The biggest question on people’s minds when they’re considering the HCG diet method of weight loss is “Does it work?” The answer is yes, it does work, but you do have to be careful. There are HCG diet scams out there.

The easiest indicator of scam or scam-free is price. HCG is a hormone produced in humans and therefore is not cheap to produce. So, it’s not going to be cheap for you, the consumer, to buy. Scammers can mark up the price of their junky products too though, so price should not be the only indicator you use to determine quality.

Look for products made in the US or another country with trusted pharmaceutical regulations (like Canada maybe). As for myself, I would stick to the US-produced stuff—not out of ethnocentricity—just because it’s harder to determine what you’re really getting when HCG products come from a different country.  Inferior HCG products can result in HCG side effects.

How the HCG diet works can be explained through this simple formula: You eat a lot less calories and your body burns up your fat stores to make up for it. One thing people aren’t often aware of is that calories equal pounds. In order to lose pounds you must lose calories; either by not eating them or exercising them away.

The HCG diet can help you with your initial weight loss but it’s up to you to maintain those losses.

A good thing to remember after completing the diet is that to maintain your weight you must eat the same amount of calories that you burn. For example, the recommended daily caloric intake for a not-so-active man is 2,000. If you’re a woman of slight build who is also fairly sedentary, you may want to keep your daily caloric intake to around 1,500.

It’s good to consult with a doctor or dietician to really get a handle on how many calories you need to stay healthy and where they should come from, but you can also learn to listen to your body to keep yourself in check.

One rule I keep for myself is to only eat when I actually feel hungry. Interestingly enough, eating to hunger and drinking to thirst have been shown to work very well for keeping us humans healthy.

If it’s snack time and I’m feeling pretty full, I don’t eat until I feel like I actually need a snack. However, it’s not good to wait until you are starving because then you might eat more than you actually need to, in order to feel satisfied. That’s one of the reasons many nutritionists and fitness experts recommend eating five to six small meals a day.

The HCG diet can help you get used to eating smaller meals than you are might currently be used to. After a few days of eating smaller portions your stomach actually shrinks a little. This makes you feel full sooner—meaning you eat less but still feel satisfied.

If you can stick with eating small meals even after you complete the diet, it will be easier to maintain your weight loss. Obviously, you don’t want to be as restrictive with your calories as you were on the diet because it’s too low-calorie for your body to sustain for a very long time. In fact, you are only supposed to do the diet phase of the HCG diet for 40 days.

The official HCG diet plan was created by a British endocrinologist named Dr. Albert T. W. Simeons. He discovered its usefulness as a weight loss aid while studying calorie-deficient, pregnant women in India. He observed that these women lost fat but not lean muscle tissue during their pregnancy despite not having enough calories in their diet.

This led him to try to human pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin, on people with Frolich’s Syndrome (a problem with the feeding centers of the hypothalamus that makes you eat more than you should). He found that they also lost fat rather than lean muscle when they were put on a low-calorie diet.

Dr. Simeons published his findings in his book, Pounds and Inches and outlined the HCG diet plan.

And thus, the HCG diet we know and love today was born. Notice that in both the cases specified above, a low dose of HCG was paired with a low-calorie diet (by choice in the case of Frölich’s Syndrome patients and because of unfortunate circumstances in the case of the Indian women).

The HCG does not cause the weight loss, decreasing your caloric intake does. However, when you cut too many calories from your diet—and very quickly—your body will react by slowing your metabolism and eating whatever is most readily available; which is your muscles.

HCG helps to program your body to go for the harder-to-burn fat stores in your body because obviously it’s not good to lose muscle in the name of weight loss.

The HCG diet as outlined in Dr. Simeons book contains three phases: a loading phase, a diet phase, and a maintenance phase. People generally lose between a half a pound to two pounds per day while doing the diet phase and taking their HCG.

The loading phase only lasts two days—which is good because it involves taking your HCG and eating as much as you possibly can to stay full all day long. This helps signal to your brain that there is enough food available—an important step because food scarcity is something that makes your brain slow down your metabolism so you lose less weight.  HCG diet dangers are also possible when you starved yourself while dieting.

After your two loading days you move on to the diet phase. This is the hardest phase of the plan. How long it lasts depends largely on you and how much weight you want to lose. Because the diet is so very low in calories, you should not diet for longer than 40 days. It’s not good for your body to go that long with that little food.

