Your comprehensive resource to answer your questions about the hCG diet protocol.
I highly encourage doing your research before embarking on this HCG protocol. This page is a work in progress guys…..just so you know there is MUCH more to come.
Please also see my HCG HOW TO section for video and blog posts on this topic.
Injections and Hcg
How often do you inject HCG?
While on the hCG Diet, you will take your hCG injections daily, once per day, usually in the morning. You will take the injections both while loading for 2 days and then daily while on the very low calorie portion of the diet.
I hate injections and needles. Do the injections hurt?
Guess what? It doesn’t hurt- I PROMISE! This is coming from a person who was just as nervous and just as unwilling to do injections as you are right now.
After doing 5 rounds of hCG Injections myself now, let me tell you my beginning story of wimpiness. I had no intention of doing injections. Way too nervous about that idea. I was going to do the sublingual hCG method (aka rx hCG Drops). But there were 2 things that made me reconsider. First of all, I’m cheap. When using RX hCG Drops you have to use twice as much hCG as for injections, thus costing twice as much. Secondly and most important, I really wanted to make sure that I got the exact amount of hCG that I was supposed to get into my bloodstream. The only way to be completely positive of this and have 100% absorption was to use injections. With drops, there is lot that doesn’t get absorbed under the tongue but gets swallowed instead, how much is absorbed is affected by how long you hold it under your tongue and how long you waited to eat and drink both before and after taking the hCG Drops (which is why you have to take twice as much hCG because of how much doesn’t get absorbed)- it was just too many variables for me to feel comfortable with since I knew that the hCG was not a placebo and wanted to get the best results possible.
SO- for those of you who really don’t want to do injections, yet in the back of your mind you’re reading the answer to this question because you feel like maybe you should try the injections anyway, TRY IT! See what’s next…..
True story: I made my husband do my first 3 days of injections on Round 1. That’s how nervous and how much I didn’t want to do them. I couldn’t work up the nerve to do them myself. I didn’t even look like while he did the injection on me. I closed my eyes, looked away, and kept asking “have you done it yet? have you done it yet?” I kept waiting for that moment of pain that all my nervousness was about. When he said yes, he’d already stuck the needle in, I said, “really????” I hadn’t felt a thing. Really- not a thing.
What Does an hCG Injection feel like?
Okay, so in all reality, there will be times when you feel a slight sensation when you do your injection- many times the hCG injections don’t hurt at all and I don’t feel anything. Sometimes it feels a little like if you take a mechanical pencil tip and push it against your thigh a little bit- you can’t honestly say it hurts but you do feel something.
The ONLY time it has hurt significantly was when I had already lost a lot of fat and was trying to inject into an are that no longer had very much fat and that I had already injected into many many times. Maybe scar tissue, maybe not enough fat, maybe both, I don’t know. I just stopped that and found a fattier place to inject and all was well again.
As long as you keep finding nice fatty areas to inject into (stomach, belly, inner and outer thighs, etc) it will not be uncomfortable. It’s a mental thing more than anything else, because it really doesn’t hurt. You’ll be an old pro in no time.
What does an hCG Injection Feel Like?
What Does an hCG Injection feel like?
For the most part, you really don’t feel much of anything- it really doesn’t hurt and many times I literally feel nothing.
In all reality though, there will be times when you feel a slight sensation when you do your injection- many times the hCG injections don’t hurt at all and I don’t feel anything. Sometimes it feels a little like if you take a mechanical pencil tip and push it against your thigh a little bit- you can’t honestly say it hurts but you do feel something. Still, it’s not any kind of sensation to be afraid of as it doesn’t actually hurt.
The ONLY time that an hCG Injection has hurt significantly for me was when I had already lost a lot of fat and was trying to inject into an area that no longer had very much fat and that I had already injected into many many times. Maybe scar tissue, maybe not enough fat, maybe both, I don’t know. I just stopped that and found a fattier place to inject and all was well again.
As long as you keep finding nice fatty areas to inject into (stomach, belly, inner and outer thighs, etc) it will not be uncomfortable. It’s a mental thing more than anything else, because it really doesn’t hurt. You’ll be an old pro in no time.
Can I pre-load my needles with hCG?
Yes, you can, but please read my thoughts on why you may not want to do this.
Why it may be a good idea NOT to pre-load needles with hCG:
Keeping your hCG in the vial until you need it each day allows you to change your dose as hCG when needed.
