Of course, as with anything I'm thinking about, I researched it first. hCG is a hormone that women produce only when they're pregnant. In fact it's what they use in pregnancy tests. In looking around for information I eventually found this pdf file on line called "Pounds and Inches" by Dr. Simeons. I found that book by reading a review of a book by someone named Kevin Tredeau. His book was called "The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You to Know About," but a lot of people say that he's really a charlatan, and that he's just implementing Dr. Simeon's diet, which you can find on line for free (although Amazon also sells it as a book as well). So I read "Pounds and Inches."
You can read a lot about hCG and Dr Simeons on Wikipedia. Basically though, Dr. Simeons was a gifted endocrinologist, and he wanted to find a solution to obesity. He felt that although there might be many causes to obesity, there had to be an underlying cause that would apply to all who were obese. While he was in India studying pregnant women in India on calorie-deficient diets, and "fat-boys" with pituitary problems. The "fat-boys" were young men who had unattractive deposits of fat and underdeveloped sexual organs (it's called Froliech's Syndrome). He noticed that the pregnant women seem to be able to carry the babies without depleting their lean muscles, and that low doses of hCG to the young men allowed them to develop their sexual organs, as well as lose weight, again without depleting their lean muscle mass.
When he went to Italy he developed the theory that there are 3 type of fat
- Structural Fat: The kind of fat that surrounds and cushions your organs. (Karen found that their is structural fat on the heel of your foot that pads the heel, and that some people, herself for instance, start to have pain in their heels when they walk because they lose that fat.)
- Normal Fat: This is the fat that the body store excess glucose as, and draws on if for energy when needed.
- Abnormal Fat: This is a kind of fat that the body deposits when there is excess sugar, but because of a problem in the diencephalic region of the brain. (According to Wikipedia it's also know as the "interbrain". You can find out more about it as diencephalon.) This region get out of whack and starts to store this abnormal fat in a way that it cannot get access to it again.
It's Dr. Simeons theory that the reason that women produce this hormone is so that the fetus and women can survive during pregnancy. It makes all reserves of energy in the body available to the baby and the Mom. He also thinks that what happens during a regular attempt at dieting is that the body first burns off the normal fat, the the structural fat until there are not more reserves there, then it starts burning off the abnormal fat. This is why dieting can be so hard, and why people hit the "wall" so to speak. This makes since to Karen and myself for the following experiences in our lives.
- Karen has always lost weight overall during pregnancies. Meaning that she genearlly weighed less after delivery than before the pregnancy started.
- Karen says that her feet hurt when she tries to diet, which would follow that she's burning structural fat of which the pad on the heel is part of.
- I can follow a pretty rigorous diet and exercise program, and I know that I'm losing weight and getting smaller, but I my big ol' gut and double chin never seem to get much smaller.
- When my Dad died, he was skin and bone, everywhere except for his little pot belly that he always had.
So as I'm reading about this stuff it's hitting home to me. Then I read that the FDA has come out against it! Well that's like ringing a bell for me. Turns out that Dr. Simeons developed a very rigorous protocol at his clinic. First it is low carb, high protein restricted diet. OK I like that obviously. However it is VERY restrictive at 500 calories. a day. However, you don't feel hungry on the diet because the deficit is made up by all the fat that your body can easily burn because of the hCG. There are also very strict rules about types of shampoo, body soap, make up, deodorant, vitamins etc that you can use because many of these products have fat's and other things in them that can cause you to stop losing weight.
Dr. Simeons would inject the hCG into his patients daily; 125 mg. In the US you can get homeopathic blends of the stuff. The FDA has kindly pointed out that there is no evidence that homeopathic hCG works. Thanks FDA for trying to keep us fat, and diabetic. However, there can be vitamin charlatans out there so I asked Darren what he was using and he said he used the HCGMadeSimple.com site. He also said that he'd started using another brand but felt miserable on the diet, until he switched to the hCG from this site. He found this site because his uncle's chiropractor used it, and his uncle lost over 130 lbs on it. OK if someone proves to me that something works and it doesn't sound totally crazy I'm willing to give it a shot, and so is Karen. Karen got a membership at the site and bought the hCG. The site has a lot of very helpful information and I think it was worth it.
The results. We've only been on it for the first week, which included the first phase which is called the "gorging phase". Really that's what it's called, and the HCGMadeSimple.com (HMS) said that many people don't really gorge on this part because it seems counter intuitive, but it's important to have your normal fat reserves full for the diet. Also, the hCG is not effective during the first two day anyway. I didn't weigh the first day we took it the hCG, but I did gorge. I weighed the second day. HMS says to weigh right after you get up in the morning and do your business. I know this is true, because your weight can swing widely during the day, however, I like to weigh after I exercise because then I get the water weight loss of exercise, but then that's variable as well, but I've now repented.
I weighed 251.8 the first day, then 255.6 after the second day of gorging (See I'm good at something) or the third day of the diet. However, that morning my BG was 156! Yikes, and it stayed high all day only getting down to 129 at it's lowest. OK I did stupid gorging that I knew that I shouldn't have and I felt pretty miserable for it. However, today I weighed 242.2 and my BG was the lowest in the morning that it's been since I started monitoring again after the last scare of super elevated BG. Also, the diet calls for a couple of pieces of fruit a day. I did the calculations on the fruit and figured that if I cut the orange or apple in half, I might be OK, but I needed to check. Turns out that it's OK to do that. I'll have to make sure that it's still OK when I go off this 500 calorie a day diet but I've been eating fruit for the first time in 10 years or so this week, and really enjoying it. Also, I'm really not hungry it's amazing. Although, I do think about eating my next meal, I'm not ravenous like I've been on some diets that had more than 3 time the calories allowed in this diet. There have been a couple times where I've forced myself to eat the last little bit of food for the day. I mean I knew that I need it, but I could have gone without it. Karen's also lost around 5 lbs this week, but that's still really good. She hate's it that I lose weight faster but that's part of having a higher metabolism because of more muscle mass, and the fact that I'm exercising more than she does. The diets say that you don't have to exercise but if you do it's more successful. It also says that during the diet is not a time to start a new exercise program, but that if you've been doing an exercise program you can continue it. That's where I'm at, I've been exercising so I'm just going to continue. So I'm losing weight and my BG seems to be going in the right direction as well. Over all I'm really pleased with the results so far.
