7 Reasons Why the Controversial HCG Diet is NOT a Fad Diet, but Real and Sustainable Weight Loss

It's Hard to Argue with Success

A public relations executive out of Chicago recently had great success with my HCG 2.0 protocol. She lost 29 pounds on her first 35-day round of the diet.

She reached out to me via my private Facebook group. Obviously thrilled with her results, she told me she wanted to make HCG 2.0 and InsideOut Wellness a household brand. I told her it may not be as easy as she thinks. In American, there is more to weight loss than simply losing weight.

Why Is the FDA (and the Federal Trade Commission) Concerned with Your Weight Loss?

While that sounds great, I warned her that it would be a struggle. It's not easy retailing HCG products or even weight loss in general. The FTC has qualified HCG, and many other supplements marketed for weight loss, as pseudo-pharmaceuticals. The FDA has made very disparaging remarks about HCG several times in the past. They sent cease and desist letters to 7 manufacturers of HCG back in 2012. It worked to quiet the noise, eliminating the retailers that were trying to make a buck off of a hot industry. But the professionals, like myself and my manufacturer, remained.

The industry remained calm until 2017, when following HCG's addition to the pseudo-pharmaceutical list (the same list as CBD and now medicinal THC), my credit card processing was revoked. The was a maneuver by the Federal Trade Commission not the FDA. What does the FTC have to do with weight loss and your health? I could venture to guess - they succumbed to pressure from big pharma and the hospital chains which are ironically owned by insurance providers. Thin, healthy people don't fill hospital beds or consume a lot of prescription drugs. Obese people do.

This was when I moved to Singapore. So that I could acquire banking and credit card processing. Then, in late 2019, Covid hit. The pandemic opened a world of opportunities for big pharma and insurance providers. As a result, our little HCG industry was left alone.

Now, with Covid long in the rearview, we're being scrutinized again.

It makes you wonder, if my PR rep Alisa, and so many others (21,000 of them members of my private Facebook group) are having success with the HCG diet, why all HCG diet controversy?

Answering Alisa's Questions - And Yours

To address the HCG controversy, Alisa asked me if I could answer a few questions so she could better communicate the diet to her media contacts. Since these are questions that many of my dieters have also asked, I thought I would post them to a blog for all of you to read and better educate yourselves. I find it to be motivating and empowering to understand the physiology of this diet. It's easier to make the necessary sacrifices on this diet if you fully understand how they'll lead to healthy targeted weight loss. What do I mean when I say targeted weight loss? There is no better diet that allows you to maintain muscle mass while strictly targeting the unwanted fat that is in all the places you do not want it. HCG 2.0 is smart weight loss. In fact, it's more about calorie replacement rather than calorie reduction.

There is a lot of noise on the web, a lot of misinformation. I hope that this blog can clear the air and provide accurate information so that you, as an educated consumer, can make the right decisions in regard to their health and wellbeing.

1. Why is the HCG diet so controversial?

I've been working with weight loss patients since 2009. For many, they've never had success with dieting. So they attribute their lack of success to a poor product or a gimmick diet. I have always remained diligent in my message that HCG is not a miracle pill. In fact, I make it very clear in my book, HCG 2.0 - Don't Starve, Eat Smart and Lose; A Modern Adaptation of the Traditional HCG Diet, that HCG is not even what is responsible for the weight loss that you experience on the diet. The weight loss that is experienced is a result of my low-calorie, low-carb, ketosis-based diet that is outlined in the book. The HCG merely targets weight loss so that the dieter can maintain healthy muscle mass while strictly losing from unwanted fat - as mentioned above. It does this by facilitating ketosis which is a metabolic process that is entirely safe and healthy and is the only way to tap into unwanted fat reserves.

Many don't get that message because there is too much misinformation circulated on the web and social media about "the miracle weight loss secret that nobody is talking about." Or "lose 10-15 pounds without diet or exercising." These are terrible messages.

If it sounds to good to be true, it almost always is. And unfortunately, my HCG 2.0 protocol get's lumped into that group of non-sense that clouds the market and makes it difficult for consumers to find accurate information that they need to make educated decisions about their health.

What's even more frustrating is that all of the noise and nonsense leads to a lack of trust in the marketplace. Weight loss is hard enough. If you can't find a program or protocol that you can trust, you'll never have the confidence needed to succeed with a diet plan.

