The client goes on to admit that she is not too fat to fit into her clothes, fit in an airline seat or sleep in a twin bed. Well, I suppose if that’s the standard we can all go back to McDonalds and feel good about ourselves. The client is asked to picture herself not being too fat. Of course she sees happiness, bonding with others, and general contentment. When she thinks of herself as too fat she imagines that she is inside of a coffin and buried alive. Yep, nothing like a bunch of extra fat on your body to make you feel buried alive.  I’ve been there.

            When I started the HCG Diet six months ago I spent quite a bit of time exploring why I wanted to lose weight. Most of my thinking revolved around issues of vanity such as wanting to feel respected by the other women at the gym. I also wanted to be able to wear nice clothes and feel young again. Needless to say, I was carrying a lifetime’s worth of baggage around issues of body image and weight.

            I ultimately lost 25 pounds going from 165 to 140 pounds on my 5’10” frame. I have kept the weight off and now feel completely at home in my “new” body. I am training to compete in my first triathlon in May and am in the best athletic shape of my life. I have to admit that I love looking in the mirror and I love planning the outfits I’m going to wear to various social gatherings. Shopping for clothes is euphoric as hell.

            As I was watching the video it occurred to me that the real reason I wanted to lose the weight was because I felt inauthentic in my overweight body. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a thin person inside of me who was being held back and smothered by the excess weight. Every minute of every day I was making excuses for my body. The monologue in my head was always something like, “Yeah, I know I’m overweight, but…..” and then I would make some excuse for why I wasn’t really living my life the way I wanted to.

            The HCG diet wasn’t easy to do, but it triggered the changes in my body I had been longing for so long. It has been six months and I have not only kept the weight off, my body has changed. I am more muscular and defined than I ever remember being.  I have never been stronger. I have gone from only being able to run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill to running three miles outside. My swimming is getting better all the time and I am now cycling with more focus and purpose than I have in years.

            The body that is emerging from all of this effort feels like my authentic self. The inside and the outside are finally in synch. Sometimes I think this must be something like what people who undergo sex reassignment surgery go through. They are willing to undergo a huge physical ordeal to be able to live in the body they know they belong in. While my ordeal was considerably less intense than that, I have gained some understanding of what it feels like to finally come home in a body that feels truly authentic. I am at ease and I am at peace with my body for the first time in my life.

            My daughter recently emailed me a video of Byron Katie counseling an overweight woman. She was gentle with the woman and slowly and lovingly got this woman to progress from saying, “I’m too fat” to I’m not too fat”. The conversation began with the client telling Katie that she was depressed and unhappy about the fact that she was too fat. Interestingly, Katie never asks her why she feels this way. I wondered if she was perhaps told by her doctor to lose weight to stabilize her blood sugar or blood lipids. As it is, we as viewers are given the impression that the client simply does not like the way she looks.

            The client goes on to admit that she is not too fat to fit into her clothes, fit in an airline seat or sleep in a twin bed. Well, I suppose if that’s the standard we can all go back to McDonalds and feel good about ourselves. The client is asked to picture herself not being too fat. Of course she sees happiness, bonding with others, and general contentment. When she thinks of herself as too fat she imagines that she is inside of a coffin and buried alive. Yep, nothing like a bunch of extra fat on your body to make you feel buried alive.  I’ve been there.

            When I started the HCG Diet six months ago I spent quite a bit of time exploring why I wanted to lose weight. Most of my thinking revolved around issues of vanity such as wanting to feel respected by the other women at the gym. I also wanted to be able to wear nice clothes and feel young again. Needless to say, I was carrying a lifetime’s worth of baggage around issues of body image and weight.

            I ultimately lost 25 pounds going from 165 to 140 pounds on my 5’10” frame. I have kept the weight off and now feel completely at home in my “new” body. I am training to compete in my first triathlon in May and am in the best athletic shape of my life. I have to admit that I love looking in the mirror and I love planning the outfits I’m going to wear to various social gatherings. Shopping for clothes is euphoric as hell.

            As I was watching the video it occurred to me that the real reason I wanted to lose the weight was because I felt inauthentic in my overweight body. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a thin person inside of me who was being held back and smothered by the excess weight. Every minute of every day I was making excuses for my body. The monologue in my head was always something like, “Yeah, I know I’m overweight, but…..” and then I would make some excuse for why I wasn’t really living my life the way I wanted to.

            The HCG diet wasn’t easy to do, but it triggered the changes in my body I had been longing for so long. It has been six months and I have not only kept the weight off, my body has changed. I am more muscular and defined than I ever remember being.  I have never been stronger. I have gone from only being able to run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill to running three miles outside. My swimming is getting better all the time and I am now cycling with more focus and purpose than I have in years.

            The body that is emerging from all of this effort feels like my authentic self. The inside and the outside are finally in synch. Sometimes I think this must be something like what people who undergo sex reassignment surgery go through. They are willing to undergo a huge physical ordeal to be able to live in the body they know they belong in. While my ordeal was considerably less intense than that, I have gained some understanding of what it feels like to finally come home in a body that feels truly authentic. I am at ease and I am at peace with my body for the first time in my life.

            My daughter recently emailed me a video of Byron Katie counseling an overweight woman. She was gentle with the woman and slowly and lovingly got this woman to progress from saying, “I’m too fat” to I’m not too fat”. The conversation began with the client telling Katie that she was depressed and unhappy about the fact that she was too fat. Interestingly, Katie never asks her why she feels this way. I wondered if she was perhaps told by her doctor to lose weight to stabilize her blood sugar or blood lipids. As it is, we as viewers are given the impression that the client simply does not like the way she looks.

            The client goes on to admit that she is not too fat to fit into her clothes, fit in an airline seat or sleep in a twin bed. Well, I suppose if that’s the standard we can all go back to McDonalds and feel good about ourselves. The client is asked to picture herself not being too fat. Of course she sees happiness, bonding with others, and general contentment. When she thinks of herself as too fat she imagines that she is inside of a coffin and buried alive. Yep, nothing like a bunch of extra fat on your body to make you feel buried alive.  I’ve been there.

