If you are on a weight loss mission like the rest of America, there are an overwhelming amount of low-carb, smart-carb, no-carb, and high-carb diet plans available to you. If you haven’t decided which one of the many diet plans is best for you and your health, this may be a good series for you. Before I dive head first into dieting, I want to make sure that if you are considering starting any major diet change, you should:
- Complete your due diligence and know what you are getting yourself into
- Research as much information about the diet as you can
- Consult a physician to make sure the diet doesn’t conflict with any current medical issues
If you have been following the Julian Bakery blog, you have learned that a low carbohydrate diet is essential to getting your body into ketosis and burning fat as energy. I personally have had great success losing fat weight during low-carb eating, so I know first hand how great ketosis works. Some of the most popular low-carb diets are Atkins, New Glucose Revolution, Low GL Diet, and South Beach. Julian Bakery carries a great low-carb bread selection to help keep your carb count down if pursuing one of these diet methods.
Unfortunately, Americans these days live a very face paced and impatient lifestyle. Many people are obsessed with the idea of perfection, and impatient dieters want to see immediate results. For those of us who tend to be on the more extreme side of things, there is a lot of talk regarding a rather controversial dieting method called hCG dieting. After discovering this unique diet method, I became intrigued by the theory and read every study I could find across the medical and nutrition world. At first I was a little skeptical, as the original hCG protocol had a 500 daily calorie intake limit and required no exercise! Anyone that’s ever looked at a nutrition label knows that 500 Cal/day is a very small amount. The theory is that a 500 daily calorie diet supplemented with either injections or oral drops of hCG, (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) promotes fat burning and weight loss up to 1lb per day, without any exercise, feelings of starvation, irritation or fatigue.
Without surprise, hCG, like the other weight loss mechanisms we’ve discussed, is a hormone! It’s produced in the pituitary gland of both sexes, but is known primarily for its production in females during pregnancy. It is obvious that anyone eating a 500 Cal/day diet is going to lose weight quickly, however my primary concerns were that the body would begin burning muscle proteins for energy instead of fat (See my Ketosis Article), and that I wouldn’t be able to exercise on the diet. There have been numerous research studies with positive results showing that the hCG works, however the studies that I found did not go into depth regarding muscle measurements.
After becoming so intrigued with this dieting theory, I began calling clinics that provide hCG to ask them some questions. Julian Bakery has a few of these exact clinics in our customer database, due to the fact that the low-carb count of Smart Carb #1 is perfect for hCG dieters. The one that really stuck out to me was MediPro Direct. This clinic claims to have a patented hCG serum that contains a few other supplements that are designed to make sure that during the low calorie diet, your body only burns fat, and not muscle. Their program also allows for more calorie intake (between 800 – 1000 Calories) in order to allow regular exercise while on the diet. This is exactly what I was looking for: a less intense version of the diet, that doesn’t require cutting out exercise.
After reading, researching, and contemplating how I was going to go about writing a quality article on hCG, I decided that I couldn’t promote this unconventional diet without actually trying it out on my own. So I contacted MediPro Direct and worked out a partnership between them and Julian Bakery so that I could see if hCG really works. One of my coworkers here at Julian Bakery, Elisa, also wanted in on this intriguing test run, so I agreed. What better way to get the full scope of hCG dieting than to team up with a weight loss clinic and compare notes between both a male and female attempting the diet?
For 40 days starting in July, Elisa and I will be posting as many details about our hCG diet experience as we can. We want our readers to be with us every step of the way so that they can make a decision on their own about this intriguing diet. We will be posting real time stats, numbers, food intake, feelings, emotions, and thoughts. Starting tomorrow, July 6th, you can find every last detail of our hCG diet experiment on: http://julianbakeryhcg.blogspot.com/. We will also be posting semi-regularly here on our main Julian Bakery blog so that our readers can stay updated. Keep checking back to read all the details of our hCG diet experience!
