With obesity on the rise, losing weight is on the minds of many wanting to look and feel their best. This has led to a growing number of diets and weight loss clinics as well as good information lost in the bad. One weight loss solution that many doctors and clinics will recommend is using HCG and calorie restriction to shed the pounds quickly and safely. It can be difficult to find good information on this topic, however, that describes how and why this treatment can work for you.
What Is HCG?
HCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin and is colloquially called “the pregnancy hormone” because this hormone is naturally produced by women to help stabilize their metabolism during pregnancy. It is often prescribed to help increase fertility in women and to treat hypogonadism, a condition where not enough testosterone is produced by the testicles. While HCG injections are not yet a popular prescription for weight loss, studies are being done on its effectiveness and long-term effects.
How Does the HCG Diet Work?
The HCG diet consists of injections combined with calorie restriction, usually in the 500-800 calorie range. The main effects of HCG in this diet are reducing the feeling of hunger, balancing hormones, and encouraging the burning of fat instead of the wasting of muscle. When you restrict calories without taking HCG, your body will often go into “starvation mode” which is a hold over from when food supplies were less reliable. This will encourage the body to store any calorie intake as fat, scavenge muscle tissue for fuel and increase feelings of hunger, which leads to a diet failing or even binge eating in response.
What Are Other Benefits of HCG?
Because there are more established treatments using HCG, there are other benefits for some who get injections such as increasing testosterone levels and fertility. Many bodybuilders will add these injections to their anabolic-androgenic steroid cycles to help reduce the side effects of testosterone such as shrinking gonads and infertility, and the hormone crashes which follow these cycles.
Are There Risks?
As with any treatment, there are some risks to adding HCG to your weight loss plan and the best way to minimize these risks is to talk to your doctor about adding this hormone as well as any prescription or over-the-counter medications and supplements you are taking. One you should know is that injections are the only safe and effective way to get this hormone. Not only are pills and drops not approved by the FDA, but there is evidence that these do not get absorbed into your blood and just get flushed out of your system. Other risks can include blood clots, mood swings, and the enlargement of male breasts and prostates. While increased fertility is a benefit for many, the fact that HCG can stimulate ovulation increases the risk of pregnancy.
There seem to be as many ways to lose weight as there are stars in the sky, especially as obesity rates continue to grow, some of these are based more on popular misconceptions instead of science and can cause more harm than good. When you talk to your doctor about weight loss plans, ask how regular injections of HCG can help your diet and exercise plans succeed.