            When I started the HCG Diet six months ago I spent quite a bit of time exploring why I wanted to lose weight. Most of my thinking revolved around issues of vanity such as wanting to feel respected by the other women at the gym. I also wanted to be able to wear nice clothes and feel young again. Needless to say, I was carrying a lifetime’s worth of baggage around issues of body image and weight.

            I ultimately lost 25 pounds going from 165 to 140 pounds on my 5’10” frame. I have kept the weight off and now feel completely at home in my “new” body. I am training to compete in my first triathlon in May and am in the best athletic shape of my life. I have to admit that I love looking in the mirror and I love planning the outfits I’m going to wear to various social gatherings. Shopping for clothes is euphoric as hell.

            As I was watching the video it occurred to me that the real reason I wanted to lose the weight was because I felt inauthentic in my overweight body. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a thin person inside of me who was being held back and smothered by the excess weight. Every minute of every day I was making excuses for my body. The monologue in my head was always something like, “Yeah, I know I’m overweight, but…..” and then I would make some excuse for why I wasn’t really living my life the way I wanted to.

            The HCG diet wasn’t easy to do, but it triggered the changes in my body I had been longing for so long. It has been six months and I have not only kept the weight off, my body has changed. I am more muscular and defined than I ever remember being.  I have never been stronger. I have gone from only being able to run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill to running three miles outside. My swimming is getting better all the time and I am now cycling with more focus and purpose than I have in years.

            The body that is emerging from all of this effort feels like my authentic self. The inside and the outside are finally in synch. Sometimes I think this must be something like what people who undergo sex reassignment surgery go through. They are willing to undergo a huge physical ordeal to be able to live in the body they know they belong in. While my ordeal was considerably less intense than that, I have gained some understanding of what it feels like to finally come home in a body that feels truly authentic. I am at ease and I am at peace with my body for the first time in my life.

            My daughter recently emailed me a video of Byron Katie counseling an overweight woman. She was gentle with the woman and slowly and lovingly got this woman to progress from saying, “I’m too fat” to I’m not too fat”. The conversation began with the client telling Katie that she was depressed and unhappy about the fact that she was too fat. Interestingly, Katie never asks her why she feels this way. I wondered if she was perhaps told by her doctor to lose weight to stabilize her blood sugar or blood lipids. As it is, we as viewers are given the impression that the client simply does not like the way she looks.

            The client goes on to admit that she is not too fat to fit into her clothes, fit in an airline seat or sleep in a twin bed. Well, I suppose if that’s the standard we can all go back to McDonalds and feel good about ourselves. The client is asked to picture herself not being too fat. Of course she sees happiness, bonding with others, and general contentment. When she thinks of herself as too fat she imagines that she is inside of a coffin and buried alive. Yep, nothing like a bunch of extra fat on your body to make you feel buried alive.  I’ve been there.

            When I started the HCG Diet six months ago I spent quite a bit of time exploring why I wanted to lose weight. Most of my thinking revolved around issues of vanity such as wanting to feel respected by the other women at the gym. I also wanted to be able to wear nice clothes and feel young again. Needless to say, I was carrying a lifetime’s worth of baggage around issues of body image and weight.

            I ultimately lost 25 pounds going from 165 to 140 pounds on my 5’10” frame. I have kept the weight off and now feel completely at home in my “new” body. I am training to compete in my first triathlon in May and am in the best athletic shape of my life. I have to admit that I love looking in the mirror and I love planning the outfits I’m going to wear to various social gatherings. Shopping for clothes is euphoric as hell.

            As I was watching the video it occurred to me that the real reason I wanted to lose the weight was because I felt inauthentic in my overweight body. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a thin person inside of me who was being held back and smothered by the excess weight. Every minute of every day I was making excuses for my body. The monologue in my head was always something like, “Yeah, I know I’m overweight, but…..” and then I would make some excuse for why I wasn’t really living my life the way I wanted to.

            The HCG diet wasn’t easy to do, but it triggered the changes in my body I had been longing for so long. It has been six months and I have not only kept the weight off, my body has changed. I am more muscular and defined than I ever remember being.  I have never been stronger. I have gone from only being able to run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill to running three miles outside. My swimming is getting better all the time and I am now cycling with more focus and purpose than I have in years.

            The body that is emerging from all of this effort feels like my authentic self. The inside and the outside are finally in synch. Sometimes I think this must be something like what people who undergo sex reassignment surgery go through. They are willing to undergo a huge physical ordeal to be able to live in the body they know they belong in. While my ordeal was considerably less intense than that, I have gained some understanding of what it feels like to finally come home in a body that feels truly authentic. I am at ease and I am at peace with my body for the first time in my life.

            My daughter recently emailed me a video of Byron Katie counseling an overweight woman. She was gentle with the woman and slowly and lovingly got this woman to progress from saying, “I’m too fat” to I’m not too fat”. The conversation began with the client telling Katie that she was depressed and unhappy about the fact that she was too fat. Interestingly, Katie never asks her why she feels this way. I wondered if she was perhaps told by her doctor to lose weight to stabilize her blood sugar or blood lipids. As it is, we as viewers are given the impression that the client simply does not like the way she looks.

            The client goes on to admit that she is not too fat to fit into her clothes, fit in an airline seat or sleep in a twin bed. Well, I suppose if that’s the standard we can all go back to McDonalds and feel good about ourselves. The client is asked to picture herself not being too fat. Of course she sees happiness, bonding with others, and general contentment. When she thinks of herself as too fat she imagines that she is inside of a coffin and buried alive. Yep, nothing like a bunch of extra fat on your body to make you feel buried alive.  I’ve been there.

            When I started the HCG Diet six months ago I spent quite a bit of time exploring why I wanted to lose weight. Most of my thinking revolved around issues of vanity such as wanting to feel respected by the other women at the gym. I also wanted to be able to wear nice clothes and feel young again. Needless to say, I was carrying a lifetime’s worth of baggage around issues of body image and weight.

            I ultimately lost 25 pounds going from 165 to 140 pounds on my 5’10” frame. I have kept the weight off and now feel completely at home in my “new” body. I am training to compete in my first triathlon in May and am in the best athletic shape of my life. I have to admit that I love looking in the mirror and I love planning the outfits I’m going to wear to various social gatherings. Shopping for clothes is euphoric as hell.

