HC3 Approved Meatloaf!
So I got back from Nashville the afternoon of Saturday July 30th and immediately we had friends over for dinner! The original plan was to go to the lake, but the weather didn't permit, so we stayed in for dinner and a movie with Desi and Tristan!
Desi and Tristan have been longtime friends now that we have enjoyed home cooked meals with on many occasions! Of course when they heard about our HC3 Trim diet, and our inability to drink or eat so many things they were quite leery about sticking around for dinner. But Paul, who is an amazing improvisational home cook, whipped together the most amazing dinner that we were all able to enjoy! Of course we cooked up some extras for Desi and Tristan, but the meatloaf was definitely the STAR of the evening!
So here is a quick run-down of our HC3 approved Meatloaf!
Ingredients:
- Extra Lean Ground Beef (1-2 lbs depending on how many ppl you are serving)
- One can of Original Rotel
- Vidalia Onion (1/4 to 1/2 an onion chopped)
- Raw Spinach (1-1.5 cups chopped)
- Fresh Cilantro - key for that awesome flavor (1 cup chopped)
- 2 table spoons Ground Pepper
- 1 table spoon Ground Sea Salt
- 2 - 4 Fresh Garlic cloves finely chopped
- 2 table spoons Fresh Garlic Powder
- 2 table spoons dill seasoning (be generous)
- 2 table spoons thyme seasoning
Mix it all together in a mixer or bowl, whichever suits you!
Put into a non-stick meatloaf pan or Pyrex dish, and bake at 300-325 for about 40-45 minutes. Keep an eye on it to be safe because those temps and time are variable depending!
And voilà! It was absolutely delicious and we had a side of asparagus and Desi and Tristan also were treated with Paul's awesome mashed potatoes! It was a success and better than any meatloaf I have had before! It was healthy and we didn't even need ketchup! Oh and note - it had no eggs or bread crumbs!
Hope you are able to try it!
HC3 Diet - Week Two - The Mission to Stay On Track!
Although it was a struggle going through the end of the previous week and weekend without Paul's support and understanding of the temptations, we both came out of the first week with significant losses. Week 2 was going to be a challenge though! On Wednesday of this week, I would be traveling to Nashville, TN for work, so preparations had to be made.
The beginning of the week was going well and we were able to meet with the nutritionist on Tuesday. She was pleased with our results and we generally discussed questions we had, etc. I think one of my biggest questions for her was relative to moisturizers! I am an addict when it comes to lotion, and throughout this process we are not supposed to use lotions because of the oils, so I found a body shimmer spray I had and it doesn't have oil in it! YEAH! It certainly doesn't do what lotion would, but for an addict like me, it helps.
So Tuesday evening Paul and I had to get me ready to head up to Nashville! I called to hotel to check on getting a mini-fridge cause I was planning to bring all my meals! They assured me they would be able to accommodate, so it was meal planning time! We cooked up a bunch of chicken and shrimp! Both of which would be just as tasty warm as cold, so it would work out. We went out and bought a bunch of Tupperware, and of course I needed a scale to travel with! And I packed two small coolers worth of food! I was set!
I was being so good throughout the entire trip until the final night of the meeting in Nashville. They had a banquet with dinner and drinks! I ate the salad, with just vinegar, and even ate the main course which was chicken (which seemed ok cause it looked fairly oil-free), and luckily they had asparagus as the veggie. While it was probably a little more calories then I should have had, I was running around preparing for stuff so I figured it wasn't a big deal.
Cocktails started flowing for everyone at the meeting and I was SOOOO GOOD! I had club soda with lime the entire night (pretending it was a vodka tonic), but I did end up slipping during the after-party in downtown Nashville, where I had two real vodka tonics!
I was fairly concerned I may have screwed myself up, and this week the weight wasn't coming off so quickly as it was the first week, but come Saturday morning when we had to leave, I did my weigh-in and had dropped almost two pounds from the previous day, and my ketone levels were still fairly high! It was CRAZY!
Week Two Ended with a 3.8 lbs loss, for a total of 8lbs since the beginning! Not bad for a small slip!
HC3 Diet - Week One of 500 Calorie Limit
Week One went surprisingly well! It's unbelievable, but I was actually full after each meal and snack! The hormone actually was doing it's job! I wasn't hungry and I have energy, although we aren't supposed to work out at all. I took it easy and had fruits for breakfast, chicken, lean ground beef, or shrimp usually for lunch and dinner, fruits and veggies for snack, and occasional glutton free pretzels (which are surprisingly very good)!
As we started, we had to begin testing our ketone levels each morning on the ketone testing strips (similar to a pregnancy test). My ketone levels started off at a medium level and as the week went on they got high! The higher the ketone levels, the better the chances you are burning fat. Toward the end of the week I was supplementing fruit or veggie snacks for the Power Reds to manage the ketone levels so that the levels don't cause my body to go into a ketone-acidosis.
