The HCG diet plan is a success and for all the right reasons. The people who follow this diet plan report incredible results: happy patients and amazing weight loss. While this diet is definitely effective, it is not exactly simple and it requires a lot of discipline to get these amazing results.
When Dr. Simeons came up with this diet plan in the 50s, he was in India, researching the treatment of starvation and obesity and how they relate with one another. While studying its effects closely, Dr. Simeons realized that HCG mobilizes lipids in all of his patients, which than leads to removal of fat cells from the body. This unique property was something new and had the makings of a breakthrough. Over the years, numerous studies have been conducted to prove/disprove Dr. Simeons’ findings but one thing is clear beyond doubt: the HCG diet not only offers extreme results, but also extremely fast results.
To make the diet more effective and easy to follow, Dr. Simeons broke the plan down into phases. This strategy has been adopted by many all over the world that has offered phenomenal results when followed diligently. Each phase has diet steps that are combined with HCG intake resulting in fast and healthy weight loss.
While the NEW HCG diet plan modifies the phases as per individual patient needs, the folllowing is by far the most effective and standard approach followed by most people.
Phase 1
This is the starting phase of HCG diet and also one of the most overlooked phases. In this phase, you are required to take high calorie and high fat for 2-3 days along with your prescribed dose of HCG. You may be an old recipient of this regimen or a new one but this will always be the starting point of your HCG Diet. This step is very important because your body will attempt to store new lipids and fat cells but will be prevented by HCG hormone from doing so. Instead of storing new fat, it will mobilize the existing lipids and fat in the body. Once you get started with the strict diet plan, you will experience rapid weight loss due to these mobilized fats and lipids. It is common to lose up to 10 lbs within 2-3 days! The success of this phase depends on the regular intake of HCG supplements without interrupting your schedule until it is completed.
Also known as the loading days’ phase, on the first day of the diet you will be allowed to eat anything and as much as you like. This is the best time to gorge on all the things that you are going to miss while you are on diet. Eating cakes, ice-cream, pasta, bread, French-fries is actually encouraged! For the two days, you are on a binge eating honeymoon before you start your Spartan diet from the third day.
Phase 2
This is the most important phase of your HCG plan. Starting from the third day, you would wake up feeling satiated and unwilling to eat even the smallest morsel of food. By now, you are taking your HCG, have the reference food list all set and you have chosen the duration of the diet too. Depending upon the weight loss you are aiming for, you can choose the number of days you wish to diet. Since you can lose up to 1-1.5 pound a day, you can choose a more realistic time frame suitable for your weight loss target. If all you need to lose is 10-15 pounds, you are not required to follow the regimen for 40 days!
This phase is built around the strict 500 calorie diet and requires plenty of water intake. Here is how you can plan your meals throughout the day based on the food items permissible in each list.
Breakfast
Your breakfast should be made up of sugar free coffee or tea. Since sugar is prohibited, you can take stevia or other zero-calorie sweeteners. If you like your coffee with milk, you can only add 1 tbsp. of milk, once in a 24-hour period.
Lunch
You can eat up to 100 grams of protein every day. To get an accurate weight on the scale, you must ensure that the meat is raw and unfrozen. Protein items consist of lean beef, lobster, crab, shrimp, fish or veal. When you want to consume ground beef, you can choose a 93/7 ratio, meaning 93% lean and 7% fat. The lesser the fat, the better it will be for you.
If you want to consume fish, choose carefully as fish normally contain high fat content such as tuna, eel, catfish and salmon. You can, however, consume Tipila which can be easily found and is good source of protein with very little fat. The meat that makes up your lunch must be stripped of all visible fat.
Along with meat, you can also consume one vegetable that you can pick from the list of foods. You can choose from tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, asparagus, cabbages and spinach. There is very little prohibition on greens or leafy veggies so feel free to consume as much as you like.
You can also add a bread stick or a melba toast for every lunch. However, when buying, only pick the plain ones and not the ones that come with additional seasonings or added cheese. Additionally, you can consume a fruit like 1 whole apple, handful of strawberries or ½ a grape fruit.
