The HCG diet plan is mostly about changing patterns—patterns of behavior and patterns of bodily functions.  HCG dieters successfully alter patterns of behavior by learning how to prepare nutritious, low-calorie meals from fresh food sources.  The HCG supplements, in turn, alter patterns on a bodily level by retraining the metabolic system, teaching cells to burn fat for energy rather than storing it.

As a certifiable health nut, I know a little bit about how health can be an addiction as much as anything else—but maybe I shouldn’t use the word “addiction”; that has a negative connotation, and I mean this in a good way.  The thing is that once you’ve experienced how good and clean you feel eating foods that are freshly prepared and naturally full of vitamins and nutrients, it simply becomes a priority in your life.

The thing about the HCG diet plan is that it not only reprograms your body, it reprograms your brain.  Once you become accustomed to eating lean meats like chicken and fish, vegetables like asparagus and spinach, and fruits like grapefruit and strawberries, these foods actually become what your brain and your body crave.  Moreover, if you’re at a party and confronted with a buffet of food spread across a snack table, your brain will automatically seek out those foods that are the healthiest.

I know that unless you’ve actually experienced this phenomenon, you’ll be skeptical.  But I’m telling you, it’s the truth.  When you eat healthy foods, you can actually feel your body soaking in all of that health, nutrition, and goodness; you are palpably replenished, and it’s a great feeling.  It’s an addiction, I’m telling you.  Your body is no fool.  It will crave those nutrients and send signals to your brain to get it the foods that will give it that high.

So when, in the middle of the afternoon, in that lull between lunch and dinner, you start craving not a candy bar but a spinach salad, I’ll be the first one to say, “I told you so.”