"The road to success has many tempting exits... Don't stop, keep moving!"

One of my friend's shared this quote on his Facebook page and I had to share it with you. If you are having a tough time losing weight, I want you to focus everyday on progress, not perfection. No one is expected to be perfect! If you fall down and have a bad day, week, or month just get back up and keep on moving forward. The only thing you have to gain by quitting is weight, so don't look back at your past failures, look forward to achieving your goals and dreams and before you know it, they will be standing right in front of you.

Happy 2012! I decided to try a new look for the new year. What do you think? I'm not sure if I will stay a brunette long-term, but it's been fun to try something different.

I'm living low carb and loving it!

Happy Tuesday! I hope you are all doing well! Sorry it's been so long since I've given any weight updates! There has been a lot of personal stuff going on in my life over the last 7 months. I wish I could say that my journey of maintaining the weight loss has been great, but honestly it has been TOUGH! As I've always said before, it's a journey for life to live healthy, so even though I've hit a couple of road bumps, fallen down, and even gone on and off the plan completely over the last 7 months, I'm back and ready to continue my journey to lose the weight and keep it off for good. I just want you to know that I appreciate all of your encouragement and kind words along the way! It has meant so much to me! :-)

I have decided to do a second round of the HCG diet to lose the weight I gained. After I finish the HCG diet, I will maintain the weight I lose by living low carb. When I completed the HCG diet 7 months ago, I actually maintained the weight I lost for about 4-5 months and then with stress, not taking care of myself, losing one of my sweet dogs, etc. I slowly started putting the weight back on. I'm completely disappointed in myself, but life happens and the only thing I can do now is choose to make my life better. In order to hold myself completely accountable, I will be blogging about my experience over the next 6 weeks on the HCG diet. I'm so sad to be back where I started when I did the HCG diet 7 months ago, but I'm excited to lose the weight again and keep it off for good. I know that dieting should be a marathon and not a sprint, but right now I feel like sprinting! LOL! I want to lose the weight quick and then maintain it the rest of my life by living low carb.

I know it's going to be hard to do this diet again, but I know I can do it! I'm so ready to start feeling like myself again. It's amazing how much weight impacts your whole life. I have felt so depressed and anxious lately and I know it's because I haven't been taking care of myself the way I should. The thing I struggle with the most in life is balance and consistency. Lately I've been putting everything into work, which in the end I hope pays off, but right now it doesn't give any love back! I have always been more of a sprinter in life, but am always challenged with pacing myself for the marathon. I know losing and maintaining weight is more of a marathon, so I've got to learn how to be consistent in my journey and live a more balanced life, so I don't fall down and lose hope again. I hope this blog doesn't discourage you, because I hate letting people down, but I want you to know that I'm not perfect and I fall down too. If you are going through what I am right now, I want you to know that you are not alone. Please don't give up! Sometimes it feels like it's just easier to give up, but in the end it's not! The only thing you gain by quitting is more weight, so don't ever quit! I believe in you and I know we can accomplish our goals!

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

-Thomas A. Edison

If you watched my last YouTube Video then you know that I'm trying something new for 6 weeks to mix things up a bit. I've been stalled in the 140s for 7 months following the Induction Phase of Atkins. I absolutely love the Atkins Diet, but for some reason my body didn’t want to break away from the 140s. I even implemented a 12-week strenuous workout plan and my weight didn't budge! I started doing some research to see if there was something I could do to lose weight again. That's when I came across the HCG Diet.

I’ve lost 29 pounds in 39 days!!! My starting weight with the HCG Diet was 156 pounds and now I weigh 127 pounds!!! I have 9 more days left of the low cal/moderate carb phase and then I start the Low Carb Phase! I would love to weigh 120lbs, so hopefully I will be able to accomplish my goal soon! Please let me know if you have any questions. I know a lot of people think this diet is crazy, and to be honest, I did too, but I’m so happy to finally be able to lose weight again!

If you are interested in learning more about the HCG Diet, I recommend that you read Pounds & Inches by Dr Simeons. He is the author and creator of the HCG Diet. The HCG Diet has been around since the 1950s and has helped many people lose weight and keep it off for good as long as they stick to his Protocol. Please let me know if you have any questions. I hope to reach my goal weight soon! I’m only 7 pounds away from reaching my goal of 120 pounds!!!

Dr Simeons created the HCG Diet in the 1950s to help obese patients lose weight and keep it off forever. I’m going to break it down for you as much as I can, but I still recommend that you read Dr Simeons book Pounds & Inches to fully understand the purpose of the HCG Diet.

