HCG Day 1 – It’s easy to diet when the thought of food makes you sick

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Rory

Part of the HCG prep is that you take the drops for two days while eating as much fatty food as possible. On the one hand it’s nice to get a “free pass” and eat whatever you want without feeling guilty. I ate SOOO much this weekend, particularly on Sunday:

Saturday: pasta and a cream of broccoli sauce for lunch, Japanese food for dinner, several glasses of wine and six or seven vodka and club sodas over the course of the night, and then a cheeseburger and fries at 4 in the morning so I wouldn’t throw up the next day from all the alcohol.

Sunday: the remainder of my cheeseburger and fries for lunch, an Entenmann’s banana crunch cake for grazing on throughout the day, and then Chinese food for dinner (at like 10 pm). And then more cake. Oh, and like a quart of chocolate milk.

When I woke up on Monday morning I was so nauseous that I almost stayed home from work. All the food I had eaten on the weekend was like a rock in my stomach. I gained FOUR pounds from my “gorge” weekend, as it’s called. I wasn’t worried about the weight gain, because I knew by Wednesday I’d have lost those pounds (which I did), but I felt like garbage and was quite happy to be starting the diet.

So yeah, as far as dealing with any hunger, Day 1 was a breeze.

Breakfast – half a grapefruit (52 cals)

Lunch – a can of tuna and half a large cucumber (172 cals)

Dinner – curry chicken and spinach (180 cals)

Snack – a granny smith apple (80 cals)

 

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HCG Diet – Preparation

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Rory

Since this is my second time doing the HCG diet, there was a lot less prep work involved as compared to my first time around. I already have a food scale, a regular scale, and of all the vinegar, seasonings and spices that I’ll need for cooking. This meant that on Sunday all I had to do was buy food. It ended up being a fairly cheap shopping trip, about $40 for enough food to get me through my first week (and, as far as protein is concerned, maybe my second week as well).

I bought:

  • Vegetables – spinach, cabbage, cucumber, and tomatoes.
  • Fruit – Grapefruits and apples. I would have also bought strawberries but I couldn’t find them in the supermarket.
  • Protein – Chicken, shrimp and crab meat. (And yes, I know farm-raised shrimp and imitation crab meat are bad. But those are two very cheap sources of protein that also happen to taste great, and it’s only for a few weeks.) I already had a few cans of tuna fish, so I didn’t need to buy any, though tuna will definitely be on the menu.

I’m glad that I won’t have to spend too much time figuring out which HCG recipes to make, since I already know what I like and what I don’t. I’ll be posting the recipes as I make them.

Stay tuned for Day 1!

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I’m starting the HCG Diet…again.

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Rory

At the end of last year I was 15 pounds heavier than I am now. I wasn’t fat (according to my friends, anyway), but I was definitely overweight, and I didn’t like it. (Of course, it didn’t help that two of my best friends are both a size zero. I’d see pictures of the three of us and want to throw up.)

I started doing yoga, and then I joined a gym. But even though I was exercising somewhat regularly I still didn’t lose any weight, because I just couldn’t stick to a healthy diet. I’d be good for a few days, but then Friday would roll around and I’d go out drinking with friends, and we’d get some nachos or mozzarella sticks while we were drinking, and then at 3 am we’d get a slice of pizza, and then the next day I’d wake up with a hangover that could only be cured by a bagel. And then we’d do it again on Saturday night. Needless to say, this unhealthy lifestyle is NOT conducive to losing weight.

Then one day last November I was checking my email and I saw that Lifebooker was having a deal on HCG weight loss drops. I am a sucker for a good Groupon, Lifebooker, or LivingSocial deal, so when I saw that I could get a 40-day supply of HCG weight loss drops – normally $104 dollars – for ONLY $39 I just had to have it. Nevermind that up until that morning I had never even heard of HCG – suddenly I was all about it. All you do is take the drops before each meal? A cheap and easy way to lose weight? Sign me up!

Of course, once I started reading up on it, I found that the HCG diet is be anything but easy. Along with taking the drops, you have to reduce the amount of food you eat to only 550 calories per day! And your food choices are very very limited. But I was determined to finally lose the weight that had been bothering me for such a long time, so I decided that I would start the drops in the beginning of 2012.

