Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

See all the hCG interview episodes
These are in-depth conversations one-on-one with hCG ladies where you get to hear their whole weight loss story and the tips that helped them succeed.

Read short written hCG testimonials
These are short testimonials of ladies who’ve written in their hCG diet results to me for quick motivation.

——————————–

Hello my friends!

HCG Reviews Episode 7 of Interviews with Everyday People is here.

I wanted to interview B for a couple reasons.  One, she’s lost 100lbs in a rather short period of time- just 16 months in fact (which she wasn’t even on protocol the majority of that 16 months).  That in itself is enough of a reason, but secondly her particular journey has some unique factors and stories to it that I think could be useful to some of us.

Her statistics are pretty impressive.  She began the Diet around 270lbs and is now around 165lbs.  Check out B’s youtube vlogs as well!

In just 4 rounds of the protocol she’s lost 100lbs, and her waist has shrunk a full 16″!  That’s almost a foot and a half people.  Think about it.  Her original pants size was a U.S. size 28 and she is currently now wearing a size 8.  You caught that right?  Size 28.  Size 8.  I looked up sizing charts to see how many inches a size 28 waist is- it’s 48 inches.  The size 8 pants are 32 inches around.

I loved how she told us that her 16 year old daughter weighs 102lbs, so she has essentially lost her daughter in weight.

Weighing Daily on the Scale

The scale is one of those things that people either do well with or don’t do well with.  Some do better in Phase 2 and life maintenance eating to hunger and not using the scale.  The scale for them can actually hamper their ability to make good choices as it becomes something that can play head games with them and cause them to get discouraged, or obsessive.  So it makes sense for them to not use it.

For others, the scale is just a tool- a feedback mechanism that can then be used to base the decisions for that day off of.  This is how B is able to view it for herself.  It sounds like she is fairly strict when in P4 and maintenance when it comes to weighing daily and doing a correction day of some sort (steak day or egg day) whenever her weight goes outside the window where she has stabilized at.  If you can view the scale in this way, it can be a valuable tool for maintaining your weight long term.

HCG is Fragile and Loses Potency Easily!  B’s Story

I see that many HCG drops sold online are sold as being “real” rx injections, premixed drops.  The problem is, the hormone is very fragile once mixed- and we’re not talking emotionally fragile people.

When pharmaceutical is not mixed yet, meaning it’s still in a powder or tablet, it can retain it’s potency for quite some time- the expiration date on powdered, unmixed from the overseas pharmacies is often 1-2 years out, at room temperature.  But once you mix, it loses it’s potency very quickly unless it’s kept refrigerated at all times, preferably protected from light as well by covering in aluminum foil.  One source told me that the pharmacy instructs to toss the hormone if it’s been left out of the fridge for more than 6 hours.

So sadly even if the premixed drops being sold somehow are real prescription, it is going to be totally dead by the time it arrives at your doorstep, or soon thereafter.  Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my observation anyway.

B’s experience just solidifies this for me.  She said by accident one day her HCG got left out all day for 8 hours, without her knowledge.  A friend had gotten curious and accidentally left it out without telling her about it. B spent the next several days taking the hormone but got ravenous and weak and couldn’t figure out why, when prior to feeling this way, she was so not hungry on protocol she was eating only 200-300 calories a day and feeling perfectly fine.  She tested her hCG on a pregnancy test and it was negative and the whole story about how that happened came to light.

Changing Dosage As You Lose Weight

Throughout her 4 rounds of the diet B has had to change her dose every round, and it’s always to reduce the dose.  Her first round she started at 200iu and by the end of the round she was taking 140ius.  Her second round she says she was taking 150ius and ended the round on 125ius.  Here on her fourth round of the protocol she found that even 125iu of HCG was just a little too much- dropping the dose to 120iu made a big enough difference that she could tell and it makes her comfortable enough to eat even less than 500 calories most days on the protocol.

In the vast majority of cases, if a person is hungry on this diet (and they are using real prescription or real homeopathic) it’s an HCG dosage problem.

When you fill the syringe with your dose of HCG, people are already surprised by how small the amount of liquid you are injecting is- it’s hard to believe that it’s going to DO anything in your body- and then to think that the tiniest change of 5iu’s in dose can make much of a difference can be hard to believe- but it really can be true.  So don’t be afraid to fine-tune or tweak your dose even if you feel like you’re pretty close to the right dose but not quite.  As B said, “don’t let yourself be hungry on HCG!”

