HCG Diet Pros and Cons

The HCG Diet has certainly gained favor in recent years for promising to help a person lose weight at an amazing rate. However, is this the right diet for you and does it really deliver on its promises?

HCG Diet

What is HCG?

Human Chorionic Gonadotropin is a hormone that is actually found in the human body. It is produced by the pituitary gland and can be found in the urine of pregnant women. Also, there are certain tumors that product HCG as well.

What’s special about HCG is that the hormone allows the body to better access the fat at a faster rate than normal, especially while eating a low calorie diet. This means that instead of burning bone mass or muscle tissue, you actually burn away the fast instead.

The theory behind the diet program is to drastically cut down on the calories to help force your body to tap the fat cells for energy thanks to taking injections of HCG. Since increasing HCG in your system will reduce your appetite levels.

The diet promises to help you lose up to a pound or more a day as long as you are on the diet. The combination of calorie restriction and the HCG hormone is designed to facilitate the weight loss in a manner that is very quick and promises to burn away the fat as well.

The Pros of the HCG Diet

For certain people, especially those who only need to lose a few pounds then this crash diet just might work. Plus, the diet can be taken in pill or drop form instead of having the injections which means less pain.

The Cons of the HCG Diet

This particular type of diet is not approved by FDA and they warn of the health risks associated with this diet program. Because of the calorie restrictions which at 500 is very severe, the potential health risks are considerable with this particular program. The HCG hormone itself seems to have very little, if any effect since the calorie restriction alone will cause you to lose weight in an unhealthy manner.

In addition, there is not exercise regimen associated with the diet which would help build up muscle tissue. Plus, there are no long term studies that fully understand just what this diet could do to your body over time. There are also major health risks associated with this type of diet that makes it unsuitable for most people.

The promise of losing up to a pound or more per day can only be done if you lose fluids as fat simply cannot be burned away that quickly. This means that rebounding from the diet is a real possibility which removes it from consideration as a long range plan to deal with weight loss.

What To Take Away

Basically, the HCG diet offers a lot of promise but the truth is that for most people it has failed to deliver. For those who are really interested in losing weight, this is just not the program that will do it and in fact should be avoided because of the potential health risk.