HCG and Me

AFTER- lost 31.2 lbs!

BEFORE. i don't have the best before shots, i really didn't want any pictures of me at that time....can you see why? i sure can!

So I had not announced this to the public yet, but here i go! I started the hcg diet November 7 2009. I wasn't happy with where i was, i felt huge, and couldn't really fit into any of my clothes. i needed to change something FAST. so i decided to do the diet earlier than planned, i weaned Abby at 8 months, that was really hard, i felt so bad for doing it. but she is doing fine with formula, and i am thrilled with the weight i have been able to lose. i feel so much happier and confident now. The first 2 days of the diet are pig out, so i started the hcg 500 calories on november 9 weighing in at 156.2 lbs. Today i am done! i thought i would go a little longer, but my body is telling me its done! by this i mean the last 3 days i have not lost weight and have been hungry/tired/a little light headed, that sort of thing, my body i just letting me know its not going to lose anymore and i should (and i am!) be happy where i am. so today i start maintenance weighing in at 125.0. so my total weight lost is 31.2 lbs!!! 70 days of the hcg. well about, i counted 10 total days of pig out/maintenance days in there, every 40 days (and for me i realized after about 30 i didn't lose well) you need to re-load your body for a day or two to make sure your brown fat stores are not getting depleted. so 60 days of 500 calories. i have been VERY pleased with this diet, no exercise, no hunger (but yes you do have an empty stomach most of the time), i had energy, i didn't feel like i was starving at all. yet i kept losing, and losing and losing. and it was exactly the fat i wanted to get rid of!! i still have my "baby" belly, but i think its kind of going to be as permanent as the kids are... its not going anywhere! haha. So yah, i am done, i am thrilled with my results. i don't think there is a better way to lose weight out there. and of course i have to always watch what i eat, you would have to be crazy to think doing this diet and then going back to old habits would not have repercussions on the scale. I thought this diet would be harder than it was, it really was easy. anybody could do it if it they truly wanted to lose weight. its not a will power diet, but you do have to learn to stop picking at food. the first week i thought i would screw up one day just because of habit, i kept almost licking my fingers as i would cook andrew lunch, and i didn't really WANT the food, i just had such a habit of "sampling" i guess. anyways, i am going to include a few things about the diet, there are a lot of things being said of this diet, and not all are true. my dad is a doctor, and he treats tons of patients for obesity using the hcg protocol. his patients have had HUGE success, as well as the rest of my family. my mom lost 70 lbs, my sister jenny 45, my sister maaret 60 i think, and they are all in guatemala, but everybody has been losing, i just don't know the other exact numbers. Dan did the diet and finished over 3 months ago and has lost 50 lbs i think and maintained it to this day. if you are thinking of doing the hcg, it works. i haven't weighed this much since 10th grade after "the accident", and i gained that weight back fairly quickly because it was a result of trauma... and i was 15 and had no idea how to "maintain" and stuff like that. starting 9th grade i was 120, so thats the closest to the last time i really weighed about the same. incredible!
I added down here some info from my dad's clinic, i found it well written, easy to read and simple to understand. so if you don't know about how the HCG diet works, read it and educate yourself!!!

How The Program Works

The body has many types of fat, but we are only going to concern ourselves with 2 types:

1) Brown fat - which is healthy fat

2) White fat - which is the stuff we all hate

BROWN FAT

Brown fat is the thin layer of fat that we have covering our whole body. This is GOOD fat. Think of it as the body’s debit account for energy storage. Under ideal circumstances, when we eat, our body will fill our blood stream with nutrients, and then fill the brown fat stores. Then the body will dump all of the other nutrients.

As we go from meal to meal, we will burn the nutrients out of the blood stream in about an hour. This will happen quicker if we are exercising vigorously. As the body needs more energy, it will pull nutrients from the brown fat into the blood stream. When we eat again, the body will refill the brown fat stores. We are extremely efficient at breaking down and restoring our brown fat reserves. Most people will have between 10% and 15% of their total body weight as healthy fat.

An average person can burn all of their healthy fat reserves in about a week or two if they quit eating. When they start eating again, the body can replenish the healthy fat reserves in about a week.