The diet phase generally lasts 23 to 40 days although it can go even shorter if you don’t have that much weight to lose. This phase of the plan involves taking your HCG (in three daily doses if you’re doing the drops) and adhering to a strict low-calorie, high-protein diet.

For example, breakfast is merely tea or coffee without cream or sugar. You can have a tablespoon of milk and use saccharin or liquid Stevia for sweetener but that’s it. Lunch and dinner involve a 3.5 serving of meat, a serving of one allowed vegetable (picked from a list), a serving of fruit (also picked from a list), and one Italian breadstick called grissini or two pieces of Melba brand toast.

The maintenance phase is still strict but should be a relief from the diet phase. This phase lasts three weeks and involves staying away from starches and refined sugars to help your body maintain the weight loss.

Don’t let the name confuse you. The Liquid HCG Diet is not one of those colon-cleansing, liquids-only diets. It’s the HCG diet (low-calorie, high-protein) coupled with liquid HCG drops. This is the main (and most recommended) alternative to receiving your daily dose of HCG via injections.

The HCG hormone is helpful in losing weight only when paired with the diet. It helps keep you from feeling as hungry during the low-calorie phase of the diet and—most importantly—helps your body retain muscle mass while burning off fat stores.

The protein found in our muscles is easier for our bodies to access and burn than the calories found in our fat stores, so our bodies will usually go for the muscles when calories are scarce instead of the fat. HCG helps prevent that from happening.

The HCG drops contain the HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) hormone in an alcohol base similar to what your liquid vanilla or maple is swimming around in. Obviously, it’s not a high enough alcohol content to have an affect you.

The drops contain no flavoring and have very little taste to speak of. Some people experience a slightly bitter taste from the alcohol but if you administer them carefully they won’t come in contact with the taste receptors on your tongue (these are usually located on the top, tip, and sides of your tongue).

Some people also feel a slight tingling sensation from the alcohol in the drops, but it’s usually not painful or even uncomfortable. They simply can tell that something has been applied to the skin under their tongue and it goes away in a couple minutes.

You take the drops in three doses per day—15 drops per dose. The drops are administered under your tongue because that is where your body can absorb them most easily. The underside of your tongue is full of soft tissue and blood vessels that is easy for the HCG drops to penetrate.

15 drops is a lot to administer at one time—especially when you’re trying to get those drops directly under your tongue.  It’s a good idea to watch yourself in the mirror as you do it—or better yet—count your drops into a small medicine cup and pour them under your tongue. Counting out the drops into a spoon or cup can help you ensure you’re getting an accurate dose.

The trickiest part is timing the drops just right. They need to be taken 20 minutes before you eat or 20 minutes after you eat. You can actually go for longer than 20 minutes in either case, it just needs to be at least 20 minutes.

A lot of HCGers set a timer to help them keep track of the time. You may want to take your HCG, set the timer for 20 minutes, and prepare your meal while you are waiting for the 20 minutes to elapse. You can also set the timer after you’re done eating and wait to take your drops—whichever works best for you.

It’s a good idea to try and take your HCG drops at about the same time every day. It can also help you stick to the diet more easily if you program your body to be hungry at certain times of the day. You will be less likely to cheat if you know exactly when your next meal or snack is coming.

There are lots of different HCG programs, plans, and books out there these days and they all spawned from one source: Pounds and Inches. This is the HCG diet book written by Dr. Albert T. W. Simeons, the endocrinologist who first discovered the use of HCG as a weight loss aid.

Dr. Simeons wrote this book to help combat obesity after researching the use of HCG in calorie-deficient pregnant women in India and Frolich’s Syndrome sufferers (a problem with the hypothalamus that causes obesity). His book outlines the basic HCG diet that is used today.

Here’s a quick run-down of what his book delineates for the diet phase of the plan:

Breakfast:

Breakfast consists of as much tea or coffee as you care to consume, but without cream or sugar. You are allotted one tablespoonful of milk and you may use liquid Stevia or saccharin for sweetener if you so desire. Breakfast is pretty sparse so many people will pull an item (like fruit) from their lunch or dinner menus to make the morning brighter.

