Post Hcg support
soulshine1116
Posts: 8 Member
Hi all! I am looking to chat about the post hcg affects. I know it is a bit different for everyone, but i am experiencing the redistribution of fat and rollercoaster weight fluctuations. Anyone willing to share their experiences? What has worked for you? What professionals have expertise in these negative after affects, etc. I have done 4 rounds over 4 years. Last round was over 14 months ago. Was able to maintain my weight for 10 months with paleo diet and calorie counting and moderate exercise. Had no problems until about 3 months ago. I am freaking out and dont know where to get help. Im currently 10-15 pounds up depending on the day and not stable at all. Any help, even just moral support would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!!!
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I tried it twice and couldn't maintain it either time. I quit throwing away my money. I bought a food scale. Using that and this site, I logged my food, stayed within my calorie range, and lost weight.6
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Right! I know! I will not be doing it again! I just would love some support and to hear of other peoples experiences. It is dangerous! There are so many negative affects that are hidden from the public. That is exactly why im seeking help here. Deleting posts like this only cintinue to worsen the situation, by hiding peoples negative experiences. Anyone ever able to stabalize afterwards?6
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hCG is often injected by men, several times a week, who are on T replacement therapy to prevent the boys from withering away and to preserve fertility in the younger men who are on treatment. It's also used PCT (sometimes in cycle) to jump start endogenous production. Men do not report any effect of these shots for weight loss. It's use for weight loss in women has been called everything from "illegal" to "fraudulent". Most Doctors (aside from Dr. Oz) will not prescribe it for that purpose and non pharmaceutical sources are questionable or straight out bunk.1
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It's not the HCG that causes the weight loss, it's the 500 calorie-per-day diet, and that's against the site guidelines.9
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Ok but im NOT on it anymore. Thats another thing i dont understand. I was able too maintain my weight for over 10 months, i dont think the weight gain was related to starvation. If it is i would love to hear how the response could be so delayed. Is it related to particular foods? Im simply seeking support and education. Not promoting this horrible diet. I am suffering from after affects and desperately need help!2
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soulshine1116 wrote: »Ok but im NOT on it anymore. Thats another thing i dont understand. I was able too maintain my weight for over 10 months, i dont think the weight gain was related to starvation. If it is i would love to hear how the response could be so delayed. Is it related to particular foods? Im simply seeking support and education. Not promoting this horrible diet. I am suffering from after affects and desperately need help!
Are you logging your calories consistently and accurately?
If you were maintaining your weight, it's because you were eating at the calorie level you needed to maintain that weight. If you're now gaining weight, it's because you're consuming more than you need to maintain your weight. It isn't related to particular foods, it's the overall number of calories you're eating.5 -
soulshine1116 wrote: »Ok but im NOT on it anymore. Thats another thing i dont understand. I was able too maintain my weight for over 10 months, i dont think the weight gain was related to starvation. If it is i would love to hear how the response could be so delayed. Is it related to particular foods? Im simply seeking support and education. Not promoting this horrible diet. I am suffering from after affects and desperately need help!
If you gained weight, you're eating too much.
How are you measuring your intake of food? What are your calories set at? How much weight do you need to still lose?2 -
Hi There. I am not familiar with HCG and I am so sorry you are having ill after affects. I would LOVE to support you as you repair your metabolism and get back on the track to your desired life style. Since I don't know much about the diet, My support can only extend to rooting you on and providing an ear to listen. I do have a couple of suggestions for you though
1) Visit your Dr. I really think he/she needs to know about what you are experiencing. Was this a Dr. recommended medical diet? I think Dr needs to know that you are stuggling
2) Try moving to a lower carb diet for a while. Not saying you need to exclude any foods, but maybe limit them a bit until your metabolism resets. Just a thought
3) Do some research to estimate your TDEE and BMR and all that good stuff to find out how many calories you need to maintain your desired weight. Follow those guidelines to see if they can get you back to losing/maintaining again.
4) If you feel that your metabolism is too slow (sometimes eating at the 500 calories per day as mentioned above can slow your metabolism). If this is the culprit, try SLOWLY adding about 100 calories per week of additional food until you get your metabolsm up again where you can tolerate a few more calories without immediately gaining weight.
I am not an expert on any of this stuff. I am just giving you some ideas of where to start trying to turn things around. You will have to do what works for you. Find the right mix and you will be right back on track. Don't let the 15 pounds scare you. It could be all water weight based on eating alot of carbs or other foods that require alot of water to digest. But start working on ways to get things going in reverse. You may need to increase your exercise until you can balance out that diet.
Best of luck to you. You GOT THIS!!7 -
My calories have actually gone down. And i do the 16 hour daily fast (eat all my calories in 8 hours). I noticed a huge problem when i tried to go keto, and now that im back on my old diet with less calories im still barely maintaining and my. Belly keeps getting bigger. I would love to loose 10 pounds but more importantly the chunks of fat in my midsection.1
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soulshine1116 wrote: »My calories have actually gone down. And i do the 16 hour daily fast (eat all my calories in 8 hours). I noticed a huge problem when i tried to go keto, and now that im back on my old diet with less calories im still barely maintaining and my. Belly keeps getting bigger. I would love to loose 10 pounds but more importantly the chunks of fat in my midsection.
If your calories have gone down and you're gaining weight, I suspect there may be an issue with your logging. Logging errors that result in people eating more than they think are really common. If you open your diary, we may be able to help you troubleshoot.3 -
I track my calories by hand. I am low carb, but not keto as i am paleo and avoid things like cheese and excessive eggs. I feel like my body was reacting to avacado when i tried keto recently. I wonder if hcg affects how your body reacts to the foods you were to eliminate during the protocol, like fats and carbs.1
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I dunno... youve yet to actually say what your calories currently are.. we can make guesses and draw suggestions out of a hat, but you're not sharing anything more then not on a 500 cal diet and that your calories went down.6
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This video by Paul Revelia might be helpful, he's talking about helping a client
https://youtu.be/0iS0n4z6-w8 3 -
ok. I am at about 1500 calories per day. About 60 grams of protien, as little fat as possible (limited to olive oil and animal fat, with occasional almonds, eggs and now I am removing avocado from my diet). I usually eat 2 meals and a snack or 3 meals each day. I eat spinach salads with no dressing, only veggies one or two times per day with a protein like tuna, chicken, ground beef (I rotate the protiens). On days where I am starving beyond my normal diet I fill the gaps with apples. My carbs come from fruit and veggies, and the rare portion of almonds only. Prior to the 1500 calories I was more lenient and allowed myself 1700-2000 daily. I am 5 ft 4 inches, weigh 135. This reflects a 10 pound weight gain in 3 months, and nearly 2 sizes due to the redistribution of all my fat to one place: my belly. I feel like the problem started when I tried a keto diet, I acheived keto for over a month, but belly fat increased. I mostly want to stabilize, would love to reduce the fat appearing on my body, and it would be nice to loose weight too. Most important I want to learn about what is going on and what I can do about it. My exercise includes 30-45 minutes 4-5 times per week, at home work out on a yoga mat, small amount of cardio to get the blood pumping and lots of stuff like squats, planks, V-ups, etc. Can not use weight more than 8 pounds as it disturbs a previous back injury.5
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Why are you removing avocados from your diet? (Says the lady who had whole wheat avocado toast with sliced hardboiled egg on top for breakfast.
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I agree with the suggestion of seeing your primary care doctor. When that hcg fad was all the rage, it made me so angry. You are not going to screw with your endocrine system like that without paying a price.
From your last post here, it seems like you are casting around for some magic solution over and over. There isn't one. There is calories in, calories out. Cutting carbs is not some magic solution, and if the 80s taught us anything, neither is extreme fat restriction. You need to burn off more calories than you eat to lose weight. There is no magic food to avoid or to eat, there is no magic formula for certain balances of macros, for weight loss. There is really just CICO, the slow hard way that actually works.5 -
Well, "about" 1500 per day for a 135 pound person is pretty close to maintenance if you are actually eating that amount.
Since you're a new member and you're tracking by hand, I'd suggest really making an effort to track accurately everything you eat in the next two months and then come back and ask us to take a peek at your Food Diary.
Guessing and "about" doesn't work.
Your body isn't "reacting" to avocados or other foods causing you to gain 10 pounds in three months. It's possible that you may have other metabolic issues, but no way for us to know. Have you seen a regular doctor for bloodwork?4 -
Here are some things about your response that i noticed.
- you seem to have a misconception about fat, you are removing avocados, which are a healthy fat and fat is important for the body, fat does not make you fat and does not put fat on your body.
- Your diet is extremely limited and kind of depressing.. but it seems to be a lot of foods that don't come with nutritional information attached which leads me to believe you are using incorrect entries in your food logs... tell me something? when you eat chicken, how much do you eat and how many calories do you log that as?
- you said you were eating between 1700 to 2000 calories, besides the 30 min of exercise, are you active at all or do you have a sedentary lifestyle? you don't really do any hardcore cardio, it takes 10 min of vigorous cardio (out of breath as you go) to burn possibly 100 calories.. maybe. Most of your exercise sounds more relaxing and geared towards working muscles which isn't really burning that many calories.