            As I was watching the video it occurred to me that the real reason I wanted to lose the weight was because I felt inauthentic in my overweight body. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a thin person inside of me who was being held back and smothered by the excess weight. Every minute of every day I was making excuses for my body. The monologue in my head was always something like, “Yeah, I know I’m overweight, but…..” and then I would make some excuse for why I wasn’t really living my life the way I wanted to.

            The HCG diet wasn’t easy to do, but it triggered the changes in my body I had been longing for so long. It has been six months and I have not only kept the weight off, my body has changed. I am more muscular and defined than I ever remember being.  I have never been stronger. I have gone from only being able to run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill to running three miles outside. My swimming is getting better all the time and I am now cycling with more focus and purpose than I have in years.

            The body that is emerging from all of this effort feels like my authentic self. The inside and the outside are finally in synch. Sometimes I think this must be something like what people who undergo sex reassignment surgery go through. They are willing to undergo a huge physical ordeal to be able to live in the body they know they belong in. While my ordeal was considerably less intense than that, I have gained some understanding of what it feels like to finally come home in a body that feels truly authentic. I am at ease and I am at peace with my body for the first time in my life.

            My daughter recently emailed me a video of Byron Katie counseling an overweight woman. She was gentle with the woman and slowly and lovingly got this woman to progress from saying, “I’m too fat” to I’m not too fat”. The conversation began with the client telling Katie that she was depressed and unhappy about the fact that she was too fat. Interestingly, Katie never asks her why she feels this way. I wondered if she was perhaps told by her doctor to lose weight to stabilize her blood sugar or blood lipids. As it is, we as viewers are given the impression that the client simply does not like the way she looks.

            The client goes on to admit that she is not too fat to fit into her clothes, fit in an airline seat or sleep in a twin bed. Well, I suppose if that’s the standard we can all go back to McDonalds and feel good about ourselves. The client is asked to picture herself not being too fat. Of course she sees happiness, bonding with others, and general contentment. When she thinks of herself as too fat she imagines that she is inside of a coffin and buried alive. Yep, nothing like a bunch of extra fat on your body to make you feel buried alive.  I’ve been there.

            When I started the HCG Diet six months ago I spent quite a bit of time exploring why I wanted to lose weight. Most of my thinking revolved around issues of vanity such as wanting to feel respected by the other women at the gym. I also wanted to be able to wear nice clothes and feel young again. Needless to say, I was carrying a lifetime’s worth of baggage around issues of body image and weight.

            I ultimately lost 25 pounds going from 165 to 140 pounds on my 5’10” frame. I have kept the weight off and now feel completely at home in my “new” body. I am training to compete in my first triathlon in May and am in the best athletic shape of my life. I have to admit that I love looking in the mirror and I love planning the outfits I’m going to wear to various social gatherings. Shopping for clothes is euphoric as hell.

            As I was watching the video it occurred to me that the real reason I wanted to lose the weight was because I felt inauthentic in my overweight body. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a thin person inside of me who was being held back and smothered by the excess weight. Every minute of every day I was making excuses for my body. The monologue in my head was always something like, “Yeah, I know I’m overweight, but…..” and then I would make some excuse for why I wasn’t really living my life the way I wanted to.

            The HCG diet wasn’t easy to do, but it triggered the changes in my body I had been longing for so long. It has been six months and I have not only kept the weight off, my body has changed. I am more muscular and defined than I ever remember being.  I have never been stronger. I have gone from only being able to run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill to running three miles outside. My swimming is getting better all the time and I am now cycling with more focus and purpose than I have in years.

            The body that is emerging from all of this effort feels like my authentic self. The inside and the outside are finally in synch. Sometimes I think this must be something like what people who undergo sex reassignment surgery go through. They are willing to undergo a huge physical ordeal to be able to live in the body they know they belong in. While my ordeal was considerably less intense than that, I have gained some understanding of what it feels like to finally come home in a body that feels truly authentic. I am at ease and I am at peace with my body for the first time in my life.

            My daughter recently emailed me a video of Byron Katie counseling an overweight woman. She was gentle with the woman and slowly and lovingly got this woman to progress from saying, “I’m too fat” to I’m not too fat”. The conversation began with the client telling Katie that she was depressed and unhappy about the fact that she was too fat. Interestingly, Katie never asks her why she feels this way. I wondered if she was perhaps told by her doctor to lose weight to stabilize her blood sugar or blood lipids. As it is, we as viewers are given the impression that the client simply does not like the way she looks.

            The client goes on to admit that she is not too fat to fit into her clothes, fit in an airline seat or sleep in a twin bed. Well, I suppose if that’s the standard we can all go back to McDonalds and feel good about ourselves. The client is asked to picture herself not being too fat. Of course she sees happiness, bonding with others, and general contentment. When she thinks of herself as too fat she imagines that she is inside of a coffin and buried alive. Yep, nothing like a bunch of extra fat on your body to make you feel buried alive.  I’ve been there.

            When I started the HCG Diet six months ago I spent quite a bit of time exploring why I wanted to lose weight. Most of my thinking revolved around issues of vanity such as wanting to feel respected by the other women at the gym. I also wanted to be able to wear nice clothes and feel young again. Needless to say, I was carrying a lifetime’s worth of baggage around issues of body image and weight.

            I ultimately lost 25 pounds going from 165 to 140 pounds on my 5’10” frame. I have kept the weight off and now feel completely at home in my “new” body. I am training to compete in my first triathlon in May and am in the best athletic shape of my life. I have to admit that I love looking in the mirror and I love planning the outfits I’m going to wear to various social gatherings. Shopping for clothes is euphoric as hell.

            As I was watching the video it occurred to me that the real reason I wanted to lose the weight was because I felt inauthentic in my overweight body. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a thin person inside of me who was being held back and smothered by the excess weight. Every minute of every day I was making excuses for my body. The monologue in my head was always something like, “Yeah, I know I’m overweight, but…..” and then I would make some excuse for why I wasn’t really living my life the way I wanted to.

