The Quest to be Thin

Holy God.  Did you see this news story today?  It was on a couple of the morning shows and Yahoo! is running it, too.  Apparently stupid bitches (much like myself) are so determined to lose some extra poundage before their wedding day that they're subjecting themselves to tube feeding.  What. The. Fuck.  I thought my ass was crazy.  But, you know what's really insane?  These chicks are still ingesting more than the 500 calories I'm supposed to be eating on my plan.  They get a big, bad 800 calorie feeding per day, but they look like freak shows with tubes hanging off their faces in the meantime.  One issue I have with this is that my limited time in nursing school taught me that NG tubes pose infection risks with the whole foreign object being inserted into the body thing.  That's why they're placed in hospitals and removed before the patient goes home.  I mean, I'm sure there are folks who are sickly that have these gadgets at home, but they're not up and walking around Wal Mart or whatever freaking everyone out and picking up God knows what disease.

My other issue is why can't these bitches crash diet like the rest of us?  It's insane, and I mean all of it- crash diets, fad diets, surgical procedures, etc.  What have we come to that we'd rather starve ourselves and butcher our bodies rather than put down the ice cream carton and bag of potato chips and get our asses off the couch and walk for 30 minutes a day?  It's the immediate gratification that we crave.  That's the problem.  No one, myself included, wants to put in the time and effort it takes to do it the right way.

Well, starting tomorrow, I'm no longer in the crazy group.  I am going to start running.  And by that, I mean wogging (walk/jogging).  I plan to build up slowly to the point where I can run a full half marathon.  I have my eye on this one.  Ideally, I'd like to plan a vacation for the whole family centered around my run, but I don't know what my job/school situation will be then.  Regardless, I'm determined to at least be physically able to do it by then.  It's almost a year away, so I'm going against my natural instincts and not setting a goal that's too aggressive.  I'm going to modify my current diet to allow for more calories and possible whole grains, if I determine that my body needs them for energy to exercise.  I will continue with the hcg, though, because as I said before, that shit is expensive.

Week 2 Check In and Some Truth

So far, I've lost 9 pounds, which is great, but I'm really having a hard time getting past how moronic this whole plan is.  I'm torn between doing what I know I should do and sticking to this retarded plan because I dropped so much cash on it, and I hate to waste money.  One thing I'm not doing is eating 500 cals per day.  I'm probably between 750 and 1000, which is still not as much as you're supposed to eat, but it's better than 500 measly calories a day. I really want to start running, so if I do that, I have to eat more.

If anyone is reading this and thinking of trying hcg, I would advise against it.  It's not that I'm starving all the time (I'm really not) or that I feel deprived.  It's more because it's expensive to get the real stuff (the homeopathic stuff is shit), you're not encouraged to exercise, and you're training your body to depend on such a low calorie amount, that when you increase your intake, the weight you lost is bound to come screaming back.  I know that there are people that do this and keep the weight off, but they do ridiculous shit to keep their weight in check.  Things like "steak days" which consist of not eating anything all day and then having a steak for dinner with a tomato.  Or egg days, where you eat a dozen eggs throughout the day, prepared however you like.  And these people swear by this method and are very defensive when people point out how stupid it is.

The allure of the hcg diet is the quick weight loss, which is what sucked me in.  I was hoping to use it as a jump start to get me going on my journey.  I have, in essence, given myself an eating disorder.  I weigh myself constantly to keep myself in check to make sure I'm losing weight.  I feel good when I deprive myself from one of the only 2 fruit servings I get per day, because I feel like it will help me lose weight faster.  I'm too exhausted to be productive around the house, but I'm terrified to eat any more than I am, because I don't want the pounds I've lost to come creeping back.

I'm a third of the way through this ridiculous ordeal, and as much as I want to get my money's worth, I'm tempted to say fuck it, up my calories, and starting walking, because when I lose the extra person I'm carrying, I want to be able to say I did it the healthy way, not the psycho starvation fad diet way.  And when I lose this, I want it gone for good.  I don't want to spend every day of the rest of my life obsessed with the scale.  That, to me, seems more miserable than being fat, so what's the point?

Countdown

In 2 days I will be officially starting the HCG diet.  I ordered the pellets, and they are supposed to be here tomorrow.  I went through an online Dr. prescribed thing, so I could make sure I was getting the prescription real stuff as opposed to the fake stuff.  I also know someone who went through the same company and lost 38 pounds on the first round.  That was enough to convince me.  Supposedly the purpose of the hcg is to keep you from being hungry and to prevent muscle loss, since you're basically doing a crash diet.  Every ounce of reason tells me this is ridiculous, not to mention I've taken nutrition classes and done enough of my own research to know what's healthy and what's not, but then there's the irrational fat girl who is desperate to get back to the normal girl I once was.  At this point, irrationality is triumphing over reason, so I'm starting this thing in the hopes that the next 40 days will jump start my weight loss as well as my motivation to keep going.

Some history: I was always active and fit until college.  Then, I got depressed and started piling on weight.  I started at 120 and finished my collegiate career at around 150.  I got married the following month and put on another 15 pounds BEFORE I got pregnant with my son. I kept 10 pounds from him and got pregnant again, keeping another 10 pounds.  The third time around, I kept another 10 pounds.  While childbirth was not great for my figure, I noticed emotions were obviously a much bigger trigger for weight gain when I got a job working for a hell beast and was miserable for 3 years, gaining another 20 pounds.  I finally quit and went back to school, gaining my college weight all over again.  So, while I won't say exactly where I am, you can do the math.  I need to lose a lot of weight to be healthy and to be able to keep up with my very active children who won't be slowing down any time soon.