Americans are sitting more than ever and also eating worse. This deadly combination of inactivity and an unhealthy diet is putting a lot of stress on people’s livelihood. It makes sense that people are encouraged to test out different diets.
There are a multitude of diets that you can try. Every diet has its own regulations, results and challenges. One of the most popular recent diets is the HCG diet, but how does the HCG diet work?
This is a diet that results in extreme weight loss, it’s also been around for quite a while. Use this handy guide to learn everything you need to know about the HCG diet.
What Is HCG?
HCG or Human Chorionic Gonadotropin is a hormone the female body produces during pregnancy. It helps the embryo and fetus develop. If there are fertility issues, a doctor may prescribe HCG injections to treat fertility.
HCG helps maintain the production of hormones like progesterone and estrogen, and it’s most prominent during the first three months of pregnancy. HCG helps promote weight loss in both men and women because it can speed up the metabolism.
Introduced to the body in drops, HCG enhances your metabolism, which makes it a powerful tool for quickly losing a lot of weight. When your metabolism is fast, you’ll find it easier to shed pounds.
How Does the HCG Diet Work?
You may be tired of exercising and eating well without seeing results. Naturally, you may wonder if there is a specialized diet that could give your weight loss a boost. Perhaps you stumbled on the HCG diet and are looking to know more about it.
The HCG diet has been around for a while, but it was first popular in the 1950s. The biggest supporters of this diet say it can curb your hunger and reset your metabolism, fixing any ‘abnormal eating habits’.
The way it works is that you take drops of HCG and along with a HCG diet plan, you’ll be shedding weight. Backers say that you can lose up to a pound a day without feeling hungry or fatigued. The HCG diet has three different phases.
The first phase is gorging for two days while taking the drops. You take 15 drops each serving, 3 times a day. The goal is to eat as much as possible to increase your metabolism.
The next phase, phase 2, is taking HCG drops while eating a 500 calorie diet. Three times a day you’ll do 15 drops of HCG. You continue this for 27-40 days, depending on the results you’re looking for.
The last phase is when you start eating a regular amount of food again. Make sure it’s healthy food, no starches or sugars. Weigh yourself often to stay within 2 pounds of your goal weight.
Benefits of HCG
There are several benefits to an HCG diet. If you feel like your energy is low and that you’re more sluggish than usual, look at the changes HCG makes in your body. Remember that everybody is different and you may not experience every benefit mentioned.
Improved Metabolism
When you use HCG, it essentially instructs your body to use fat as an energy supply and that speeds up your metabolic rate. Other diets require you to cut back on calories and leave you hungry with a lower metabolism. If you’re always wondering why you have that one friend that can eat anything without gaining weight, it’s probably because they have a fast metabolism.
Increased Energy
Americans are tired. It could be because they’re overworked or it could be their diet. Because of so many diets limiting your calories, it’s easy to feel fatigued.
HCG is great because your body is releasing adipose fat, which turns into energy. Many people who try the HCG diet report an increase in energy within a couple of days.
Preserves Muscles
When you do a diet with a big calorie deficit, you will lose fat, but you’ll also lose valuable muscle. Muscle is more difficult to gain than fat, and if you took a break from the diet, you could end up gaining fat back more easily than muscle. Using HCG will allow you to preserve muscle while losing fat so you can keep your strength.
Regulates Your Hormones
When you take HCG, your body’s hormones regulate. If you’re a man taking HCG, you might notice that it improves your libido. If you’re a woman, it’ll balance out your estrogen levels and this can lead to healthy weight loss.
HCG Diet Recipes
If you’re ready to commit to this diet, you’ll want to make sure you know the recipes you’ll be able to follow that work under this diet. There are plenty of resources that will list specific recipes that adhere to the 500 calorie limit guidelines.
Generally, it’s two meals a day, and it includes:
- protein
- vegetable
- fruit
- one serving of bread
While it may be tempting to eat unhealthy foods, remember that you want to treat your body with kindness and give it well-balanced meals. Even if the calories are restricted, it’s important to make sure that the meals you eat are nutritious.
HCG Diet For Weight Loss
There is a lot of pressure to adhere to beauty standards, and finding the right diet and exercise plan can be difficult. As you research different diets, be sure it’s something you’ll be able to maintain, and that works with your lifestyle. After all, your body is a temple and you want to treat it right!
So how does the HCG diet work? It uses drops of HCG along with a diet plan in order to help you lose weight. Consider this as an option for the next time you’re ready to start a new diet.
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