            The HCG diet wasn’t easy to do, but it triggered the changes in my body I had been longing for so long. It has been six months and I have not only kept the weight off, my body has changed. I am more muscular and defined than I ever remember being.  I have never been stronger. I have gone from only being able to run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill to running three miles outside. My swimming is getting better all the time and I am now cycling with more focus and purpose than I have in years.

            The body that is emerging from all of this effort feels like my authentic self. The inside and the outside are finally in synch. Sometimes I think this must be something like what people who undergo sex reassignment surgery go through. They are willing to undergo a huge physical ordeal to be able to live in the body they know they belong in. While my ordeal was considerably less intense than that, I have gained some understanding of what it feels like to finally come home in a body that feels truly authentic. I am at ease and I am at peace with my body for the first time in my life.

            My daughter recently emailed me a video of Byron Katie counseling an overweight woman. She was gentle with the woman and slowly and lovingly got this woman to progress from saying, “I’m too fat” to I’m not too fat”. The conversation began with the client telling Katie that she was depressed and unhappy about the fact that she was too fat. Interestingly, Katie never asks her why she feels this way. I wondered if she was perhaps told by her doctor to lose weight to stabilize her blood sugar or blood lipids. As it is, we as viewers are given the impression that the client simply does not like the way she looks.

            The client goes on to admit that she is not too fat to fit into her clothes, fit in an airline seat or sleep in a twin bed. Well, I suppose if that’s the standard we can all go back to McDonalds and feel good about ourselves. The client is asked to picture herself not being too fat. Of course she sees happiness, bonding with others, and general contentment. When she thinks of herself as too fat she imagines that she is inside of a coffin and buried alive. Yep, nothing like a bunch of extra fat on your body to make you feel buried alive.  I’ve been there.

            When I started the HCG Diet six months ago I spent quite a bit of time exploring why I wanted to lose weight. Most of my thinking revolved around issues of vanity such as wanting to feel respected by the other women at the gym. I also wanted to be able to wear nice clothes and feel young again. Needless to say, I was carrying a lifetime’s worth of baggage around issues of body image and weight.

            I ultimately lost 25 pounds going from 165 to 140 pounds on my 5’10” frame. I have kept the weight off and now feel completely at home in my “new” body. I am training to compete in my first triathlon in May and am in the best athletic shape of my life. I have to admit that I love looking in the mirror and I love planning the outfits I’m going to wear to various social gatherings. Shopping for clothes is euphoric as hell.

            As I was watching the video it occurred to me that the real reason I wanted to lose the weight was because I felt inauthentic in my overweight body. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a thin person inside of me who was being held back and smothered by the excess weight. Every minute of every day I was making excuses for my body. The monologue in my head was always something like, “Yeah, I know I’m overweight, but…..” and then I would make some excuse for why I wasn’t really living my life the way I wanted to.

            The HCG diet wasn’t easy to do, but it triggered the changes in my body I had been longing for so long. It has been six months and I have not only kept the weight off, my body has changed. I am more muscular and defined than I ever remember being.  I have never been stronger. I have gone from only being able to run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill to running three miles outside. My swimming is getting better all the time and I am now cycling with more focus and purpose than I have in years.

            The body that is emerging from all of this effort feels like my authentic self. The inside and the outside are finally in synch. Sometimes I think this must be something like what people who undergo sex reassignment surgery go through. They are willing to undergo a huge physical ordeal to be able to live in the body they know they belong in. While my ordeal was considerably less intense than that, I have gained some understanding of what it feels like to finally come home in a body that feels truly authentic. I am at ease and I am at peace with my body for the first time in my life.

            My weight has been stable for about 2 months. I weigh myself every morning when I first get up. I am always within the same 2-3 pound range. At the end of the year I gathered all of my old, large clothes and gave them to charity. It was an act of faith; faith that I will not go back to my old ways of eating and regain the weight.

            I have a new way of eating that works well for me. It is pretty simple. For breakfast I have either an egg white omelet or a smoothie made with frozen fruit, green powder and whey protein. Lunch is 2 cups of steamed vegetable and 4 ounces of lean meat. If I want an afternoon snack I eat cut up raw vegetables and occasionally some low fat yogurt with agave nectar and a teaspoon of ground flaxseeds. Dinner is usually a large green salad, more steamed vegetables and another 3-4 ounces of lean meat or tofu. On the weekends I enjoy a glass (sometimes 2) of wine.

I never eat refined starches or sugars. I have lost my craving for them and feel relieved that they are no longer a part of my life. It was not until I stopped eating these foods that I realized the effect they had on my eating. Starches stimulated my appetite and were probably the driving force behind my constant snacking and tendency to keep eating after I was full. All these years I thought I needed these foods for energy.  All they were doing was stimulating my appetite and leading me to a life of frustration about my weight.

On New Year’s Day I got up and got on the scale and discovered that my weight was the lowest it had been in over 15 years. This is the first year in my adult life that losing weight is not one of my New Year’s Resolutions. This has freed me to think about things that are more important than just my weight. This year I resolved to do more writing and work on a book I have thinking about writing for a long time. I have also resolved to extend my running distances and begin preparing for a triathlon in Hawaii in 2012.

It is very interesting to finally achieve your weight loss goals. I cannot describe the exhilaration of fitting into a slinky dress and going to a party. I have thrown away my Spanx! I wear my shirts tucked into my jeans now. When I meet new people or go to business events I feel supremely confident. I can no longer use my weight as an excuse to not meet a challenge. For years I told myself that I would do this or that as soon as I “lost the weight”. Now, I have no more excuses. It’s time to get on with my life and all of those lofty goals I’ve set for myself over the years. The time is now, there’s nothing holding me back and the only way to proceed is forward!

            I am being very careful to exclude starches, refined starches and sugars from my diet. I am finding that I no longer crave these foods. I feel liberated from the dependence I had developed upon them in my pre-HCG life. That having been said, I have to admit that there are moments when bread is pretty tempting. Like the other day when I came out of a meeting at lunch time and had to walk past one of these Subway junk food sandwich places to  get to my car. The bread there is gross, but it sure smells great while it’s baking! I am happy to report that I walked right past the place and retrieved my lunch of lean steak and steamed broccoli with balsamic vinegar from the car. Afterwards I felt calm and in control of my life. It was a wonderful feeling to know that I was controlling the food and not the other way around.

