Needless to say, it's a really bad idea to go on vacation for ten days in the middle of a forty-day-fasting-diet. On Day 20 I broke the HCG diet something fierce and it continued for the entire ten days of my vacation. Unfortunately, I kept thinking I would get back to the regimen of the diet and continued taking HCG for the first three days of the trip. Big mistake. As promised in the literature, I packed the weight on at an alarming rate. I gained back thirteen of the roughly twenty pounds I lost. Lesson learned, I'm moving on.

I think it is important to note in the context of this HCG diet experiment that as soon as I broke the diet on day 20, I became a stark, raving lunatic with food. It's as though someone released a damn suddenly and the flood gates were left wide open. I ate and ate and ate for ten days. There are several things that played a role here. Certainly, it was that I wanted to because I was on vacation. It was also that Amy and my Mom daily cooked my favorite foods: scalloped potatoes, roast and biscuits; turkey, mashed potatoes, corn and gravy with home-made cheesecake thrown in for good measure and a lot more.

I can't help but feel the HCG diet played a role in my lunacy. I'm going to go back on HCG tomorrow and launch off again on the experiment. I remember reading experiences of those who claimed you would put the weight right back on unless you continued past phase II's starvation mode and gradually added fats and sugars back in during phase III. I'm holding onto the hope that this is a leading reason why I went so nuts. Or, perhaps it's just that I wanted to eat a tonne after starving myself for twenty days. We'll see. Day 1 of my second HCG epoch starts tomorrow. Wish me luck.