This post is a response to a discussion started on BHUZ about a dancer who was curious about the HCG diet for weight loss.
I am a naturopathic doctor (ND), and this is a very "hot" topic in alternative healthcare right now. I can't advise anyone yea or nay, but I can give those who are curious some insight into my thoughts on the subject. First of all, the one thing that all diets that work have in common is calorie restriction. When you restrict the amount of food you eat, you lose weight. A drawback of that strategy, however, is the "yo-yo" phenomenon: while you are restricting calories your body goes into "save whatever I get" mode. Then, once you begin to eat normally again, you are still saving everything you eat, which makes you gain all the weight back.
The HCG diet comes with this drawback. Many re-gain the weight after stopping pills or shots. Another side-effect is anxiety, which has been mentioned. There are other side effects which I won't take time to mention here, but the biggest is cost! Plus, this hormone is only supposed to be in the body during PREGNANCY, and I'm sure there are undesired long-term effects that have not been adequately researched.
That said, what are some time-honored ways to lose weight? Weight lifting. Muscle burns fat. There was a big cardio craze in the '90's to "burn fat", but research has shown that building muscle bulk will burn more fat than cardio, every time. And when you weight lift, switch it up. "Muscle confusion" training is the best way to ensure that your body doesn't adjust to your fitness routine, and the less you can adjust, the more fat you will burn. Check out Mark Lauren's website "You are your own gym" for a great discussion on bodyweight exercises and muscle confusion:
Welcome to You Are Your Own Gym: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises by Mark Lauren
Another great fitness regimen based on these principles is CrossFit.
Welcome to CrossFit: Forging Elite Fitness
What else? Diet, of course. Whole foods. What is a whole food? Anything that grew out of the ground, dropped from a tree or bush, or was slaughtered. No processing. Think: nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, meats, fish in as close to their original format as possible. The less starchy, the better for weight loss (so go easy on potatoes, bananas, yams). Check out the World's Healthiest Foods website:
The World's Healthiest Foods
What else? Mental approach to how we perceive weight, food, eating, and our body image. For this, I prefer using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), which addresses our conscious and subconscious attitudes surrounding the choices we make. For those skeptics and name-droppers, it's been highly endorsed as a psycho-emotional therapy by the likes of Deepak Chopra and Dr. Mercola. Check out:
EFTUniverse.com
The good news? All of the suggestions I've mentioned above are FREE. Bodyweight exercises can be done at home, with few props. Many EFT resources are free. And buying whole foods is often less expensive than purchasing their processed cousins. HCG is a band-aid, a short-cut, not a viable long-term solution to the weight issue or to achieving optimal health.
