Beta HCG Diet -- Staying On It While Traveling

In a hotel, no car, tied up from early morning to late night. How do I stay on this diet? I am without a scale to fulfill the requirement of weighing myself every day. It was too big to bring and the hotel doesn't have any to bring me. Well, at least I wangled a refrigerator out of them, which has made a huge difference.

Normally at these things, I worry all day about when they're going to let us out so we can eat. I have snacks in my purse to tide me over and they're only fresh in that they're not stale; it certainly isn't because it's "real" food. I OD on Diet Coke. And I have food in my room, always. But not here.

Several things are different. I'm not hungry, by and large. Thank you, Beta HCG, for that. I haven't had a Diet Coke for three weeks. The food in my purse is one piece of melba toast and an apple. I'm drinking water by the liter. I prefer sparkling water but with drizzles of fresh lemon juice I can drink nearly that much plain water too. I still get a little panicky over meal breaks but it's more about where I can get the food I can eat on this diet than it is about rushing to eat.

I got here Wednesday. I put frozen shrimp in my carry-on so I ate that in the Denver airport during my two-hour layover. And an apple. I brought several pieces of fruit with me -- three apples, three oranges and four lemons. And a box of melba toast. So the challenge is to find vegetables. A friend who's a Platinum-level hotel guest took me up to the concierge lounge at dinner time. They had a great spread! Unfortunately, the entree was turkey drowned in gravy and mashed potatoes. There were wonderful crackers and cheese squares. I don't remember what else. I just know I couldn't eat any of it. So my friend went with me to a restaurant in the hotel and I ordered grilled chicken, hold all the trimmings and sides, and sliced tomatoes.I stuck half of the chicken in my fridge for tomorrow. Only one vegetable yesterday instead of the two I was supposed to eat, but by and large in my mind I did great.

Today I bought a pre-packaged salad with chicken on top. I took all of the chicken out and gave the rest of the salad to my friend, who enjoyed it. Tonight my friend went back up to the concierge lounge but I didn't bother. I went to the high-end restaurant in the hotel and paid $40 for a ribeye steak, hold the trimmings and sides, and ordered steamed kale and sliced tomatoes. I asked the waiter how much the steak weighed before cooking and he said eight to nine ounces. I'd heard bad things about kale (similar to spinach) but had never tried it. It was pretty tasty, which made me think that they probably cooked it in something even though the waiter said it would be steamed. I'm not sure but I ate it all anyway because I was behind on my vegetables.

Interestingly, the very slim and attractive woman in the couple with me at dinner, who was eating normally, told me she had gone through several rounds of the Beta HCG diet and lost some and gained a bit of it back, but then it jolted her out of her previous habits and she lost 70 pounds! That was my intention too, to stop the madness of my crappy food addictions. She also said she lost a bunch of her hair, which definitely disturbed me. She said it is growing back but slowly. I'll have to ask Dr. DeWet about that.

A $40 steak is pretty outrageous. But for my $40 I have two more decent-size hunks of luscious ribeye steak for two meals and some tomatoes for my late-night snack tonight, fulfilling the two-veggie requirement. That isn't so bad. But those damn vegetables remain the biggest thorn in my side. We'll see how creative I can be for the rest of this trip. Stay tuned.