Monday, January 24, 2011

To HCG or Not to HCG

This is the big question I have looming over my head at this point. The question being wether or not I should try out this HCG diet or not. My sibling who is a gorgeous girl and not what I would consider overweight in the least is a promoter of the HCG diet. I’ve talked about it a little bit in an early post, but she truly believes that it is a miracle diet, so I decided to do a little bit of my own research. One of the things I found was how it is a miracle. Promising quick results like up to 30 pounds lost in 30 days. But of course I found this on Web sites that were promoting or selling the HCG diet kit so of course I have to consider my source. In a country where two thirds of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese it only makes sense that there would be a need to promote something that promises quick and easy results. I’ll tell you a little bit about the diet.

HCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin which is a hormone found in the urine of pregnant women. The HCG hormone is supposed to suppress hunger and trigger your body to use stored fat as energy. Most of these diets restrict eaters to only take in about 500 calories a day and the food must be organic, unprocessed along with taking the HCG injections or serum drops under their tongue (according to an article on webmd.com written by Kathleen M. Zelman, the oral HCG may contain very little if any HCG). The dieter is to follow the plan for 45 days straight and it promises to fix your metabolism and lose up to three pounds a day.

Diet experts are not on board with this. Most believe that the reason the dieter is losing weight is obvious it is because they are essentially starving themselves by cutting their calorie intake down to 500 a day. This also is not fixing the metabolism it is in fact ruining it according to nutrition experts.

Knowing everything that I read on this Web site should of course be a deterrent for me trying this out myself right? Well yes and no. Here is where I need your advice. When my friend Adrienne was down the other day she and I talked about this diet and she said a woman that she went to church with lost a lot of weight on this particular diet and that she did not do the 500 calories instead it was more like 1000 or 1200, I can’t remember exactly what Adrienne said. However the point is that the woman who did the HCG diet lost like 80 pounds and it has changed her life. Not only has she been off the HCG portion of the diet for three months she has maintained her weight loss and made a lifestyle change that has allowed her to lose this weight. Adrienne said that she lost the weight fast, but has kept it off. Sometimes I know all we need is that little push to keep at it.

So I am seriously considering trying this particular thing out. I would love to hear your input. Is this something I should try out or not? Have you tried it or known of anyone else who has? I know my sib wouldn’t do it if she didn’t believe that it truly would work out so I trust her judgment. I would just really like to get some other opinions before I try it out myself. Let me know what you think.

3 comments:

  1. It may work. It may not. I think the mind is a powerful thing, and if someone believes they have a miracle cure, chances are they will be much more dedicated to it. So is it the program that is giving them such great results, or the fact that they are actually eating less calories?
    What happened to P90x? I thought you were doing that program. You can try HGC if you would like, but I would pick one and commit to it.
    The bottom line is that weight is lost when more calories are burned than are taken in. At least that's the healthiest method. I think it's all about balance and good choices. I say that as someone really overweight, but it's not a secret. I think the reason that most people "can't" lose weight is because they aren't willing to make that change. I, personally, like food, so while losing weight would be nice, I'm not going to waste money on fad diets when it's something I could do for free. I just haven't committed to making that change yet.

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  2. As far as the P90X goes I was doing that, but the doctor told me to stop before I had my surgery and to wait until I was healed to do it again. I would like to start it again, actually I got up at 5:30 this morning and did one of the DVD's. I know what you are saying about the committing thing it makes perfect sense it also makes sense that it may not be the hormone that is causing the weight loss, but the lower the calories to be taken in. I talked to a woman in my office about the HCG today and I have a lot of things to say about it now. I have to run to class, but I'll add more later!

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  3. OK so I was talking to Melanie, she's one of the advisers in my office and she said no don't do it. We talked for a long long time. This was of course after Jana came running out of her office screaming, "No Cassandra, don't do it". It was a fun day in the office :)

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