrong before. This time I'll succeed." But then the same thing would happen again.

And now I'm so, so afraid I'm there again. I have a very bad feeling that I am. But I still won't stop trying. I still think this diet is my best shot at breaking through.

I'm sorry if my defeatist post alarmed any of you, but I do love all the wonderful things you wrote. I'm going to print all those sweet posts out and hang them on my refrigerator so I can read them every day.

Sweet dreams, all.

[verbqueen]

P.S. Heidi, you POOR thing! What a rotten thing to have happen!

[privatediva]

Jessica! Your cruddy weight loss wall experience is *exactly* what I've been going through for the last two years. Last summer, even in the worst of the heat, I was up at 4:30 am every morning, no exceptions, putting in *at least* 7 miles before everyone else was even coming to for the day. I ate never ever over 1500 calories. My family knows this to be true...that is why I've had the support I've had from them, I think....they know how hard I was working and that I couldn't get it to budge when the combination of my food intake and ridiculous exercise regimen would have caused anyone else to lose a ton.

The fact that I'm as far as I am in this absolutely proves that HCG makes a vital difference in how my body "thinks". So...I *totally* understand your fear, and also am totally convinced that this diet will be your solution as it is mine. We got this one, sistah

[verbqueen]

Half pound gain this morning.

If that weren't enough, I also woke up to the arrival of TOM, first appearance in five months. I hoped that he and I had permanently broken off our relationship.

Looks like the old bod is pulling out all the stops to sabotage me.

Week 4 is NOT going well.

[pooticus]

Week 4 is going great! Don't you see? Now you have an explanation for no loss!!!! I used to gain anywhere from 3-10lbs with TOM!!!! So in a few days, you should see some loss at least!!! and hang in there kiddo!!! You're doing this thing!

[OceanDreaming]

TOM is the culprit! No wonder you're gaining. There's no way you can't get through this set point with the amount of calories you're eating. You will, it's just that Aunt Flo has completely screwed with your week! Hang in there! Next week you'll have water and fat loss showing on the scale!

[Speck333]

Yup, TOM... that explains the gain. And the recent loss explains the TOM. Loss of fat = release of hormones like estrogen. So there you go.


I hear all of you so well on this *number*. I am at my number, too. 149. I have seen it several times in the last several months, but I can never stay at it. Despite what all my signatures say, I am currently up at 152.0. It's all water. I "punished" my body on Friday and, not only do I gain water weight at TOM, but also mid-cycle when I ovulate, and guess what time it is? So yah, here I am, too. But I'm really glad I figured it out, because these mysterious monthly gains were making me crazy.

Jessica and Diva, I'm both comforted and scared by you experiences with being stuck. It doesn't make any kind of sense how a person can eat so little and exercise so much and be stuck. I've been through this recently, too, and it absolutely proves that the "calories in calories out" model is total BS. *Something else* has to be going on. And I have read Taubes and others. Anyway, other than my recent water gain, I was finally getting some traction with very low carb and moderate cals. I don't want to go through "everything". I don't want to have to do hCG, but I'm so glad that it's there in case I have to. And I'm so glad for you pioneers to blaze the trails.

[CherylB]

Originally Posted by verbqueen

Half pound gain this morning.

If that weren't enough, I also woke up to the arrival of TOM, first appearance in five months. I hoped that he and I had permanently broken off our relationship.

Looks like the old bod is pulling out all the stops to sabotage me.

Week 4 is NOT going well.

Pooticus is right! And I have some personal observations to add about set-points. As Jessica knows, 177 was a terrible one for me, too. I hadn't gotten below it in 12 years. I'm only 5'3", too! But I did it with my trusty pellets and just riding it out! No, I was not "Miss Faith" at the time. I was feeling just like you are. But it happened. And I had a bump-up before it went back down, too. But you have nasty 'ol TOM to blame! When your whoosh comes it's going to be a dramatic one.

