Posts Tagged ‘low calorie diet’

How The HCG Treatment Resets Your Metabolism

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke (best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey) was a contemporary of Dr. A.T.W. Simeons, though it is doubtful that the two men ever met or even knew of each other. Nonetheless, Clarke might have been talking about the HCG treatment when he said, “Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.”

Although it may seem to be magic (dropping one to two pounds a day can certainly seem miraculous), Dr. Simeons’ weight loss method is based on solid science.

Origins of HCG

Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG for short) is a natural by-product of gestation. It is secreted by the fetus during its development and protects the fetus in two ways:

  • should the mother be undernourished, it prevents her system from leeching nutrients
  • it prevents the mother’s immune system from mistaking the father’s DNA for a “foreign” pathogen (like a transplanted organ)

Dr. Simeons used the hormone on patients who were morbidly obese due to a dysfunctional thyroid. He discovered that small amounts of this hormone could actually cause weight loss.

How It Works

To one’s bodily systems, which are controlled by the brain but have no consciousness of their own, there is no difference between a deliberate reduction in calories through a low-calorie diet and a genuine famine caused by external factors (such as drought or pestilence). In either case, these systems will adjust themselves in such a way as to conserve fat reserves.

This is all very well and good in a state of nature, but it makes most forms of dieting exceptionally difficult. The mechanism by which bodily systems and their function are fueled is controlled by a small gland in our brains, called the hypothalamus. It is like a combination fuel switch and throttle. It determines which fuel sources are used and the rate at which these are utilized.

So, imagine you are driving a car with two reserve fuel tanks – one which holds lubricating oil and the other jellied gasoline. You are out in the desert and the primary tank is almost empty.  You can run the motor on lubricating oil for awhile, but it won’t run very well, and that oil is really needed to protect the engine components. The jellied gasoline is extremely volatile – but because it is in jelled form, the fuel injectors cannot use it. Therefore, the fuel switch automatically goes to the oil tank, then cuts way back on the accelerator so that the car is barely moving.

This is essentially what happens in your body on a low-calorie diet. The fat deposits (adipose) are like jellied gasoline – they are rich in energy, but in a form that the body cannot readily use.

What HCG does is: (A) breaks up these adipose deposits, turning them into a liquid that the body can burn, and (B) reprograms the hypothalamus to access the adipose first rather than turning to muscle tissue and viscera.

The result is that normal metabolism is maintained, even when calories are in short supply.

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HCG Diets: The History and Science

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

HCG Diets have been much in the news in recent years, but in fact, they have been around since the 1950s, when endocrinologist and HCG weight loss pioneer Dr. A.T.W. Simeons began publishing his startling research on the nature of obesity.

The Making of an Endocrinologist

Dr. Simeons was a graduate of the University of Heidelberg Medical School in the 1920s. He chose endocrinology as his specialty, which in turn led to a fascination with tropical diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and leprosy.

Simeons spent several years working at a hospital in Hamburg where the diagnosis and treatment of such diseases were the focus. In 1928, Simeons went to central Africa in order to study these diseases in their own environment. Following this, he accepted a post in India, where he spent most of the next two decades.

During his time working in a Mumbai hospital, Dr. Simeons was able to do intensive research into the effects of undernourishment  on pregnant women as well as patients who because of a defective thyroid gland had gained a great deal of weight. While these might not seem to have any connection, Dr. Simeons came to two startling conclusions:

  • The primary function of HCG was to protect the fetus, preventing the starving mother’s system from leeching nutrients
  • Administering low doses of this hormone to morbidly obese patients caused them to actually lose their excess fat.

Dr. Simeons believed that this excess fat, known as adipose, was a kind of “fuel reserve” that was locked up in a usable form should the person experience a “nutritional emergency.” What happens instead, he wrote in 1954, “is that someone suffering from obesity who attempts weight loss through a low calorie diet will first lose lean muscle tissue, followed by protective visceral fat.”  That “…only as a last resort will the Body yield its abnormal reserves,” adding that “by that time the patient usually feels so weak and hungry that the diet is abandoned.”

