One of my friends called me up a couple days ago and asked my opinion on the HCG diet. She and her husband had been considering it because nothing else they were doing was working. I started laughing out loud. She and her husband, who regularly participate in Insanity or P-90X workouts that would knock me on my butt within two minutes, are anything but fat. They're not even a little bit chubby. But she asked me my opinion of HCG and not whether I thought she needed to lose weight, so I answered her question.
(I think I've written about my revised opinion of HCG on here, but I can't be bothered to check, so I might be repeating myself. Bear with.)
In short, the HCG diet is designed to kill a person. That's the honest truth. It's completely unsustainable, for one thing, because you are consuming only 500 calories a day. 500 calories is not enough for your body to live on, and because of that, your body will desperately fill your head with visions of sugarplums just to get you to quit starving it and eat something. Starvation does a number of terrible things to your metabolism and your internal organs. Starve long enough and there's a good chance that you won't be able to reverse the damage.
Because you're starving yourself, your body begins shutting down non-vital processes in order to conserve resources. You're also forcing your metabolism to slow down to a snail's pace. So while you're proud of yourself for sticking with your 500 calories a day and your dose of HCG, your body is cannibalizing your muscle tissue for energy, which is exactly the opposite of what you want. Muscle burns more calories than fat tissue, so building muscle is vital in a weight loss plan, but it's extremely difficult to exercise and build muscle when you feel like you are going to faint at any moment.
When you start eating like a normal person again, your body is relieved that you have enough food and is determined not to starve any more, so it packs on the increased energy resources as fat against future starvation. For 99% of people, you'll gain back more weight than you took off, but it will be fat tissue and not muscle tissue. You've just made future weight loss that much more difficult for yourself because now you're more jiggly-puff AND you've damaged your metabolism.
Meanwhile, you're probably wrecking some really vital internal organs. Since you need your liver and kidneys to function well, and because it's nice to have a gall bladder in good condition, quit the HCG immediately.
I've done a lot of research since my own experience with HCG. I admit I was desperate when I spent a lot of hard-earned dollars on this wonderful miracle drug that promised so much, and I did lose 12 pounds before I gave in to my need to eat enough to sustain me. Actually, what really stopped me during that second round of HCG was a strong spiritual witness that I was hurting myself needlessly and uselessly. I quit at that moment.
There are probably other health issues you are not addressing if you've been steadily gaining weight without changing your diet or exercise patterns. This is a toxic world, and I think a vast majority of us are in need of cleansing. We have parasites sucking the nutrients from our food and flooding us with toxic chemicals, we eat refined flours and sugars, and many, many of us are probably suffering from hormonal and other imbalances. All of these could be affecting your weight. HCG won't fix the underlying problems; it will just make things worse.
I've come to the conclusion that the only way to safely eat is to stick with whole grains, plenty of vegetables and some fruits, herbs, legumes, and coconut oil as a fat, and to completely avoid caffeine, soda, coffee, non-herbal teas, alcohol, most dairy, and meat (except in times of hunger or when food is scarce). If you eat right, you can get away with eating a lot of those good foods without putting on weight, so you'll never be hungry or send your body into starvation mode. You can research whether or not you feel you need supplements, but I also think that if you grow your own vegetables using organic mixed material compost, you most likely only need vitamin B12 supplements and occasionally some Vitamin D. Add exercise for muscle building and to keep yourself happy and in good working order.
I'll let you know when I'm at my ideal weight if I'm right about the eating plan. Like Alice in Wonderland, I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it. I'm trying to solve my own issues with this desperate and nearly crippling fatigue from which I suffer, but if I can get that worked out, I think eating right and exercising will start producing the results I really, really want.
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