9 Months Pregnant

Today I weighed in at 209 lbs. I’m 5’ 4”.

I’m eager to feel normal again but not worried about my ability to lose the weight. I’ve been pondering my upcoming weightloss journey, especially this month. Before we get into that I’m going to complain just a tiny bit about being fat.

No woman likes being called fat. To imagine that a pregnant girl with raging hormones and extra sensitivity would like being called fat is completely insane. I’m not having twins. I fear for the next person who asks me.

For the first two trimesters I was super healthy, walked for 30-60 minutes per day plus climbed 4-5 flights of stairs at least three times a day at work. Then the pandemic hit. A lot of people have gained weight sheltering in place. I’ve gained 40 lbs! Mostly this happened because I totally stopped exercising and I’ve eaten freely. What’s done is done. My baby is fine and I’m going to have a natural birth. But I have some weight to lose once my tenant vacates.

Because I’ve tried so many diets in the past and have had success with them, it’s hard to choose which to do. I’ll be breastfeeding so I have the added consideration of what’s best for my baby and what aids lactation. I’m right now looking at a low calorie diet that’s paleo-ish but with oats and barley. As long as I count my calorie intake and usage, drink tons of water, and breastfeed, I know I can lose the weight. I would really like to be super hot by Christmas. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I’m having a baby soon. I’ve wanted a daughter since my aunt told me her life long goals were to have a daughter and go to Egypt and she achieved both. My baby Carmen is going to be so awesome, I can’t wait to know her.

Love, Dana

Photo by Laura Mooney, The Best Days of Your Life Photography Studio

Shrink Wrap Shrinks Fat

I’ve seen several of these magical body wraps on Instagram and Pinterest. You may have heard of the Belly Bandit for postpartum belly reconstruction. There are many variations of body wraps, but basically they’re bandages or Saran Wrap tightly wrapped around the belly (or any trouble area) to tighten the skin and shrink fat. I tried it last night. It worked. I didn’t take before and after measurements, but I took pictures and saw results. Please pardon my heaps of (clean) laundry and shoes in the pictures.

Step 0. Drink a liter or two of water throughout this cycle. Drink a liter before the exercise step and as much as you need during and after exercise.

Step 1. Rub TONS of lotion onto the belly. I used Jergens Skin Firming lotion. Once it’s soaked in, add another two layers so it’s really globbed on there like monster venom.

Step 2. Roll Saran Wrap around the waist tightly. You want to breathe, but consider it a homemade plastic girdle.

Step 3. My plastic kept riding up with my fat bulging out at the hips so I taped all the way around the top and bottom with packing tape.

Step 4. Put a bunch of clothes on top. I pulled my exercise pants way up and put on a t-shirt, sweatshirt and sport jacket.

Step 5. Do sweaty exercise for 45 minutes. I did 45 on the stationary bike and was dripping sweat.

Step 6. Remove the shrink wrap by cutting down the middle, the way paramedics remove shirts. It will be very sweaty and gross with globs of lotion rolling off. You might want to do this part in the bathroom. Then scrub the hell out of your body in the shower.

Next time I’m doing my thighs and arms too. I might try the neck. According to an article I read, the heat and penetrating lotion loosen up fat. I guess that’s how it works. Sweating is always a good thing in my book. My stomach stayed flat all day. Some girls use mud instead of lotion, others add lemon juice, tea tree oil, cayenne pepper and other ingredients. I might try some of those if I get adventurous and willing to wash a bowl. This was the fastest belly shrinkage I’ve experienced. It took less than an hour. Shrink wrap.

Love, Dana

Fat Girl Playing Skinny

My brother made a diabetic vanilla mousse tonight. That means sugar-free jello pudding made with half and half (less sugar than milk) and whipped. I was able to avoid a taste, though I did watch him eat it like a creeper. It was thick, creamy and oh so light. Once a fat girl, always a fat girl. I love that shit.

I’m on the HCG diet again. After the launching gorge I shot up to 142 lbs and this morning, on day ten I weighed in at 134 lbs. I’m determined to stick with this diet until I hit 127 putting my total weightloss up to FIFTY POUNDS. Fifty pounds is a lot of weight. That’s two and a half of our obese tuxedo cat.

