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Posts tagged ‘Diet’

12
Nov

Nutrition After A Diet. A Few Tips.

How not to gain weight after the diet? This question bedevils every woman thrown off the pesky extra pounds. Because a successful weight loss – is only half the battle, now you need to keep the achieved results. Unfortunately, not everyone can do it.

This happens because people are often not accustomed to reduce caloric intake gradually, and some time sitting on a strict diet, waiting for when this is over and he will finally be able to eat. Of course, if after a diet, he will immediately pounce on the food – all disappeared pounds will be back. In addition, it should be understood that thin and slender people need fewer calories than full ones. And after the diet you need to eat less.

This does not mean a diet till the death; it just means a sensible approach to nutrition after a diet. The second common mistake – is neglect of physical activity and sports in general. To maintain weight after the diet is difficult, but without the sport – even more difficult. Going in for sports, you’ll spend more energy on burning calories, you will build muscle mass, which also allows the body not to accrete fat and speed up the metabolism.

First, get out of the diet gradually. After any diet do not immediately gang up on unhealthy and fatty foods. Think about how to eat after the diet, look and learn how to prepare delicious and low-calorie dishes using fruits, vegetables and lean protein.

Exercises. If you are not fond of a gym – go to aerobics, pool. Dance, ballet, jogging – you can always find something on your liking. Physical activity not only helps keep your figure slim, but will get more out of life.

Get rid of psychological dependence on meal. Find passion or hobby. In life there are always more interesting ways to have fun, relax or entertain.

Follow these three unpretentious rules, and, most importantly, love yourself. And you’ll never have a question about how not to gain weight after a diet.

Fortunately we live in the world of digital technologies which provide us with a truly unique way to find anything we need or solve a problem. Those who are worrying about their weight, might want to review this HCG Drops site. Sure it would be right to find out some info about HCG Diet as well before trying them.

Food has significant meaning for our bodies that’s why it might be useful to pass Food Allergy Tests to find out if you can eat everything or not.

Related posts:

  1. Five Tips To Follow The HCG Diet
  2. Fat Loss Tips That Work For Hard-Working Moms
  3. Easy Weight Loss Tips

12
Nov

The Advantages Of HCG Diet Compared To Others.

1. In spite of such a drastic weight reduction and low-calorie diet, the patient does not look emaciated, does not feel a painful feeling of hunger or the need for sweet / fatty foods.

2. The diet is quite tolerable and even pleasant, since the first days of diet the patient observes a significant reduction in weight, weighing on an everyday basis, that is difficult to achieve in all others, exhausting diets.

3. Parts of the body which were normal (face, chest) before beginning the diet do not decrease.

4. The skin improves and softens.

5. Due to a healthy diet the body is cleared of toxins, the patient becomes lightheaded.

6. During the course the patients have no fatigue, irritability, anxiety, excitement, confusion, depression.

7. During the course it is not recommended to engage in active sports, as low-calorie diet and all intake calories are needed for normal functioning.

8. Not muscle mass, but an extra supply of fat goes away in contrast to other express diets.

9. Many chronic diseases such as diabetes, kidney failure, cardiovascular problems, and digestive problems are improving during the diet.

During the course it is strictly prohibited the use of sugar, alcohol, fat (including skin care products), except those that are acceptable. The slightest deviations from the medication and diet violate the entire course of treatment. This diet does not allow even the slightest error. At the same time, it will not be difficult for you to adhere to strict rules as you will be completely satisfied with the calories that will come from your fat reserves. Therefore, before deciding to sit on this diet, you need to be firmly committed to complying with all rules and provide the most relaxing time on the course of the diet.

Upon completion of the course, so that the body will remember the new weight, you need to go locking course.

Fortunately we live in the world of high technologies which provide us with a unique way to find anything we need or solve an issue. Those who are concerned about their extra kgs, might be interested to visit this HCG Drops site. Of course it would be right to get to know some info about HCG Diet as well before applying them.