            Two of the foods I missed the most during Stage II were Shitake Mushrooms and avocados. Here is a recipe using these two foods along with flax oil and some old familiars such as kale and onions. If you’re not familiar with flax oil I encourage you to check it out. It is an Omega3 fat, which means that it is very supportive of your cardiovascular system because it tends to keep your blood nice and thin allowing it to circulate through your body easily. It is also very supportive of your nervous system and brain, so it is good for keeping you sharp mentally and keeping your moods stable. Perhaps best of all, it has a tendency to speed up your metabolism, so you burn more calories when you eat it. Flax oil must be kept cold and under no circumstances should you use it for cooking. It should only be used on cold or cooled food. How do I know all of this? I am a nutritionist. Yep, that’s right; I was an overweight nutritionist, but not anymore!

            Here’s the recipe. It’s great for the holidays because of its green color and because you can make it a day or two ahead of a party and it gets better as it sits. I hope you enjoy it.

Marinated Chard and Kale Salad

From Elaina’s Pure Joy Kitchen

www.PureJoyLivingFoods.com

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

Salad:

1 bunch fresh kale

1 bunch Swiss chard

1 medium red onion, sliced very thin

2 cloves garlic, pressed

1 or 2 medium avocados, cubed

1 medium zucchini or summer squash, thinly sliced or 10 shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced

Marinade:

¾ cup flax or olive oil or a combination of the two

½ cup fresh lemon juice

Dash of cayenne

Directions:

1. Remove the stems from the kale and chard and tear or slice into pieces
2. Pour the marinade over the leaves and squeeze firmly with your hands to help the leaves become softer. After a couple of minutes you’ll notice that the volume of the leaves has been significantly reduced,
3. Mix the rest of the salad ingredients into the bowl and allow to marinate for an hour or more. The longer it marinates the more tender it becomes. This will keep, well sealed, for up to 5 days.

I am now at the end of Phase II and all the hard work, planning and sacrifice have been worth it. I’ve lost 11 pounds and a total of 13.2 inches. Unbelievable…I am over a foot smaller than when I started this diet. Here are the stats: 2 ¼ inches from my chest, 2 ¾ inches from my tummy, 2 inches from my hips, 3 inches from my waist, 1 ½ inches from each thigh, 7/8 and 1 3/8 inches respectively from my upper arms. My body composition has gone from 26% fat to 24%. All of this in 21 days…unbelievable!

            Now the scary part starts. I have to maintain my weigh loss without the help if the HCG injections. I’m a little scared that the weight will come back, but the doctor ways I’ll be fine as long as I stay away from starches, sugars and refined carbohydrates. The good news is that a much broader range of foods will now be available to me. I can’t wait to have mushrooms and cauliflower again. I’m also looking forward to a little bit of avocado and real vinaigrette on my salad again. It will also be nice to be able to use my regular facial cosmetics again.

            Three weeks ago I began this journey wondering if this would work at all and, if it did, whether the results would last. Today I have the answer to my first question. Yes, HCG works and it works better than any weight loss program I have ever tried. I am so happy with my new body. All of clothes fit beautifully.  I am pulling things from the back of my closet that used to be too tight and most of them are loose on me now. I can hardly wait to go shopping and try on new stuff. I feel like I have been let out of cage. Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

I have gotten into a rhythm and, although I never would have believed it, have become comfortable with my very low calorie diet and daily injections. I’ve had some minor problems with fatigue and brain fog, but the B vitamin injections from my doctor have helped a lot.

It has become something of a game to avoid eating in social situations. Sometimes I feign illness; “Gee, Sally that bread looks delicious, but my tummy is all out of sorts today and I just can’t eat a thing”. Other times I have no choice but to have the food in front of me (dinner with the boss, etc.) and I spend the entire time moving the food around on my plate. The trick to being able to do this is to make sure that you have eaten before you sit down to a meal with others.  I have discovered that people don’t notice whether you’re eating or not. They are so absorbed in their own eating that they are oblivious to others. This diet has provided me with a platform to observe others eating in a way I never noticed before. Most people eat way too much, way too fast and utterly mindlessly. This has been one of the great lessons from this experience. I know that my eating patterns and behaviors will be different for the rest of my life. Perhaps I will finally make peace with food by the end of this diet.

I hope all of you fellow dieters are experiencing similar successes. One of the skills I have acquired during this experience is learning how to make a vegetable scramble with egg whites and no oil. I’ll share it with you in the spirit of camaraderie.

Oil Free Egg White Vegetable Scramble

Ingredients:

¼ cup vegetable stock

½ cup chopped vegetables (left over steamed veggies work great)

1/3 cup organic egg whites

¼ teaspoon spices and/or spices of choice

Directions:

1. Bring the stock to a boil in a small (9” or smaller) non-stick skillet
2. Add the veggies and boil in the stock until the stock is reduced by half
3. Pour the egg whites over the veggies, reduce the heat to medium low and cook until set on the bottom and nearly cooked on top
4. Sprinkle the spice(s) over the egg whites and veggies
5. Turn the egg whites and veggies and turn off the pan, leave the food in the pan for 2-3 minutes, then remove from the pan and eat right away

Hope you enjoy it, and as my friend and coach Mark would say, Journey On!

            I am also beginning to notice that my clothes are looser. Things that had gotten tight are zipping more easily these days. I am having fun rediscovering clothes I had pushed to the back of my closet because I felt uncomfortable in them. I will be taking my measurements again over the weekend so soon I’ll know how many inches I’ve lost.

            The other day someone asked me an interesting question. This woman wanted to know why I, as a woman in late middle age in a long term marriage with grown children gave a shit about being thin. She just didn’t understand why I would feel so much urgency around becoming slender again. To her mind I didn’t need to attract a mate or impress men in any way. In fact, she pointed out that women our age are pretty much invisible in a social context. I also do not need to compete with younger people in my job. Nor am I looking for a job at this time. She just didn’t see the point.