When you are following a diet of vegetables, you are not required to stick with strict guidelines as far as the quantity is concerned. Just use your common sense and appetite needs. Since mostly greens are filling, a salad size serving will be your best bet. Thankfully, veggies are normally very low in calorie count so one can stock up well on leafy greens. You can pick 2-3 veggies from the list and make your salad. However, hold off the dressing. It should not contain any oils, fats or sugar. Apple cider vinegar, white or red vinegars are good taste enhancers and do not have high fat content. Your seasoning ingredients can contain salt, pepper and other spices that never really hurt any salad!
Amongst sauces, mustard, teriyaki and hot sauce contain sodium and are considered safe. However, before you get any one of these home, always read the labels. If the sugar content is less than 2 grams then it is probably safe to use. You need to limit the sodium intake because when the levels of sodium increase, your body starts to retain water that will not look very pretty on the scale!
In phase 2, you are not only restricted in foods but also the cosmetics that you use. Its use must be limited to your body’s ability to absorb the fat your skin comes in contact with. Most importantly, steer clear from the massage parlors! When you are undergoing HCG diet, getting a massage can have a damaging effect. With massage, your body’s fat stores are moved around that might interfere with the fat that was being burnt by your body.
List of Allowed Foods
Vegetables: Spinach, any kind of lettuce, beet greens, cabbage, chard, onions, tomatoes, fennel, cucumber, radishes, celery, asparagus
Proteins: Boneless meat/poultry, fat trimmed meat, lobster, fish, crab, shrimp, extra lean beef, chicken,
Fruits: Apples, blackberries, blue berries or strawberries, lemons
Beverages: Herbal Tea, bottled Water, melba toast, sugarless Gum, stevia (natural sweetener, any flavor), mustard · Apple Cider Vinegar · natural herbs/spices, salt and pepper, garlic
Phase 3
This is the maintenance phase and the one that will determine the longevity of the results. It is also an extremely crucial phase that concludes your HCG diet. Even when you have reached the last day of the diet regimen, you are still required to stay on a 500 calorie diet for another three days. This is important to ensure that all traces of HCG are out of your system before you body starts to introduce larger food portions back into the body.
After the completion of 3 days, you can increase your food intake but keeping it within 1500 calories every day. You will have to maintain the calorie intake for at least 3 weeks from the last day of 500-calorie diet. You can now eat/drink things like dairy products, healthy fats such as avocados and proteins. During this phase, proteins play a huge role and are mandatory for the body to keep it working well. An average person is required to consume at least 80 grams of protein each day. This is not equal to 80 grams of weight but actually the nutritional value of the protein.
When people are transitioning from phase 2 to phase 3, they often get excited by the increased food options but end up neglecting steak and chicken that are very important sources of protein. Even though this phase is less restrictive, as far as food choices are concerned, it is mandatory for you to maintain high levels of protein to keep you going throughout the day. Eating eggs and cheese is helpful that you can complement with protein supplements to make it simpler. You must refrain from using any high-carb drinks or sugar. However, mostly protein powders are good quality and are even available in pre-made form that you can consume on the go. It is one of the best ways to make up for your body’s protein requirement.
Some guidelines that must be followed religiously in this phase include weighing yourself every morning after you are done with your morning business. Your weight should not be increased more than 2 pounds from last morning’s weight. In case it does, you must increase protein intake for that day. Call it a steak day, if you want! Make your breakfast with 2 eggs, steak for lunch and then another steak for dinner with a helping of cheese.
The reason why you need to have protein days is because your body cannot store protein as fat. So when you do consume excess of protein, all your body can do is burn it along with whatever stores of protein it can find which is usually the fat from the night before. Next morning, you would be happy to see that you are back to the weight you were on before!