And I did. I spent the first 5 months of 2012 on a very strict diet. It was hard work that required willpower, determination, and having absolutely no social life. But by the time I finished with my diet in May, I was down 25 pounds.

My before, during and after pics. When I look at that before pic I want to puke.

But then the warm weather came. This summer I was all about YOLO – You Only Live Once. It’s a good attitude to have in general – but not when it comes to dieting! I know crepes topped with Nutella, ice cream and walnuts are bad for me, but YOLO! It’s like as soon as I said YOLO I was allowed to do anything I wanted. I also felt like it was okay for me to indulge a little, considering how much I had sacrificed in the earlier part of the year.

But apparently I am incapable of indulging “just a little.” Over the past five months I’ve watched as the scale has crept up, and up, and then down a little, and then back up again. Since May I’ve gained back 10 pounds. I’m only like 2 or 3 pounds heavier than I was in that “during” picture above, but while back then I was on a downward track and was happy to look in the mirror, now when I look at myself naked all I see is my failure to keep the weight off.

I had already decided to go back on a strict diet. Then last week I got an email for half off of the HCG drops, and it just struck me as the right time to start again. So I ordered them, and they came in the mail, and today I start the “very low calorie” portion of the diet. Mentally I find myself in the same headspace that I was in back in January  – now is the time to do it. No cheating, just buckle down and get it done, so that when 2013 rolls around I will be starting the year as the person I want to be.

So yeah, expect a lot of diet recipes and posts over the next few weeks!

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Sugar-free, gluten-free cream cheese brownies

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Rory

In case you’ve been living under a rock and didn’t know, last weekend there was a hurricane on the east coast. I was fortunate enough that I didn’t suffer any negative effects from the storm – except, perhaps, the 5 pounds I must have gained after stuffing my face nonstop for four days. Seriously, I ate SO MUCH. It’s not like I had anything else to do.

On Tuesday morning I decided that I needed to get myself back into diet mode, which meant that I needed to do a little sugar-free baking so that I’d have healthy snacks available for the rest of the week. After making three batches of my favorite sugar-free cookies, Coconut Meringues (omg I just realized I haven’t posted the recipe for that yet!), I decided to try something a bit more complicated. Since I had two packages of cream cheese in my fridge that expire on November 3rd, I knew that whatever I made would have to have cream cheese in it.

At first I wanted to make something with the remaining pumpkin puree that I had in my fridge, which was leftover from when I attempted to make Pumpkin Meringues…which was before I went to Europe…which was over three weeks ago…so yeah, after spending a good half hour googling “pumpkin cream cheese truvia,” I realized that I should probably check to make sure the pumpkin was still good.

It wasn’t. Whomp whomp.

But during the course of that google search I DID happen to stumble on a recipe for cream cheese brownies. It wasn’t really the recipe that caught my eye as much as it was the pictures – mouth watering.

I modified the recipes I found HERE and HERE. After a bit of tweaking to make a recipe that is not only diet-friendly but also uses Truvia and Cocoa Powder (which is what I had in my kitchen), this is what I came up with. I always get a little nervous when it comes to cooking with Truvia, because I’m afraid of the aftertaste that comes with using too much, but I brought these brownies to work and my non-dieting friends thought they were amazing. In fact, Di said she thinks it’s the best dessert I’ve made so far.

Enjoy!

Sugar-free, gluten free cream cheese brownies

For the brownies:

Wet Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup Coconut oil (melted)
  • 3 Eggs (and 1 egg white – see instruction #4)
  • 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients:

  • 1 cup Almond flour
  • 1/2 cup Unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1/4 cup Truvia
  • 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp Sea salt

For the cream cheese part:

  • 8 oz of cream cheese (one pack)
  • 2 Tbs Truvia
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

1.Preheat the oven to 350. Line an 8×8 pan with aluminum foil and butter the foil. (I saw this instruction in one of the recipes I read. It made transferring the brownies to the cooling rack wayyy easier.)