The main reason it may be a good idea to keep your hCG mixture in the vial and take out your hCG on a daily basis from it is in case you need to change your dose mid-round. This happens all the time- in fact, if you are a person who happens to start miraculously on the exact perfect dose of hCG for you, and not need to change the dosage at some point during the round, well you are rare my friend.
By dosing your hCG daily as needed instead of pre-loading your needles, you will be able to adjust your dose as necessary. At the start of each hCG round, sometimes there is a dosage change that needs to be made almost right away as you may find the dose you’re on to be too high or too low to create that non-hunger state that is very important. Additionally, once you find a dose that feels really good and makes you not hungry, you may still find a few weeks in to the diet as you’ve lost weight that you need to reduce or adjust your dose once again- many as they get smaller have found that they’ve needed to gradually reduce their dose of hCG to get the same no-hunger feeling.
If you pre-load your needles, you will not be able to change your dose unless you put your injection needle back into the hCG vial and this will dull the needle further making your injection painful. Also it’s just a lot of trouble to do this.
If you do decide you want to pre-load your needles anyway, this is how you can do it:
– Draw up enough hCG for the given dose into each injection syringe, being careful to make sure that the entire chosen area of the syringe is full of the hCG liquid and there are no gaping holes or pockets of air. Do no let the needles touch anything else except where you stick it into the hCG vial and immediately…
– Put the injection caps back on each needle.
– Store the needles in a paper bag or something else that will prevent light from reaching them.
– Store them in the fridge.
Where do you inject hCG?
It’s important when using hCG injections to inject in a place with lots of fat. You want to inject the hCG into your fat. If it goes in your muscle that’s okay too, but most likely the needles you’ll get in your hCG kit will be fairly short and just the right length to reach your fat.
The usual places that hCGer’s seem to use and that I’ve used for my own hCG injections are in the belly area, on either side of the belly button at least an inch away, the inner and outer thighs, buttocks (if you can reach!) and I’ve also injected into my fattier tricep area.
On a 40 day round of HCG injections, since you are supposed to skip a shot 1 day a week, when is the best day to eliminate that shot?
For all but one of my long rounds of hCG, I skipped a shot once a week as the original protocol tells you to do. Usually I just started skipping it about 1 week into starting the vlcd. I find in general that the one day with no injection really doesn’t feel any different than the days with injections (usually it’s only if you were to skip a 2nd day that you would start to get hungry etc.) Many people load on the weekend, so this means their skip day might end up being on a tuesday or wednesday. But any day really is fine.
The main thing is I feel that it’s nice to get a whole week of vlcd’s in before doing the first skip day, in my opinion.
How do you dispose of the used needles and the sterile water?
You can either get a sharps container, or I believe others will put them in an empty plastic gallon milk jug and toss it that way. I believe the legality of all this varies from state to state so you might want to look that up for your state.
Can hCG lose effectiveness?
Yes there are a few ways this can happen. One is that hCG is very unstable in liquid form. That’s the reason it’s put into powder form before you get it in your vial (called Lypholization – watch the pharmacist explain this process to us here!) Once the hCG is mixed up by you, the guesstimate is that it stays usable (as long as you keep it in the fridge at all times except when you use it to get your injection) for about 4 weeks or so. Usually after 4 weeks, it’s always a good idea to re-mix your hCG, even if you have some left. You can often start to tell that it’s losing potency because you’ll get hungrier and having issues with weight loss. I have re-mixed my hCG at 3 weeks many times just to be safe.
Why do you not follow Dr Simeons directions for the injections? He used a very long needle and the injections were in the back buttocks Other uses of hcg follow the same protocol, a very long needle and injections in the back upper buttocks
So basically in a nutshell it has been found that hCG absorbs into your system better through subcutaneous actually vs. intramuscular- see this study regarding this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12749424
Aside from that there is the circumstantial type stuff where people get the same results – ie both hunger- which is the main way you know you’ve absorbed it properly, as well as weight loss – I’ve even seen people do both- 1 round with sub q and one round with intramuscular and they did not lose more weight with IM.
For instance, I took 125iu’s subcutaneously, the same dosage Dr. S gave his patient’s IM and had no hunger at all – so obviously I absorbed it still.
It’s nice to know this actually because the shorter needles are nice!
Either way of course people can do what they feel is best, but the vast majority of people using the hCG protocol now do it sub q and the research seems to show it works well this way.