Final day! Here’s where I finished up.
- 135.9 lbs vs target of 135 lbs
- 7.0% body fat vs target of 5% – 7% body fat
- 28.1 waist vs target of 28 waist
The HCG Diet is an unquestionable success for me personally. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you. I had my own internal struggles with reigning in my eating when I was in a fun, social setting which I am frequently in especially over the weekends. Each cheat weekend set me back about 6 days of progress (it usually took about 3 days to get back down to where I was before I cheated. You may have a similar challenge. O something completely different. Or none at all.
The HCG Diet met all of the items I was testing over the last 6 weeks:
- It helped me manage hunger which was probably the biggest effect I was looking for
- It helped me target the fat loss from my “problem areas” (waist in my case as is typical for most men)
- It helped me preserve my lean muscle mass.
I didn’t notice too many side effects. There were a few small things I’ll mention:
- I got a little tired of injecting myself each day.
- However, if I made sure I went straight in at a 90 degree angle to where I was pinching on the sides of my belly the needle just went right in without any resistance.
- Alternating sides where I injected each day helped
- Using the packaged alcohol wipes over pouring isopropyl alcohol onto a cotton ball was a definite efficiency booster for me
- Thankfully, I had an easy place to dispose of the needles since my workplace provides a drop off
- Sometimes there may have been some constipation but I’m not sure it was all caused by the HCG.
Here are my metrics for today:
Pictures
Diet
Exercise
Weight
Body fat%
Skeletal muscle%
Blood pressure
Measurements
Waist
It’s Bastille Day in France today! Instead of “off with her head” for poor Marie Antoinette in saying “let them eat cake” I much prefer “off with his weight”
The weight is still falling! Lowest weight and body comp of the diet today – 138.3 lbs and 8.2% body fat!
You’re reading the post of a LOSER!
Not much to say today. Still plateaued. BUT, I’m excited I get to take the family to see Hamilton tonight! Couldn’t make it to New York but will see it in Chicago.
Dealing with pain is painful. I’m still sore from working out on Friday (back and legs) but I will try to do upper body today. I’ve adjusted my workouts during the HCG Diet to not keep pushing the weight higher and higher given that I was struggling with a right shoulder injury pain along with some bouts of sciatica in my right buttock. The sciatica has been doing quite well as I’ve tried to experiment with sleeping position to see if it would help (more on back than on side). However, I have another hypothesis that it might be weather related also since I had been hurting quite a bit during winter time. Regardless, my workouts are now on the higher rep range, higher set range but lower weight (e.g. 5 sets of 10 vs 3 sets of 3-5 in the old days). It definitely has a different effect and may be a contributing factor to me maintaining my muscle mass while on the HCG Diet even as I’ve lost nearly 18 pounds so far.
On to the home stretch! This is the last week of my HCG Diet active phase…I do have a week long transition phase to go through also. While the needles for the injections haven’t been bad I did start to find them annoying over time.
Today I hit a new record both in weight and body comp! 140.0 pounds and 9.3% body fat! These are my lowest stats yet while on the HCG Diet and a remarkable drop from nearly 158 pounds and 18% body fat. To put it in perspective that is an 11% drop in my body weight and a 48% drop in my body fat…YESSSSS!
Countdown…10 days left to go! I weighed in today at 142.9 lbs and 11.3% body fat. Pretty much lost an entire week due to my 4th of July binge. (I admit it was fun, though). Also, I have been recently captivated with filling out my outdoor kitchen to get back to my roots on Chinese cooking, specifically on a wok so that I can generate “wok hei,” the distinctive smoky flavor that you can only get at on a high BTU / high temperature burner (like what they have at Chinese restaurants. All these books / videos I’m watching about cooking up good Chinese food (including not just main courses but also Dim Sum and Chinese pastries!) aren’t helping me on my diet.