2. Mix the wet ingredients in a bowl. (Note: I melted my coconut oil and then almost immediately poured it in with the eggs. This caused the eggs to cook a little bit, which you can see in the photo below. It didn’t affect the taste or anything, but that was probably a rookie cooking mistake.)

3. Add the dry ingredients and mix really well, then set aside.

4. In another mixing bowl, mix the ingredients for the cream cheese filling (I took the egg white that was left over from this and added it to the brownie mixture).

5. Add half the brownie batter to the pan, then a layer of the cream cheese mixture (next time I’ll make a thinner layer that is more evenly spread out), and then repeat until everything is in the pan.

6. Swirl!

That’s it! Just pop it in the oven for about 40 minutes (I say “about” because I did 45 minutes and they were a bit overcooked. Maybe start checking at 35 minutes just to be safe).


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Photos, photos everywhere

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Rory

If I never edit a photo again it will be too soon. Since I came home from Europe I have edited – no joke, no exaggeration – almost FIFTEEN HUNDRED photos!!! First there were the pictures from the vacation. Over 800 pics just from Paris alone! I took so many pictures on that trip it was ridiculous. The reason why? Well, I got the iPhone 5 just days before my trip, and the camera on that phone is freaking AMAZING!! (I know Di is laughing right now as she’s reading this, because over the course of our trip I must have said it a hundred times. But it is!!)

Here are some of my favorites (yes, they’re all from Paris, but I can’t help it – it was just so beautiful there!):

Then I spent three days last week editing photos to go into a digital photo frame that my friends and I got for another friend who is moving away. 😦 That was fun but bittersweet – fun because over the past two years we’ve done so much that I’d forgotten about, and it was nice to relive some of those moments, but bittersweet obviously because one of my best friends, who I see and talk to on a daily basis, is leaving. But nothing lasts forever, I guess.

Eventually I will upload those photos to this blog (the vacation ones). Hopefully I’ll get some up this weekend. 🙂

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European Vacation

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Rory

I had such a great time on my trip. Paris was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to in my life. Amsterdam, well, it was fun, but that’s where I did the heaviest partying and so I was ridiculously hungover for a good chunk of time I was there. Not a pleasant experience. Brussels was pretty. And even though we were there on a Monday, there were a LOT of people there: it seemed like half of Scotland had arrived – in kilts – to watch the soccer game between Belgium and Scotland the next day. Berlin was amazing – the people were friendly (unlike France), the food was great, and the weather was perfect! At one point I was actually sitting outside in a t-shirt!

The worst part of my trip (other than the hangover) was discovering that my flat iron wouldn’t work. It forced me to spend most of the trip with curly hair – and I have been hating my hair curly lately (I need a cut, too much weight in the front). It wasn’t a huge deal, I guess, because until we got to Berlin it rained at least once a day, so I would have been dealing with hair issues regardless. Still, I would’ve liked to have had straight hair for the nights we went out. Most days I just kept it up in a ponytail.

But seriously, I’m really not complaining at all. Like I said to Di, our trip didn’t have “highs and lows” – it was just high and not-quite-as-high. Even when our train to Brussels was cancelled and we were running around all these different train stations in Holland like chickens with our heads cut off, we didn’t get upset about it, we just kept saying “Seriously??” to each other and laughing about it. And even when we were informed that we had booked our hotel in Berlin for the wrong day and the hotel had no vacancies, we didn’t freak out, we just laughed and spent an hour on the computer finding a new room (which wasn’t easy!).

Overall, it was really nice to get away. And now I’m home, have been for 2 days. I’m not suffering from post-vacation depression like I usually do…although that might change on Monday when I finally go back to work. It’s been harder than I thought it would be to get over my jet lag – on Thursday night I went to bed at 8 and woke up at 8 the next day. Last night I went to bed at 8 and I woke up this morning at 4 AM!! I should be good by Monday though. Oh, and my flat iron still isn’t working. Must have blown a fuse when I plugged it in in Europe. Womp womp.

And now it’s back to my real life. Salsa classes later, then dinner with my friends. It should be a good night!

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I’m home!

