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.