I’ve found some good diet foods you should try. Hebrew National has these DELICIOUS 97% fat free all beef kosher hot dogs. They are only 45 calories each and taste like Slim Jims without that awkward paper wrapping- is it edible? Another GREAT diet food is gobhi chicken curry. It’s cauliflower and chicken breast pieces in an orange curry sauce with no sugar. You can find recipes on Pinterest or go to your local Indian-Pakistani restaurant and order it like I do three times a week. The owner is very proud of me. I’ve been eating there since my chubby days and he swears it’s the gobhi chicken diet that took my weight off. I love gobhi chicken. Spicy foods burn fat. Avoid rice and naan. The last fat burners are blueberries and grapefruit. Both satisfy the sweet craving and they are full of antioxidants.

Drink water. Take your weight in pounds divided by two for how many ounces of water you should consume per day, i.e. 134 lbs/2=67 oz.

I took some revealing pictures before this round of HCG and will post them with the after shots when my belly is camera ready.

Love,
Dana

The Secret

The secret to my fantastic weightloss was HCG1234 by Creative Bioscience. It’s a bottle of sublingual drops that make a low calorie diet easier and more effective. The ingredients and what they do are listed at the bottom of this post. Several of my girlfriends had done the HCG diet and ALL of them achieved amazing results. Not all had lasting results. There are many brands of HCG drops on the market with or without human hormones. I went with the hormone-free Creative Bioscience drops recommended by a girlfriend who had started with a body similar to mine and ended up like a model.

The diet should be done for a minimum of 21 days and is best started right at the end of your period. It has three phases: loading, low calorie, and then maintenance. Through the loading and low calorie phases, take ten HCG drops under the tongue three times a day not within ten minutes of eating or drinking anything.

The loading phase is two full days of gorging with fat, sugar, carbs and normal foods too. Eat as much as you possibly can! Do it over the weekend so things like work don’t disturb the flow of bacon and donuts into your face. The point of loading is to get your body programmed to primarily use fat for energy. When you stop gorging and continue the HCG drops, your body will keep burning lots of fat, but now from storage.

A successful loading action for me was to make a list of all the naughty foods I would miss during the low calorie phase and I ATE THEM ALL. I bought everything I could at the grocery store and systematically hit the restaurants I had to visit like Bob’s Donuts, Happy Donut, Donut World, etc. During the loading phase I was eating NONSTOP. It’s no joke. A good loading phase will set you up with a high fat burning rate and help you make it through the first couple days of low calorie eating. By the end of a good gorge, you should feel like you don’t want to eat again for a while.

The low calorie phase starts on day three. There are very few approved foods. http://www.hcg-diet-miracle.com/hcg-diet-food-list.html It’s basically no carbs, no sugar, no artificial sweeteners, no dairy and very little fat. You can consume 500, 800 or 1200 calories per day. On the 800 and 1200 calorie diets, exercise is okay but not on the 500 calorie diet. My successful diet has been 500 net calories (calories consumed minus calories burned). I use the MyFitnessPal app to keep track of all foods and physical activity- I’ve tried several similar apps and it’s the best because it has the most foods programmed in. Due to the nature of my work, not exercising is unrealistic. If consuming too few calories for a greater level of physical activity, the body can get really weak and uncomfortable.

My successful HCG phase 2 diet:

Breakfast- one hard boiled egg and a black decaf coffee (caffeine is okay. I don’t drink it myself)

Two snacks a day- one apple, one grapefruit or 50 blueberries

Lunch/Dinner- one Trader Joe’s chicken sausage and two Persian cucumbers or ground turkey with steamed spinach or romaine lettuce and chicken breast with low fat, sugar free vinaigrette.

I know it seems boring to just eat those few items for 19+ days. It is boring. That’s part of why it works for me. If I have a bunch of delicious and interesting food around I easily slip back into “living to eat” instead of eating to live. I also don’t like cooking during the week and I’m against microwaves; I’m getting so little food I don’t want to kill what I do eat. Part of my life change was removing food from my top priorities. It was one of my main pleasures. In fact food was one of the few things that made me happy sometimes. After my 2013 body, mind, spirit makeover I don’t see any use for depression related ice-cream binges. I just trained myself out of food being so important. If I did it after 28 years, anyone can do it.

Let’s take this moment for me to explain those 28 years and my eating habits. My dad worked late so my brother and I would get home from school and head straight for the freezer. For years I would have an after school snack of three microwaved chimichangas with salsa and sour cream. Or three bowls of cereal. Or two Klondike bars. And we ALWAYS had chips and cookies in the house. At one point he bought a cow cookie jar that mooed when the lid lifted, but I figured out how to trick the “alarm” within a couple days- lift the lid straight up without tilting it.