Should You Start the Protocol the Moment You Hear About It? Or Is A Little Research in Order?

B is a good example of what I highly recommend others do.  Take your time researching the HCG diet plan first.  Seriously folks.  I know when you are overweight you are anxious to get it off.  But this protocol is a lot more involved than the average “diet” and the repercussions for not doing it correctly are worse than any regular diet as well.  Things like consuming any fat on the diet can lead to fat gain….despite being on the 500 calories.  Yup.  For real.

B took a solid 6 months to research the protocol before starting it herself.  You don’t necessarily have to investigate it for that long, but get fully informed all the steps and rules involved with it.  What I found especially intriguing about her own particular research process though is that B said she looked for the people who hadn’t done well on this weight loss protocol and tried to figure out why they had failed so that she would learn what not to do.

Her method obviously worked well for her because she’s gone through her weight loss journey with the hormone like a freight train.

Maintaining Weightloss During Her 8 Month Break

B took a whole 8 month break between her 2nd and 3rd round.  She maintained her weight extremely well during this time, and even managed to only gain 3lbs while on a month long trip to the UK eating hot dogs and crossiants.  Wow girl!  I don’t think things would pan out that well for me on such a trip.  That is why she feels so confident though that this protocol really does reset your hypothalamus.

She did clarify a few things though- so don’t rush out to the store to buy the largest pizza you can find just yet.  From B’s story I gathered that,

1.  While she does eat things like pizza and hot dogs, she doesn’t eat foods with sugar.

2.  The “indulgences” she has are in a moderate amount.

3.  She weighs every single day and always does some sort of correction day if her weight gets outside her maintenance window.

We also discussed how individuals often discover through the protocol that certain foods or food groups causes gains on the scale or indigestion and you realize that you might have a sensitivity to it.  It sounds like B is not sensitive to gluten or carby/bready type products, and yay for that huh!

Choosing to Remove Both the Melba/Grissini AND the Fruits on Phase 2

B has done something that I have done for two of my diet rounds as well.  The vast majority leave out the 2 allotted melba/grissini sticks on the diet- we all agree the only thing consuming it seems to do is make us have cravings and want to eat more of them (they’re like chips right?  Who eats just 1 melba toast??).  If you do eat the melba, totally not putting you down here- actually it means you are better than me because you can can be satisfied with 1 melba.

However, both B and I, and lately some others I’ve seen, have been also leaving out the fruits on phase 2 as well.  Now when I did this, I did replace the fruit with 0% Fage greek yogurt.  B didn’t replace hers with anything and just ate less.  This makes the calorie count for what she was eating significantly under 500 calories- this CAN be okay, IF you are doing it because you are truly not hungry.  See my full post on Do You Have to Eat All 500 Calories?

In addition to this though, it also makes the diet extremely low carb.  So much so that you will experience your glycogen stores depleting.  Which is fine- there is just something that you will have to keep in mind later when you get to phase 3 and phase 4 if you choose to eliminate the fruits on phase 2 as well.

Glycogen is stored glucose- if you were to do a long distance bike ride or run for like 20 miles or something and you didn’t eat anything, your body would tap into this “reserve” of glucose in the form of glycogen in order to give your body the energy it needs to do that. Some is stored in your liver and the rest in your muscles.  In fact muscles are 75% water! Woa.  In B’s research she found that to store 1 gram of glycogen it takes about 3 grams of water to go with it.  This is an excellent article on glycogen and weight.

Anyways- I am actually not a glycogen expert at all- it’s something I’d like to research more because I find it fascinating but just haven’t had a lot of time.  In a nutshell though, you can have several lbs of your weight that is actually just glycogen stores.  When you make the protocol so extremely low carb by eliminating the grissini and fruits, your body’s glycogen stores will become depleted, leading you to a artificially lower weight at the end of your round.

What I’m trying to say is, you will not be able to maintain your weight within a 2lb window if you do the diet without fruits.  This is okay.  You just need to be aware of it that’s all so that you don’t get discouraged are feel frustrated that you can’t seem to keep your weight in that 2lb window.  Once you start eating a small amount of carbs again, your body will automatically refill it’s glycogen stores right away, and it can do it very quickly.  I will make a blogpost dedicated to this particular topic all by itself in the future.

Thanks B!

Thank you so much for letting me pick your brain- you really were a wealth of knowledge, and you had a wonderful story to share as well.

Related posts: