The HCG Weight Loss Plan--Pros and Cons

Healthy weight loss will never be as easy as weight gain; that’s just something we have to live with. But the HCG weight loss plan provides an answer.  The HCG weight loss plan has results that will amaze you. The sad fact about diets is that people actually do follow very difficult diets with no results, or at best very brief results. Sometimes the most difficult diet programs will actually make you gain weight in the long run.

It is true that the HCG diet program has been used for more than fifty years and produced remarkable results, but there are always pros and cons, so here is the brutal truth…

HCG Diet Pros
1. Rapid Fat loss The program is designed to eliminate one to two pounds of body fat per day. It has been shown to focus on fat stores rather than muscle tissue or bone density that is typically lost in extremely low calorie crash diets.

2. Health The Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin (HCG) hormone is approved by the FDA and is naturally occurring in both men and women. It has no known side effects and the levels are only slightly raised; in fact women have much higher levels of the HCG hormone during pregnancy than is recommended for the diet program.

HCG Diet Cons

1. Caloric Intake
The diet calls for strict adherence to a 500 calorie a day diet. This will be difficult at first, but it will get easier. The fact that the body begins to adapt to a minimal caloric intake is proven science, how much easier varies from person to person. The fact that the program was designed to target fat loss rather than weight loss is significant because a great deal of the weakness people feel during drastically reduced caloric intake is due to the loss of muscle that one should expect if they only followed the diet without the HCG.

2. Duration
I’m not sure if this is a pure con, because the three and a half week duration of the diet seems to make it a bit more forgiving for those intimidated by the caloric restrictions. The reason that it is a short diet is the low levels of HCG being used; your body will simply get used to the slight increase if used for a longer period of time as it would any other slight increase in hormone levels. For people with more than forty pounds of fat to lose, they can repeat the diet after a short period.

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