hCG

I have been on the HCG diet for one month and I have only lost 11 lbs on it. I feel taht it is working, but when I went to talk to one of my friends that is a plastic surgeon, he has been dong research on it and he said that it is a rip off. He said that it is not FDA approved, and that if the HCG cream/hormonres made us lose weight, then every pregnate woman would be skinny during pregnacy!
He stated that the 500 calorie diet it what is making us lose the weight. And that the B12 shots oly help you release the water retention.

A few weeks ago, I was an emotional wreck and for the first time in my life, couldn't eat. I managed a couple or 3 granola bars a day, eating roughly 500-700 cals a day for a week. I dropped almost 10 lbs overnight. I knew I had to start introducing food back into my diet or my body was going to suffer. I started eating again, reasonable amounts (between 1200-1600 cals a day, eating exercise calories) and I've gained back about 7lbs in 2 weeks' time.

Starving yourself works. It also ruins your body in ways you cannot always repair. :flowerforyou:

That sounds very unhealthy and scary. Only 500 calories!? Your body needs way more than that! It'll go into starvation mode and you'll start losing muscle as well as the fat. And who knows what kind of damage that kind of diet will do to your inner organs. :noway: I know people want a quick fix, but please read some of the posts that MFP members that have been on here for a while have posted. The healthy way to lose weight is by eating healthy and exercising. It may take longer but aren't you worth it to know that you're losing weight in a proven healthy way?

bump

I hope we didn't scare her off.

Well, not off the site, but maybe off the diet. Sounds kinda scary!

Is that like the Dr Bernstein diet?

No, the Bernstein's Diet is a low carb plan.

On Bernstein's what you can eat:

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/bernsteinsdiabetesdiet/a/bernsteinfoods_2.htm

What you can not eat on Bernstein's diet:

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/bernsteinsdiabetesdiet/a/bernsteinfoods.htm

the bernstein diet DOES give you injections, same thing, these people can eat whatever they want though, only diff

I have the book and have read it and am on a website that caters to all different types of low carb plans and I have never read this or heard it before.

It is not mentioned in the book anywhere as I was considering following that plan, however it is too strict for me.

I was just wondering if it's similar to put out a warning that my friend did it. She sure did loose a LOT of weight fast (like 70 pounds in about 4 months), however she did nearly get gout. Half her hair fell out, she looked grey all the time and smelt bad. She was eating around 500 cals a day and receiving injections 3 times a week. Also, she gained back about 15 pounds after she stopped it.

A few weeks ago, I was an emotional wreck and for the first time in my life, couldn't eat. I managed a couple or 3 granola bars a day, eating roughly 500-700 cals a day for a week. I dropped almost 10 lbs overnight. I knew I had to start introducing food back into my diet or my body was going to suffer. I started eating again, reasonable amounts (between 1200-1600 cals a day, eating exercise calories) and I've gained back about 7lbs in 2 weeks' time.

Starving yourself works. It also ruins your body in ways you cannot always repair. :flowerforyou:

Same thing happened to me during a stressful time in my life, and I lost hair. A ton of it. And weight. I'm good now, but it took a lot of vitamins and a good diet and quite a few months before I felt like me again.

My doctor has recommended for me to do the HcG Diet. Under my doctor's care I have discovered I am extreamly B vitamin defienct and could be affecting my weight loss. The HcG is basically either injections or a oral drop. You are on this for a 6 week cycle. It is suppose to cause weight loss as to one to two pounds a day. My doctor explained it as, 'resetting your metabolisim, and allowing for weight loss.' The HcG helps to release depositied fat and causes hypothalamic lean-protection mechanisms . see below. Once the weight loss has been achieved. You rest for 2 months, while eating healthy and exercising. It is recommended that you exercise for an hour a day but not manatory. After that 2 months you can either go back on for another cycle or continue with the new eating healthy and excerising. During the 6 week cycle, I would be monitored by my doctor weekly. Plus have weekly blood tests, done.

Now I can say that HcG, naturally, does work to lose weight. The twice I have been pregnant the first couple of months I really dropped weight. About 30 lbs in 2 months. I would joke the only time I can lose weight is when I am pregnant.

This is some good information on HcG and the diet:



Human chorionic gonadotropin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Weight loss
A controversial usage of hCG is as an adjunct to the British endocrinologist Dr. A.T.W. Simeons' ultra-low-calorie weight-loss diet.[7] Simeons, while studying pregnant women in India on a calorie-deficient diet, and “fat boys” with pituitary problems treated with low-dose hCG, discovered that both lost fat rather than lean (muscle) tissue. He reasoned that hCG must be programming the hypothalamus to do this in the former cases in order to protect the developing fetus, and proceeded to use low-dose daily hCG injections (125 mg) in combination with a customized ultra-low-calorie (500 cal/day, high-protein, low-carbohydrate/fat) diet to help obese adults lose dramatic amounts of adipose tissue without loss of lean tissue, at a Salvator Mundi International Hospital in Rome, Italy, clinic mainly for celebrities. After Simeons’ mysterious death, the diet started to spread to specialized centers and via popularization by such as the controversial popular author Kevin Trudeau (search for hCG in that article for more details).

The controversy proceeds from warnings by the Journal of the American Medical Association[8] and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition[9] that hCG is not safe,[8] indeed ineffective, as a weight-loss aid[10] on its own; yet its usage (as cited above) to increase testosterone production contradicts this assertion, since much late-life male obesity is associated with estrogen dominance and deficient testosterone in the mis-named, so-called andropause.[citation needed] Furthermore, in the Simeons protocol, it is, as in any diet, the ultra-low-calorie component (caloric deficit) that results in weight loss, if the protocol is followed strictly.[citation needed] hCG’s role is supposedly to trigger the hypothalamic lean-protection mechanisms Simeons thought he saw, thus promoting mobilization and consumption ofabnormal, excessive adipose deposits, while protecting normal adipose and lean tissue from being consumed, with the assumption that these protective hypothalamic mechanisms exist in males as well as females, to be acted upon by hCG.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin#Weight_loss