My dad would serve us family meals every night and we blessed every dinner with a prayer. He made tuna casserole, steak, baked potatoes, delicious stuff. And he served dessert every night! I remember him serving two small scoops of ice cream in the beginning, but soon we were allowed to dish up our own ice cream. My brother and I were both very fat kids. Oh, and I had to pack my own lunch for school everyday which usually consisted of a pepperoni and mustard sandwich, two kudos bars and a Capri Sun. Sometimes I’d toss a couple cookies in there too, why not?

Back to HCG phase 2, there are some things to watch out for. Sugar makes you hungry. If sugar sneaks into your diet somehow in a meat marinade or salad dressing, you can start getting intense cravings. Read labels! The other thing is it’s VITAL that you drink as many ounces of water as your weight in pounds divided by two EVERYDAY. The second and third low-calorie days are the hardest. The second day is usually fatigued. The third day is craving city! Drink more water and if you have to, eat a little extra of an approved food. Do not give in and buy a pastry. By the fourth day the diet is EASY. Parties are tough, especially if you love beer. Visiting older relatives is tough. Visiting my stepmom is tough because she thinks I’m too skinny and will try her best to get pasta onto my plate. A must-be-done tip is remove all unapproved foods from your house. I live with my brother so I got his agreement to not buy any peanut butter for three weeks. Williams kids love peanut butter.

Weigh yourself everyday naked with dry hair. Log your daily weight on a paper graph or in the MyFitnessPal app to keep it easy. Some diets say not to weigh in daily, but if you follow the HCG protocol you will lose between half a pound to two pounds a day which is encouraging with no threat of discouragement as long as you stick to the plan.

“Accidents” might happen. I’m on my sixth day of phase 2 right now and I accidentally ate a Chipotle burrito with everything in it for lunch. “I thought it was a 4oz low-fat turkey burger patty…” Now there are degrees of badness. If you have an occasional extra grapefruit, change nothing. It’s ok. If you do like I did and eat a burrito and plan to drink three beers when you get to your best friend’s house tonight, have an apple day tomorrow. Apple days are the bandaid for big cheats. Tomorrow I am eating nothing but apples. I’ll probably have six of them, maybe seven. On cheat days and apple days, continue the drops as usual. Stay strong and don’t use one bad day as a reason to quit or do an “I’ve f’d up so bad I might as well…” This is the sixth time I’ve done HCG. Three times were very successful, the others were bungee jumps. If you stick to the approved foods, you will lose weight. The drops and water will curb your appetite enough that you won’t go crazy and you will lose weight even if you eat more calories.

The third phase can be tricky, maintenance. This is when you stop taking the drops. After being on so few calories, the metabolism is shot. One day of eating carbs, sugar and fat can pack on two or more pounds. Don’t do it!! Stick to the same exact regimen for two days. If you want to eat some extra veggies or fruit it should be okay. But be very careful. For the next week or more continue with no carbs or sugar. You can start exercising again after the first two days of maintenance. Keep using the MyFitnessPal app to keep track of your foods and exercise if the app was successful for you. In maintenance I always get religious about logging my food and calories and I stick to my net calories goal. If I eat something bad like an Annie’s street hotdog, I ALWAYS log it and exercise enough to erase the damage that night. I never wait a day to handle it. I always work off the extra calories before the day is done. Every body is different, but this method works. I highly recommend it. Some people like exercising in the morning. My basic disagreement is that I don’t want my food converting to fat while I sleep. I’d rather exercise off the food right then before it becomes fat. That’s how the body is supposed to operate: food gives energy to make the body work. If you take the food but don’t do the work, why did you take the food?? I play a game with myself to eat no carbs or sugar for the day so I don’t have to exercise. If I lose the game all I have to do is exercise. No big deal! Exercise is fun anyway- if you find a workout you enjoy.

My very favorite workout is running on Nob Hill in San Francisco. I put on a good playlist and run up and down the hills ninja style- high knees downhill and butt-kicks up hill. Since I moved to East Oakland I’ve made the best of the boring stationary bike and invented “Zumba-ride.” This is normal bike pedaling while listening to hip-hop and dancing with my upper body. I dance very vigorously like a Zumba routine. It is soooo fun. It wouldn’t work well in a gym because I would look like an utter lunatic. Whether I’m biking or running, I like to change it up every few days with some circuit training from my Jillian Michaels video along with some abs with Henry from Hasfit and the Lower-back (ass) video I posted a few weeks ago. On maintenance it is important to nurse the metabolism back up to speed by continuing to eat healthy and EXERCISING. Exercise is a metabolism booster.

