Wow, had no idea I'd get this much response that quickly! I read through everyone's posts, then had to kill a spam bot at the very end...
So to answer the build questions- large frame Asian build- meaning leg heavy, not as long legged as you Caucasian guys. I'm 5'9" and grew up pretty athletic, mostly running track, playing basketball, and biking... I have a sprinter's build. I graduated high school at 145lbs. I couldn't quite bench my own weight, but I could crush an apple with one hand, punch through safety glass and put pretty sizable dents in steel lockers, and had enough leg power to do 30 leg press reps at 900lbs and pull a 35" vertical in-game on the basketball court. For those that do frame size / skeleton size judging based on the wrist test, when I wrap my middle finger and thumb around my wrist, I have about a half inch gap, and my hand-span is 9".
College graduation at 23 had me at about 165, almost as good shape as high school, but not quite. I'm halfway past 35 now, and 2 kids' worth of pregnancy sympathy weight plus lots of McCrapper's time (playland is awesome for munchkins, but food is not!) and eating on the run while not going to the gym because I hate just "working out" takes its toll.
So two pics, which are actually pretty hard to find since I'm usually the one behind the camera:
First one is just over two weeks ago on 5/3, should have been right at 200lbs. The first few days of the weight graph are guestimates- I had weighed in at 200 a few days prior at a clinic, and was probably just a hair over on 5/3. 5/4 was my first actual measurement on the diet- everything before is an average from first measure backwards through 200.
Following pic is when I was about 165, back in 2002. Some of you OG crew may remember a "tech" article I wrote lampooning how to install seatbelt pads. Since about late 2005 I never fell below 170-175. You can mostly see the difference in the face.
So the diet is the hCG Protocol. There are a LOT of details to keep track of while you're on it, but to really oversimplify- you take a hormone injection that forces your body to churn through your fat stores instead of going into starvation mode from dropping your calories too low, then you do exactly that- drop your calorie count down to 500-800 per day. No starch or sugar, extremely low fat. No working out. The hormone is the same that causes a woman's body to cannibalize itself in favor of a developing baby when there's not enough nutrition for both the mother and the baby.
To expand a bit, there's a 40+ page medical paper written by the Italian doctor who developed the diet but written FOR other doctors, it's here:
DR SIMEONS POUNDS AND INCHES MANUSCRIPT
Katie did this diet after a TON (months and months!) of research years ago after pregnancy #1 and was able to keep the weight off until pregnancy #2. Same after #2- stable after a month of super fast weight loss until now when she decided to get back down to wedding weight. She just wrapped up her successful third round. This is my first time.
Part of the whole deal on this is that your body resets its "natural weight" when you're done. I was skeptical, but it kept for Katie each time, even with a 25+ pound drop in a month. There are a bunch of billboards all over DFW (maybe other areas?) that advertise 30 pounds of weight loss in a month with no injection and no surgery- this is the same thing. We just do it ourselves for about $200 in materials instead of $3000 in clinic fees.
So there's a TON of literature about it and a LOT of BS on the net marketing variations of it, plus a bunch of people that try on their own and don't get it quite right and screw themselves over... There's also quite the mixed opinion about it in the medical community, but all of my doctors are good with it.
Hope that helps explain things a bit. Read the doc's paper if you want to know more, look around on the 'net, slam it if you want- but it's worked multiple times for Katie, and it's working for me.