- Fat is the highest calories per gram, 9 calories per gram, if you did keto and also used inaccurate entries from the database then there is a good possibility you were over eating considerably and gained.7 -
soulshine1116 wrote: »ok. I am at about 1500 calories per day. About 60 grams of protien, as little fat as possible (limited to olive oil and animal fat, with occasional almonds, eggs and now I am removing avocado from my diet). I usually eat 2 meals and a snack or 3 meals each day. I eat spinach salads with no dressing, only veggies one or two times per day with a protein like tuna, chicken, ground beef (I rotate the protiens). On days where I am starving beyond my normal diet I fill the gaps with apples. My carbs come from fruit and veggies, and the rare portion of almonds only. Prior to the 1500 calories I was more lenient and allowed myself 1700-2000 daily. I am 5 ft 4 inches, weigh 135. This reflects a 10 pound weight gain in 3 months, and nearly 2 sizes due to the redistribution of all my fat to one place: my belly. I feel like the problem started when I tried a keto diet, I acheived keto for over a month, but belly fat increased. I mostly want to stabilize, would love to reduce the fat appearing on my body, and it would be nice to loose weight too. Most important I want to learn about what is going on and what I can do about it. My exercise includes 30-45 minutes 4-5 times per week, at home work out on a yoga mat, small amount of cardio to get the blood pumping and lots of stuff like squats, planks, V-ups, etc. Can not use weight more than 8 pounds as it disturbs a previous back injury.
It's going to be hard for us to provide feedback since you don't have a diary to share. If you're logging off-line, the things I would consider would be that you might have some incorrect calorie counts for some foods you're eating or the way you're measuring your food isn't giving you the best accuracy (for example, are you using measuring cups or are you using a food scale?).
If you've gained 10 pounds in 3 months, I think it's likely that you are eating more than 1,500 calories a day, it's just not on purpose.3 -
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cmriverside wrote: »Well, "about" 1500 per day for a 135 pound person is pretty close to maintenance if you are actually eating that amount.
Yes, this. If you are gaining weight, you're eating at or above maintenance calories. For weight loss or maintenance, it does not matter when you eat, how many grams of protein you eat, where your carbs or protein come from. If you want to lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than you burn. If you want to maintain your weight, you have to eat as many calories as you burn, not more or less. Macros matter for nutrition, calories matter for weight loss.0 -
I'm not looking for a magic solution, I'm looking to be educated. I know that bodies are all different and what works for one person may not work for another. I tried to use this app for food tracking but that was many years ago and it was very different. I am a bit obsessive about accuracy of tracking and if I ate a partial meal or anything It was difficult to track it online, I would end up with multiple entries based on portion size and it got overwhelming. I serve my portions as follows: meat servings (about the size of a deck of cards, cooked. Or about 4 ounces before cooking) - learned that from keto, that actually reduced my protien intake. Veggies, the salad is usually spinach, zucchini, tomato, onion, brussel sprouts, about half the size of a margarine container (you know like the big country crock ones). Then fruit is only for snacking. I stick with apples and that is usually one per day, or for sugar cravings I will have small portions of pineapple or berries. Actually I love the foods I eat, I get creative and things stay tastey and interesting. Before this issue I would treat myself to a restaurant meal every other month. That was usually a cheese burger with half a bun and French fries (it was my favorite treat!) I am very happy with paleo but keto was hard because I had to limit my fruits. I very well could have been logging incorrectly with keto. in fact I know when I started I was doing it very wrong, but after I learned a bit I did achieve ketosis and feel like I was doing very well with the diet, even had my weight start to maintain, but my belly got bigger so I stopped. I do believe that healthy fats are key, but I also wonder if my post hcg body treats fats different now. In all of the time I maintained my weight loss I have been limiting my fats to meat fat and oils. When I went keto and increased avocado and eggs and the like, I began to see a problem. Also, being uninsured I haven't seen a doctor in nearly 10 years. In fact, when I looked into visiting for a wellness visit about 7 years ago I found my doctor had retired. This is another reason I am inquiring on the best provider to help with this specific issue. I truly appreciate all the feedback. Thank you all for helping me thru this!
