HCG Diet

Many of you have already approached me about the HCG Diet.  I have criticized it so far, but have lumped it in with some previously famous fad diets.  That wasn't necessarily fair becuase thios one is a lot different.  And I don't mean that in a good way.  However, I honestly hadn't done much reading on the diet itself, but from the information I was given, was very very skeptical.  Here were some of my original reservations:

1) Don't mess with your hormones.  Ever.  Unless you get a reputable physician's recommendation and a prescription for hormone therapy, it's not only unwise, but can be extremely dangerous to mess with your body's hormone levels.  Unless there's some deficiency or over-production, there's no need to tinker with hormones.  Artificially raising hormone levels can cause later deficiencies or even permanent damage to glands.

2) Restricting your body to 500 calories might be great for losing weight... if you feel like muscle and vital organs aren't inportant.  A heavily restrictive diet like this will cause your body to go into starvation mode.  In starvation mode, the first source of internal energy is glycogen storage.  After those reserves are used (and that's pretty fast), your muscle and connective tissue is consumed next, along with some organ tissue.  Last to be consumed is body fat.  It's also not enough calories to sustain full and healthy brain function. 

3) It doesn't actually help change bad habits.  Anyone can starve themselves for a month if they really set their mind to it.  After that month, no good habits have been established in place of old bad habits.  No sustainable lifestyle changes have been made.  No healthy habits are made.  This does not bode well for keeping weight off in the long run. 

After reading both pro and con articles, it appears that my initial misgivings were justified. HCG is banned in MLB, and can cause some pretty nasty side effects.  Also, there's no credible scientific backing to the "diet" claims. 

For more info, Google "HCG Diet Side Effects" and you'll get a host of information about the possible issues it may cause.  My take is that it's not worth the risk.  Maybe you won't have any issues on the HCG diet.  Maybe you will.  But there's only one sure-fire way to lose and keep off the pounds and inches... moderate weight loss.