PHASE 2 – PART DEUX
DAY 29

OKAY - - IT’S OFFICIAL; I’M NOT ON A PLATEAU! I’m down three pounds over the weekend. That feels remarkably good!

I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary this weekend, in fact I was rather sedentary. I did a lot of painting and listening to conference. We did eat a lot of steak and apples, and that is always good for the waistline. We had the cabbage chili for lunch instead of dinner and maybe that helped as well.

Lane is down into the 230’s. He weighed in at 231.5 after walking, but he put 232 as the real weight today, so he’s almost into the 220’s!! His face looked so thin this morning. He is doing great!

Update on Jill: she had an ‘oops’ today because she played conference bingo with the kids yesterday and she said ‘I cheated bad!’. She was up a pound today. Her total so far is 18 pounds down. She said she’ll have that naughty pound off today.

This is our last two weeks on phase 2. One thing that has really helped me lately is the small protein snack at 10:00 a.m. I was getting physically ill around 10:00 each day, but just pushed through it. SIL said it’s okay to eat 1 oz. of protein to help me make it to lunch. I’ve lost 1 pound per day since I started doing that. Lane puts his protein on a piece of melba toast.

Stay tuned for more good news to come.


DAY 29 - P.S. Jill called today to say she is down 2 pounds thanks to a steak and apple day yesterday. She said she doesn't think cheating was worth it!

PHASE 2 – PART DEUX
DAY 26 [closing out week 4]


UGGGGGGGG - - - up and down, up and down, up and down. I think the pattern is supposed to be down, down, down! Lane and I are both fluctuating a lot. I’m beginning to wonder if I have plateaued.


I had just begun to trust the cabbage chili again, when, BAM! Up ½ pound today. I actually ate less of it last night than I usually do.


I need to go back and look at my history to see what I was doing on the 4th week before. I know I went up and down a lot, but when you’re working at it every day, it seems like it should just come off!


We had our department lunch today, and I told them I would just bring my own, but they wouldn’t have it, so because I was talking with one of my co-workers yesterday and he mentioned that he was going on a business trip but was not worried because they had lots of In-N-Out Burgers in California. [he’s doing phase 2 also] I knew I could have the ‘protein’ style burger with tomato, onion and mustard. SO - - that’s what I ordered for today’s lunch. It was VERY tasty! [and I usually hate raw onions on burgers]


Lane is down into the 230’s. [I’m so proud of him] He started this journey over a year and a half ago at around 350. Now, THAT is an accomplishment!!


We have a rather thin mattress on our bed at the trailer. We used to hate it because we both would wake up with sore hips and backs. Lane put another mattress on top of that one this year, and even though we were both sleeping better, I hated it because it was so tall in the room and the ceiling is low. Making the bed was a nightmare because Lane would push the mattress and bedding down every time he would get up during the night. By morning I would have to make the bed from the mattress up and it was such a pain. I finally had him haul it out and we went back to the thin mattress. Amazingly we both slept fine. It has to be that we are putting less weight on our hips and backs now.


Okay - - - - I CAN find some positive things to say today. I need to focus on the positive, and not the ½ pound gain. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can - - - - - - -

PHASE 2 – PART DEUX
DAY 22


I LOVE STEAK AND APPLES!!!

I wish I had known this little secret over the last few years. Who knew that eating apples all day and a big juicy steak at night would drop the pounds????


According to SIL, it’s either supposed to be all apples or all steak, but we’ve found that the combination works great. Over the weekend we decided to just do two steak and apple days. Lane stayed with it more than I did, but I ate it a lot. I was down a full pound on Sunday. Lane was down two or three. It put me under a very important ‘zero’. I honesty wondered if I would ever be under that zero again. It felt fabulous!!


One danger with eating steak all the time - - - - - we’re becoming steak snobs. The little petite sirloins were great for a while, but now we are buying more expensive cuts. [we’re taking two filets on the department retreat on Wednesday.] Lane actually talked me into buying those expensive sirloin steaks from Costco on Saturday.


Another important factor is exercise. You can’t just be sedentary and expect to lose the weight. Even normal everyday activity is not enough. It needs to be a concentrated effort to move aerobically. Lane walks in the mall every morning, and if he also does other physical activities, he has better losses.


Lane talked to Jill about walking, and she tried it. She dropped 3 pounds.


I know that exercise was a missing puzzle piece for me when I was on Phase 4. I just get so stinkin’ busy! After working all day at the office, there is so much to do when I get home. [and sometimes I’m so tired I don’t WANT to do anything!] I know if I made it more of a priority I could do it. I have certainly done it in the past. I just didn’t let anything else get in the way. I need that level of commitment again.

But putting the exercise subject away for another day - - - I LOVE STEAK AND APPLES!! If you are feeling bloated or have overeaten, just spend a day eating apples and steak. It's like magic!

PHASE 2 – PART DEUX
DAY 16


We’re in the 3rd week of this round. I compared my weight loss with the same time period last time, and I am actually ahead of what I did in May.


Jilly is down 15 pounds, I’m down 8 and Lane is down to a weight he said he hasn’t be at for so long, he can’t even remember the last time he saw this weight. Jill was really discouraged yesterday because her loss was coming in ounces, not pounds. Today is a different story; she dropped 2 pounds today and she is feeling GOOD! She said she was so hungry yesterday that by dinnertime she knew that the tiny portion was just NOT going to cut it. She doubled her fish portion and had a green salad. It took the hunger pangs away and she was able to get through the evening much better.