2. What makes HCG 2.0 different than the original HCG diet protocol?

There was a time when I worked with the original HCG diet. In expanding my chiropractic practice and I was looking for a way to bring in more mainstream patients to my clinic. Obesity in the US is a big problem, so I saw it as an opportunity. I researched a variety of diets and only found one that made sense - HCG.

My process in researching supplements is still the same today as it was in 2009 when I discovered Pounds and Inches: A New Approach to Obesity by Dr. A.T.W Simeons, which is the original manuscript that outlines the specifics of the original HCG diet. If the physiology makes sense, then I want to see it in practice. I want to see if people are actually getting the results that have been reported. With HCG, the physiology added up. It made sense. Additionally, people were getting incredible results with it, so I slowly introduced it into my practice. I hired an MD to be my medical director and write my scripts for prescription HCG injections and I handled the patient education side.

That said, there were a lot of things about the original HCG diet that didn't add up. Particularly how the diet was very specific about the allowable calories. It allocated on 500 calories per dieter, whether that dieter was a large man or a small woman. That's a big red flag as men have greater protein requirements than woman. Size and age matter as well.

So the first thing I did was incorporate the BMR calculation that individualises the diet to each and everyone's body type based on their age, gender, height and weight. It's quite brilliant, even if I say so myself, and so necessary for healthy weight loss.

The second thing I did was make it totally ketosis based. Less carbs and more keto.

HCG 2.0 is smart weight loss. You don't have to beat yourself up to experience rapid, yet healthy weight loss. You just have to eat smart. In fact, HCG 2.0 is more about calorie replacement rather than calorie reduction. The body requires nutrition, not just calories. The quality of the calories are much more important than the quantity. If you give the body what it needs (healthy fats, adequate protein and the phytonutrients found in vegetables), it will reward you with a healthy satiety response. If you give it the empty calories so prevalent in the Standard American Diet, appropriately acronym'd SAD, you'll fullness will be very short-lived. As soon as the stomach walls retreat from the distention following your SAD meal, your body will still be craving the nutrition you didn't give it, so you'll soon be hungry again. It's not uncommon for American to be both obese and malnourished. A truly SAD state of affairs.

HCG 2.0 provides you all of the calories you need to satiate the nutritional requirements of your body without the empty calories of the Standard American Diet.

3. How does HCG contribute to weight loss?

As I said above, the weight loss, the actual reduction of fat and pounds, is only an indirect result of the HCG supplement. The weight loss is a result of the low calorie diet that accompanies the HCG.

A pregnancy naturally produces enormous concentrations of HCG, but pregnant woman don't lose weight. HCG must be accompanied by a low-calorie diet in order for it to result in weight loss.

To explain how HCG contributes to weight loss, let me describe why HCG is produced naturally durning pregnancy.

As a species, the human body is designed to retain calories in the form of fat. It's an evolutionary trick that allowed us to survive famine and long winters. However, this "caveman physiology" get's flipped upside down durning pregnancy because the growing baby needs a 24/7 calorie supply for proper development.

Enter HCG.

The HCG that is produced by the mother's placenta interacts with a gland in the brain called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus, in turn, regulates the thyroid. All of this allows the mother to tap into her fat reserves to provide a perpetual calorie source for the baby growing inside her uterus. This is why starving woman in 3rd world countries can still give birth to healthy, full-weight babies. This observation is what inspired the original HCG diet back in the 1950.

So in the absence of a pregnancy, if HCG is supplemented, even in very low doses, it has the same effect. It allows the dieter to sustain themselves on their own stored fat. In other words, in combination with a low-calorie diet, HCG exacerbates the metabolism of stored fat, also known as ketosis.

4. Why are you able to maintain your weight loss following HCG? Does HCG re-set your metabolism?

This I'm less sure of. Is it possible to sustain your weight loss following the HCG diet? Absolutely. But if you lose 25 pounds on a round of HCG then immediately go back to your old eating habits, you will absolutely gain the weight back.

To be honest, losing weight with HCG 2.0 is the easy part. Most are capable of modifying their behaviour for a 30-40 day window in order to lose weight. But making the lifestyle changes necessary to maintain it are much tougher.