When your brown fat reserves are depleted, your body will trigger your hunger response. This is a fact that we will call attention to later in this letter.

WHITE FAT

This is the stuff we all HATE! It accumulates around the belly, on the butt, the hips, under the arms, on the chest, under the chin, and everywhere else. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is obsessed with “skinny.” It may not be fair, it is certainly not logical, and it is never pleasant to those of us who are fat.

THIS NEXT PART IS VERY IMPORTANT so read carefully: The body will only store white fat when we have elevated levels of insulin in our blood stream. It is physiologically IMPOSSIBLE for your body to store white fat if you do not have elevated levels of insulin in your blood. When we eat sugar, starches, or processed foods, we are injecting sugars into our blood stream. The pancreas then excretes insulin into the blood stream to keep us from going into a coma. Once there are elevated levels of insulin in the blood, this is a signal for the body to store white fat.

The reason our body stores white fat when insulin is present is because, for hundreds of years, people went through a famine every year. This famine was called winter. In the fall, when the fruits are ripe, and the corn and potatoes are harvested, we are eating lots of grains, sugars and starches. This is a signal to the body that we are getting ready for winter and that we need to store white fat.

The problem we face in today’s society is that we eat sugars, starches, and processed foods ALL THE TIME, so we have elevated levels of insulin in our blood all the time. Our bodies are constantly storing white fat. On average, most Americans will gain about 5lbs per year.

HOW DO WE GET RID OF WHITE FAT

There are only 2 ways to get rid of white fat:

Way # 1 – Live Through a Famine

And by this, we mean that you need to move to a place where there is NO FOOD and you have to LITERALLY live through a famine. If there is ANY food available, you will not succeed. All diet programs are a form of self imposed famine. “Eat less, exercise more” is the standard mantra of the medical profession and the weight loss community in general. If this were truly the way to lose white fat, we would all be A LOT skinnier. The fact is that “Eat Less, Exercise More” does not work for losing white fat. It only works to lose healthy brown fat. “Eat Less, Exercise More” is an excellent way to maintain your weight once you lose all of your white fat, but medically and statistically speaking…it does not work.

WHY THIS DOES NOT WORK

When we starve our body, here is what happens:

· 1^st we use up all of our healthy brown fat

· Then we will get VERY hungry and irritable and think about food ALL THE TIME

· The body will then go into the infamous “starvation mode” and will lower your metabolism. You will feel listless, tired, and unable to concentrate.

· If you are lucky enough to eat less calories than your body burns, then, and only then, will you begin to burn white fat; but your body will also burn muscle at the same rate. The reason it does this is because muscle burns fat and our body is trying to survive as long as possible…so it will burn fat and muscle at the same rate so you will live as long as possible before you die of starvation.

· When we go off the diet, our body will INSTANTLY restore all of the healthy brown fat we have lost (so we will gain 10 to 15lbs within a few days), then our body will spend the next 3 weeks packing as much white fat on as it possibly can. Most people will end up gaining at least as fatter as they lost. The bad news is that we now have less muscle, so we will gain even more fat as time goes on and we are less equipped to lose it.

If you are like me and 150 million other Americans, this will all sound too familiar.

WAY # 2 – GET PREGNANT (Or use HCG to trick your body into thinking it is pregnant)

With the HCG Weight Loss Protocol, we are tricking your body into thinking that there is a fetus present. When a woman is pregnant, the placenta and the fetus produce a chemical called HCG in HUGE amounts in the body (millions of parts per liter). A pregnant woman will have literally millions of units of HCG running through her system.

When there is HCG present, the body will no longer follow the normal set of rules for fat usage. The number one concern now is for the preservation of the fetus; so things happen a little differently. When HCG is present, the body will stimulate the adrenal gland so that the mother is more alert. It will also cause the body to produce endorphins so that the mother is happy. If the mother eats less than she burns, then the body will use the white fat first, and leave the brown fat and the muscle alone. The mother must be able to fight or flight, so the body will preserve its brown fat stores and muscle. Since the white fat stores are almost never used, the body will access this as energy. This is GREAT NEWS for us!!!

