HCG Diets: Fad, or a short lived popular phenomenon?

[nukinfuts]

Dr. Steve

I am giving serious consideration to going on the HCG diet. It is medically supervised by a physician and I just wanted to see if you had any thoughts on this. I know hcg is FDA approved but not for weightloss. I figure it's safer than diet pills and I will be having bloodwork before I begin the plan.

Thanks!!!

[jauble]

Dr. Steve

I am giving serious consideration to going on the HCG diet. It is medically supervised by a physician and I just wanted to see if you had any thoughts on this. I know hcg is FDA approved but not for weightloss. I figure it's safer than diet pills and I will be having bloodwork before I begin the plan.

Thanks!!!

Doing some basic lazy research, this appears to be a chemical injection (please tell me if I am wrong) but I cant find out how it works. This makes you not pregnant anymore body typed.

[nukinfuts]

Doing some basic lazy research, this appears to be a chemical injection (please tell me if I am wrong) but I cant find out how it works. This makes you not pregnant anymore body typed.
It's basically a very low calorie diet. I am starting with a 21 day detox which is consists of supplements and lots of fruits and veggies. At day 8 I add lean protein such as fish or chicken. Then after those 21 days you start the HCG injections which you are correct it's the same hormone we produce when pregnant. Basically the Hcg is supposed to counteract the hunger that comes from a very low calorie diet and also your body will pull from the fat you need to lose not from muscle. There are a lot of people that have done this in my area and the results are amazing and they are maintaining the weight loss. It's almost like having gastric bypass without the pesky surgery. I couldn't find a lot of negative feedback about side effects of the hormone injections and you can't do more than 2 three week cycles of the hcg injections. I figure that one good thing is resetting the way I eat and 10 weeks of my life to work on that is well worth it. At any rate the detox is worth it because getting away from processed foods is a good thing to do every once in a while. I will let you know how it turns out I just wondered if you had any thoughts on it.

[Dr Steve]

Dr. Steve

I am giving serious consideration to going on the HCG diet. It is medically supervised by a physician and I just wanted to see if you had any thoughts on this. I know hcg is FDA approved but not for weightloss. I figure it's safer than diet pills and I will be having bloodwork before I begin the plan.

Thanks!!!

ok, I need just a little more information; when you say you're going "on the HCG diet", do you mean you will be administered HCG? What's the rest of the plan? If you can summarize the program, I can tell you a lot about it.

to get everyone on the same page: HCG is Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, which is a hormone secreted by the early placenta. It's a signal to the "corpus luteum" to continue to produce "progesterone" which is a pregnancy supporting hormone. In men, HCG will cause an increase in testosterone levels. It's also probably behind morning sickness in pregnant women.

Why anyone would take a pregnancy hormone to lose weight is beyond me, but I have an open mind. My concern with "diets" like this is that once you lose the weight and go off the diet, without a maintenance program your weight will bounce back to "pre-diet plus 10", meaning that if you started out at 200lbs and lose to 170, when you bounce back you'll end up at 210lbs. I'm generalizing badly, but you get the idea. Many of these programs will claim that they have a strong maintenance phase, but in my experience once you are no longer buying the high dollar treatment (in this case, HCG), they lose interest in you as a patient.

will this be supervised by your primary care doctor? or some third party doctor? if you have a link, feel free to post it or email it to me and I'll evaluate them. I'm biased, that's for sure, but as I said I do have an open mind.

Also, how much are they charging you?


your friend,



steve

[nukinfuts]

It's based on Dr Simeon's plan. If you google his name in relation to HCG you can find his "research". You do injections of hcg daily for 3 weeks and go on a 500 calorie diet which in itself will make you lose weight. The cost varies but I am looking at around $1300 for the two three week courses of hcg. My worries are that hcg can cause blood clots? I eat right and am active but I have about 45 pounds that needs to go and I seem to stall. I am not at all a candidate for gastric bypass but even with that people will often gain the weight back and struggle. I haven't really dieted per say but about 2 years ago I drastically changed eating habits and while I lost 30 pounds I can't seem to budge the scale. I guess my point is that I can maintain what I lost but need something to help me with the last 45. Weightloss in any form without training yourself on how to eat always results in gaining weight back and then some. Gastric bypass just seems do invasive and there's no way I would have surgery unless I was a Twinkie away from a coronary. This diet plan seems to be popular in the chiropractic community and I would never buy hcg off the Internet which I see where some people do that. I am totally open to your thoughts on this. I do think it may be the next fad diet.

[Dr Steve]

It's basically a very low calorie diet. I am starting with a 21 day detox which is consists of supplements and lots of fruits and veggies. At day 8 I add lean protein such as fish or chicken. Then after those 21 days you start the HCG injections which you are correct it's the same hormone we produce when pregnant. Basically the Hcg is supposed to counteract the hunger that comes from a very low calorie diet and also your body will pull from the fat you need to lose not from muscle. There are a lot of people that have done this in my area and the results are amazing and they are maintaining the weight loss. It's almost like having gastric bypass without the pesky surgery. I couldn't find a lot of negative feedback about side effects of the hormone injections and you can't do more than 2 three week cycles of the hcg injections. I figure that one good thing is resetting the way I eat and 10 weeks of my life to work on that is well worth it. At any rate the detox is worth it because getting away from processed foods is a good thing to do every once in a while. I will let you know how it turns out I just wondered if you had any thoughts on it.


well, let us know how it goes. I'm a little weirded out by manipulating hormones like that...as you know I'm not a proponent of anabolic steroids unless you're treating pathologically low testosterone. I'm not a prude, I have what I think are good reasons to avoid them.

with this, it's even more bizarre. you're fooling your body, your MALE body I might add, into thinking that it's pregnant. No wonder you can't eat. :smile:

I will do some real research on this and try to get back to you on it. Above all else I have an open mind and would like to see what's out there. if it's a panacea, I'm cool with it. On the other hand, like all short-term diets, it begs the question how you'll keep the weight OFF once you go off the protocol.

your pal,



steve