This is the tragedy of those who repeatedly attempt low calorie diets that invariably fail

The Role of HCG

Dr. Simeons concluded that when HCG is reintroduced into the adult system, it recalibrates the hypothalamus gland – the part of the brain than regulates metabolic processes. It helps to unlock adipose deposits, making them available as a fuel source when calories are not otherwise available – as when eating a low calorie diet.

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With HCG, Dr. Simeons’ Diet Preserves Muscle Mass

Friday, February 5th, 2010

You have probably heard about major concerns regarding HCG, Dr. Simeons’ diet and health. This low calorie diet allows you to eat no more than 500 calories a day, which is risky at best After all, most humans in normal health require at least 1,500 calories a day, and some require as much as 2,000-2,500. Under normal circumstances, someone attempting weight loss by restricting themselves to such a low calorie diet would waste away, losing muscle mass before they would burn fat.

This does not happen on the HCG program however. The key lies in how HCG changes your metabolic processes, forcing your body to burn excess fat from the beginning instead of muscle tissue.

It’s Unnatural

Contrary to popular judgmental wisdom, fat is not about laziness or lack of “will power.”

In fact, virtually nobody chooses to be fat, any more than they choose to be white or black, gay or straight, short or tall.  According to Dr. Simeons’ research, obesity is the result of many complex variables. Some of these are genetic in nature; others are due to the modern lifestyle, including food choices and eating patterns imposed upon us by agriculture.

For example, did you know that hunting-gathering peoples do not normally eat grains and legumes or dairy products? These are plants that normally must be cultivated. For the first 90,000 years or so, they did not exist in the human diet. Like their simian relatives (chimpanzees and gorillas), Stone Age humans ate tree fruit, wild root vegetables, eggs and meat. The human digestive system was simply not designed for many agricultural products we take for granted today.

This said, there is archaeological evidence to suggest that larger women were considered desirable in later Stone Age cultures. This is still true in many parts of Africa and Polynesia. Such women are viewed as more fertile and able to bear strong offspring. Such genetic traits would naturally be passed on to children.

Finally, there is the subject of eating patterns. In nature, all primates (including humans) are browsers who nibble on small amounts of food over the course of the day. This kind of eating is not possible in an agricultural society due to the intensive labor demands. Humans were forced to eat occasional meals at set times, ingesting more calories that they required for immediate metabolic needs. Those extra calories wind up being stored around the abdomen and on the hips as adipose.

HCG Unlocks The Energy

Adipose is a rich source of energy and nutrients, much like whale blubber that sustains Inuit people in Arctic regions. However, adipose is not readily available to humans as an energy source when calories are reduced. This is why humans normally “waste away” on a low calorie diet. With HCG, Dr. Simeons’ diet makes adipose readily available for metabolism by reprogramming the hypothalamus. On the HCG program, when you restrict yourself to Dr. Simeons’ low calorie diet, the hypothalamus obtains the extra calories from adipose, not lean muscle tissue. It’s that simple!

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Keep Muscle Mass While Losing Fat With the HCG Diet Plan

Friday, February 5th, 2010

The HCG diet plan is a vast improvement over other kinds of low calorie diet plans. Why should this be? The primary reason is that under Dr. Simeons’ protocols using HCG, you hold on to your lean muscle tissue and protective visceral fat while getting rid of the unsightly excess fat deposits around the  belly and hips – an unnatural and normally difficult to get rid of form of fat known as adipose.

The secret lies in how HCG works.

Where Adipose Comes From

Dr. A.T.W. Simeons came to the conclusion that adipose was an unnatural phenomenon that was due largely to a combination of genetics and the dramatic change that agriculture brought to the natural human lifestyle. Adipose deposits are the result of three major causes:

  • evolution (as a survival mechanism)
  • genetics (a trait passed on from parent to offspring)
  • agriculture (eating patterns and new foods)

Let’s take a look at these one at a time.