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soulshine1116 wrote: »I'm not looking for a magic solution, I'm looking to be educated. I know that bodies are all different and what works for one person may not work for another. I tried to use this app for food tracking but that was many years ago and it was very different. I am a bit obsessive about accuracy of tracking and if I ate a partial meal or anything It was difficult to track it online, I would end up with multiple entries based on portion size and it got overwhelming. I serve my portions as follows: meat servings (about the size of a deck of cards, cooked. Or about 4 ounces before cooking) - learned that from keto, that actually reduced my protien intake. Veggies, the salad is usually spinach, zucchini, tomato, onion, brussel sprouts, about half the size of a margarine container (you know like the big country crock ones). Then fruit is only for snacking. I stick with apples and that is usually one per day, or for sugar cravings I will have small portions of pineapple or berries. Actually I love the foods I eat, I get creative and things stay tastey and interesting. Before this issue I would treat myself to a restaurant meal every other month. That was usually a cheese burger with half a bun and French fries (it was my favorite treat!) I am very happy with paleo but keto was hard because I had to limit my fruits. I very well could have been logging incorrectly with keto. in fact I know when I started I was doing it very wrong, but after I learned a bit I did achieve ketosis and feel like I was doing very well with the diet, even had my weight start to maintain, but my belly got bigger so I stopped. I do believe that healthy fats are key, but I also wonder if my post hcg body treats fats different now. In all of the time I maintained my weight loss I have been limiting my fats to meat fat and oils. When I went keto and increased avocado and eggs and the like, I began to see a problem. Also, being uninsured I haven't seen a doctor in nearly 10 years. In fact, when I looked into visiting for a wellness visit about 7 years ago I found my doctor had retired. This is another reason I am inquiring on the best provider to help with this specific issue. I truly appreciate all the feedback. Thank you all for helping me thru this!
It sounds like you're using estimates to determine how much you're eating (meat serving the size of a deck of cards, vegetables filling half a margarine container, etc). While this works for many people when they're first starting out, as you get closer to goal weight accuracy can become much more important for many people. I think this is what you're experiencing now -- the methods that previously got you into a deficit so that you could lose weight are no longer making that deficit happen. Many people who run into this find that when they improve the accuracy of their logging, they begin to again see the results they want.7 -
OP I am willing to teach you how to use MFP as I appreciate your efforts to try and learn but please know that right now the way you are logging is doing you no favors.
If you would like to learn how to navigate MFP you can message me and I will spend the time with you when I get home later.
If not I hope you figure something out.8 -
soulshine1116 wrote: »I'm not looking for a magic solution, I'm looking to be educated. I know that bodies are all different and what works for one person may not work for another. I tried to use this app for food tracking but that was many years ago and it was very different. I am a bit obsessive about accuracy of tracking and if I ate a partial meal or anything It was difficult to track it online, I would end up with multiple entries based on portion size and it got overwhelming. I serve my portions as follows: meat servings (about the size of a deck of cards, cooked. Or about 4 ounces before cooking) - learned that from keto, that actually reduced my protien intake. Veggies, the salad is usually spinach, zucchini, tomato, onion, brussel sprouts, about half the size of a margarine container (you know like the big country crock ones). Then fruit is only for snacking. I stick with apples and that is usually one per day, or for sugar cravings I will have small portions of pineapple or berries. Actually I love the foods I eat, I get creative and things stay tastey and interesting. Before this issue I would treat myself to a restaurant meal every other month. That was usually a cheese burger with half a bun and French fries (it was my favorite treat!) I am very happy with paleo but keto was hard because I had to limit my fruits. I very well could have been logging incorrectly with keto. in fact I know when I started I was doing it very wrong, but after I learned a bit I did achieve ketosis and feel like I was doing very well with the diet, even had my weight start to maintain, but my belly got bigger so I stopped. I do believe that healthy fats are key, but I also wonder if my post hcg body treats fats different now. In all of the time I maintained my weight loss I have been limiting my fats to meat fat and oils. When I went keto and increased avocado and eggs and the like, I began to see a problem. Also, being uninsured I haven't seen a doctor in nearly 10 years. In fact, when I looked into visiting for a wellness visit about 7 years ago I found my doctor had retired. This is another reason I am inquiring on the best provider to help with this specific issue. I truly appreciate all the feedback. Thank you all for helping me thru this!
It's fine to prefer one way of eating over another, but any diet that results in eating fewer calories than you burn will cause you to lose weight.
Your comment really emphasizes portions and portion sizes rather than calories. How many calories are in your salad? Your fruit? The oil you use in cooking? Your meat? In order to be sure that you're in a calorie deficit, get a food scale and weigh all of your food rather than thinking about food in terms of portions. You can look up how many calories are in 100 grams of pineapple, but a "portion" of pineapple is ultimately meaningless for understanding how many calories you're eating.4 -
Thanks. My portions are measured in a veteran sort of way. I spent years measuring my food on a food scale, but I suppose I can double check my work. I usually prepare my foods in bulk and separate them into "portions" so I can easily grab when I am ready for a meal and I have a list of what most things are calorie wise. My spinach salads are 350-450 calories depending on which veggies I put in b/c I use a little olive oil as dressing. Then I have to add protein calories. I do think that fruit is more difficult to accurately judge, but I do limit fruits so that helps! When I eat just my meals and no snacks I am usually around 1200 calories. But each day varies a bit. I find that if I keep to 1200 calories for a few days I run into a day where I am starving and eat a couple apples and sometimes almonds. But then if I go over my calories I will reduce calories the next day.0
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