Getting Started on the HCG Diet

Before you get started on the HCG Diet, we suggest you follow this advice to help you achieve the best weight loss results possible.

1. Read Dr. Simeons’ Pounds and Inches: A New Approach to Obesity.
2. Always check with your physician before beginning any weight loss program.
3. Purchase the HCG and HCG supplies:

• A quality digital bathroom scale that measures in increments of .1 or .2 pounds (tenths)
• A quality food scale that measures in grams
• A George Foreman grill (or similar)

4. Pick your starting date. If you are a menstruating woman, you should wait until the last day of your cycle. Refer to Dr. Simeons’ manuscript for more information.
5. Take “Before” pictures of your front, side, and back profiles.
6. Take and record your measurements and weight.
7. On your start date, which is your first “Gorge Day”, begin taking the HCG on a consistent schedule.
8. The first two HCG days are your “load” or “gorge days”. These days should be spent eating as much fattening food as possible in order to restore structural fat and avoid hunger at startup.
9. Starting with the third HCG day, begin using the strict, low-calorie diet and continue until 72 hours after the last day that HCG is taken. Try to eat real, natural or organic food, avoiding antibiotics, chemical/sugared injections, and frozen glazes with ingredients you can’t pronounce.

What to expect during the first week:

• You may get a headache as you detox from sodas, sugar, etc. Note - aspirin is allowed to alleviate a headache but take tablets, no gel caps.
• You may have some hunger or minor discomfort—especially if you didn’t gorge sufficiently—usually peaking around the fifth day of the protocol.
• Lots of participants feel an overall sense of well-being—sometimes quite a euphoric feeling with lots of energy.
• You should expect fluctuations in weight loss. Dr. Simeons says: “After the fourth or fifth day of dieting, the daily loss of weight begins to decrease to one pound or somewhat less per day… Men often continue to lose regularly at that rate, but women are more irregular in spite of faultless dieting. There may be no drop at all for two or three days and then a sudden loss which reestablishes the normal average. These fluctuations are entirely due to variations in the retention and elimination of water, which are more marked in women than in men.”
• A small number of participants experience a sudden drop in blood sugar. Dr. Simeons explains, “Towards the end of a course or when a patient has nearly reached his normal weight, it occasionally happens that the blood sugar drops below normal… Such an attack of hypoglycemia… comes on suddenly; there is the same feeling of lightheadedness, weakness in the knees, trembling, and unmotivated sweating. But under HCG, hypoglycemia does not produce any feeling of hunger. All these symptoms are almost instantly relieved by taking two heaped teaspoons of sugar.” (From our own experience over the past ten years, we’ve found a teaspoon of peanut butter to be as effective as 2 teaspoons of sugar.)

Are you concerned about the safety of the HCG diet? We've done the diet and here's what we've learned.

We wish you great weight loss success!