Apparently I'm rare - most gals who do hCG seem to lose big (2-5 pounds a day) for the first week, and then their losses taper down to half a pound or so for the duration of the protocol. I didn't really have any big water weight or load weight losses, but have consistently lost right around a pound per dose the entire time, with very little deviation.m

Today is another one of those days - I was down .8 pounds to 187.4, or exactly 20 pounds gone. It is a bit mind boggling that I can lose so well and feel so good. My skin is clear and bright, my energy is great, my weight is coming off of all the right places, I'm not losing large amounts of hair (I hope it stays that way!). Things are great in dietville and my plan isn't really giving me trouble. I haven't had a hard time sticking to it, while it is boring (with the very limited food list) it is nutritious and certainly tolerable for the short time I am on it, and the losses are so great they keep me well pacified.

I admit I get highly annoyed when hCG is called a fad or crash diet. That shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of both how the hCG works and what the diet is trying to do - retool the chemical signals that control fat storage and break addictions to processed, high sugar/starch foods. It does so beautifully, and not only am I eating NO sugar these days, either in pastry or granulated form, but I don't much crave it and my palate has been completely nixed of artificial sweetener addictions, too. I've been drinking plain water without issue - no crystal light, diet soda, or the like. Not needing five pieces of gum to get me through me cravings for the day. Not needing to sweeten food like grapefruit, because they're sweet enough. Things like that.

The other thing that bugs me about the crash diet designation is that, by definition, those diets have losses that cannot be easily maintained - they yoyo users. But the entire point of the protocol is breaking food addictions, fixing the body, and resetting the previous weight set point to a new low that is maintained within a two pound window on either side. And it WORKS. On the message board and mailing list I see hundreds of ex-yoyo dieters, ex-atkiners, ex-calorie counters like me who all lost weight on our previous methods but found they couldn't be easily maintained, stopped working well after a while, or just didn't give us what we want. Hundreds of people who DID find both healthy weights and livable, easy maintenance after completing P3 and moving into P4. Many more like me who are in the process and genuinely can say we are less hungry on our 500 calorie diets than on our 1800 calorie diets of old. And yet so-called 'experts' have the gall to tell experienced dieters, who know their bodies, that such a thing is just the placebo effect and ignore all the science regarding why the hCG works and what is does? Solid science that has been around and reinforced for six decades?

When I see it lumped next to the tapeworm diet and cabbage soup cleanses, yeah, I get pretty angry. Because that ignorance (or some clinics' shameless altering of much or all of the protocol into something that doesn't work as well) is preventing a lot of people suffering with obesity from finding both a method and a long term answer to their weight control issues.

This plan is NOT for everyone. It takes research, preparation, and dedication. But willingness to do the aforementioned things brings wonderful results. I think any long term watcher of my blog knows I'm both skeptical of most diets and sensible in what I undertake. I didn't just hop on a crazy train and do something completely reckless with the body God gave me! But I hope my exhaustive documenting of my process, thoughts, and results on this blog might help some who are looking for answers find what they need. For me, the protocol is increasingly looking to be 'it'. As I move toward P3 and maintenance - P4 - we will see if that holds, but for getting the weight off in a healthy, painless, manner? This has far exceeded what calorie counting does for me. Less hunger, less cravings, weight off of my belly and NOT my face or arms (the emaciated look, where structural fat is lost but the saddlebags remain).

It has liberated me of most of my autoimmune responses to certain foods and it is OBVIOUS. No more acne, probably 80% less seborrhea, no diarrhea or bloating, no achy joints from sugar inflammation, no overproduction of oil mixed with dry, flaky patches of skin. None of that. And because those are all gone, whe I am slowly reintroducing foods in P3 I can actually tell which ones cause the problem (is it dairy or is it the bread? Sugary treats or yeast?) and which ones I can indulge in on occasions like holidays or dates, where they aren't the most nourishing thing for my body, but they can be tolerated. It allows me to, once and for all, make up a food list that works for ME and break the cravins enough to allow me to ban whatever I truly can't tolerate. That, alone, has made this diet worth it, incredible weightloss aside.

And it IS incredible - in 20 doses of hCG, with about five rest days, I have lost 20 pounds right where they needed to go, with no struggle, no hunger, and minimal pain (from the shots). And the pain factor could be completely eliminated if I did my hCG sublingually instead of subcutaneously. To 'experts' who gloss over the diet's details without researching it and actually studying what the protocol is, it looks like a fad diet. Unsustainable, unhealthy, impossible to maintain. But I know the truth - hCG has been a total answer to my prayers about my weight and food struggles, it works exactly as Dr. Simeons claimed, and for some dieters who struggled for a long time with common wisdom on their diets, it can be exactly the silver bullet needed to move the scale and blast through the wall of cravings that keeps us imprisoned in eating styles that aren't good for our health.

I am so grateful for what this diet has done for my body. I hope others can find some success in it, too. That is why I am blogging so extensively about this - the only way to counterbalance the Dr Oz/Cosmo/uninformed family doctor nonsense about this plan is more information, more experiences, more details into how and why it works. And while I'm a novice nobody, I still hope these posts can give more information to those who are curious, or might be advising a friend or relative on their weight issues. I started out a skeptic, but I'm a total believer through my own research and experience.