Darwin Had a Point

While it may seem counter-intuitive that Nature would come up with a survival technique that ultimately undermines our health, keep in mind that Nature does not always select the best solution. She will go with virtually any solution.

When early proto-humans and apes went their separate ways some 4-8 million years ago, this split was largely due to geologic events that cut them off from the rainforest and confined them to a hot, dry savannah where food sources were unreliable. The humans most likely to survive were those who could store life-giving fat against lean times.

Big Girls Rule, Skinny Chicks Drool

If prehistoric statues of full-breasted, large hipped women are any indication, it is likely that fat women were considered desirable mates during the Stone Age. This is still true in many parts of Africa and the South Pacific islands. When such women are preferred mates, guess what happens with their children and grandchildren?

New Foods, New Demands

Agriculture is a relatively recent phenomenon – and it not only introduced many new foods into the human diet, it changed our normal eating patterns.  It forced us to “chow down” at widely-spaced intervals, instead of nibbling as we needed to.

The body has to do something with those excess calories.

Here at this site, you’ll learn much more about how Dr. Simeons’ protocols and how the HCG diet plan can help you lose weight while keeping muscle mass.

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Why You Don’t Lose Muscle Mass on the Low Calorie HCG Diet

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Normally, on a 500 calorie diet, the human body begins to waste away. Generally, the body needs 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day to survive. Otherwise, malnutrition sets in. However, this does not happen on the HCG diet, even though Dr. Simeons’ protocols require a diet of only 500 calories a day – starvation under normal circumstance. The fact that people on HCG remain healthy and active and feel very little deprivation (if any) has to do with how HCG works.

What Dr. Simeons Learned

A.T.W. Simeons was a medical researcher of the early 20th Century. His specialty was endocrinology, the sub-field of medicine that deals with the body’s “ductless” glands that secrete a wide variety of hormones. In case you have forgotten your high school biology, hormones are biochemical substances that regulate a large number of metabolic processes.

In pregnant women, the hormone Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, or HCG, plays a large part in maintaining the health of the fetus. While working in India during the 1930s and 1940s, Dr. Simeons determined that HCG helped prevent the mother’s system from robbing the fetus of nutrients in the event she was experiencing starvation.

Dr. Simeons also studied patients who suffered from morbid obesity due to pituitary gland dysfunction. Interestingly, these patients did not necessarily overeat, but when Dr. Simeons began treating them with HCG, they began to experience weight loss. This led to some very interesting conclusions about the nature of obesity and weight loss.

Why We Get Fat

Dr. Simeons realized that obesity was not due to any one cause, but a number of complex variables, all of which were related to genetics and the changes wrought by the introduction of agriculture – which changed our natural diet and eating patterns dramatically.

Because of these variables, combined with certain evolutionary tendencies, humans have developed the trait of storing excess fat, known as adipose, around their abdominal regions (in men) and hips and thighs (in women). Adipose is a form of fat that contains many nutrients and high caloric content – but is literally “locked up” in a form that cannot be readily utilized. On a normal low calorie diet, the body first starts to cannibalize itself by feeding on muscle mass. Once that has gone, it turns to fat deposits that we need – the fat that surrounds our internal organs, providing lubrication and protection. Only then will it start to use adipose to maintain life processes.

The HCG Diet To The Rescue

HCG, taken in conjunction with Dr. Simeons’ protocols, causes weight loss to happen quickly and naturally by reversing this process. The gland in our brains, known as the hypothalamus, gets “reprogrammed” when HCG is replaced in our bodies; instead of starting off with muscle tissue, it is forced to unlock the calories stored in adipose first. This is how good health is maintained while eating a very low calorie diet and taking HCG.

How The HCG Diet Can Help You

You’ll find a wealth of material here on this site about HCG, Dr. Simeons’ protocols and how these can help you in achieving your weight-loss goals.

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