In Part 1 of my review on Dr. Oz’s recent show about HCG Injections, I mentioned just a couple little things that I do take a bit of an issue with.  Here today, I wanted to discuss the things I agreed with, which is really the majority of the show.

Pearls of Knowledge About the hCG Diet

Dr. Oz had a batch of women who’ve lost weight with hCG injections on the show- one one of them has been keeping off her 55 pound weightloss with hCG for 2 years now!   They all agreed unanimously that their hunger was nil on the diet and that they’ve had no issue keeping the weight off since.

Dr. Emma mentioned an interesting point of view regarding why it’s plausible that the hormone could indeed reduce hunger, more so than a placebo. She mentioned that nausea during pregnancy is associated with higher levels of human chorionic gonadotropin, and that taking the much smaller doses of hCG on the diet basically does take the edge off.

Dr. Oz also mentioned the fact that hCG in pregnancy send signals to the thyroid to produce more thyroid hormone, and profoundly affects a woman’s hormone levels.

Wow I’m pretty much loving Dr. Emma at this moment- she mentioned something else she noticed in her practice, which is that women who have experienced extreme nausea in pregnancy, sometimes find they experience a slight nauseous feeling on hCG as well (no-where near as elevated and debilating as actually being pregnant though since the levels of the hormone in pregnancy are astronomically higher than the amounts injected for the diet). She reiterated that this being the case, dosage of hCG is definitely unique for each patient- something I whole heartedly agree with.

Dr. Oz brought on the challenge of side effects from the protocol that has been reported to the FDA. Thankfully Dr. Emma cleared it up right away by showing that for the most part, the side effects listed in this manner have to do with using high-dose shots of the hormone in fertility treatments. We’re talking one 5000iu shot in one go.  hCG Dieters are using much smaller doses of hCG- usually 125-150iu, about 40 times less hCG than the amount used in fertility treatments. She added to her position on the low probability of actual “danger” or “risk” involved by stating that out of the thousands of patients she’s treated, not one has had any serious side effect from doing the Diet with injections.

Improved Recipes on the hCG Diet

Next Dr. Oz entertained chef Donatella Arpaia who has revamped P2 eating for the diet plan with recipes that are enjoyable- she did the weight loss protocol through Dr. Emma and lost 35 lbs in two cycles (what we online mostly refer to as rounds of hCG) and has been maintaining it for several months now, including through the notorious holiday season.  Arpaia’s husband is actually a Doctor and it was nice to hear his viewpoint on what he observed as his wife went through the human chorionic gonadotropin protocol. He made a great statement, that it’s not like hCG is just so miraculous that you just inject it and the weight falls off- there is a whole protocol involved in order to get the exceptional results that people are achieving. Donatella is around food all the time in her day to day life as a chef, and the effects of hCG were strong enough on her that was able to manage the very low calorie diet (for her sounds like it was between 600-800 calories) without much difficulty at all.

The chef and Dr. Oz gave a showing of what a 560 calorie day on the diet plan might look like with the foods laid out for you to see. You’ll notice that they are showing food items that are not on the “original” diet protocol list that Dr. Simeons created. I am certainly open to this myself, as I’ve eaten quite a number of off protocol foods- the thing is to do so strategically and with knowledge- for instance, the cauliflower that Donatella showed- she mentioned the nutritional count in ½ cup of cauliflower as having just 14 calories, and in my mind, it seems to fit into the framework of a qualified hCG food.

You can check out more of Donatella’s hCG recipes here: http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/chef-donatella-arpaias-low-calorie-recipes

Put It All Together

In conclusion, of course there is always more information that could be dispensed, and the focus in this particular review of hCG Injections was on weightloss and preservation of lean muscle.  There’s another side to it as well which has to do with learning how to eat properly after the diet is over and how to get over some of the reasons that led us to being overweight in the first place, like emotional eating.  This was not addressed.  But this topic is covered in great detail in Robin Woodall’s book, Weight-Loss Apocalypse: Emotional Eating Rehab Through the hCG Protocol.

If you choose to pursue doing the diet plan with hCG Injections, you can look into the pros and cons of these two companies at my Buy HCG Injections page.  If you’re still learning about the diet and how to do it etc., a good starting place is my New to the hCG Diet page and the HCG FAQ page.  You can see my own personal results using Injections here: My HCG Diet Results

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