            It seemed like an odd question to me. However, it did get me thinking about why slenderness is still so important to me at this age. In my case I will never be free of my mother’s judgment, even though my mother has been dead for eight years. The constant nagging about my weight combined with the conditionality of her love will never leave me. It has become my own judgment of myself and is too deeply ingrained in my psyche to ever leave me.

            But there is more to it than that.  I want to be thin again to have social acceptance. It’s not just my mother’s voice telling me to be thin; it’s everybody’s voice. Overweight people do not get as much respect as thin people. A woman of a certain age who still has a nice body gets a lot more respect than one who has become fat and dumpy. I feel much more confident walking into a room in a nice dress with a thin body than I would overweight in loose, body-disguising clothes. I also like the respect that I get when I walk into the gym and my body looks good. People stroke you for maintaining your body.

            It is also nice to walk into a clothing store and get some respect. I love clothes. It would be such a loss to me to not be able to fit into a nice outfit for a special occasion. Granted, some boutiques have their heads up their asses and don’t carry anything larger than a size 6. I think that is truly crazy, because no matter how skinny I get I could never fit my broad shoulders and long legs into such small clothing. Those people are just prejudiced against tall people as far as I’m concerned. However, I would be absolutely miserable if I had to shop at plus size stores or buy everything on line. I love shopping, and the fit of a beautiful garment is truly one of life’s great sensual pleasures.

            Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I associate getting fat with throwing in the towel and admitting that I’m getting old. As long as I can run a few miles, bike a few more and go out in public in a swimsuit I don’t feel my mortality as intensely as I would if I could no longer do these things. I know women who are overweight and very fit, but in my mind being thin is connected to staying fit. And staying fit is part of retaining my youth.

I know darn well that I am going to continue to age and that at some point my life will end. Maybe I’m like Elsie from Chelsea in Cabaret, when they lay me out like a queen I’ll be the best looking corpse anyone has ever seen.

All kidding aside, my need to be thin is deeply ingrained in me and is something I will always strive for in myself. I am looking forward to my new body and to the new challenges and accomplishments I’ll complete when I am once and for all at my desired weight.

I go back to my HCG manual in search of an answer. Plateaus are normal I’m told. If you hit a plateau have an apple day. An apple day means that from lunch one day to lunch the next you eat nothing but six apples. I can’t do that today. I have my killer gym workout tomorrow and I can’t do that on a frigging apple for breakfast. I resolve to have an apple day tomorrow if the scale is still stuck. When I looked into the diet they mentioned apple days, but they portrayed plateaus as something that might happen a couple of weeks into the diet after a substantial period of weight loss. I’ve been at this for 8 days and lost a total of 3 pounds! I feel cornered and almost hopeless.

In the hopes of clearing my head and raising my mood, I take my one week measurements. Here is cause for joy! I have lost an inch from my chest, ¾ of an inch from my waist and ¾ of an inch from my belly. I’ve also lost from bulk from my arms and legs for a total loss of just under 4 ½ inches for the week. Ok, I’m back on track and have resigned myself to an apple day tomorrow if the scale hasn’t moved.

Another thing I’ve noticed about the diet is that I am much more sensitive to my environment. I notice noise, smells, glare, dust – anything that confronts me. This afternoon my husband and I went to a concert with a friend. She’s an older woman who drinks a lot. As soon as we got in the car I immediately noticed that she had horrendous under arm odor and was wearing a strong, acrid smelling perfume. Within minutes the sides of my face started to throb, my throat started to close and my nose was burning. Usually BO doesn’t bother me much, but this woman’s body is so polluted by alcohol that she smells really bad. The concert was wonderful, but I had to ask my husband to sit between us so that I could breathe.

I guess I am just going to have to get tough with this. When I decided to try the diet my doctor told me that I might not have the same experience as someone who was very obese. At 5’10’ and 160 pounds I have quite a bit of muscle on my body. I have also continued to work out really hard two days a week, because I don’t want to lose everything I’ve worked so hard to gain. This may be holding water in my muscles and keeping my weight number high. In any event, I am very anxious about what the scale will say tomorrow.

            I feel like a beached whale. It has been fun to eat all this fat, but after two days of cheese, macadamia nuts, avocado, ice cream and more than a little wine, I am grossed out. Interestingly, earlier in the day I felt very energetic and had a great work out this morning. Then later in the afternoon I felt overcome by lethargy.

            As of this morning I had not gained any weight. I wonder what the scale will show tomorrow. At the moment I just feel heavy and sluggish. Tomorrow I start the low calorie part of the diet. I feel kind of nervous, it is such a strict regimen that I wonder if I can stay with it. Life comes at you sometimes and I wonder how I’ll do as I navigate the ups and downs of my existence in the knowledge that I cannot eat out NO MATTER WHAT.

            I found out last week that I have to have my house fumigated for termites next week. That means my husband and I have to stay in a hotel for 2 days. So I have to prepare all of my meals for those days in advance and take them to the hotel with me.  I also have to board my two cats who will not understand what is happening and may think that they are being given away. It is going to be difficult to stick with the diet during all of this upheaval. However, I am a very disciplined person and if anybody can do this I can.

            One amusing thing about eating all of this fat is that I have noticed that my libido has bounced back from its menopausal stupor. Last night my husband and I were like a couple of teenagers. I mean this was really primal Discovery Channel sort of stuff. I know that sex hormones are derived from fat. But I didn’t think that ordinary dietary triglycerides could do this. I mean look at all these fat, impotent guys bellying up to the fast food counters. It surprised me that I had such a depth of intensity around the whole thing. The only other thing I can think of is that the hCG hormone is releasing fat from my tissues and my body is able to use that fat to manufacture some stuff I haven’t had access to for quite some time now. This could be almost too good to be true. I could lose copious amounts of weight and get my mojo back too.

            Today I began the hCG diet. I started the day dehydrated and somewhat hung over because last night we went out to dinner with friends and I allowed myself to drink too much wine.  The wine knocked me on my butt and I woke up this morning feeling exhausted and fuzzy around the edges.