Food is very important for our bodies that’s why it might be useful to pass Food Allergy Tests to learn if you can eat everything or not.

Related posts:

  1. Advantages Of HCG Diet.
  2. Short Description Of The Diet Based On HCG.
  3. Low Fat And Low Calorie Diet Plans
11
Nov

Advantages Of HCG Diet.

Men do it, women do it, young and old … We are talking about injections of the pregnancy hormone HCG. An example of such a choice is those who could lose weight with these injections without diet or starvation. In their view, this hormone helps to redirect the body to use the “fuel” from reserve stocks, which we usually call “the zones that require correction.”

In general, the function of HCG – human chorionic gonadotropin is somewhat different – it occurs in large quantities during pregnancy and stimulates the body to store fat and nutrients to ensure healthy growth and development of the child.

Experiments with these injections have shown that, reducing caloric intake to 500 calories per day, the body goes to the consumption of fat, respectively, solving the problem of excess weight. The reason for this is that Mother Nature conceived so that even if a pregnant woman would receive insufficient food and sometimes go hungry, the child will still get an amount of fat needed for him “from his mother.”

Receiving injections of HCG, a human body is “deceived and believes the human became pregnant,” trying hard to provide an imaginary fetus with all necessary, including fat and – here the mechanism to combat obesity starts.

The result is that the person does not experience loss of energy and vitality, weight falls very quickly, and the difference between a real hunger and habit is very clear. Hunger, which exists only in the mind, – this is the one who harms the health and healthy weight – it appears under the influence of advertising and food habits. HCG injections give a clear sense of when to eat, and when hunger is imaginary and you have to simply overcome it.

Those who have tried these procedures argue that they have learned to listen to their bodies and satisfy their real needs. Naturally, the weight began to decline.

Luckily we live in the world of high technologies which provide us with a unique way to find anything we want or solve a problem. Those who are worrying about their weight, might want to check out this HCG Drops site. Sure it would be right to find out some info about HCG Diet as well before applying them.

Food has significant meaning for our bodies that’s why it might be useful to pass Food Allergy Tests to find out if you can eat everything or not.

Related posts:

  1. What Can Be Better Than HCG Diet?
  2. Basic Ideas About HCG Diet
  3. Main Principles Of A Diet At Pregnancy
11
Nov

Short Description Of The Diet Based On HCG.

The course duration of the diet varies from 26 to 43 days. For 26 days the patient loses on the average 5 to 8 kg, for 43 days – from 10 to 15kg.

People suffering from obesity, which need to loose from 15 to an unlimited number of overweight, might pass the second, third, fourth courses and manifolds, and so on, until they reach the desired weight. In this case it is needed a break between courses at intervals of not less than six weeks.

Throughout the diet the patient take homeopathic synthesized HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) three times a day. The drug is manufactured in the form of drops, which should be dropped under the tongue.

The diet ration is rather limited and designed on 500 calories a day, but do not scare, because during the diet the patient obtains an equivalent of 3000-4000 calories per day. The way nature is that the body producing HCG will enrich the patient with nutritional value from his own fat stores, even if he will starve. During reception of HCG, the patient does not feel hunger, even if he is generally endowed with increased appetite. This is the phenomenon of this diet.

During the diet the patient need to refrain from using cosmetics, based on fat, because it interferes with the drug at the organic level.

The complete description of the diet, the method of application, information about skin care (including a list of cosmetic products) and other necessary information may be obtained after consultation with a specialist in that case, if there are no contraindications and other misunderstandings.

This diet not only helps the patient to lose weight, but to restore his metabolism. After completing the course, patients see, as previously disproportionate shapes acquire correct proportions.

Receiving HCG does not affect the hormonal balance system. The drug has no side effects in men, women and adolescents. Pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under 12 years must not take this drug.