In this phase, your body is being trained to remain stabilized which makes it all the more important for you to stay true to the plan. This is where it gets very tricky! Since you are allowed to eat anything, you run the risk of being too tempted and thus throwing all your effort from weeks before off balance. Many people fail at this phase, not once but many times. Your body is still not accustomed to the new weight and needs to program itself to stay at that weight. So when you introduce sugars and fats later, your body will know what to keep and what to burn. This is where you need to prime your body and not confuse it, especially if you want to maintain the body weight.
To keep your body from falling into confusion mode, you can eat from the following list of foods that are perfect for phase 3 consumption.
Meat: Loosen up meat lovers! You will love phase 3 because here you can indulge in some of your favorites again. While you can explore several items on the list, steer clear from processed meat such as hot dogs and bacon. Here are some of the foods in meat category that you can add to your food list.
Bacon, beef jerky, beef roast, Breakfast sausage, Ground beef, Lamb, Liver, Pork chops, Venison Vienna sausage
Fish: fish lovers had nothing to lose all throughout the diet. They already enjoyed their favorite fishes during 500-calorie diet phase. While in this phase, you are given too many options, you need to limit your choices based on the calories you can consume per day.
Anchovy, Bass, Clams, Catfish, eel, Herring, mackerel, mussels, oysters, salmon, sardines, squid, calamari, trout, tuna
Poultry: if you don’t enjoy fish much, HCG diet might become a slightly tough run for you. To make your plate look better, you can pick from one of the many poultry options that are available to you in the third phase of this diet: Duck, pheasant, turkey and Goose
Other sources of Protein: Thanks to the exhaustive list of foods available in the third phase, you are not required to limit your protein intake to just meat anymore. Nuts are also a good snack food to beat those hunger pangs. The vegetarians who are already struggling with limited food options for them in this diet must know that beans are off-limits as they are high in starch content. However, if you exercise caution, you may just be able to introduce some of it in your food. Here are some more sources of protein:
Hummus, but do check the ingredients; all types of nuts like cashews, hazelnuts, peanuts, pine nuts, pistachios, almonds; soy; tofu
Vegetables: vegetables are so filling, so nutritious and virtually fat free. This is why you can explore the veggie route for stabilization phase of HCG diet. However, due to high starch content, some vegetables like corn and potato have been taken off the list. But you can still consume them if you use caution. Eating it in small quantities with careful monitoring of your weight will help you get away with little carb along the way! Here are some of your choices in veggies section:
Bamboo shoots, Bean sprouts, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Green beans, Cauliflower, Eggplant, Jalapeno peppers, Mushrooms, Okra, Red chili pepper, Sauerkraut, Radishes, Snow peas, Sweet bell peppers, Turnips, Spaghetti squash, Summer squash, Zucchini, watercress
Fruits: fruits are tasty and filling and are also crucial in the stabilizing phase 3 of the diet plan. Since the diet warns against very sweet fruits like bananas and grapes, but with restraint and exercise, you may be able to indulge in sugary fruits too.
Apricots, Blackberries, Blueberries, Cantaloupe, unsweetened coconut, cranberries, guava, honeydew, lemons, kiwi, olives, limes, nectarines, papaya, peaches, pears, pineapple, plums, raspberries, watermelon
Dairy: Lucky for you, dairy of all kinds is allowed in the third phase of HCG diet. The only thing you need to beware of is extra sugar. Don’t forget that fat free and low sugar should always be your first preference.
Butter, cheese like mozzarella, parmesan, string cheese, Swiss cheese, provolone, cheddar, cottage cheese, eggs like boiled, fried, poached, deviled, scrambled, milk, sugar free yogurt
Other: Since this is a stabilization phase, you are given a lot of food options to choose from that makes it relatively easier for you to breeze through. Here are some other things that you can add to the menu to make your HCG diet taste better.
- A wine glass with a meal is OK
- You can eat dried soy bean in moderation
- You can drink fruit juices with no extra sugar and limit the sugar intake by watching the portion size
- Mayonnaise is fine but should be sugar free
- Low fat oils for baking and cooking
- Peanut butter and other sugar free nut butters
- Sugar free dressings, mustards
- Taco salad minus the tortilla
- Home made veggie dip with sugar free ingredients
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