This brings up a good subject. There are just some days when your body is hungry all day. Lane struggles with this when his schedule gets interrupted. Last Saturday we were driving during lunch and didn’t end up eating lunch until 3 p.m., and he just couldn’t get over the ‘hungry’ all day. I gave him a large lunch [Cabbage chili], and he had his afternoon snack 2 hours later. He ate a large steak for dinner [way over the recommended 3.5 ounces] but he just couldn’t kick the ‘hungries’ the rest of the day.


Jill is on the go a lot, and ends up in town at lunch and dinner time quite often. Yesterday she discovered that Burger King has a great salad that fits in with Phase 2 perfectly. It is a large bowl of lettuce and they put the chicken and all the toppings in separate bags so you can put on only the sides you want to add. It is called the GARDEN SALAD, and is reasonably priced.


Bottom line today: 16 days in - - and we are all in a much better place than if we were not doing this. Jill would still be 15 pounds heavier, I’d still be 8 pounds heavier, and Lane would not have seen the miraculous number on the scale today.

PHASE 2 – PART DEUX
DAY 10


Not a long blog today, just a couple of interesting notes:

1) Lane and I made cabbage chili Monday night for dinner. It was wonderful. I will make it when we are not doing phase 2. It was extremely simple and cooked in minutes. It made so much I couldn’t eat it all. [Lane was happy to eat my leftovers as well as the extra in the pan] I’ll include the recipe at the end of the blog.


2) All three of us were ‘UP’ on Tuesday. Lane and I ate the same food for dinner, but Jill had something entirely different. Very strange. At first we thought it was the chili because both of us gained, but when Jill said she was up too, well, then it just got weird.


3) All three of us were back down today. Very strange indeed.


CABBAGE CHILI [one serving]

3.5 OZ GROUND BEEF [ Browned]
2 C WATER
¼ CABBAGE [Chopped]
1 TOMATO [Chopped small]
1 Tsp CHILI POWDER
1 Tsp OREGANO
1 Tsp CUMIN
SALT AND PEPPER TO TASTE
2 GARLIC CLOVES [Chopped]


[We will also add some chopped onion next time around. I didn’t have any cumin and I don’t even know what it is.]


BROWN GROUND BEEF, ADD ALL INGREDIENTS TO LARGE SAUCEPAN AND BRING TO BOIL. COOK UNTIL CABBAGE IS TENDER. [10 – 15 minutes]

PHASE 2 – PART DUEX
DAY 8


We are one week into the new program. Lane is down 15 pounds, I’m down 6 pounds, and Jilly is down 10 pounds.


Jill said she is so excited because there is no way she ever would have lost this much weight using a more traditional method.


This time around, Jill has introduced us to boiled radishes [not as bad as you might think], and baked radish chips. Radishes are only 1 calorie per radish, so they are a great choice as an add-on.


I’m still getting really hungry between breakfast and lunch, but I expected that. That time of day has always been my worst hunger time. A nice warm herbal tea does help to kill the stomach rumbling. Late nights have been fine. It just shows me that eating late at night is more of a habit than a need.


I’m eating a lot more steak this time. I’m hoping it will help me get past the .02 and .03 ounce losses I experienced last time. Early in phase 2, the first time, I chastised a fellow HCG blogger for eating steak every day. I was pretty brutal about how I felt about that and how stupid I thought she was, since beef is higher in calories than chicken or fish. I later apologized to her in one of my blogs because I had eaten a couple of beef meals and dropped some good weight. I still don’t understand WHY it works, but I know it does. Phase 3 taught us that if our weight went up, we would do a steak and apple day and it would be back down the following day.


Jill was not on the diet at that time, but she was visiting and decided to try it. It worked so well for her she formally adopted it and began incorporating ‘Steak & Apple’ days into her life. She bought a lot of steaks to start this program because she already 'gets it'.

PHASE 2 – PART 2
DAY 4

We started Phase 2 on Monday, Sept 6th. We were camping at the property [and without water most of the time, it really WAS like camping!], so it was pretty easy to do a loading day. I fixed a huge breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, muffins, and pancakes. [actually Mark-son made the pancakes].


We got really busy in the afternoon and ended up skipping lunch. I did snack a lot on ‘stuff’, but we were leaving early, so between the packing and closing up the trailer, we just didn’t eat. Also, we were all full from breakfast and no-one wanted to eat. [Jilly is doing phase 2 with us this time]


After getting home around 5 p.m., Jill and I were lucky enough to get nail appointments, so we left Lane with the girls and we dashed to Walmart. By the time we came back it was getting close to 7:00 pm and we were starving! Lane couldn’t wait for us and had eaten a hamburger with the girls. We talked him into grilling us some steaks and we had fresh corn that an IPC had given me. Jill and I finished up with a piece of Amish Friendship bread and a scoop of ice cream.


Tuesday was day 2 of the ‘loading days’. Breakfast was my normal shake, I ate in the TNI café for lunch, and had baked Hungarian crepes. They sound better than they tasted. Lane brought home KFC chicken fried steak for dinner [yuk], and I ate m&ms before going to bed.


The ‘loading’ worked because I was up two pounds on Wednesday, which was the first day of the actual diet. I was a bit hungry during the morning but I remember that as being the most difficult time of the day for me. I did fine during the afternoon and didn’t get to my snack until 5:00 pm. We ate dinner at 6:00, then went to Salt Lake to see a grandson in the hospital. We got home about 9:30 pm and I went to bed at 10:00. I was not hungry at night.


Today I was down to my starting weight. The extra two pounds are gone. [Lane lost 6 pounds!] I had to bring both lunch and dinner to work today because my RS group is coming to view the gardens this evening. I’ll be staying here so I can greet them and show them out to the gardens. I’ll eat my dinner at my desk and just hang out until they come at 6:00.