A Quick Look at HCG

Hey kids,

I was just thinking that some of my friends might not know exactly what the HCG diet is so I thought I would give you a quick rundown on the diet. For more info check out some FAQs here:  http://www.healthyhcg.com/faq.html and the full book on the diet here: http://hcgdietinfo.com/HCG_Diet_Simeons_Manuscript.htm

This diet uses the horomone found in pregnant women to kick start your metabolism into using up the fat you've already got stored instead of taking it from your food only or from your muscles and bones. In combination with the HCG (which I'll be taking in the form of injections but can also be taken under the tongue - more expensive and less effective) you go on a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) of 500 calories per day for up to 40 days. There are three phases of the diet:

Phase 1 - Loading (2 days): Loading days start with your first injection of HCG. A loading day is basically a day where you eat the fattiest crap you can possibly get in your body. I'm talkin McDonald's, pizza, deepfried mozzarella sticks wrapped in bacon.. basically the stuff you have avoided your entire adult life. This causes your fat cells to be nice and big which helps control your hunger when you move to Phase 2 and the HCG starts kicking in.

Phase 2 - Stabilization (23 - 40 days or up to 40 injections): This is where you go on the VLCD of 500 calories. But it's not just any 500 calories, not like you can just eat one kid's meal a day, it's a strict diet with insanely strict rules that includes only a few options of veggies, meats and condiments and is so strict that you can actually use no moisturizer during this time because of risking putting on weight! Craziness. But the HCG helps control all cravings and you body is actually consuming calories just by taking them from the stored fat. Check out the research, it's not as scary as it sounds.

Phase 3 - Maintenance (3 weeks) - In this phase you simply maintain the weight that you were at when you ended Phase 2. If there is any change either up or down 2lbs it must be corrected in this stage. You can eat whatever you want as long as there is no sugar or starch. Lots of cool recipes online. After this Phase you slowly start introducing your body back to sugars and starch which is helping retrain your metabolism. You can do another round but must wait 6 weeks until you begin Phase 1 again.

Anyhow, that's the diet! It's pretty inexpensive and, according to all the blogs and others I've talked to who have done it, it's highly effective. People lose an average of 20 - 25 lbs on their first round and more on every round afterwards. Let's hope it works that well for me! Hope I can make it!!