What we do on this diet, is to trick the body into thinking that we are pregnant; then we simply starve ourselves. We will inject .125 ml of HCG into our muscle each day and then eat 500 calories or less per day.

The average man will need about 3500 calories per day to maintain their current weight. The average woman will need about 2000 calories per day. If you are only eating 500 calories per day, you will lose between ½ and 1 lb of white fat every day! While on HCG, you will not lose any brown fat, and you will not lose any muscle. I know, because I have done it. My wife has done it, and my parents have done it, along with a dozen or so friends and associates.

While on the HCG protocol, you should not exercise, you do not need to purchase expensive supplements, and you will not spend hundreds of dollars on prepackaged foods. You will have lots of energy and you will not be hungry. Please understand that you will have an empty stomach; but you will not be hungry. Your body will make sure that you have plenty of nutrients from your white fat stores in your blood stream all the time. Since the brown fat is not being used, your hunger response will not be triggered.

How Do You Keep The White Fat From Coming Back?

When you reach your weight goal, you will have spent over 40 days starving your body and forcing it to eat thousands of calories of white fat. The body will want to replace this fat as soon as possible. It will take about 21 days for your body to adjust to the fact that it is not starving. During this phase you will increase your caloric intake to between 1200 and 1500 calories per day to help your body and metabolism stabilize. Eat plenty of protein, low sugar/carb fruits (strawberries, apples, oranges, and grapefruit), and low carb vegetables. Good fats, such as olive oil and butter are encouraged, but, DO NOT EAT ANY TYPE OF SUGAR OR STARCH DURING THIS PHASE!!!!

Your body cannot store white fat if the insulin level in your blood is too low. It is impossible for your body to store white fat if you give it no sugar and no starch. For 21 days we will be giving your body lots of food, but NO SUGAR AND NO STARCH. It will take about 3 weeks for your body to return to a normal metabolic condition.

You MUST weigh yourself each morning. If you are ever more than 2lbs above your stopping weight, you must immediately do a “Steak Day.”

What Is A Steak Day?

When you get on the scale and you weigh over 2lbs from your stopping weight, immediately fast from all food until dinner. DO NOT EAT ANYTHING!! You may drink all the tea and water that you want, but eat NO FOOD until dinner. For dinner, you will eat a big steak and an apple or a tomato. Other proteins such as chicken or 3-4 low carb protein drinks can be substituted if you do not like steak. When you get up and weigh the next morning, you will be back down within 2lbs of your stopping weight. DO NOT WAIT to do a steak day. You must do your steak day the SAME DAY that you weigh yourself and are over 2 lbs from your stopping weight.

If you are interested in understanding why this works, here is a quick, simplistic explanation:

In order for your body to store white fat, the body will increase the level of the fluids in an effort to suspend the excess nutrients while preparing to store white fat. The process of storing white fat takes the body about 2 days. When you get up in the morning and you have excess fluid retention, you immediately fast from eating for 2 meals. You will be using the nutrients in your blood stream and then you will be using the other nutrients that are suspended in the excess body fluids. At the end of the day, you will flood the body with protein by eating a big steak. The body will respond by dumping the excess fluid. This TOTALLY derails the body’s attempt to store white fat.

The Rest of Your Life

For the rest of your life, you will weigh yourself every morning. If, at any time, you are more than 2 lbs from your stopping weight, you must immediately do your “Steak Day.”

Once you are finished with the initial 21 day phase, you can begin to SLOWLY introduce starches and sugars back into your diet. Begin slowly…very slowly. Start with a piece of toast with breakfast; then check your weight the next day and see how your body responded. If you are within the acceptable range, then you know that you can handle 1 piece of bread a day. Do the same with other starches and sugars; starting with starchy vegetables first, then breads, and then sugars. If you move slowly, you will be able to introduce all of these items back into your regular diet and not gain weight. It will not take you long to determine where your threshold is with sugars and starches. You will be surprised how much of these items you can eat and not gain weight.

If you are vigilant in monitoring your weight and doing a steak day when necessary, you will never again carry around unwanted fat. If you are not vigilant…feel free to visit us again and we will put you back on the program.