Fortunately we live in the world of digital technologies which provide us with a truly unique way to find anything we need or solve an issue. Those who are concerned about their extra kgs, might want to visit this HCG Drops site. Sure it would be right to learn some info about HCG Diet as well before trying them.

Food is very important for our bodies that’s why it might be useful to pass Food Allergy Tests to learn if you can eat everything or not.

Related posts:

  1. Basic Ideas About HCG Diet
  2. Low Fat And Low Calorie Diet Plans
  3. The Main Idea Of HCG Diet
15
Jun

More Fat Burning Diet Secrets and Tips Revealed

The last couple of weeks I’ve been working on my Bonus Fat Burning Workout videos, but this week I decided to go more into some diet secret tips and tricks.  Diet and more specifically the pre-workout meal in a fat burning diet is often overlooked. I decided to tackle this issue first.


Your performance during a workout is highly important if you want to get the most out of your fat burning fitness and diet program.  If you’re not fueled up properly through your diet, your performance will be less than optimal.  For example, you might feel weak or fatigued, and for an exercise where 10 reps and 100 lbs would be best, you might only be able to accomplish 6-8 reps.  That would mean your missing out on 20-40% of fat burning foundation building results. By foundation building, I mean building lean body mass a.k.a muscle, and stimulating your metabolic processes. 

Obviously, if you want to get the best and fastest fat burning and fitness results, you can’t miss out on the benefits of your best performance during a workout.  Check out this free video where I reveal one of my tips, a secret fat burning diet meal that you can use pre-workout to fuel you up properly so that you can do your best in your workout!
If you like this secret fat burning meal and tips in this video, let me know, and I will reveal more of my secret fat burning diet meals and other tips and tricks in future videos.  
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8
Jun

Diet Pills Don’t Work [Learn from my mistakes]

Well now THAT’S just ridiculous.

Old habits die hard for anyone but for those of us with OCD tendencies, old habits need a wooden stake to the heart, a silver bullet, a clove of garlic and a whole a whole cart full of Wal-Mart clothing to die. (What? Apparently nothing slays Hollywood vampires like bad fashion.) Which is how I found myself surfing the website for a diet “supplement” (I suppose “pill” sounds too after-school special?) being flogged to death by a local radio show I listen to in the mornings. One of the hosts of the show claims to have lost over 100 pounds by taking these pills. Somehow these magic beans not only took Jack to the giant but also got Jack his personal training certification and the giant to embrace eating beans instead of Jack.

For months I resisted the lure but the other day I caved and went and looked at the site. I just had to see it – I told myself that my natural cynicism would spot all the problems right away but in reality it’s because I have a serious weakness for The Testimonial. Sure I love my research but for some reason anecdotal evidence is oddly compelling for me, especially when I “know” the person. But I didn’t buy the pills, even with all the amazing testimonials from “Jen C.” and “Abby F.” and “Other Generic Name followed by Random Letter”. Not even the evidence from “Hot Dr. Who Got His License in Dentistry from Correspondence School in Yemen” swayed me. You know why?

1. Because diet pills don’t work for other people. The short – and oft repeated – maxim of diet pills don’t work because if they did, we’d all be skinny pretty much sums it up. Do you think that if there was a single pill, prescription or otherwise that really made people permanently lose weight that Kirstie Alley or Oprah would still be on tabloid covers?

2. Because diet pills don’t work for me. Of course I’ve taken these. You know I have. Ever since “mini-thins” enticed me in high school with their over-18 purchasing policy (that they sold at the gas station across the street from a high school), I have been in the thrall of diet pills. In college I was poor so I mostly took straight-up caffeine pills along with some other random diet aids that friends and roommates would give me. (Thank heavens Adderall didn’t exist back then because I probably would have taken it.) These uppers gave me energy and had the added bonus of suppressing my appetite so I could go about my disordered eating habits without having to eat toilet paper.