The HCG Diet is a 70-Day Weight Loss Program that has 4 phases. Phase 1 is called the Loading Phase. You follow Phase 1 for the first 2 days of the diet. During the Loading Phase, you eat as much high calorie, high fat foods that you can consume. Many people feel sick during these 2 days from eating so much. The Loading Days are supposed to keep you from feeling hungry because your body takes the fat that you consumed those 2 days and burns it for energy, so your not supposed to feel hungry. To be honest, I felt a hungry the first week, but a lot of it was emotional hunger. I think it’s a psychological thing…It always seems that whenever you tell yourself that you can’t have something that you want it that much more! After the first week passed, the cravings got better and I didn’t feel as hungry anymore.

Phase 2 is a very restrictive, low calorie, moderate carb diet that you follow for 6 weeks or 20-40 days. During the 6 weeks, you can take the Medical Grade HCG Hormone by shots 6 days a week or you take the Homeopathic HCG Hormone by drops everyday of the week. The purpose of taking the hormone is to suppress your appetite and to tell your body to burn fat. You might be thinking, why would I want to put hormones into my body that a female excretes when she is pregnant if I could just do the 500-Calorie Diet without taking any hormones?! Good question… in fact I asked the same thing! The logic behind using the HCG hormone is that it tells your body to pull from its fat stores and release them whereas if you were to just follow a 500 Calorie Diet without the hormone, your body would still lose fat, but it would lose more muscle mass than fat. During Phase 2, the strictest phase, you can only eat food that Dr Simeons listed in his book Pounds & Inches. You are allowed 2 proteins, 2 fruits, and 2 veggies each day.  After you complete the 6 weeks, you stop taking the HCG shots or drops and continue to follow the 500-calorie diet for 3 days. After the 3 days then you start Phase 3.

During Phase 3, you follow a Low Carb Diet for 3-6 weeks! The purpose of this phase is to stabilize your weight. You gradually add calories back into your diet every few days. Start with 700 calories for a couple of days, then 900 calories, then 1200 calories, and then stop once your reach 1400 calories. If at anytime you weigh more than 2 pounds over your last Injection/Drop weight, you are supposed to do a Steak Day. Once you are finished with the Low Carb Phase, you start Phase 4.

During Phase 4, you gradually add starches and sugars back into your diet. I’m going to just stay in the Low Carb Phase and stabilize my weight loss by following the Maintenance Phase of the Atkins Diet.

I ate a ton of chicken and fish in the beginning of Phase 2 and I just can't stomach it anymore.  I reviewed Dr Simeons Protocol to see what other options I could have and I saw that vegetarians could eat cottage cheese.  I'm not a vegetarian, but I do like cottage cheese so I decided to give it a try.  The last 2 weeks I've been eating cottage cheese for lunch and dinner and I'm still losing weight at a great rate!  Here are some pics of my typical HCG Phase 2 lunch and dinner. If you have any questions about the HCG Diet, please don’t hesitate to ask. Just leave me a comment below. Thanks for reading!

Here is my video blog of how I finally broke my 7 month stall. I hope you enjoy! Please feel free to ask any questions and share your comments below. I'm also excited to share with you that I've lost another pound! I weigh 133lbs! I look forward to updating you more on my weight loss journey. I'm Living Low Carb and Loving it! :-)

I woke up this morning and stepped on the scale. I was so excited to see the scale drop 2 more pounds!!! I've lost 4 pounds in 2 days. I'm going to keep doing this fast until Sunday or Monday. I'm trying to do it for it least 4-5 days as Dr Atkins recommends. Its not easy, but the weight loss is keeping me going. I was so discouraged to not see the scale move for 6 months and so it's so nice to finally see the weight come off again. I know I'm going to have to be very careful coming off of this fast and eat very healthy, unprocessed low carb food because I don't want to gain back everything that I've lost from the fast. After I'm done with this fast, I'm going to go right back to the Induction Phase. Once I reach my goal weight, I'm going to start incorporating more carbs into my lifestyle. I will keep you posted.

Here is what I ate on my 1st and 2nd Day of the Atkins Fat Fast. I track all of my food in Livestrong.com. I love it because it's really easy to use! I realize when I track the food I eat, it makes me more aware of the kinds of food I put into my body. It also keeps track of exercise. It's my favorite diet and exercise tracking tool!