Have you heard about the HCG diet? This is a diet that Kevin Trudeau made famous again (it was famous once before years ago) in his book “Natural Cures They Don’t Want You To Know“. First off I hate that there is supposed to be some secret that the “Diet Industry” is trying to keep from people. If there was you can bet I would be exposing it.
What is the HCG Diet?
Anyway the HCG diet is actually a shot and a low calorie diet. You take a shot everyday for a few months and this shot of HCG is supposed to help you metabolize your fat easier. Human Chorionic Gonadotropin is expected to burn fat when you are starving yourself instead of burning both fat and muscle.
I have now seen that you can buy drops to take orally instead of shots for the HCG diet but not sure if this is just a poor mans alternative
The diet part of the HCG diet is what makes this diet very hard to take. The diet is the lowest that I have ever heard of and that is 500 calories a day. 500 calories a day is not very much and this is designed to make it so that you will easily lose weight. Trouble is you are starving yourself.
HCG Diet
The other part of the diet is that you are not supposed to exercise. As you exercise your metabolism rises and at the same time you are burning a large number of calories. when you are only consuming 500 calories a day you are bound to get sick exercising in such a calorie deficient state.
There are a lot of people for and against the HCG diet and I have to admit that in researching this diet I have found many people that have lost a lot of weight and at the same time I have found a lot of people that are against the diet because it is at it’s core unhealthy and the effects of HCG are really not all that well known (except for some biased independent studies)
What Does the Science of HCG Say?
The weight loss diet proposed by Albert Simeons is a ultra-low-calorie weight-loss diet (less than 500 calories). Simeons, while studying pregnant women in India on a low calorie diet, and people with pituitary problems were treated with low-dose hCG, claimed 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 by promoting mobilization and consumption of abnormal, excessive adipose deposits. Simeons later published a book entitled Pounds and Inches, designed to combat obesity.
Simeons, practicing at Salvator Mundi International Hospital in Rome, Italy, recommended low-dose daily hCG injections (125 IU) in combination with a customized ultra-low-calorie (500 cal/day, high-protein, low-carbohydrate/fat) diet loss of adipose tissue without loss of lean tissue. After Simeons’ death, the diet started to spread to specialized centers and via popularization by individuals, such as the controversial author Kevin Trudeau, famous for promotion of alternative therapies and treatments.
AMA is against HCG Diet
The controversy proceeds from warnings by the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that hCG is neither safe nor effective as a weight-loss aid.
A meta analysis found that studies supporting hCG for weight loss were of poor methodological quality and concluded that “there is no scientific evidence that HCG is effective in the treatment of obesity; it does not bring about weight-loss or fat-redistribution, nor does it reduce hunger or induce a feeling of well-being”.
Should You Try the HCG Diet?
So should you try the HCG diet? I am going to probably take some flak for it but I would definitely say no.
I have to be opposed to the HCG diet even if it does help people lose weight for the simple reason that you are staving yourself and not getting any exercise. This sounds like a terrible way to live and the health benefits without exercise are not going to help as much as losing weight using proper diet and exercise.
Just don’t do the HCG diet.
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