The first time I overdosed on these I was in high school and my family went out of town to a family reunion that I managed to talk my way out of by saying I had to study, which was true. It was also true that there were a bunch of college parties happening that I was dying to go. Wanting to make the most of my freedom but still uber-responsible I decided the best way to hit all the parties, work 40 hours a week at my waitressing job and still study for finals was to not sleep and just pop pills. Brilliant! I went for 3.5 days with no sleep. I remember showing up at work for the lunch rush and shaking so badly that my boss told me to forget it and just go home. I threw up on his feet. I don’t remember much after that. He told me later I was hallucinating. And yet I didn’t give up the pills. Old habits, see.

The next overdose happened my freshman year of college. I don’t remember why I felt the need to take fistfuls of these pills this time – probably something to do with the fact that I have the perfectionism sickness – but I do remember my heart doing funny skips and thinking I was going to die. I called my boyfriend at the time to tell him good-bye and he immediately rushed over. I threw up on his feet. He made a big show of pushing me up against a wall and yelling at me that if he ever caught me harming myself again he’d… (What? Hurt me?). Sobbing, I watched him flush my pills down the toilet. I was Jessie “I’m So Excited!” Spano on Saved By the Bell, now with more sturm and drang! But I still kept the pills. Old habits, sigh.

After that, while there were still incidences with The Pills, I didn’t have any more dramatic episodes of this nature. Until, as you may recall, my Great Puke Race of 2010. Wanting to run a PR at that distance (which in and of itself was stupid since that was the first time I’d ever officially raced 10 miles so anything would have been a PR, duh), I accepted some pills from a friend right before the race started. But instead of feeling energized, I went way past that and into a manic run that left me feeling the worst I’ve felt – outside of childbirth, that pain practically gave me PTSD – in 10 years. I threw up on my own feet. Some of you questioned at the time what I was thinking taking unknown “energy pills” (would a diet pill by any other name smell as phony?). I wasn’t thinking at all! It came so naturally to me because I’ve been doing it my whole life.  Old habits suck.

I learned my lesson that time. Partly it was because I’m a grown-up and responsible for 4 little people who deserve so much better than that in their mother. Partly it was because of my readers, you guys deserve so much better than that in your friend. And, I’m not going to lie, partly because two doctors e-mailed me to tell me how very easily I could have killed myself and that scared the crap out of me. I haven’t touched a pill since. But the urge is still there, especially when the siren song of the testimonial calls.

The funny thing is, the whole point of taking the pills is to lose weight right? And yet every time I’ve taken them while I may have lost a handful of pounds initially (all that puking on feet, you know) it has never once resulted in long-term weight loss. In fact, after a week or two on them I most often saw a rebound effect where I’d end up gaining weight to where I weighed more than when I started them! The other problem is how quickly I’d become accustomed to them – to get the same energy I’d need twice as many, then three times as many, and then usually at about this point I’d burn out my money and my adrenals and end up back where I started but poorer and heavier and with a major headache. It’s a vicious cycle. But habits are breakable and this is what I’m showing myself every day.

Sometimes I just need to remind myself of what I already know.

Have any of you ever taken diet pills? Anyone else a total sucker for testimonials? Anyone else seen like every episode of Saved By The Bell??

26
Apr

Xtreme Fat Loss Diet Review – Xtreme Fat Loss Diet Scam

Xtreme Fat Loss Diet Review – Xtreme Fat Loss Diet Scam.The Xtreme Fat Loss Diet is a 25 day rapid fat loss program that combines Cheat Days, Fast Days, Depletion Days, and numerous other “advanced”fat loss methods into a strategic five day cycle that is repeated five times over the course of the program. It will be no surprise to you to learn that certain foods are not too good for you if you’re aiming for fat loss.

Now, some of the foods that are bad for you and your figure are fairly obvious – cheeseburgers, pizzas dripping with cheese and fast food in general, you wouldn’t expect to play a major part in a calorie-controlled diet now would you?

The problem is that most of the foods that are a disaster if you’re looking for extreme fat loss are absolutely delicious aren’t they? But, you’ll be pleased to know that there are actually some foods that can will help you to lose weight.

