hCG Diet Interviews – Episode 2 – Losing and Maintaining Weight After Both Cancer and Menopause

Hello lovely hCGers. This interview is part of what is now a plethora of weight loss success stories with real everyday women (and men! There’s a few dude interviews in there) who have used either hCG injections or drops with the hCG diet protocol to lose between 20 and 150 lbs.

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.

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The HCG Diet Reviews – Episode 2!

The Lovely Side Effects of Cancer and Menopause- Weight Gain

I had the honor of interviewing Barbara Yaffee recently, a 56 year old cancer survivor who recently went through the hCG Diet protocol in it’s entirety and came out the other side as one very pleased woman. She has 2 awesome websites, urbanknitta.com, and bondingweekend.com a site that addresses and arranges retreats related to building stronger relationships in life with those important to you. Additionally she has just launched an awesome lifestyle blog inspiredgirl.me.

Barbara has some wonderful insights to share of her experience on the Diet protocol. She has an interesting background- she dealt with eating disorders as a young person, and later went through recovery and learned how to properly love and care for her body. That was many years ago. She has maintained a stable healthy weight for many years now until the recent past when she went through therapy for cancer.

The anti-cancer drugs she had to take caused a change in her hormones and put her into early menopause. With that came a 15 lb weight gain, in what seemed like overnight fashion after so many years of maintaining a healthy weight. Her eating habits had not changed. She found herself in a predicament where even eating as little as 1200 calories was causing her to gain weight still and it was very frustrating for her, being that she had spent so many years eating so healthy (no gluten, no refined sugars) and was very physically active.

What Is It Important to Know About the hCG Diet or Any Diet?

Barbara’s first thoughts of the Diet were, as most of ours were, skeptical. Anyone will lose weight if they only eat 500 calories a day! That’s a given. Being that she came from an eating disorder background, she was not surprisingly leery- it was because she had a naturopathic doctor whom she trusted that recommended the diet that she decided to look into it. Then of course she found the wonderful youtube community online and my hcgchica results showing my proof of fat loss and ability to keep off the weight lost with hCG.

That was really one of Barbara’s biggest concerns- the ability to maintain weightloss long term and have a healthy metabolism- and that is what I strongly feel we should all be concerned with, no matter what diet we choose to try. How this is achieved, from what I’ve seen, has 2 parts to it:

how the actual diet itself interacts with our body
how our metabolism functions after the diet

Let’s actually discuss point #2 first- how is the metabolism functioning after the diet?

Barbara’s hCG Diet Results and Review

I’d like to just quote her email to me today:

“Today is my official end to P4, yea! I weighed exactly 120 lbs this morning, my LIW weight! (this is Last Injection Weight- her weight on the scale at the end of Phase 2 of the diet, the losing weight phase) Even though I ate almost 2000 calories yesterday (was super hungry for some reason). Healthy food, but some carbs for sure like peanut butter, and an organic high protein cliff bar (OMG, never been able to eat that stuff) and edamame. I do still eat a grapefruit and 2 apples every day, and raw fresh coconut, as well as drink at least 64 ounces of fluid, and I believe that all of this helps my digestion and my metabolism. And I eat often, small amounts all day long. And like you, I have been eating a lot of fruit. One other thing I noticed is this. I can eat higher HEALTHY carbs amounts if I keep the calorie count lower (1500-1600). I can eat more calories if i keep the carb count lower. And my weight seems to be more and more stable with time.”

Barbara lost 15 lbs total in her 1 round of HCG Injections – and she was only about 15 lbs overweight, so that means she’s got her perfect bod back now- at 56 years of age, in menopause no less! But more importantly, did you notice that she’s eating at least 1500-1600, and some days upwards of 2000 calories every day, while staying the same weight at 120lbs? Remember, before embarking on the Diet protocol, Barbara was gaining weight if she even approached the 1200 calorie mark, despite eating what you might call a Paleo or Low Carb lifestyle. This is a good indicator that her metabolism not only hasn’t been ruined by the hCG diet, but has actually improved.

Interaction of hCG with a 500 Calorie Diet In Our Bodies

That brings be back to point #1- the interaction of the hormone and the low calorie diet (500 calories to be exact) with the body. I wish I could say the data was completely clear cut to say exactly what was happening when you combine the too. Like the kind of data where we videos from tiny little micro-cams showing what the human chorionic gonadotropin hormone is doing inside fat cells or something. But we don’t have access to this at this time.

