How To Use HCG For Dieting

Human chorionic gonadotropin (aka HCG) has found popularity as a diet supplement, with users claiming to lose nearly 1 lb. per day over the course of a month. The diet depends on a combination of caloric restrictions (to the tune of 500 Cal/day, about a quarter of recommended needs) and HCG to help users lose weight, specifically fat, while retaining lean mass. How does all this work?

HCG is the pregnancy hormone

HCG is the same hormone for which pregnancy tests look. The logic for its use as a dietary supplement is that in pregnant women the hormone is believed to cause the body to go into a fat-burning mode. That is right - even though a pregnant woman gains weight, she is actually mobilizing fat stores to feed the fetus. If you were to have the same process occur, but without the fetus, you would simply burn the fat yourself, or so the reasoning goes. Meanwhile, you retain the lean mass that a caloric restricting diet typically burns as well. But how is it taken exactly?

The HCG diet

The diet itself is a carefully-formatted procedure involving several phases. The HCG is taken in the form of drops that is added to food or taken directly. HCG is normally taken over the entire month-long course of the diet, while the caloric intake is adjusted over the five phases. At the end of the diet, the HCG is discontinued. Because the diet involves eating as little as 500 calories a day, it is recommended that it is followed with the supervision of a physician. Five hundred calories a day is an amount of food that leads to starvation if it is not nutritionally well-balanced.

HCG is believed to make rapid weight loss possible without losing lean weight, but the diet is not for the faint of heart. Notify your physician, and research the risks carefully before embarking on this promising but challenging weight-loss regiment.

The hormone is believed to cause the body to go into a fat-burning mode