Hi! I'm Helen. I have a wonderful husband and 5 cute and lively kids. I just had baby number 5 on August 29th, 2009. We live in NJ and we homeschool.

I have been following Jorge Cruise's 3 hour diet for a couple of years and went from 193 lbs to 145 lbs. I gained 45 lbs with this pregnancy (I started at 155 lbs). My goal is to get back to 145 lbs. I also follow Jordan Rubin's dietary advice. His insulin balancing one week diet helps me get back on track in my eating ...

Hi! I'm Helen. I have a wonderful husband and 5 cute and lively kids. I just had baby number 5 on August 29th, 2009. We live in NJ and we homeschool.

I have been following Jorge Cruise's 3 hour diet for a couple of years and went from 193 lbs to 145 lbs. I gained 45 lbs with this pregnancy (I started at 155 lbs). My goal is to get back to 145 lbs. I also follow Jordan Rubin's dietary advice. His insulin balancing one week diet helps me get back on track in my eating whenever I happen to stray and start eating junk again.

I also want to get my house clean and tidy and keep it that way and am trying to apply the flylady stategies.
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Here is a summary of the 3 hour diet:
1. Eat within an hour of waking up, it speeds up metabolism
2. Eat every 3 hours, it keeps your blood sugar constant
3. Keep your calories to 1400.
4. Do 20 minutes of cardio exercises a day.
5. Stop eating 3 hours before bed, you'll sleep better
6. Try to get 8 hours of sleep every night
7. Use stevia as a sweetner. It's an herb from Paraguay. Zero calories, zero artificial stuff.
8. Add flax seed to your food as much as possible, at least 1 TBSP a day. It keeps you full and keeps you regular in the bathroom. Make sure it's ground before you eat it. Grind it in a coffee grinder. Amazon sells it pretty cheaply
9. Drink a glass of water every hour.
10. Drink green tea, it speeds up your metabolism.
11. Go decaf.
12. Include a small treat each day.
13. No exercise on Sundays
14. Do Jorge's Cruise Moves for 8 minutes each morning. You basically do 8 minutes of resistance training each morning. You could easily use the exercises on sparkpeople instead. Pick 2 exercises a day and do them alternatately every minute. Do one for one minute. Then switch and do the other for one minute. Keep switching back and forth for 8 minutes. Rotate your focus, for example, on Mondays and Thursdays, focus on upper body; on Tuesdays and Fridays focus on core exercises (abdominal); on Wednesdays and Saturdays focus on lower body. Take Sundays off.
15. Make a cassette of yourself saying positive/encouraging statements, alternating with songs that encourage you. Listen to it with a walkman each day.
16. Substitute emotional eating with friends. Log on here for support instead of turning to food for comfort.
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We are Christians. God has always been my best friend. At this time in my life, though, I've been struggling with the stress of life and often forget to pray and read the Bible as I would like to. I've been fighting off some minor depression and the 3 hour diet and the support I got there did so much for me. I am now getting to know many of you and being encouraged to continue to pursue a healthy diet, exercise, and spiritual and emotional health.

I started overeating when I was 14 and we moved to Wisconsin from Brazil and I was lonely. I ate for comfort when I got home from school, and it just became a habit to eat when I was sad, happy, etc... I've felt convicted for a long time that gluttony is a sin and that I am disobeying God when I overeat, but I had no self-control or self-discipline in this area, and praying for it didn't work. I tried to work through Elisabeth Elliot's book, "Discipline, the Glad Surrender" but it involved self-discipline I couldn't come up with. The Lord is there for us, but somehow, with this problem of overeating, I needed more specific help and my lack of obedience in this area of my life was really affecting me spiritually, physically, and emotionally. A few years ago I found a diet that made sense to me and I tried to follow it but could only keep to it for a couple months at a time (it's Jorge Cruise's 3 hour diet) and eventually had to have the comfort that food offers in order to survive my busy days with pregnancies and toddlers and then homeschooling. I read through a book called "Love Hunger" and it involved a lot of journalling and working through past pains and griefs and giving them to the Lord, forgiving people even for small offences, etc... it involves a 10 step approach. Well, one of the steps it recommends is to be in a support group for people who overeat, so I remembered that Jorge Cruise had a support group on the web and I decided to join it. I was suprised to find so many Christian women there and the support was just the comfort I needed to replace the comfort I got from food. I was there for a year and lost 40 lbs, but the site is expensive, and they seem to have quit overseeing it and we felt abandoned. Many of the ladies moved to sparkpeople and invited me to come over too, which I did. What I'm trying to say is that the Lord is helping me to overcome my sin of gluttony, but not without the aid of a good diet plan, a good and sensible exercise plan, and good people to "talk" to each day. I wasn't able to obey on my own. I always thought that if I had enough faith and if I loved the Lord enough to obey Him, I should be able to just obey Him, but He has made it easy for me by giving me the tools to obey Him, a plan. I still need Him to help me stay on plan in my eating and exercising, and when things get especially stressful, I still fall into my old habits, but not for long. I keep jumping back and trying again, and often succeeding.

Read More About HELENCHRISTINE (Updated January 24)

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