All I know is the results that I’ve seen. But by results, I don’t mean proof of weightloss- as we already agreed, weightloss on 500 calories will happen, hCG or no hCG. But by having hydrostatic body fat testing or DEXA scan done before and after one does the diet, it is possible to see how much fat was lost on the diet, and how much muscle was lost. So far, in my own case, and the case of others who have access to this testing, there is a high percentage of fat loss- see good examples of this here: Sabrina’s 93% fat loss on the hCG Diet, and my own fat loss results on the hCG Diet)

The fact that those who make long term healthy changes to their eating habits are able to easily keep off their weightloss from the diet kind of leads us to the above conclusion, but the testing is really nice to actually PROVE the fat loss results.

Use of Homeopathic hCG

I should mention that Barbara used homeopathic hCG. But I must immediately follow that statement with a warning- she got her homeopathic hCG through her doctor, using a brand that you can only purchase through a doctor at this time- it is not sold to the public. BE VERY LEERY of homeopathic hCG drops currently being sold online. Just this past year, the FDA forced several homeopathic hCG companies to stop selling their product with hCG in it, and in an effort to still make money, many of these companies have come out with a “new” product that contains NO hCG hormone, but have labeled and discussed the product on their websites to mislead people into thinking that their new drops still contain hCG. Sadly, there is no brand of homeopathic hCG that I can safely recommend at this time that I am 100% positive contains real homeopathic hCG. If you really want to do homeopathic hCG, I suggest you visit with an open naturopathic doc or chiropractor, and tell him or her that you’d like to use these homeopathic drops.

Otherwise, at this time, I can only feel comfortable recommending RX hCG Injections because I know I can trust the product.

Feelings of Wellness or Un-wellness on the hCG Diet

Barbara actually felt very good physically and mentally while on the Diet protocol itself.

But I want to be honest here- not everyone will feel GREAT on the Diet- that doesn’t mean you won’t lose weight and keep it off- just that not everyone will feel their best during the losing weight process.

Let me talk about this for a minute regarding why I think this is. I have done 5 rounds of the protocol now, and most of them I have felt really good, but 2 rounds I didn’t feel very good. Most of us likely have some type of health issues we are dealing with, many undiscovered, which I believe can contribute to feelings of fatigue or tiredness on the diet that may be more pronounced than others. This doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t do the weight loss protocol still, because I’d do the entire process over again in a heartbeat, as it’s led me to where I am today- but I just want to make sure that all of you reading this know that how you feel while on the diet itself will vary.

Some of you may have lots of energy and may find that you can continue exercising.
Some of you may find that you feel pretty good, but more low key than usual and that exercising while on phase 2 is too taxing, and then
Some of you may feel as I’ve felt at least one round, which is pretty crappy.

If the latter is what you have ever felt on the protocol, I tend to believe that you might have some undiagnosed health complications going on that need to be addressed- as that was the case for me- once I addressed these issues, I was able to do the following round of hCG feeling fantastic and losing a lot of fat that I kept off. Which brings me to another point- the protocol is NOT a cure all for everything that ails you. It is in my opinion, an excellent way to lose weight, but if you have undiscovered thyroid, adrenal, or hormone problems, you may need to discover and address these prior to or at least concurrently, with the diet to feel your best and to get the best results from the protocol.

If you are rather new to the diet and still in research mode, you might find my HCG FAQ’s page helpful, and my Buy HCG page helpful if you want to be sure that you purchase real prescription HCG. You can see my own personal HCG Diet before and after pics and story here.

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Comments

Marcia Olsen says

September 26, 2016 at 5:46 pm

I’ve done HCG and gain the weight back each time especially in my belly where I don’t usually gain weight. I did it again because my metabolism has slowed down due to menopause. I eat fish and chicken no starch. I’m 5’8″ and weight 128 I work out with a personal trainer 3 days a week and I walk or hike 6 miles 6 days a week. and I would like to know how many calories to eat and a meal plan.

- Kim S says
  
  May 23, 2018 at 9:30 am
  
  Hi there, I enjoyed your testimony very much, thanks for sharing. I’ve been going through menopause myself for nearly 2 years now. I haven’t had a Mensa for almost 1. Now that I’ve been on HCG for just over 1 week I have started menstruating again…. and heavily. Should I be concerned?
  
  - Li-An says
    
    May 23, 2018 at 8:18 pm
    
    Hi Kim,
    
    This is Li-an, Rayzel’s assistant. What I hear with hCG is that sometimes does strange things with a woman’s period and for menopausal women, we have had occasional reports of spotting and such. We haven’t had anyone say that their period came back as in regularly from hCG though. I hope that helps. once they are off hCG, their cycle goes back to normal, whatever that was.