It is safe to say that HCG works as hard as you do. HCG results are directly proportional to how closely you follow Dr. Simeons’ protocols. A 500-calorie a day diet may seem rather harsh, and under normal circumstances, it would be. Your body needs more than a mere 500 calories a day.
However, when hormone-replacement therapy in the form of HCG injections or drops is added to the equation, you do not actually need to consume that many calories. In fact, you don’t even feel it, in most cases, because your body is eating up your excess fat at a prodigious rate to the point that you may lose up to two pounds a day.
Does it Really Work?
In many cases, people have indeed experienced those kinds of weight loss results. However, one pound a day is more realistic for most people on the HCG diet. That’s still nothing to sneeze at, however. Losing 40 pounds in six weeks is an impressive achievement, made all the more attainable with the use of HCG.
Here’s the math: if you are an average woman, you normally need 2,000 – 2,300 calories per day. Men require 2,700 – 2,900 calories. While on the HCG program, you are ingesting 500 calories.
So, let’s say you need 2,500 calories per day in order to maintain your basic metabolic functions. That extra 2,000 calories have to come from somewhere, right? This is where HCG comes into the equation. By unlocking those excess fat deposits, this hormone makes those fat cells available to your body as fuel.
Okay, there’s a problem. There’s 3,500 calories in a pound of human fat. Therefore, even if you are following the HCG diet, you aren’t going to burn that many calories in a day. 2,500 – 500 = 2,000, which is not quite a pound’s worth. Right?
Not necessarily.
Preparation for the Diet
Remember, before you start the HCG diet, you are to spend two days gorging yourself on all the high-fat food you can lay your hands on. The purpose is to rev up your metabolic rate so that you are actually burning more calories than you would normally.
The other factor is to deny yourself fat in any form whatsoever, which means eliminating any form of fat that may be applied topically – as in skin creams and many kinds of soap. Most of these products contain vegetable fat in some form. Since your body craves and needs fat, it will actually absorb it from that source.
While on the HCG diet, you want to deny your body any other source of fat other than those adipose deposits around your belly, hips and thighs. Normally, these fat cells are locked up in a form that is unavailable until all other sources of nutrients have been exhausted. HCG actually unlocks those sources while directing the hypothalamus gland (the part of the brain that regulates the endocrine system and metabolic processes) to use them. Thus the reason you lose weight fast and why you lose weight from those “hard to lose” areas.
