What is the HCG Diet?

My sister-in-law first told me about the HCG diet several months ago. She said that a girl that she works with lost tons of weight on it and kept the weight off. She didn't really know the details but it had something to do with getting injections of a hormone and being on a 500 calorie-a-day diet. She also said part of the diet had "loading days" where you could eat as much as you wanted and the highest fat content you could eat. It didn't sound healthy to me. I know that a super low calorie diet is very unhealthy and makes your body think it's starving. The body ends up holding onto the fat stores that you want to get rid of and "eating" from healthy fat, muscle, and bone in the body. You feel sluggish, tired, and cranky. Also, weight lost on a super low calorie diet is always gained back with more fat in the areas you wanted to lose from. What's the point of doing that? Macking down on high fat foods when you are trying to lose weight, trying to be healthy, or both also seems really counter-intuitive to me. The whole thing sounded U-N-H-E-A-L-T-H-Y to me. Yes, I want to lost this weight and mostly these inches. But I don't want to be unhealthy.

There's alot more to the HCG Diet than either she or I knew at the time. The diet protocol was actually designed by Dr. A.T.W. SIMEONS, M.D. in Italy over 30 years ago. It has been used since then with great success and with little to no reported side effects. Two things that I am particularly excited about on this diet are that the success rate for maintaining the weight lost seems to be over 80% and that dieters find that they are losing the fat in their trouble areas. Sounds fantastic! To read Dr. Simeons' actual protocol, I recommend this link: http://hcgcoach.com/SimeonsProtocol.shtml#The_Diet. The rest of the website has information of varying value depending on what you are looking for but the original written protocol is worth reading if you want to know what the HCG Diet is really about.

Basically, HCG is a naturally occurring hormone that is found in women when they are pregnant. When they do the urine test to see if you are pregnant, they are testing for the presence of HCG. HCG doesn't make you pregnant and it doesn't make your body think it is pregnant. It actually has alot of functions and it is used medically to treat a variety of conditions. Using HCG for weight loss is actually an "off label" prescription. HCG can be used safely and effectively for men and women. As a hormone it tells the body to do certain things and the body responds. Just like a woman having too much testosterone and growing facial hair.

HCG is extremely safe. During pregnancy, women have very high levels of HCG for 9 months without ill effect. The amounts used for weight loss are minute in comparison. The only side effect I have heard of is the possibility of headaches in the first couple of days on the low-calorie regimen for people who are severely obese or toxic. Even for these individuals, the headaches are reported to be mild and should not occur after the first few days.

One of the messages HCG sends to the body is a command to utilize fat stores to use as energy. Normally, when our calorie and fat intake shrinks (read: very low calorie diet) the body stores the fat and slows the metabolism. Essentially, the body thinks it is being starved and wants to 'hang on' to every bit of potential energy/fat that it can. While using HCG, the body feels free to use up the fat stores that it has. It's not afraid of starving so the metabolism is not slowed. Your body isn't living on only the food that you eat but also on your own fat stores. So you may be eating a 500 calorie-a-day diet but your body is living off of more.

What does this mean? It means that you aren't tired and sluggish. It means that your body is living healthily off of the abnormal fat stores that you want and need to get rid of in order to look your best and be your best. It means that you aren't starving your body and that you aren't losing weight or fat from healthy places in your body, e.g. between your internal organs. You need healthy fat in your body. HCG safeguards that fat by utilizing the abnormal and unhealthy fat buildup in our body.

Another thing that HCG does is work with the hypothalamus to reset your metabolism to a healthy rate that will last long after the injections and the diet are over. To me, it sounds like a miracle.

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and I am not giving medical advice. I don't work in the medical field. The information I am sharing below is what I have researched from multiple sources and what I was given when I had my medical consultation).