HCG Diet - What Am I Injecting Myself With?

Losing weight is a national obsession. Four out of five American women say they are dissatisfied with the way they look. One out of four men is on a diet on any given day and nearly half of the women of the United States are restricting their food intake to lose weight. With Americans spending nearly 40 billion a year on weight loss products, the desire to feel and look thin can turn ugly when people grow desperate for an immediate solution.

"I wanted a quick easy fix - lose the weight and be done with it," says Sylvia* a 28-year-old working mom who has struggled with her weight since childhood. Sylvia had tried the Atkins diet and she had met with a nutritionist, but nothing produced her desired results.

"After my second child, I had a hard time losing the weight I had gained," she says, "And then I saw my uncle who had lost a lot of weight and he said he had taken these injections."

HCG injections.

HCG, human chorionic gonadotropin, is a hormone produced during pregnancy and is typically used to treat infertility, but Dr. Albert T.W. Simeons published a study in 1954 claiming that hCG injections, coupled with a low calorie diet, produced dramatic weight loss in men and women. In recent years, this diet has been revived and is currently one of the hottest fads on the weight loss market.

Sylvia watched her 300 lbs. uncle lose more than 20-percent of his body mass using hCG injections. "I was really surprised how focused [my uncle] was on the diet; he's older, no kids, and this [hCG diet] is all he talks about," she says. "He also claimed he was never hungry!"

Seeing the her uncle's immediate results, Sylvia called Dr. Arthur Davidson, Jr., M.D., of Ultra Health Consulting, a medical professional who administers the injections and prescribes a strict food regimen for hCG diet practitioners.

"I paid $1,500 for a six-week session of hCG injections," says Sylvia, "The first round was great, but it was so hard." Initially, Sylvia lost 15 pounds over the course of treatment.

The key component of the hCG scheme is a low-calorie diet, no more than 500 calories a day. "It wasn't rocket-science. If I'm eating this little, of course I'm going to lose the weight," she says.

A typical breakfast for Sylvia was seven raspberries. Lunch was a quarter of grilled fish and half-a-cup of uncooked cauliflower; dinner was roughly the same. "I was always hungry, but I did lose the weight and that made me stick with it," she says.

But the biggest problem was the constant state of hunger Sylvia experienced, "I was starving, I almost felt like I was going to faint." Part of the lure of the hCG diet is the claim that hCG suppresses the appetite and makes the 500 calories a day bearable.

But the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) strongly disagrees. It has issued a strict declaration against the scheme saying, "hCG has not been demonstrated to be effective adjunctive therapy in the treatment of obesity. There is no substantial evidence that it increases weight loss beyond that resulting from caloric restriction, that it causes a more attractive or "normal" distribution of fat, or that it decreases the hunger and discomfort associated with calorie-restricted diets."

With no true medical research to support the hCG-injections, the FDA banned all forms of the hCG hormone in over-the-counter weight loss product. Today, any hCG-based diet products consumers buy at health food stores contain placebo or homeopathic recipes of the hormone. Followers of the diet still claim that they lose anywhere between two-to-three pounds a week on hCG-based products, but it's hard to base these results on a voodoo-like ingredient and not on the highly restrictive diet.

Since ending her hCG injections, Sylvia hasn't regained any pounds, but she also hasn't reached her goal weight. "I haven't lost any weight since then, but I stayed the same," she says. "So it did feel like it was worth something, but [hCG] is just a crazy diet and after I was finished I wondered, 'What have I been injecting myself with?'"

*Sylvia's real name has been changed to protect her identity.
**If you are someone who has experienced the hCG diet and felt duped, lied to, or experienced harmful side effects, please contact tjw118@aol.com for more information on a potential class-action law suit.