How The HCG Diet Works
If you have been researching diets for very long or looking for a way to lose weight fairly quickly, yet safely, then you’ve probably have come across the HCG diet or at least heard of it. And with very good reason.
The HCG diet, or at least the updated and new version of it, is extremely effective, safe, and will have you dropping 20-30 pounds in less than a month. And that’s all without exercise or dangerous drugs, operations or HCG diet dangers. It’s all natural and easy to do.
Sounds pretty incredible but it works and works really well.
So for those who haven’t heard about it or know much about it, let’s go over it really quickly.
HCG stand for Human Chorionic Gonadotropin. It is a naturally occurring, hormone-like substance that is found in the bodies of pregnant women. In fact that’s why pregnancy test search for, HCG, and if they detect it you get a positive on your pregnancy test.
So what does it do and how do you avoid any hCG side effects?
Well HCG takes the fat stores of the pregnant mother and releases them to provide nutrients for the mother and the developing baby. This make sure that both the mother and the baby have enough nutrients to sustain life and be healthy. Now of course you gain weight while being pregnant, and that’s a good thing, but when you use HCG when you are not pregnant anecdotal evidence suggests that it does some really incredible things.
So while on the HCG diet you adhere to a very specific diet plan. It’s a low calorie diet plan but you aren’t actually counting calories. You select your food from a specific list and just make sure to weight it so you know exactly how much you are getting. It’s a lot easier than counting calories which just isn’t effective.
So the low calorie diet while on the HCG tells your body to start pulling the fat storage from your body so you use it as nutrients. A lot people criticize the HCG diet because they think the low calorie diet isn’t enough to be healthy, but what they don’t understand is that the HCG is taking the nutrients from your fat, keeping you healthy while allowing you to lose weight. Pretty neat!
So how do you take the HCG.
Well there are two methods. You can either take an HCG injection with a needle or you can use oral HCG drops which you simply place under your tongue.
The original way was to use the injections but technology has come a long way and developed an oral version of HCG. The benefits of the oral HCG are that it’s safer, much cheaper, you don’t need a prescription to get it, and you don’t have to use needles, making it much easier and convenient to use.
Just make sure to get your HCG drops from a reputable company as there are some scams out there. A good rule of thumb is that if your HCG drops are “cheap” then they probably aren’t going to work. You should expect to pay about $90-$100 per ounce. But don’t worry, you only need a few drops a day and your small bottle will last for weeks.
So what you do to start the diet is make sure you have your HCG and the diet all figured out.
The first two days are called your “loading days”. You basically take your HCG at the required times, 3 times a day in most cases, while eating everything you can and as much as you can. Seems counterintuitive but it works and here’s why.
When you load your body up with fat it tells itself that it has enough fat to keep your vital organs safe so it’s OK to start to release the fat storage on your body. It’s basically the reverse principle of the “starvation mode” you’ve heard so much about when you stop eating but you don’t lose a lot of weight because your body is trying to hold onto everything.
So you eat a lot and your body tells itself that it’s OK to start burning the fat. That’s good.
So on the third day you start the low calorie diet. The low calorie diet consists of normal food like vegetables, chicken, beef, fruits, and a carbohydrate typically in the form of Melba toast or a grissini breadstick which is an Italian breadstick that is long, slender and crunchy.
So that food is what you eat for lunch and dinner. For breakfast you can have your coffee or tea. If you need something extra you can always have something from your lunch earlier, just make sure you don’t eat it again at lunch because you will be eating extra food and that will cause you problems.
You will also be drinking a lot of water. It’s very important to stay hydrated, especially when you are losing so much weight, so quickly. So be drinking about 2 liters of water a day.
Another thing you need to know about this diet is that you have to avoid oils. Not only in your cooking but also in your beauty products. The reason behind this is that the HCG will absorb any fat and will stop taking it from your fat storage, not good. So avoid makeup, lotions, or any other kind of product with oils in it. You can use mineral makeup and oil but that’s about it. Don’t take it lightly because it will make a huge difference.
Then after you’ve been on the diet for 23 days or 37 you stop your HCG but continue the low calorie diet for 3 more days to make sure all the HCG is out of your system. After that you move to the maintenance phase.
The maintenance phase is where you can start to eat normally again but you avoid sugars and starches. Starches are found in things like potatoes, rice, flour, etc. Do some research as starches are found in many places you wouldn’t expect.
The maintenance phase is 3 weeks long and is designed to maintenance and set your new weight point so the weight doesn’t come back. It’s also a time to solidify your new habits and keep your eating under control. You should be weighing yourself everyday and watching your weight to make sure it’s not steadily climbing. If it goes up make sure you know what you ate the day before and make any changes necessary. It’s important to keep track of your diet and always keep a detailed record of how much you weigh and exactly what you ate every single day.
After that you can do another round of HCG. The reason you can only go a maximum of 40 days on the HCG diet is that your body will get used to the HCG and it won’t be as effective. But if you take a break between rounds you can do as many rounds as you need to lose as much as you’d like.
So you can do the diet to lose 10-200 pounds. It really is effective and can be done as long as you need it.
It also helps you keep the weight off by teaching you what to eat and how the bad foods effect you. I can’t tell you how many people tell me that the HCG diet has saved their life completely. Many people go off their blood pressure, diabetes, and other medications that they had been dependent on.
It’s amazing how much your health will improve once you start to lose the weight.