That said, maintaining your weight loss is a really good problem to have. How many of your friends would love to have that problem? My book contains a very specific maintenance protocol that makes the process very doable. The first three weeks following your diet are critical to maintaining your weight because that is the time that your body is most determined to replenish its fat reserves. If you can make it through the first 3 weeks without resorting to old eating habits, maintaining your weight loss will only get easier.

5. What is homeopathic HCG and why does it work as well as "prescription" strength? 

This is a bit complicated. I discuss it in length in my book. I'll do my best to summarise it here.

The homeopathic HCG found in my HCG drops and my HCG patches contains the real and active HCG hormone, but not in the concentrations of the prescription HCG.

What homeopathy does is use a magnification process to magnify the potency of the original hormone. Again, this is covered more thoroughly in the book, but what you have to remember is that the concentrations of HCG are not relevant to its affect on weight loss. If it was, pregnant woman would not gain 25-50 pounds during pregnancy. In fact, the mere presence of of HCG is enough to achieve the desired weight loss results.

6. What's the difference between your HCG patches, HCG drops and prescription HCG?

For the most part, I answered this above. First off, hormones are very large molecules so they don't get readily absorbed through the GI so you have to find an alternative delivery systems. The most common are sublingual drops, injections and now my transdermal HCG patches. I have since introduced an HCG, B12 nasal spray.

The prescription HCG will come in higher doses and must be prescribed by an MD. It usually comes in the form of injections, but take my advice and stay away from those. Unless you're a nurse, you're not qualified to inject yourself with anything. In addition, most of the prescription HCG comes from compounding pharmacies that are largely unregulated. John Oliver recently did a great piece on compounding pharmacies that you'll find quite disturbing. Just because you're injecting yourself with a needle doesn't mean that it's more therapeutic. If you want to do prescription HCG, request it in the sub-lingual form which is a tablet that dissolves under your tongue. There is just too much margin for error with needles.

My HCG drops are what I founded my business upon. The injections and the expenses they required had to be forwarded on to my patients. They were no longer cost effective if the same results could be achieved for a 1/4 of the cost. This is whey I abandoned the injections years ago and proceeded with the HCG drops. My homeopathic provider has been the same since 2011. He has an FDA approved homeopathic manufacturing facility in Arizona. In addition, my manufacturer is also a pharmacist. He has a pharmacy license in Arizona as well.

My HCG Patches were added to my store in March of 2018. They're more than just HCG. It's like having a whole-food, multi-vitamin supplement on your arm 24/7. In addition to the HCG, the patches also contain natural metabolic boosters in the form of Forskolin, African Mango, Green Tea Extract and many other vitamins and minerals. It's been a big hit.

Although that I feel the patches are a better product, they're twice the cost of the drops. And some people like the idea of taking the drops twice per day. It reminds them that they're on the diet.

Most recently I've added the HCG, B12 nasal spray. Many are using the HCG nasal spray in conjunction with the HCG patch.

7. Why do you think there is such a "red flag" from the medical community about the HCG diet?

The same reason consumers don't trust HCG is the same reason medical professionals don't trust it. There is too much misinformation out there. And there are too many opportunistic fools trying to make a buck off of a hot industry. Just because someone is good at marketing and building websites that rank high with Google doesn't mean they are qualified to sell a weight loss plan - perfect segue into the last question.

8. What do you have to say about the FDA calling the HCG Diet "dangerous, illegal, and fraudulent?"

In 2012, the FDA sent cease and desist letters to seven homeopathic manufactures of HCG. Within the letter they said that the providers were, among other things, dangerous, illegal and fraudulent.

And in fact, the FDA was exactly right in sending those letter. The manufacturers that received letters were reckless and dangerous in the lack of concern they had for their buyers. They were fraudulent in the way they marketed their product by making outrageous and exaggerated claims which is illegal. If you recall, Dr. Oz was reprimanded and fined for this exact reason.

That being said, it's not illegal to retail HCG online as I am doing as long as I don't make false claims about its effectiveness. So until the FDA tells me directly that I can no longer retail HCG, I will continue to sell HCG supplements.

In summarising the HCG controversy

I hope this will clear up some of the controversy surrounding the HCG diet and allow readers to make educated decisions about the direction they want to take their health.

My philosophy with weight loss is the same as my philosophy with my pain management patients. Let's get you out of pain as quickly as possible then fix you structurally so that it doesn't come back.

In regard to weight loss, let's get the weight off of you as quickly as possible then worry about keeping it off.