Lunch:

Lunch is much heartier than breakfast, but is still very lean—this is a low-calorie diet after all. First on the lunch agenda is a serving of meat. 3.5 ounces weighed raw, to be exact. Your choices of meat include veal, beef, chicken breast, fresh white fish, lobster, crab, or shrimp. These meats must be boiled or grilled—whichever method of cooking is best for the meat you choose. E.g. you want to boil the lobster but perhaps grill the chicken.

You may have a serving of the following vegetables: spinach, chard, chicory (a green little plant often used in salad or to make substitute coffee), beet greens, green salad, tomatoes (not a vegetable but often used as one), celery, fennel, onions, red radishes, cucumbers, asparagus, or cabbage.

You may also have a serving of the following fruits: an apple, an orange, half of a grapefruit, or about a handful of strawberries.

The last item for lunch is one Italian breadstick called grissini or one piece of Melba toast. The Melba toast is usually found near the crackers or croutons in your grocery store.

You choose from the same menu for dinner as you do for lunch. It’s good to get as large of a variety of foods as possible while on the diet since your calories are so scarce, so do choose different things for each meal. You need to get as many vitamins and nutrients as possible and varying your food choices is the best way to do this.

Although the HCG diet plan is always referred to as a low-calorie diet—and it is—you don’t actually count any calories while you’re doing it. You measure and weigh your food to ensure you are consuming the correct quantities and this, in turn, results in a low-calorie diet.

So, one item you will need for completing the diet is a good food scale. These are pretty much available at any culinary shop and are definitely available online. You will also want measuring cups and spoons for those food items that do not require weighing.

Beyond the food-measuring items you simply need your diet-specific foods and your HCG. The foods specified in the diet should also be easy and convenient to find. Most of them are sitting on a shelf in your grocery store.

One of the reasons many people don’t eat healthily is because they think they can’t cook—or that cooking is too much of a hassle. Cooking fresh food from scratch is actually only as hard as you make it and usually involves a few simple steps and a little preparation.

In our busy world, it’s the norm to eat out several times a week and consider a Marie Callendar’s pot pie a home-cooked meal. But, keep in mind that any food prepared for you is full of extra calories, fat, preservatives, and who knows what. It’s fine to indulge in that pot pie every once in a while, but don’t you dare consider it healthy.

One thing people often find when they start eating fresh, whole foods is that they feel better. And, the more you eat of good, healthy food–the more you come to like it.

For example, I used to believe that I did not like vegetables. Except for a few select varieties they were a rather unfortunate necessity to be endured every once in a while. Somewhere back a few years ago, I became interested in cooking and trying new recipes.

This turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever gotten interested in because it helped me lose weight without me even trying. With each new recipe, there were new vegetables to be tried and they were often prepared in new and interesting (and delicious) ways.

So, I slowly built up my appreciation for vegetables and now I love them. Now, I will eat them steamed or raw and feel that life is good. It also helps to eat vegetables you grow yourself. It’s fun to pick your own stuff and come up with something to make out of it.

As you will notice, the bulk of what you eat on the  HCG diet  is meat, vegetables, and fruit. All you need is the right recipe to get you excited about eating these foods on a regular basis. If you learn only one thing on the diet, I hope it’s that it’s not hard to cook your own food, and that fresh food really is better.

Here is a simple HCG Diet-friendly garlic chicken recipe to show you what I mean.

You will need:

3.5 oz of Chicken (100 g) or you can make 3-4 servings at a time with 10.5-14 ounces

1 Diced Onion

3-5 cloves of garlic (left whole and unpeeled)

Your allotted lemon juice for the day (juice of one-half a lemon)

Black pepper or salt to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
2. Heat up a non-stick skillet over medium heat
3. Add the onion to the skillet. Stir constantly until it is tender. This will take about 5-10 minutes and the onion will start to turn clear. If it’s turning brown lower the heat.
4. Place the onions in a glass baking dish
5. Set your chicken on top of the onions
6. Squeeze your lemon juice over the chicken and add salt and pepper to taste
7. Place garlic on and around the chicken
8. Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil
9. Bake for about 30 to 45 minutes or until the juices run clear and there is no pink in the center of the chicken

You obviously don’t eat the garlic cloves in this meal, they are just for flavoring. You can choose to eat the onions for your vegetable or leave them in the pan and choose a different vegetable for your serving.