Again, we probably all know a lot of the foods that we should be eating as part of a healthy diet – green leafy vegetables, whole grain bread and rice etc. We just need to be disciplined enough to eat them in sufficient quantities.

Protein, of course, is an essential part of nutrition but if you must eat meat to get it you should aim for lean cuts to ensure that you don’t ingest too much fat.

It is important that you lose weight in a healthy way – especially if you are looking to shed a fair amount of fat in a relatively short time period.

You should devote a reasonable amount of time to learn about the types of foodstuffs that help with weight loss. You should also learn how to combine these foods in a way that gives you variety in your diet. If you make your meals interesting you’ll obviously have much more chance of sticking to a diet. You’ll find a lot of very useful information on the Internet concerning the best nutritional value food choices.

Some example foods that are known to be able to help you lose weight include: strawberries, blueberries, apples and chives.

Now, one of the problems you will have to overcome is the fat-laden dressing or garnish. It’s absolutely no good sticking to healthy foods and healthy portions if you then drown them in artery-clogging sauces etc.

Remember, you must try to eat healthily whilst at the same time enjoying your food because you mustn’t look at a diet as a one-shot exercise. If you want to lose weight and keep it off then you’ll have to get used to the fact that this is a lifestyle choice.

Read The Full Insiders Review Here: Xtreme Fat Loss Diet Review

One of the better diet plans for this strategy is the Xtreme Fat Loss Diet. This is an excellent diet program that can effectively promote weight loss in an expedient manner. As such, it remains highly recommended. Are you are looking for a proven diet with which you can lose weight in short time? Xtreme Fat Loss Diet is the answer!

Click Here To Download Xtreme Fat Loss Diet

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You will probably be interested in Xtreme NO also.

Related posts:

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  2. Good Night Sleep For Weight Loss
  3. Weight Loss Traps To Be Aware Of
19
Apr

Selling Weight Loss to Children [Are kids the next casualties in the diet wars?]

id="attachment_1196" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 600px"> href="http://www.thegreatfitnessexperiment.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/willywonka.jpg"> class="size-full wp-image-1196" title="Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie image" src="http://www.thegreatfitnessexperiment.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/willywonka.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="458" /> class="wp-caption-text">And yet Willy Wonka always managed to stay so slim…

“Tell me I’m not angry for no reason!!!” was the subject line on an e-mail from Gym Buddy Lindsey. I tried to imagine what would be so upsetting as to require the use of a double negative and extraneous punctuation.  That it continued with “I’m so pissed!!!!!!!!!!” only made me more intrigued. (And more entertained – you have to know Lindsey, she’s a very passionate person! We’re friends for good reason is all this tempest-in-a-teapot is saying.) She writes, “I just saw a commercial of a girl no older than fifteen talking about how she didn’t fit in at school because she was overweight, but “after joining this diet program, she fits in with friends.” I believe it’s wonderful to be healthy and to promote healthy habits, but by appealing to kids by saying they won’t fit in unless the scale says a smaller number is a blunt way of saying “you’ll never be good enough.””

I checked out the site of the popular diet company (so popular that if a local radio station doesn’t quit mentioning it every 5 minutes I’m going have to find a new morning show, AHEM) that she referenced and sure enough they have a whole section of their site dedicated to “ href="http://www.slimgenics.com/success/find/success-stories/young-adults">Young Adult Success Stories” with pictures of young – some very young – looking kids along with a blurb about how they feel after losing XX pounds. Oh, and of course their “before” and “after” weights are listed. Indeed, href="http://www.slimgenics.com/success/detail/144">one girl who looks about 14 writes, “Before I lost weight on the program I always thought I was going to be the “big one” in the crowd. I wanted to lose weight so I would have more self esteem and fit in with the other kids in my class. After losing 25 pounds on the program I am happier, healthier and feel more comfortable about being Me.”

