Downsides Of Doing The HCG Diet

Most diets seem like pretty simple things. You eat certain foods or restrict calories in order to lose weight. However, when you introduce hormones, prescription, or non-prescription drugs into the mix, the diet has the potential to become dangerous.

The HCG diet is the latest fad diet to be given the “miracle cure” status by many physicians and weight loss marketers. HCG, which stands for human chorionic gonadotropin, is a hormone produced mainly during pregnancy to help the mother support a growing fetus. By suppressing appetite, HCG is claimed to help people lose weight with little or no exercise. Before you go on this diet you may want to consider the possible downsides that few people are talking about.

HCG use curbs natural hunger:

This is bad on a very basic level. The body provides natural hormonal and chemical signals of hunger because it needs energy and nutrients for cellular function. By eating 500 calories a day on the HCG diet, you’re literally inducing cellular starvation through the severe restriction of nutrients. Regardless of what any so called expert tells you, this is never a very good idea.

Sure you may lose some weight during the diet, but what is it doing to your body? The reality is there’s simply not enough research on the long-term effects of HCG as a weight loss aid. If you use HCG to help you lose weight, nobody, not even your doctor, can tell you with full certainty what the long-term risks factors are. This fact alone should make you think twice.

During the HCG Diet you’re encouraged not to exercise:

Right off the bat the most important aspect of changing your body composition is being removed from the equation. Proponents of the HCG diet don’t want you to exercise because they know it would cause your metabolism to down-regulate in a hurry. This would put you in a severe catabolic state and bring any benefits of the diet to a quick halt. The bigger problem with all this is it gives the dieter unrealistic expectations. At some point you’re going to have to stop the diet and then what happens? If you’ve not developed healthy lifestyle habits with nutrition and exercise there’s little chance of being able to keep the weight off.

The HCG Diet gives you unneeded hormones:

You need to remember that HCG is for the most part produced by females solely during pregnancy. Some people seem to be missing this concept. If it was intended to be used in the metabolic processes for fat loss your body would produce it on its own through normal mechanisms.

The HCG Diet is expensive:
Depending on your source, diet cycles with HCG injections or sublingual drops can cost upwards of $800 or more. You’ll want to think about the costs as being an investment. What do you expect long-term not just short-term as far as an acceptable return on your investment? Let’s just say the diet works for you and you lose 20-30 pounds. Would you still think it was a good investment if you gained all the weight back within a month or two after stopping the diet?

Creating a supportive nutrition eating plan, working out regularly, developing new lifestyle habits, these are essential components in any program which can produce long-term weight loss success. When you go on the HCG Diet, you are no longer relying on yourself. Consistency, determination and lifestyle changes are thrown out the window in favor of a drug.

There may be potential unknown health risks of using HCG as a weight loss drug that we don’t even know about yet. Time will tell whether or not the risks outweigh the potential rewards. This much I know for sure however. The biggest downside of doing the HCG diet is any drop on the scale will certainly be short-term unless lifestyle habits are changed. The HCG Diet is a band-aid and all band-aids eventually fall off.

As a certified Charleston personal trainer I’ve seen the diet work well for some people and fail miserably with others. In general from what I’ve experienced the more weight the individual has to lose, the more likely they’ll be able to stick with the diet. People with a lot of weight to lose will always do better on severe calorie restrictive diets. Physiologically, they’ll lose less muscle tissue during periods of deprivation.

Regardless of what anyone pitching the diet tells you, there is no way you can severely restrict calories and not lose some lean muscle tissue. This is an important fact to consider as the more lean muscle you lose during a diet; the easier it will be to gain fat after it’s over.

As you can see I’m not a big proponent of the diet. However, I don’t want to claim the diet is ineffective or won’t help you to lose weight. There are more than enough people who have shown positive weight loss on the diet to let the results speak for themselves. Having said that, there are also countless others who have had bad experiences with the diet and lost more than just money from their wallet. Whenever you start messing around with the endocrine system and hormonal balances, you’re simply rolling the dice.

I can’t tell you with any degree of certainty whether or not the HCG will work for you, help or harm. I simply want you to think about the big picture before jumping onto this diet. Regardless of whether or not it will work or be safe…only you can determine if you think it will be worth it in the long run.

That’s something you’ll have to decide. I hope that you’ll consider the “unknowns” however before running out to be the next guinea pig. There is no debate on the benefits of eating whole, natural foods, and using physical activity to lose weight.