My Experience with the HCg Diet

Someone recently commented on here that they wanted to know more about my experience with the

 HCg diet. So, I am going to try to recount as much as I can of the 10 months that I spent within the

 HCg diet and what my life has been like post HCg.

In May 2010, I heard radio ads, which I don’t generally pay any attention to, but the ads were done

by my favorite local Radio DJs who were actually following the diet and would frequently talk about

 the own adventure with it in the mornings. So, I went to the site they suggested and after discussing

 it with my sister we both decided to try it out. The product we had came in a pre-formulated spray

bottle and we were supposed to take 3-4 spray pumps 3 times a day. The diet itself is technically 3

 phases (although some companies use a 4^th phase that is essentially life/maintenance after HCg).

 Starting the very first day you take the sprays, Phase 1 consists of eating as much junk food,

specifically high fatty foods as possible. This is to allow your body to have easy access to fat at the

 very beginning before the body recognizes what is happening and lets go of the hard to lose brown

fats. This is only 2 days. Phase 2 is the HIGHLY restrictive phase (I’ll describe this in detail in a bit).

 For the next 21-40 days you consistently take HCg and remain on this restrictive part of the diet. The

 time frame depends on how much weight you want to lose and how your body reacts to HCg and

whether your body goes into immunity early. Otherwise you need to stop after 40 days and move on

to phase 3. Phase 3, you had back certain foods, but still restricts you from having refined sugar,

starches and carbohydrates. This phase is 6 weeks long. After that if you’ve lost all your weight you

slowly start adding back the rest of the foods, and supposedly you have reset your metabolism and as

 long as you don’t go back to eating junk all the time, you are supposed to live an easy life being able

 to enjoy a balanced diet without having to live on 1200 calories for a week after having a

brownie.Now that you have a picture of what the diet is (essentially 3 months) I can tell you my story. My sister and I began the journey a couple days apart. I being the typical avid dieter, was too excited to read everything thoroughly before I started, so I half hearted binged during the 2 days. Oh yes, I did binge for a person that was always trying to lose weight, but not in comparison to what I was supposed to do. I made sure to stock up on the necessities and begin pre-making my “lunches”. So, meals during the 38 days of restriction consisted of 2 servings of each: 3-4 oz of chicken or whitefish (hamburger was allowed, but some bodies don’t process it well a.k.a. gain instead of lose), your pick of fruit was an apple, grapefruit or about a cup of strawberries, vegetables had a larger option of onions, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, pretty much any kind of greens or lettuce, peppers and I’m sure a few others, but I can’t remember more, your “carb” was either grissini or melba toast again, just 2 pcs. Essentially every day I lived on about 500 calories total.

One common meal I ate:baked cod, onion strings and an apple dipped in Truvia and cinnamon.

We were allowed to have coffee, but with no cream (actually I think we were allowed 1 Tbs a day if we had to have it) and could sweeten it with stevia. Then we were encouraged to drink a minimum of 100 oz of water, squeeze lemons in it as much as possible and drink as much herbal tea as we wanted. We were supposed to vary each for every meal, so we were getting a “variety” each day. We were supposed to not feel hunger after the first week because the HCg would be turning the bad fats into nutrients and causing the body to feel full from that. Unfortunately, my sister and I both have unique body chemistry and neither of us ever truly felt that way. My sis was considerably worse off than myself and we contacted the CEO of the company on many occasions to discuss our problems throughout. She was great about helping us through, but still our bodies just did not respond as expected. I would lose for a couple days and then would put some back on. Something should have told me it wasn’t working, how can someone sticking 100% to the diet gain weight while only eating 500 cal a day, but still I persevered.  Thankfully my job made it easy for me to make tea all day long and drink as much as I needed to. I would drink hot tea all day because that helped at least make the hunger be faint. For lunch would eat one serving of each and then again for dinner would have the second serving. It truly was all about discipline and the first 3 weeks were exciting enough because I dropped so quickly it made it worth it. I dropped a total of 22 lbs in the 40 days, however about 17 of those were in the first 30 days, the next 10 my weight fluctuated up and down which was soooooo frustrating when I did not cheat even once in the entire 40 days. My sister had extreme headaches and severe hunger pretty much from the beginning and lost about 20 lbs. She had to stop early because of the extreme weakness (which signals the body is no longer registering the HCg/immunity).
          to be continued...