My hCG update. I am still anti the hCG diet! Don’t do it! In fact, I won’t be having anyone on my radio show that promotes this diet. There are numerous reasons I will share. The first two days on it I almost threw up each night. I am used to eating a clean and healthy, but the directions for the first two days are to eat as much fat and sugar as you can. It actually lists fried foods and ice cream. Made me ill! I didn’t even eat that bad the second day, but tried to eat more than usual, and I was still sick. You may be thinking, I already eat badly, so what a great diet! Well, first I would work to eat better; second, I would still steer clear of any diet that promotes eating a lot of fat and sugar! Both in high amounts are not healthy. Also, foods high in fat and sugar are not nutrient dense, so there are two day your body is not getting the vitamins and minerals it needs to function properly.
Day three suddenly reduces you to a very low calorie diet, 500 calories to be exact. You stay on this restrictive diet for the remainder of phase II of the plan. The directions do not allow breakfast, but you can drink coffee in the morning. Then you can have 100 grams of protein, a vegetable, a piece of fruit and a bread stick for lunch and dinner. I was tired the morning of day three and had an important interview scheduled, so I drank coffee. I was sick as a dog all day! I almost fainted at the store trying to find bread sticks and a piece of fruit.
Day four, I made a fruit smoothie for breakfast, as I did not want to harm my body and my metabolism any further and had planned to attend SPIN class later, where I would burn off more calories than I was allotted for the day. Well ended up having massive stomach pains and feeling sick later in the day and was up all night in pain.
Needless to say, day five, I am absolutely exhausted and not on the diet any longer. I would not allow my best friend to stay on something this harmful to the body, so I decided to treat myself like my best friend.
500 kales a day is not enough to support your Basil Metabolic rate (resting metabolism). I don’t care if you are on hCG or anything else that touts a different story. Your body requires a certain number of calories to function efficiently. 500 calories is also not enough calories to get all the nutrients your body needs.
Now, many are saying, well I lost weight on this diet. You could lose weight on a 500 calorie diet without the hCG, but I guarantee you won’t keep it off for the long term. Of course there are outliers, as with any weight loss program or diet, so probably the usual 3% of people that do the hCG diet will keep it off for five or more years. I have asked three so called hCG experts that sell this diet at enormous prices for data showing a large cohort of people that have lost the weight and kept it off for five or more years. They have come up with 0. I even talked to one that admitted to doing it, gaining the weight back, and then doing it again. That is not my definition of being successful.
Yes, I am sure many of these people mean well. They may be among the 3% that kept it off and think they are helping people. I am not saying they are all shysters. I don’t think these people are trained in nutrition and/or metabolic function, so they don’t fully understand the damage it is doing to the body.
Any diet that promotes losing 30 lbs in 30 days or says it has been hidden from the public is obviously not healthy, so why do it to your self one more time? You did not gain 30 lbs, in 30 days, if you don’t want to gain it all back; you better not plan to lose it in 30.
I think losing weight and finally keeping it off and being healthy sounds a lot more sexy than lose 30 lbs in 30 days, stop being scammed my these types of diets.
Without the nutrients your body needs, you will also look older faster and you won’t look fit, you will look like a thin flabby person. Just something to think about! So please, make an attempt to actually eat nutritiously and move your body more, before doing another fix it quick scheme.
If you need my help, let me know!
Karen
With Karen's education and eighteen years experience in the preventative health, nutrition, and fitness fields and personal experience battling weight, she could not ignore the growing obesity epidemic, especially after the announcement by the surgeon general stating, this would be the first generation to die before their parents due to obesity. This is not a legacy Karen wants to leave behind.