My biggest whoosh came when I broke through that set-point. I lost FOUR LBS overnight. I didn't believe it and so I reweighed and reweighed and took the number that was slightly higher. But the next morning I was still weighing at the 4-lb loss and I believed it then.

Looking back in my food journal for that time-frame, it went like this:

177.8, 177.4, 178.0, 177.4, 173.4! I even had a bad stomach virus during this time and couldn't eat what I normally would have eaten on P2. I was throwing up and couldn't digest anything. Even still, my weight went up! But you will have your own success story to tell very soon, Jessica. BELIEVE IT!

Look at me now! Breathing down the neck of the 150's!

[bacon bit]

Jessica, I couldn't agree more with these ladies! I am so excited for you in the next few weeks. This is going to be it!

[privatediva]

Cheryl...thanks SO much for sharing that story. I know 145 is going to be a real test for me. I am determined not to settle for staying there, even though at 5'7" it's not a bad weight for me and if I'm there long, I imagine people are going to start saying "aren't you about done with that stuff?" Nope...not done until I'm past that. I need to break through that wall.

[verbqueen]

Amen, Diva. You stay true to your dreams, and I'll do the same. We WILL get there.

Hey, Heidi--what a fun new avatar! Love it.

I've had a nice day--it's beautiful here today, and although AOL weather says it's 90, it's breezy and no humidity, and I don't even have the AC on in the house. Had a nice morning at church--didn't have to sing (or be there early!) and got sit there like a civilian and listen to other people sing.

Spent a pleasant afternoon playing board games with Dave and Hallie, and they just left to drop him at the airport and then she'll head on to Newport Beach.

I had P2 chili for lunch, and will have a chicken and apple salad for dinner. No hunger today, so at least my surprise hormone attack didn't bring uncontrolled appetite with it.

Thanks again, some more, still, for all the amazing encouragement! I'm going to focus from here on out on making sure that I GIVE as much as I have received!

[SoHappy]

Good Evening! Just finished reading here and getting caught up, and I applaud you for how well you've done on this eating plan, both in your overall adherence to the plan even when you eat away from home, and also with the actual pounds you've lost so quickly! That is so exciting.

I'm so old I hardly remember, ... but I'm with those who believe once TOM is gone, your body will be over it's retention weight gain, and you'll see a number on that scale that will thrill you. Keeping all my fingers and toes crossed for you.

And my 4-day trip was fun, tiring, and piled on several pounds, seemingly in the blink of an eye, so this week will have to be devoted to some true dieting. Gotta' get serious with those JUDDD Down Days once again. :blush:

Continued good wishes for you, Jessica!

[verbqueen]

SH, no one rocks JUDDD better than you do. You'll have those few little vacay pounds off in a matter of days, if I know you.

Thank you for the wonderful encouragement. Glad you had a fun time on your trip. Now go rest!

[privatediva]

does sound like you had a lovely morning at church. We did too. We are starting a new church and today was our first official Sunday. We are meeting in homes for the time being, but we have a fantastic pastor, music, and even Sunday School for the little ones all worked out. We began with a Communion service...which was very special to have the first time together as a real "entity". We've been meeting (most of us) off and on for about 4 years, but because the man who is our pastor is a Lt Col in the Army, he was deployed twice during that time. We continued with the help of another church, but now he is back for good and we're ready to make it real. It was a great, not relaxing, very exciting and emotional morning. We'll get into a routine soon...still figuring out some logistics, but we had three hymns, Communion service music and an offertory....and it all went beautifully! My plate will be just a bit more full now, as I'll organize and play the music, but that will be all joy, all the time. I am recording some Sunday School songs for the little ones to sing along with this week. That will be fun. They're studying about David, so I have a few tunes based on Psalms and one very fun song called The Battle is the Lords. Jessica...you're the expert...if anything comes to mind you would share with me, give me a heads up! The children's music will be an ongoing project for me because I'm really the only one comfortable enough to sing with them, but I won't actually be in their class. So I'm just going to make a bunch of recordings so they can sing along to learn.