My heart breaks for her. The teen years are transformative and also traumatic. On one hand, being the “fat kid” sucks. While I didn’t have this particular issue in high school – don’t worry I had lots of other things to shatter my self-esteem! – it doesn’t take much understanding to recognize how horribly many overweight teens are treated. MTV even has an entire show, “ href="http://www.mtv.com/shows/i_used_to_be_fat/series.jhtml">I Used To Be Fat“, dedicated to just this premise. No one can blame “Taylor T” for wanting to shed the pounds and fit in. But on the other hand, tying her ability to “be Me” to her weight is a very slippery slope and one that many an adult woman has wished they’d never started down. And of course there’s the issue of using teenagers to pimp weight-loss products. It’s one thing to see Kirstie Alley shake her moneymaker in the Jenny Craig commercials but quite another to see the sweet face of a teen awkwardly hunched in that trying-so-hard-to-look-casual way. Many of our “Me”s are so fragile when we’re young. Heck I even get a little worried when I see Jennifer Hudson schilling for Weight Watchers even though she’s technically an adult now.

The “obesity epidemic” is already one of the most controversial topics you can bring up but if you want to really rile people up talk about childhood obesity. Michelle Obama didn’t pick that as her platform on accident. Everyone from Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution to the checker at your local grocery store who eyes all the boxes of Fruit Roll-Ups you are buying (I swear they were for a craft project for preschool! They cut shapes out of them! And then stick them to stuff! They’re very sticky!!) has an opinion about what we feed our kids and how to teach them about food.

In one corner you have the The Children Are Fine camp that advocate a more hands-off approach to kids’ weight. If a child is soothed with an ice cream bar then so be it, food is an emotional experience. And if a child chunks up a bit, well they’re probably going to hit a growth spurt soon. Plus the more you make food an issue the less able they are to listen to their natural hunger cues – something kids are born good at. At least until we train it out of them.

In the other corner you have the Early Intervention camp that points out the mental, physical and social toll that being overweight takes on a child and figures that the sooner you nip bad behavior in the bud the easier it will be to correct. Sure kids are good at choosing to eat what they need but our obesogenic environment can drown out their natural cues and so we need to teach them. Our society is so un-vigilant with food and exercise these days that parents and doctors feel they need to be hyper-vigilant, even if that means intervening as young as two. And after all, what’s wrong with teaching kids about healthy food and exercise?

No matter which methodology you subscribe to, the social impacts of being overweight can’t be ignored and so it makes sense from a marketing perspective to use that desire to be liked to lure in a whole new demographic of dieters into their multi-billion dollar machine. Orson Scott Card wrote a short story about what would happen if there were machines that fed you any kind of delectable food you wanted and then other machines that would magically make the accumulated fat disappear. How would society react if our weight was entirely under our control? In the story people stopped caring so much about who was fat or thin, mostly because it was so easy to be either. Of course, being Orson Scott Card, it also turned out that aliens had set up the magic machines and were using them to farm humans for fat which they then turned into energy, disposing of the humans once their fat potential had been drained. (There are a lot of societies disastrously lost to Science Fiction, just saying.) My point – besides the fact that Orson Scott Card rivals Ray Bradbury for writing deeply unsettling fiction (Don’t believe me? Read “The Shepard.” I still get a full body shiver every time I think about it.) – is that if the social stigma were taken away from being overweight then we’d be able to see using teens in diet ads for the ridiculous ploy that it is.

Honestly I still haven’t figured out which camp I’m in when it comes to teaching my kids about healthy eating. I vacillate between both extremes – I let my kids have doughnuts for breakfast this morning because a friend brought them over and I was too tired to object and yet there hasn’t been a fruit snack, can of pop or even white crackers in our house in years. (Nothing says great parenting like inconsistency!) But I do know that I want my kids to know that I will love, adore and accept them no matter what they weigh and using kids in diet advertisements feels like it undermines that message.