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Rory

So much for blogging while I was on vacation! It proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, partly because the wi-fi situation was so spotty but mainly because I actually wanted to enjoy my vacation. Crazy, right? I did write a little bit while I was on the planes and trains though, so I will finish that up and start posting about my Euro trip soon. Stay tuned!

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Deciding what food to bring on the plane

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Rory

One night a few weeks ago, while I was looking up hotels in Berlin, I thought it would be a great idea if I made a few sandwiches for my flight to Paris. After all, it was going to be a long traveling day (over 13 hours because of a layover in Canada), and I didn’t want to find myself starving and forced to waste money on a crappy $10 sandwich from some place at the airport food court. I had to do a bit of research, to see which foods I could bring from NY to Canada and then from Canada to France. When I saw that I could bring fish into Canada but not meat, I decided that I would make myself a lox sandwich. A bagel and lox with lettuce, tomatoes, and onions is one of my favorite meals in the world!

The night before my flight I went to the supermarket and bought: a package of lox, a loaf of whole wheat bread, a cucumber, and a tomato. I also bought a thing of hummus and a bag of caramel-flavored Popcorners chips, which have been my new favorite snack ever since my trip to Seattle a few weeks ago. Total cost? $22. So much for saving money. But I had enough food for at least four sandwiches, so it was worth it.

Before I left for the airport I cut everything up and put it all into separate little ziploc bags. I didn’t want to make the sandwiches ahead of time because 1) they would be soggy by the time I ate them, and 2) I wasn’t sure whether everything would be allowed into Canada, and I didn’t want to be forced to throw out my sandwich just because I had put some cream cheese on it.

I was starving by the time I got to the airport. Di and I went into Au Bon Pain, and while she got a coffee I made a sandwich. I might have looked a bit silly, sitting in the airport making myself a sandwich, but I am so glad I did it, because it was delish! Oh yeah, I also packed the rest of the pumpkin brownies I made the other night. Di tried them and she loved them. 🙂 When we landed in Montreal we were hungry again (what is it about traveling that makes you completely famished?), so I made another sandwich and we had “snack time” – sandwich, brownies, hummus on bread, and some more popcorn chips. I made my last sandwich and finished off the last of the brownies right before we landed in Paris.

Turns out that I didn’t have to worry about anything after all. Customs never even asked about my food, neither in Canada nor in France. I left the French airport with some hummus, a few slices of whole wheat, and some Popcorners crumbs. Which I snacked on as I was writing this.
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Bonjour mes amis!

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Rory

This is me and Di (pronounced “Dee”) right before our flight out of New York. I’m on the right, for those of you who don’t know me yet. Di and I are on our way to Europe for a nine-day, four-country vacation. We’re spending three days in Paris, two days in Amsterdam, one day in Brussels, and two days in Berlin. Should be a great time!!

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Turning a pumpkin meringue cookie FAIL into a pumpkin brownie WIN!

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Rory

I have become an expert at making sugar-free meringue cookies, so in honor of the first post on my new blog, I attempted to spice things up and make sugar-free Pumpkin Meringue Cookies.

Keyword = ATTEMPT. It was a pretty abysmal result.

The problem was that the recipe I followed called for cocoa powder. Every single time I have tried to add cocoa powder to my meringue recipe, the egg whites have *instantly* deflated. I thought this time would be different, since I mixed it in with the Truvia beforehand, but all that did was slow the “deflation process” (if there is such a phrase).

When I saw what was happening I immediately started scooping the egg whites on to the cookies sheet. I managed to get a good amount of cookies on the sheet before I was left with a liquidy mess. I popped them in the oven and hoped for the best. But what I got was the worst: flat, undercooked, styrofoam like cookies. Major fail. I haven’t made a batch this bad since the first time I tried making the cookies six months ago.

But all was not lost that night. I decided to take the deflated egg whites, which were already mixed with truvia, cinnamon, cocoa powder and pumpkin spice, and make…wait for it…chocolate pumpkin brownies!

I have to say, they came out pretty amazing. I added safflower oil, almond flour, walnuts, and pumpkin puree. Plus baking soda and baking powder. I can’t post a recipe though, because I have no idea how much stuff I added. But the result was yummy enough that I will definitely be making these again.

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