[verbqueen]

Oh my gosh! I'm so full of ideas, I hardly know where to start! I'll shuffle through my stuff this week and pick out a few of our most beloved things and scan them. We can talk about how you'd prefer me to get them to you.

What ages are the children you are working with? Or is it mixed ages?

Speaking of mixed ages, I'm doing a really fun thing I do every couple of summer. We have a "Girl Power" ensemble, and I invite all the girls from 3rd grade through college to participate. Some of my oldest girls are helping me organize and supervise this, and I have no idea whether I'll end up with 5 or 25. But anyway, I have a simple anthem, 2 part treble, for them, and my older girls know both parts so they will be the anchors. I have all the girls over on Saturday night before the Sunday we sing. I will serve them dinner, we'll learn the song, we'll have a swimming party, come back inside and work the song some more, then rehearse again Sunday morning and sing it in worship. It just TICKLES me to see a precious little third grader singing earnestly next to a college freshman!

But that's all by way of saying that there are many things that work well for multi-age choirs. One thing I do frequently with my two youngest groups is choose a song that has a simple, repeated refrain. I have the little guys, the Carol Choir, learn refrain, and have the big kids sing the verses, or the B and C melodies. Little kids LOVE to get to sing with bigger kids!

How fun for you--I'm excited for you. My church began as a new church development, and there's an excitement and sense of possibility there that is so empowering!

[privatediva]

we will have mixed ages for the time being...from 6 years to a senior in high school. But mostly I want to concentrate on the little ones for now. The older ones will actually be in and out of Sunday School (which happens during the grown up Bible class). The three high school girls are tag-teaming as Sunday School teachers. We have a curriculum that works pretty well teaching on different levels. I need songs that are simple enough for the young ones to hold on to the melody, but are content rich...either paraphrases of Scripture, direct quotes, or really strong doctrinal content. In other words...not so much looking for anything "touchy, feely". It would be wonderful to have a couple that are very Scriptural since music facilitates memorization so beautifully. In a few years, we may have a slew of kids...maybe enough to have choirs. At this point, we'll just integrate songs into Sunday School time. We are close to a military base and many of our families are military, so we can expect a steady stream of little ones. Two of our ladies are real pregnant right now. Pretty fun and exciting time.

[CherylB]

There is a great praise and worship team I love to listen to online. I have one of his CD's and some of his songs are simple. Check out Leadworship.com. I love his music so much that I bought a song book with DVD. (I had been teaching myself to play the guitar but have fallen by the wayside lately.)

I've been really wanting to get back to going to church but I don't know of a good one close to home. Y'all are making me homesick!

[verbqueen]

Originally Posted by privatediva

we will have mixed ages for the time being...from 6 years to a senior in high school. But mostly I want to concentrate on the little ones for now. The older ones will actually be in and out of Sunday School (which happens during the grown up Bible class). The three high school girls are tag-teaming as Sunday School teachers. We have a curriculum that works pretty well teaching on different levels. I need songs that are simple enough for the young ones to hold on to the melody, but are content rich...either paraphrases of Scripture, direct quotes, or really strong doctrinal content. In other words...not so much looking for anything "touchy, feely". It would be wonderful to have a couple that are very Scriptural since music facilitates memorization so beautifully. In a few years, we may have a slew of kids...maybe enough to have choirs. At this point, we'll just integrate songs into Sunday School time. We are close to a military base and many of our families are military, so we can expect a steady stream of little ones. Two of our ladies are real pregnant right now. Pretty fun and exciting time.

Great! I will see if I can come up with anything good. I, too, am extremely content conscious. I use music of all genres and cultures with my kids (I think the God of all places and times should be praised with ALL kinds of music!), but it has to have meaningful text. (Although beautiful and powerful melody counts, too. Kids do NOT have to have sing-song melodies.) I think if all worship music were chosen based on text rather the musical style, the "worship wars" would end tomorrow!