How do you feel about using kids in weight-loss advertisements? Is it providing a much-needed service helping teens get healthier or is it just one more way to make them feel bad about themselves? Do you prefer early intervention or a wait-and-see approach for kids? Do you have a favorite-yet-ookie Sci Fi writer??

25
Mar

More Fat Burning Diet Secrets Revealed

The last couple of weeks I’ve been working on my Bonus Fat Burning Workout videos, but this week I decided to go more into some diet secret tips and tricks.  Diet and more specifically the pre-workout meal in a fat burning diet is often overlooked. I decided to tackle this issue first.


Your performance during a workout is highly important if you want to get the most out of your fat burning fitness and diet program.  If you’re not fueled up properly through your diet, your performance will be less than optimal.  For example, you might feel weak or fatigued, and for an exercise where 10 reps and 100 lbs would be best, you might only be able to accomplish 6-8 reps.  That would mean your missing out on 20-40% of fat burning foundation building results. By foundation building, I mean building lean body mass a.k.a muscle, and stimulating your metabolic processes. 

Obviously, if you want to get the best and fastest fat burning and fitness results, you can’t miss out on the benefits of your best performance during a workout.  Check out this free video where I reveal one of my secret fat burning diet meals that you can use pre-workout to fuel you up properly so that you can do your best in your workout!


If you like this video, let me know, and I will reveal more of my secret fat burning diet meals and other tips and tricks in future videos.  

28
Feb

The HCG Diet: Fad or Miracle? [Plus breast milk ice cream!]

In a world where losing weight is an extreme sport and the risks of failing include being socially ostracized or dying, a diet where you give yourself daily injections of a hormone culled from the blood of pregnant women can seem pretty reasonable (ancient altar and stone knife, platinum subscription only). But only if it works. And therein lies the controversy surrounding the latest diet du jour, the HCG diet. (Strangely this is not the only news story this weekend to center around alternative uses for pregnant women’s bodily fluids – the new “Baby Gaga” ice cream is made from “organic, pure, free range, all natural” breast milk. And lest you think it is just a stunt, it has already sold out.)
HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin, is a hormone produced in pregnancy, first by the embryo and later on by the placenta, that helps sustain the baby’s rapid growth. Infants and children have a lot of it as they are still growing like crazy (case in point: my six-year-old son ate two porkchops, a whole plateful of sauteed veggies and a full cup of wild rice for dinner. He is now, as I type this, in the kitchen having a snack because he can’t go to sleep because “I’m so hungry my little legs are weak.” Where does he get this stuff? It’s not like anyone else in this house is dramatic…) but even adults still make it.
You may have heard of HCG from sports doping scandals. It’s illegal to use in most sports but athletes sometimes risk it anyhow because of the benefits reported from the hormone. It’s long been known to support muscle growth and power and can even mitigate some of the damage from using (also illegal) anabolic steroids but lately the focus has been on its purported hunger-suppressing properties.
The official HCG diet is a pretty simple plan. One: You take daily doses of HCG either through doctor-prescribed shots, sublingual drops or homeopathic drops. Two: You eat 500 calories a day. You can see why people lose about a pound a day on this diet. 500 calories a day sucks. I remember back in my disordered eating days having a limit of 800 calories a day and that was coming from an anorexic. I can tell you from personal experience that consistently eating that few calories feels terrible. According to the HCG diet gurus, that’s where the HCG comes in by allowing you to eat only 500 calories a day without losing your freaking mind.

Holding tightly to my little luge sled of Intuitive Eating, I generally try to block out diet chatter. And, in case you haven’t noticed, these days I also try to avoid writing much about diets. But after the experiences of a close relative and several readers – I even had two of the Gym Buddies text me about it! – I decided it warranted a post. Plus Dr. Oz did a whole show about it and how could I not love the man who first taught me the fun of investigating my own poop? (I maintain he is the best thing to come out of the Oprah-spawn franchise.)