            This is one of two introductory “gorging” days. I have been eating fatty and fattening things all day. At the Farmer’s Market I had an almond milk and cacao shake, which really filled me up. I also sampled quite a few cheeses. I thought about getting a waffle, but honestly could not stand the idea of putting any more food in my stomach.

            At Whole Foods I also ate quite a few cheese samples and bought both Macadamia nuts and chocolate covered almonds. I’ve been stuffing the nuts into my mouth all day. It’s fun. I love macadamia nuts and chocolate covered almonds and I never let myself have them. I also love cereal, which I also avoid, so I just had a bowl of that too.

            In a way though, it makes me feel anxious to eat all this high calorie food. I feel like a Victorian era bride on her wedding night. After being told my whole life to stay away from this stuff, now I’m supposed to embrace it. It’s like “close your eyes and think of England” as I eat another handful of nuts. The irony is that I have actually gotten to the place where I no longer crave these foods and it makes me uncomfortable to eat them. If this diet doesn’t work, I’ll have many days of borderline starvation and hard gym workouts to make up for these two days.

            I also did the swimsuit photos and all of my measurements today. The photos reveal a blocky, boxy, a little past middle aged woman with several rolls of back fat. It also shows my blubberous mid section. I have hated that fat middle of mine since I first became aware of it when I was eight years old.  Can a small syringe of this hormone remove this curse from my body?

            I have been riding a continuum between optimism and resistance in the week since I began planning the diet in earnest. A few days ago I sat down and planned out my meals for the next six days or so and it felt like I was planning the start of a war. Would this work? Will I be able to prepare all this food, because, unlike other times, when an unexpected evening of eating out is not dispositive, it could derail everything in my new situation.   Yes, this is a war; one against an element of my own body. This is a war against a specialized group of highly hormonally active cells. Any false moves could allow those cells to get the upper hand and defeat me.

            I keep thinking of the story “Flowers for Algernon” about the guy who takes a drug that makes him smart and then watches as it wears off in the laboratory mouse who took it before him. In the end, he is worse off for his efforts and back where he started. I am afraid that this diet will allow me to be thin for a short time and then my body will go back to its old form. My doctor keeps assuring me that it doesn’t work that way. I want to believe him. I trust him. That’s why I’m on this journey.

            Like many people who have opted to try this diet, I have struggled with weight issues for almost my entire life. I have rarely experienced slenderness in my life and on those occasions when I have it has often been accompanied by substance abuse or extreme stress. I have never been happy, calm, sober and thin. It’s high time I was.  It’s my turn. I am an avid exerciser and carefully watch what I eat. However, I have a layer of nasty, ugly menopausal fat over the muscles I’ve grunted and sweated to build at the gym. It’s my time to look the way that I feel I deserve to look.

            My misadventures with food issues and weight issues began when I was 8 years old. My parents and I had moved from Michigan to California the previous year and we had been pretty much on the move for a year or so by the spring of 1963. We were living in an apartment in El Cajon, California and there was very little to do other than sit around and watch TV. I was never allowed to snack between meals, so I wasn’t stuffing myself in front of the tube. No, I think the combination of the beginning stirrings of puberty along with the change from running through the neighborhood and playing with friends in Michigan and sitting in the living room in front of the TV in El Cajon was enough to allow my body to begin accumulating fat.

            In any event, the moment I will always remember as the inauguration of my “weight problem” began as a problem for a distant relative of ours named Lillias Fullerton, who felt it her duty (or at least her business) to comment upon my body and call me a “little butterball”. I remember the night she called me that, as she said it in such an affectionate tone of voice, it didn’t occur to me that the bitch had just insulted me and that after that comment neither I or my parents would never view my body the same way.

            Up until the “butterball” moment I had never thought very much about my body one way or another. People always remarked about how tall I was and I was often mistaken for being older than I was, but I had never considered my body as a force to be reckoned with before that fateful night. Lillias’ intrusive comment and my parents’ reaction to it would inaugurate a relationship of conflict and hatred with my body for the rest of my life.

            I recently got out an old album and looked at the photos of myself during that spring and yes, I was a bit chubby.  My parents both abhorred overweight people and Lillias must have sent them into panic mode when she made reference to my weight. They sprung into action and within days I was plunged into the world of diets, calories, and for the rest of my childhood, hunger.

            I don’t remember that diet lasting that long. I don’t remember if I lost any weight and I don’t remember the details other than being really hungry on the weekends in the afternoons and my mother telling me that I could not have anything to eat until dinner, which always seemed like an eternity away. I remember trying to sneak food which was characterized as “lying” and resulted in being spanked with a wooden paddle and confined to my room for some period of time. The paddle hurt, but what hurt more was feeling that in my fundamental physical being I was fat and repulsive. This vessel, this body that contained my soul and was the only package I could be encased in for this lifetime was unacceptable and ugly and had to be punished through hunger in order to be loved. I would lie in bed as an unhappy 8 year old and wish there was some way to get the fat off my body really fast. Oh how I wished for a magic potion that would free me of the fat that kept my parents from loving me as much as they had a few months before when I wasn’t a “butterball”.

            We moved a few more times, and in the summer of 1964 we found ourselves in Blythe, California, where I would spend the rest of my childhood. Blythe is in the middle of the lower Mojave Desert and summer temperatures hover around 110F. We blew into Blythe in June of 1964. My parents had separated briefly in the spring of 1964 and this was to be new beginning for them and for us as a family. It was so hot that nobody went outside during the day, so I was hamstrung in trying to make new friends. As we moved around, I was usually able to connect with at least one or two other girls and find some kind of common ground; usually Barbie dolls. This place was different. There was nobody around and the street we lived on was hot and silent all day long.

            Once again, TV filled my days. Once again, my mother noticed that I was overweight and another “diet” was imposed upon me. This one would last for the next year. Over the course of the summer I met a few kids, most of whom were very weird.  The most popular game was to dare each other to hold lighted firecrackers as they exploded. Several families forbade their daughters to have anything to do with me when they learned that my family was not Christian and had no interest in attending their church. The diet didn’t seem to be doing much good and my mother kept ratcheting my food allowance downward. As a result, I kept asking the weird kids I hung out with for food whenever I went over to their houses. I was just so hungry all the time. I hadn’t learned how to be hungry, an essential skill for most women in our society.