Edited to add: I was thinking one song in particular that I want to send you. It's a Hebrew style melody with a Psalm based text. I've used it at the beginning of our choir year when I was integrating my new 2nd graders into the older choir, and I taught the basic melody by rote. After they mastered the words and melody (and that doesn't take long--kids learn SO MUCH FASTER than adults, I find), I invented a little Hora style dance--you know, grapevine to the right, grapevine to the left, all into the middle raising hands together, all back out lowering hands together, etc. They LOVED the dancing part, and since I get them right after a long day at school, they NEED to move. After they had absolutely mastered that, I taught them the countermelody/descant, and we added that at the end of the first melody. Finally, we put the two together, and even eventually were able to do our dance while singing in two parts!

Anyway, to make a long story even longer, the children adored this song so much that when I let them vote for which would be our solo anthem at the Chorister's Guild choir festival, they wanted this one. Of course we weren't able to dance at the festival, so they were forced to sing standing still. But it was the hit of the festival, and it sounded, as several parents commented to me, very complex and difficult. But the kids could've done it in their sleep after all our dancing in choir practice!

[privatediva]

I can't wait! ))) what a blessing you are!

[bacon bit]

It's so interesting to me...I'm sure most of you in this thread have known each other a few years and so you know about each others backgrounds. I just thought it was funny that I have a background in church music, too! LOL I used to sing in a praise band at a former church. Now I just work in one. Just thought it was interesting!

[verbqueen]

That is amazing, Heidi! Please do chime in on this church-music-y conversation!

I'm always so impressed with people who can do that praise team singing. I'm a classical first soprano, and have no belter range/power at all. I'm also incapable of improvising. If a note is printed on the page, I'll sing it. Otherwise, forget it! Ha!

[verbqueen]

Oh, and Cheryl and I have been LCF friends for several years, but the rest of this thread's "gang" is new friends! Isn't that wonderful? I'm tickled pink.

[bacon bit]

In school I did both madrigal and show choir. I wished I could sing pop when I sounded so much better singing The Messiah. One day I am so going to embrace it...one day...

[verbqueen]

Originally Posted by Speck333

Yup, TOM... that explains the gain. And the recent loss explains the TOM. Loss of fat = release of hormones like estrogen. So there you go.


I hear all of you so well on this *number*. I am at my number, too. 149. I have seen it several times in the last several months, but I can never stay at it. Despite what all my signatures say, I am currently up at 152.0. It's all water. I "punished" my body on Friday and, not only do I gain water weight at TOM, but also mid-cycle when I ovulate, and guess what time it is? So yah, here I am, too. But I'm really glad I figured it out, because these mysterious monthly gains were making me crazy.

Jessica and Diva, I'm both comforted and scared by you experiences with being stuck. It doesn't make any kind of sense how a person can eat so little and exercise so much and be stuck. I've been through this recently, too, and it absolutely proves that the "calories in calories out" model is total BS. *Something else* has to be going on. And I have read Taubes and others. Anyway, other than my recent water gain, I was finally getting some traction with very low carb and moderate cals. I don't want to go through "everything". I don't want to have to do hCG, but I'm so glad that it's there in case I have to. And I'm so glad for you pioneers to blaze the trails.

Speck, I was so many posts behind after my busy weekend that I neglected to respond to this one, but I know what you're saying--and you shouldn't HAVE to try "everything." At any rate, trying "everything" does not at all guarantee any answer to the mystery of why, and when, we will either be able or unable to lose weight.

And of course, it is entirely possible (and in my heart, I'll always wonder) that had I simply stayed the course with low carbs and NOT tried all that stuff, I'd have broken my stall and been able to lose. Who knows? But I applaud you for steadfastly working the plan and having the patience to outlast a set point. That takes some real maturity and commitment.