In 2013 my successful weightloss came from doing a 21 day round of HCG then maintaining with healthy diet and exercise for a month or two before doing another round of HCG. It seems most logical because A) no one wants to diet for a year straight and B) you can really stabilize your gains this way. I went from 177.7lbs to 133.4. I’ve been stably a size six (size four in some brands) for the past several months. This method works.

I’m doing this last round of HCG because I want to get down to a loose size four or two. I don’t think I’m fat now, but my real goal is to have a flat stomach. It’s been the goal all along and I’m getting very close. Exercise alone does not give one a flat stomach. I know this because I have actually tried. I have done a million ab workouts. The motto is “abs start in the kitchen.” Having tried just about everything and having lost over forty pounds, I have figured out good methods for my funny little body. By late April, I will be bikini ready. This is my pledge and I promise you guys I will do it. I took pictures last week and will present a before and after comparison when I’m done. Thank you for reading this promise. I’m staying true to my own goals. Flat stomach time!

Love,
Dana

HCG1234 ingredients:
L-Ornithine (increases the efficiency of energy consumption)
L-Carnitine (used for the breakdown of fats for energy)
L-Arginine (stimulates the secretion of growth hormones)
L-Glutamine (used for muscle growth)
Maca (for energy)
Niacin (improves circulation)
Africanum (reduces/relieves inflammation)
Beta-Alanine (for muscle performance)
Rhodola (handles fatigue)
Astragalus (increases metabolism)

Love, Heartbreak, Weightloss

I had an “over share” at Starbucks today.

I walked in and the barista was like, “GOOOOOOOD MORNING!!!! HOW ARE YOUUUUU??!!!” I was hit at such an un-matching emotion that I grumpily said, “tired.” The register girl calmly took over, “Let’s get you some coffee.” So I gave them my order of half-caf so I wouldn’t seem like an asshole ordering my usual decaf after I meanly told the girl I’m tired. The register girl looked at my hand when I paid, I guess, and asked “Did you get engaged recently?” Ouch.

“I got dumped on Valentine’s Day. I haven’t taken the ring off yet.” I burst into tears.

She apologized and looked really regretful. There was no way she could have known. And after all she was trying to make me happy. I took my coffee and headed for the half and half. I sobbed at the cream station- not those silent tears but the full on “buhuhuhuhuh suhuhuhuh” sobs. I dug through my purse and found sunglasses, popped them on, and peeled my hair out of my tears. Headed for the door. The door was like some kind of trap and I pushed, pulled and tried both sides of the frame before I finally escaped.

What does this have to do with weightloss? Well first of all it’s my blog and I can’t seem to complain enough about getting dumped so I can use this if I want to. But back on point, heartbreak is GREAT for weightloss. No appetite! And even better for weightloss is falling in love.

A major part of my weightloss ignition was that I was engaged and getting married (to a different ring giver than the current one). I was going to marry “Andrew” and wanted to get in shape. I was so chubby and struggling that one day I decided to give myself a reality check. I was walking by a Chinese wedding shop and popped in to try stuff on. It wasn’t a classy appointment-only establishment. When I told the Chinese I needed a size 14 they explained that there weren’t any Chinese women that big and pulled the biggest gowns they had. They were all ugly. I put one on and couldn’t zip it up. I tried another one and couldn’t zip it up. I took selfies in the mirror to really document the “situation” and left. I lost some weight after that. Things didn’t pan out with Andrew anyway and I cancelled the wedding.

Then I met “Paul”. He was and maybe still is the love of my life. He fit the list so to speak. Our romance was fast and intense and everything I felt true love should be. Between “sexercising” and the best motivation ever, I was able to take off the balance of my extra weight. Then he dumped me on the Eve of Valentine’s Day in a text message. It was awesome.

Fortunately my church has special therapy for upsetting life changes. I’m starting tonight.

A lot of people say weightloss shouldn’t be done for a man or “don’t change yourself for a man,” etc. I think that’s crap. Any motivation to feel and look better is good motivation as long as you don’t get crazy and turn bulimic.

