Lose a pound a day: HCG dieters say it's possible

The HCG diet claims to be natural, promises to help you lose a pound or more a day and even discourages exercise.

HCG stands for Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin and is a hormone that is produced during pregnancy. It's detected in the urine of pregnant women.

HCG retailers say it works because it goes on the same concept that a pregnant woman's body will use stored fats to help send nutrients to the baby, even if she is not eating much.

“Gunthor, I would love to hear what kind of experience you had if you followed through on this diet.”

I started the drops on 16 February at 290lbs. I ended the drops 6 weeks later at (drum roll) 254lbs. Yes, I lost 36 lbs in six weeks. My wife dropped only 20 but she cheated a lot. We have suffered one side effect....apparantly HCG is used as a treatment for infertitlity, we are pregnant. We did not think this was a possibility for a couple of personal reasons.

I had regained about 11 lbs so I restarted the drops 4 days ago. I have already dropped 10 lbs. My ultimate goal is 200lbs give or take....by Thanksgiving. I will have lost 90 total pounds in less than a year, without a rigorous exercise regimen. I will, once I have reached my goal weight begin regular excercise 4 times per week just to maintain that weight loss, I am not interested in being heavy again after losing all that weight.

You’re right. I have a couple of friends who went on this diet last year. After doing a little google research on it, I found a double blind study on it. The study showed that people taking the injections and eating 500 calories/day didn’t lose anymore weight than people eating 500 calories/day and not taking the injections. The study also showed that it was irrelevant as to what you consumed, as long as it was only 500 calories/day of whatever. I’d post the link, but don’t have enough interest to chase it down again. It was fairly easy to find though.

What’s unhealthier? Being overweight or going on a crash diet for a couple of months?

Going on a crash diet for a couple of months is far unhealthier. You become what you eat. By denying your body anything healthy to use, you will be depleting your body's ability to fight off neurodegenerative diseases and cancers.

Far better to begin to eat only healthy, real foods TODAY and watch the extra pounds slide off, albeit slowly. All while you give your body the good, healthy FATS it needs to run brain and systems, and enough protein and vitamins to keep you very healthy.

Research the paleo way of life and start today or tomorrow. You won't need to watch calories at all. It will only take about 4 days or less of cravings for the grain-based foods you give up. After those 4 days you will never want to eat them again, when you understand it is the grains that have been making you fat, and unwell.

I wonder if the weight comes back on almost as fast as it came off once you get back to a regular diet

You can always add fat mass more quickly than you can burn it off through resting metabolic rate and physical activity. If this were not true, people would be in serious danger of starvation.

Here's how fast the weight will come back: energy intake/energy expenditure = X. If X is more than 1, you will gain fat mass. If X is less than 1, you will lose body mass. The larger the value for X above 1, the faster the weight, as stored fat, will be replaced. The smaller the value for X below 1, the more weight, both as stored fat and lean body mass, you will lose. If X = 1, then there will be no change in body weight. This is the fundamental truth of weight gain and weight loss. Anything promising anything different (short of surgical removal of fat) is fraud.

The HCG diet claims to be natural, promises to help you lose a pound or more a day and even discourages exercise.

If this hormone only shifts substrate use away from glucose and toward fat oxidation and does nothing to depress one's appetite to decrease one's food intake or to increase one's basal metabolism to burn off more fat, then there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. If you burn one pound of fat per day, you are using 3500 kcals of energy.

2. If you cease eating entirely and burn 3500 kcals worth of fat per day then you would lose a pound of fat per day.

3. Few people, especially people who are chronically over-fat, expend 3500 kcals of energy per day in basal metabolic activity and physical activity.

4. If the hormone results in the preferential mobilization and metabolism of fatty acids from fat tissue and there is not a corresponding increase in metabolic activity or physical activity to use these fatty acids for fuel (such as an attached growing fetus), then one will be walking around with very high serum lipid levels, not a good thing.

5. One cannot excrete fat.

6. One cannot excrete glucose except under pathological conditions.

7. One cannot excrete proteins in any amount except under pathological conditions.

8. One cannot convert fat to proteins or to glucose.

9. If one's glucose oxidation is severely restricted in favor of fat oxidation, then relatively increased glucose levels have to be compensated for by storage as glycogen. Exceeding the small 3 day storage buffer for glycogen forces the liver to start generating fat. Too much glycogen and a fatty liver is what happens to geese that are overfed to produce the best livers for pate, though not for the geese's health.

10. If energy usage is preferentially shifted toward fat oxidation, then there is a corresponding relative decrease of both glucose and amino acid oxidation. This means an increase in serum amino acid levels to the degree that the excess of amino acids above the body's daily requirement for protein synthesis is not metabolized for energy needs.

If there is loss of fat, the only way that is possible is for the fat to be used as fuel. If there is loss of weight due to fat being lost by use as fuel then there must be increased fuel requirements. The only way to increase fuel requirements are a. increased metabolic needs due to increased muscle mass, a growing tumor (and tumor metabolism is preferentially glucose, not fat), or a growing fetus, b. increased basal metabolism, or c. increased levels of physical activity.

In the case of using this hormone, there is no growing fetus. If it causes an increase in basal metabolic rates then the rationale for its effectiveness is lost because it was supposed to shift fat away from storage and toward the nutrition of the growing fetus. An increased basal metabolic rate foils this.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.