All on my own...

So today was my last meeting with Maeli and I'm officially done with the maintenance phase of my diet. Time to see how I do on my own. And honestly...I think I'll do just fine.

I am down to 305.8 lbs as of today, which has me super excited. I can't even explain it. Hopefully by this time next week I can say I broke that 300 mark I've been aching to get to. (I'm not going to weigh again for another week...if I can help it haha) I also lost another couple of inches over my body..mostly in my shoulders and buttockals (as my dad calls them. Gotta love my family haha) Another great thing is that while I didn't quite reach my goal of 300 lbs. by the end of this round of dieting...I DID reach my goal for body fat percentage! When I started out I was at about 47.5% body fat. As of today I'm at 40%. Yay me!

So now that maintenance is over, I have a bit more leeway with my diet. AND....I can have sugar!! SHOULD I have it? Well no....but if I balance out my carbs properly, like I've learned to do, if I have cake at my son's birthday party today it won't completely screw up my diet or undo the work I've done. My body is officially retrained! I really do feel like a different person. Eating healthy comes naturally to me now and exercise isn't as taxing on my body. I actually enjoy it. I eat 6 small meals a day and drink lots of water...and I don't crave the junk I used to. Will the birthday cake taste good? Um...hell yes. It's cake haha. But I won't eat a giant piece and a huge scoop of ice cream, nor finish off the pan when the kids are at school not looking either.

I know a lot of people have been critical of this diet because while on the drops/500 calorie diet it seemed so extreme...but you can't look at me now and tell me it didn't work exactly the way it was supposed to. I've lost 25 lbs, almost 8% of my body fat, and nearly 50 inches of fat over my entire body...all in 6 weeks! And people can keep calling it a crash diet but look at what I trained my body to do...and my mind. I reset my hypothalamus so that I could re-train my body when and how to process/store/burn my food and fat. And now i'm eating healthier than I ever have..and not because I feel like I HAVE to either. My body actually WANTS to. Was it hard? Hell yes...those 3 weeks I was on the drops were some of the hardest I've had...but it was worth every second. 3 weeks of struggle was worth the complete turn around I've done with my way of thinking and my lifestyle. And 3 weeks of struggle will be more than worth it when a year or two from now I'm literally half the person I was when I started.

I will be doing another round of hcg drops, but not just yet. Since I lost so much weight on my own this last week just with healthy diet and exercise, I'm going to keep going as is and ride it out. When I hit a plateau then I'll give myself another little kick start with another round of hcg. But until then...I'm all on my own :)