Love is great for weightloss.

Love,
Dana

My Weightloss Step 1

The first effective step on my weightloss journey was with Jillian Michaels. I used her “30 Day Shred” DVD and the “Jillian Michaels: Slim-Down” iPhone app.

I bought the DVD from Amazon for five bucks- later discovered it’s on YouTube for free! It has three levels. Level one has been effective enough for me. Levels two and three are terrifying!

The first time I did it I weighed 177.7lbs. All exercise was painful because my belly and boobs tugged. But thanks to super tight sports bras I made it through the video three times a week for several weeks. In the workout, Jillian talks about how it’s not easy to get fit and “these abs don’t come for free!” She’s so right! It is NOT easy to go from obese to healthy. I mean, there are easy aspects to it and having done it, it somehow seems like it was easy. But that’s from my new viewpoint with my easy “healthy bod” life. Life is so much easier without insecurities about my weight, discomfort in basic activities and of course I feel more secure about maintaining my super hot boyfriend.

The first few times I did the video, I moved to the best of my ability. Not only did I modify push-ups to the knees, I just hovered on my hands and knees. Cute, right? After three or four video cycles, I felt myself getting stronger. I was able to endure the video nonstop, still modifying some moves.

The Jillian app is AWESOME. She has some exercise advice on there that I never followed and I think she has some recipes that I never read. What is rad about the app is the journal. You can log all of your food and exercise into the journal and it keeps track of your calories consumed, calories burned and the net calories (food minus exercise) for the day. I logged EVERYTHING. The app has selections for routine activities like “Bathing self,” and actual exercise too. Virtually any activity can count toward your calories burned. So you log all of your meals and snacks as well as all physical activity.

Your ideal net calories can be set on the app for your personal fitness goal whether you’d like to maintain your weight, lose a pound per week or lose two pounds per week. The app can calculate your goal itself, but I went with a second opinion at http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html.
In that calorie calculator, enter your age, sex, height and weight. Then it asks for your activity level. Because I wanted a net calorie goal, I entered my activity level as “sedentary (little or no exercise)” so it wouldn’t compensate for exercise I would already subtract on my Jillian app. Check out the calculator for yourself so this makes sense to you. At 28 years old, 5′ 4″ and 178lbs my net calorie goal to lose 2lbs per week was 827 calories. Unfortunately 827 calories is too low for the Jillian app rules so I set my calories to the lowest possible amount at 1,200. According to various sources, a diet of fewer than 1200 calories can put a body into starvation mode and slow weightloss. I never found that to be true, even consuming as few as 700 per day.

Logging food can be difficult to confront when you eat stuff like Oreos or peanut butter. What I found and most food “journalists” have found is that logging is key to food discipline. If I can’t admit it to myself, I should probably step away from Happy Donut and walk back to church. Many, many times I didn’t walk back to church and I just logged the donut(s). It was part of the confront process. Living my entire life as a chubby girl, I had to confront that my weight was something I constantly created. It was not true that skinny girls could eat unlimited junk food and stay skinny. Sure there might be some rare cases, but for the most part chubby people are chubby because they are actively creating their fat bodies. And it took effort to get chubby and stay chubby. The journal helped me to see that. It was no surprise that I was gaining weight when I was so often eating pizza and donuts. I have eaten so many donuts in my life. I love donuts. If I could pick one food to be my magical superfood that was somehow best for my health and beauty, that food would be donuts. I ate a donut on Sunday. The point is, I eventually realized that I CAN control my weight so I made big sacrifices. Remember, this is not a life long skinny girl telling you how it’s easy to be thin. I ate A LOT of fatty food and LOVED it. And I was fat.

Using the Jillian app and exercise video, I noticeably tightened up my body. My clothes fit better. My confidence was up. I even jogged outside a few times. Looking for a way to speed things up I started researching diets. That’s where the story gets intense! More on that later.

Jillian Michaels was the spark that ignited my fat burn. With her help I was able to take control of my body. I still do the 30 Day Shred video once or twice a week. It’s great for tightening and toning all the right spots. If you would like to lose a good amount of weight, I highly recommend starting with some level of exercise before dieting. Moving your body and perceiving it’s anatomy is super important to gain control over it.

I hope this helps you. And I hope you try the 30 Day Shred! Here are links to my favorite videos:

30 day shred:

Hazfit abs:

Fitness blender lower back:

Love,
Dana