            The problem was that I wasn’t a woman; I was a nine year old girl and was growing like crazy. I would reach my adult height of 5’10” by the time I was 14. My body was absolutely screaming for food. It was all I thought about, I didn’t care about forming friendships with the other kids, I just wanted, desperately wanted, something, anything, to eat. When I couldn’t find kids to hang out with in the neighborhood, I would creep around the garbage cans of the families that had had cookouts the night before and pull the meat bones from the garbage and eat the fat off of them. In fact, the only time I ever recall eating spare ribs was from a garbage can.

All I remember from the fourth grade was the report I wrote on Japan (which I got an A on) and being hungry. One of the most humiliating experiences of my entire life happened at lunch one day in fourth grade. My entire lunch consisted of a boiled egg and half a banana. One day I was so hungry and so anxious to eat my lunch that my hands were shaking and the boiled egg slipped out of my hand and slid across the table onto the ground where a kid smashed it with his foot. The other kids thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen and laughed like crazy. I tried to laugh along with them, but inside I was crying. I was just so hungry.

Starving me wasn’t getting the result my mother wanted, so in the spring of 1965, in preparation for a trip back to Michigan to see our relatives, my mother and I both went on diet pills. I was 10 years old. The diet pills worked. They made me shake and gave me such horrible motor mouth that my teacher nearly killed me, but the weight came off. I thought I had found the answer. For the first time since that night with Lillas I wasn’t hungry and I was doing what my parents wanted…I was wasn’t eating and I was getting thinner. Eventually my mom had to tell my dad why I was behaving like a mental case and he put a stop to the diet pills. By that time we were ready to leave on our vacation and I looked pretty good.

By the time I was eleven I had thoroughly internalized the “butterball” mentality and understood that obesity made me unlovable. The fat around my middle was millstone around my soul. Why did I have to be imprisoned in this vessel that grew fat on my upper abdomen and belly when other kids could just eat and be kids? Sometimes I think that my childhood ended with the “butterball” comment when I was eight years old.  From that day I have carried the burden of being “thin enough” throughout nearly every day of my life. I am ready to lay my burden down.

In high school I was probably not considered fat, but I was never what you would call thin. Looking back over photos, I was reasonably thin when I was 16 and 17, but by the time I was 18 a pretty heavy drinking habit had put that thick muffin top back on my upper abdomen.

A year of eating in the cafeteria at Dykstra Hall at UCLA didn’t do anything to slim me down. By that time I had become involved with my the man who would become my first husband and he, like my parents, frequently told me what a fat pig I was and that I needed to lose weight. During the summer between my first and second year of college I went on a liquid diet and lost about 8 pounds. I couldn’t sustain it when I started classes again and could barely summon the energy to go to class, work in his mother’s office in the afternoon and then study at night. Sometimes I was so tired I wanted to cry.

I had something of a break through when, in my junior year, my husband and I relocated to Santa Barbara. We moved to Isla Vista, the student community on the edge of UCSB. IV, as it was called, had a food co-op that had fresh organic produce, whole grains and unpasteurized milk. I had just finished reading “Diet for a Small Planet” by Frances Moore Lappe and the co-op had everything I needed to implement the lacto-ovo vegetarian laid out in the book. That book changed my life. I taught myself to cook with that book and within 5 months I had lost about 30 pounds. For the first time in my life I was actually thin. I had to buy new clothes because my old ones were literally falling off of me.

That summer I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life and married my first husband. I had nearly called the wedding off three days before after a terrible fight where he had been completely disrespectful of me, but I felt I had come too far to back out. That fall, we met Jeff, the man who would introduce me and my husband to cocaine.

I took an immediate liking to coke. You didn’t have to inhale nasty smelling smoke to get high; just a numbing whiff of stardust up your nose. In a few minutes all of your needs were met. Unlike pot, you could keep your train of thought and have outrageous conversations. You could also stay up all night very easily because you never got tired. You could study on the stuff. Best of all, you never got hungry. Cocaine put both food and body fat in the dungeon where I believed it deserved to be. I got really thin.

Eventually, inevitably, the marriage and the cocaine came to an end. Interestingly, when I stopped using I didn’t gain weight. I had learned not to eat and ate very little. This went on for years. It was like my appetite had been permanently suppressed. I pulled my life together after the divorce and got accepted to law school.

Law school was so stressful that I didn’t eat, have a period or a bowel movement for that matter for the most of the first semester. I lived on steamed vegetables and yogurt and rounded out my weekly calorie intake with a massive alcohol binge every Friday afternoon.  I was so poor in law school that I was actually what you would call food insecure. I frequently lacked the money to buy enough food to stave off hunger. I sometimes had to make a can of soup last for two days by highly diluting it.

I met the man who has been my husband for the past 25 years during my second year of law school. He was already a lawyer and he could afford to feed me. I ate. By the time I left law school I was chubby again. This didn’t get any better when I became pregnant with my son two years later.  I gained 38 pounds and it took me over a year to lose the baby weight. I did it by going hungry and exercising like a maniac.

            Three years later I became pregnant with my daughter. Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of my first pregnancy, I watched every bite of food that went into my mouth. The result: I gained 36 pounds this time. What followed was another year of gritty dieting and all the exercise I could fit into my schedule. By the time my daughter was two years old my weight had stabilized at a reasonable level and I was able to remain pretty slender until my late 40’s when I became peri-menopausal.

            I had a good menopause. I used no drugs and came through the experience with no tumors, surgeries or serious maladies. I did, however, gain about 30 pounds without changing my eating habits or exercise routine. So I did what I’ve always done and went on a diet. I managed to lose about 15 pounds, but the rest of the weight would not move no matter what I did. I kept slapping away at my weight like Don Quixote tilting at his windmills, but I was truly stuck.

            Then I learned about the HCG diet. Here is a chance to get this stubborn menopause weight off once and for all.  I have some reservations about how I might feel, but I figure if I’m too miserable I can always stop. This is a chance to kick this can down the alley once and for all and I cannot resist the temptation to try it.