Toward the end of the week Paul was traveling for work, and that was when I felt more challenged! It's easier when you are doing something like this with someone else. And ironically, when you're alone and just watching TV or movies, you get the boredom eating syndrome. TV doesn't help with this either, with commercials for Dairy Queen, McDonald's, Domino's Pizza and more! 
The craziest part about it, my body wasn't hungry for those things, my head was! The pretzels and water helped, but this was the struggle I realized would be ongoing for the remainder of the 40 days!
At the end of week one, I lost a total of 4.8 pounds! It was the most I had lost ever in that period of time. Usually it would take me a month to lose 5 lbs, and I pretty much did it in one week! AND I resisted ALL TEMPTATIONS!
HC3 Diet - Days 1 & 2 - "The Loading Days"
We met with the Optimum Health nutritionist, Kelly Hall, on July 11th to discuss the diet in full detail with the plan to begin the diet on the following Saturday (July 16th). We figured if we had to consume 3500 calories of high fat foods, it would be much easier to do that if on the weekend when we could focus on eating!
It really does sound fun, eating all those fattening foods you always feel guilty eating. And while you would think that you can eat whatever you want, you really do need to focus on high fat calories, not high sugar. You won't get the same results if you eat all deserts!
So Saturday rolled around and we took the hormone in the morning when we got up and then we began our fatty feasting! We decided to use the, iphone app, myfitness pal to make sure we met our minimum calorie intake of 3500. We ate scrambled cheese eggs, bacon, sausage, burgers from McDonald's, Hot Dogs, KFC Original Recipe, Bologna, Steak, Pepperoni, Block Cheddar Cheese, Peanut Butter, Cashews, Pecans, and to end each night we each had HUGE slices of Cheese Cake! Check out the details below on the images from the calorie counter!
The first day seemed to go smoothly, and I was actually proud of myself for getting through it, because while it seems like a pretty simple thing, it's quite hard! But we both made it through the first loading day. Now day two wasn't as smooth, I was definitely struggling to reach that 3500 calories, and the things that helped most were the nuts and peanut butter. They pack a lot of fat calories for a smaller amount of intake, so you don't feel so full. We also had a very fatty steak for dinner that night and while I struggled to finish it, I actually got it all down! And then had to move onto the cheese cake desert. By the end of day 2 of loading I was miserable and actually started crying I felt so disgusting! It was rough! All I wanted to do was go to sleep.
But in either case we both made it through the loading days, and the total weight gain for myself over those two days was minimum I think I gained about 1.5 lbs total.
And we were both ready to start the low calorie, low fat diet!
Hello Wordpress World, Bloggers and Blog Followers...
This blog is starting out as an experiment in getting acclimated to Wordpress! While I love the functionality and the ability to customize, I have been very torn with using wordpress blogs myself. From past experience the ability to update and change themes and widgets has been a pain in the arse!
I do thoroughly enjoy reading other people's blogs, and hope to provide content worth checking out every once in a while. I imagine it will be slow coming, as this is new to me, but either way welcome and I hope you enjoy the neat features I have started to add to my blog!
The HC3 Diet - It's Time to Drop the Weight!
So after an awesome first 6 months of marriage, both Paul and I found ourselves packing on the weight, and faster than we ever imagined. We were gradually less and less interested in being active and more and more uncomfortable with how we felt about our bodies.
One of Paul's clients, Optimum Health, provides weight loss management options, and as a jump start to the weight loss they supervise the HC3 Diet. Paul and I had talked about it for a while as an option, but were contemplating if we couldn't do what the diet requires by just a eating better low carb and low fat diet. But on HC3 it's very different!
They tell you how you will take a hormone and supplements and only eat 500 calories and my first thought was, I can lose that much weight if I was eating 500 calories without a hormone. But the burning question was how could I actually get by only eating 500 calories. It seems crazy, especially considering I had on many occasions done calorie counters and struggled to stay under 1200 calories.
The HC3 Hormone is a homeopathic version of the HCG Hormone, the pregnancy hormone. And while taking it, it is telling your body that it needs to provide additional nourishment to you and the baby you would be carrying. So the hormone causes your body to consume the additional calories (of fat) while you only consume 500 calories. To start the diet off, you have two days of loading, in which you consume 3500 calories of high fat foods to set the basis for the hormone to burn those same calories for the next 40 days. After the "Loading Days" you drop down to 500 calories and your body begins to consume the remaining 3000 calories from the fat that is stored in the body. It's pretty miraculous, but we have already begun and it is working!
I will be posting details of our experience from the first two loading days and at a minimum weekly updates of our weight loss as well as, our highs and lows, and of course great food options that have helped us get through this 40 days!
If your lucky... I may even post some before and after photos of us both!