I myself have not tried this diet – nor will I as I gave up doing dietary Experiments after my second go-round of eating disorder therapy. So to answer the question of whether or not the HCG diet works, I present to you everyone else’s anecdotal evidence:
- My relative lost 30 pounds in 40 days and while he did gain back some of it after going off the diet, he’s managed to keep most of it off. He also said that while the first few days were awful, after he adjusted to the small limited portions he felt really good on the diet.
- One of you readers (who asked to remain anonymous) reports using the sublingual drops and dropping 10 pounds in the first week on the diet. She was simultaneously thrilled and alarmed.
- Another reader (also anonymous) e-mailed to ask me if her hair loss and thyroid issues would be from the calorie restriction of this diet or from the HCG homeopathic drops she was taking.
- Dr. Oz, after interviewing a myriad of experts and people who’ve tried the diet found a studio-audience full of success stories and two who had a terrible experience with it. Although the CDC man he interviewed said that from reports coming in to the CDC, the numbers are closer to for every 1 person who has success on the HCG diet, 10 have failures and many of those end up with medical complications including amenorrhea, hair loss, mood swings, cardiac arrhythmias, fainting and gall bladder disease. He even ominously pointed out that 17 people have been reported dead from suffering cardiac arrest while on 500-calorie diets although he did not say those people were on the HCG diet specifically. Oddly, after all this Dr. Oz still concluded that the diet is “worth investigating.”
For myself, there are several important issues that need to be considered with the HCG diet. First, the “HCG” part can be hugely variable with people using everything from pharmaceutical grade hormone shots to the homeopathic drops which according to the FDA man on Dr. Oz, “contain no active ingredients whatsoever”. The FDA man added (you’d think I could look up his name but that would require me to sit through the whole Dr. Oz episode again and weirdly he doesn’t use titles on the bottom of the screen with people’s names like every other talk show host does.) that in the “hundreds” of studies the FDA has conducted not a single one has shown the HCG drops or shots to perform better than saline. So basically you’re paying for the placebo effect with a fancy dropper. To reinforce this, my relative who lost the 30 pounds in 40 days? He ‘fessed up afterward that he didn’t actually use the HCG drops at all as he thought they were too expensive and instead just stuck with the calorie restriction.
Second, the “diet” part sends up a lot of red flags to me. As I pointed out, when I did this without the drops it was considered an eating disorder. Whether or not diet adherents progress to clinical pathology, I think it would still cause the same kinds of distress in the body resulting in everything from mood disorders to organ failure if continued long enough. Losing a pound a day seems like it would be unsustainable in the long term as well.
Third, as I learned with my many pregnancies, the higher your HCG and the faster it doubles are indicators of a healthy pregnancy (or pregnancies – too high and you’ve got multiples!). Short of a blood test, what’s the best way to tell if your HCG is increasing rapidly? Morning sickness! (Which should rightfully be known as anytime-anywhere-puke-every-time-you-pass the seafood-counter-in -the-grocery-store sickness.) You couldn’t pay me to go through that again.
Unfortunately real experiences with this diet are hard to come by. If you Google anything related to HCG and diet the first 10 screens are filled with sites selling the diet or affiliated with it. Any legitimate resources seem to be buried under all the hype. My feelings are best summed up by the nutritionist on Dr. Oz. When asked about her opinion of the diet she said (very sensibly), “Why is it a bad thing to be hungry? You should feel hunger if you’re only eating 500 calories a day! It means your body is working properly.”
So I’m interested in your thoughts: Have any of you tried this? What do you think of injecting yourself with pregnant lady blood product? Would you try breast milk ice cream? (If it were my own I totally would but at $22.50 a serving I’m too cheap to suckle on a stranger’s teat, even if she is “free range.”)
*Apparently they make pharmaceutical grade HCG by collecting the blood of pregnant women, removing the HCG and drying it to make a powder. This powder is then added in varying strengths to water to make the solution.

Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2011. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everythingfor more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!