look on hcgdietinfo.com, they have a lot of sources advertised. I originally used one in Florida and they were great but expensive. I also used a drug escrow service overseas, they took a litttle longer and i had to obtain my own sterile water and needles but they were way cheaper.

Hi everyone,

Sorry that I've been missing for awhile - i've been really busy with family affairs, but I'm back.

HCG injections are not the best way. Please be careful. Sometimes it's necessary to take drastic steps to reap drastic results (i.e. avoiding gastric bypass surgery).

Otherwise, please believe me when I tell you that moderation really is king. I am from an extremely obese family (average person 150 pounds overweight)....

I am 5'3", 115 pounds, and 16% bodyfat. This is no coincidence. It took me lots of hard work, and a whole lot of discipline.

My first steps were:

1) exercise less when I did (yep, you read that right - i found that if i exercised 15 minutes a day in the beginning, I was excited to go back every time - it was EASY)

2) increased my exercise time when "i felt like it" b/c I was enjoying myself. this is positive reinforcement for exercise.

3) split my meals in half - then wait 45 minutes and eat the second half if I was still hungry (many time, i wasn't)

4) served myself on smaller plates - i heard somewhere this works - i think your head just tells you you are eating too much when your plate is stuffed.

5) told people around me that i was going to lose weight - this held me accountable.

I hope this helps.

have a great day and be safe,

Fit Julia

Fit Julia
Have you tried hcg? It's wonderful that diet and exercise alone have worked for you but that doesn't work as well for everyone. And hcg is not all that drastic, certainly not anywhere near gastric bypass. It's a natural substance given in very small amounts and it works, amazingly well. It also releases fat in the abnormal fat storage areas, diet and exercise alone don't do that. I've seen many people that have dieted and exercised and lost alot of weight but still have a gut and cellulite in their thighs and arms yet their faces are drawn and their breasts are like prunes because they have lost structural fat.
For me the diet really helps me to let go of all the foods that I shouldn't be eating anyway but I haven't had the will power to stop eating. A lot of those foods I won't be eating again (like processed food and sugar) My body is detoxing them out and my body won't be craving them which makes them alot easier to resist.
Yes, this diet only works to keep the weight off if you change your eating habits. But it's a lot easier to eat healthy to maintain then to lose. And losing the weight in a couple of months is very motivating to keep it off as opposed to trying to keep your motivation high for months to years to still get the weight off.
If you didn't need hcg for your weight loss then that's great for you. But don't talk about something that you haven't tried and don't understand. Share your experience but don't knock others. Everybody's body is different, different things work for different people. We overweight people have enough self hatred in our own heads without someone telling us that something should work for us ( which most of us have tried and tried again) that doesn't.

Hey there,

If I rubbed you the wrong way, I'm sorry.

I realize that everyone here has tried to exercise and diet (or most everyone) and didn't have success... but this doesn't mean that it is not a solution.

I want you to be happy. I want everyone to be happy. In fact, I've been trying to search for answers for you...

I'm not knocking anything, for the record... just playing devil's advocate and wanting people to be able to be healthy - there are other benefits to exercise: stress relief, endorphin release, decreased tendency to crave 'bad for you foods', improved productivity, improved energy, etc.

I think most people overtrain when they are suffering from obesity, and this hurts more than it helps..

this is my 2-sense. hope it helps - be strong, there is a solution - it's proven that good nutrition (i.e. enough calories) proper exercise (i.e. a little bit, low intensity, progressing to higher over time) helps everyone. After all, we are all human, right?!

we can't be that different from one another - i want to share my strength with you and help you overcome what seems to be saddening you.

This injection sure seems to attract a lot of women.

I hardly can call this a fitness topic, since there is no evidence of any attempt to try to be fit, just stick a needle in yourself, I'll be moving it over to weight loss

Mikolas
It's certainly not just stick a needle in, it's much more complicated then that. It includes lifestyle change including working out to have long term success. Some people need help getting fit and a big part of that is losing weight.

I think he just meant because the topic wasn't particularly about fitness, it should be moved to a place where people looking for similar things can find it yes?

Yes, I was being blunt, but Maddie described what I meant.

It has nothing to do with fitness, and thus needed to be moved to another topic.

Fit Julia
I appreciate that. I just think that we should share our experiences not our assumptions. And you flat out stated that hcg is not the best way even though you have no experience with it. HCG is the best way for some, it certainly has been for me and a lot of people that I know.
I agree with you about exercise and that should be a large part of anyone's weight loss program and healthy lifestyle. And the rest of your suggestions are very helpful for maintaining a healthy weight, which should also be a major component in anyone's weight loss program, it needs to be about weight maintenence not just weight loss otherwise we just end up back here again and again. But a lot of us need more to get us to maintaining and HCG has been the answer for me. It's not just about losing the weight, it helps to reset your hypothymus and your weight set point so that your body will function properly and you won't gain the weight back.
Also, just telling people to eat healthy, what does that mean? Most people aren't even educated about our food supply and what is happening to it that is causing obesity rates to keep climbing. All those diet foods out there are full of chemicals and toxins, even a seemingly healthy apple is full of pesticides and devoid of the vitamins that it is supposed to have if it's not organic. Kevin Trudeau's book The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You To Know About is full of that information and how we have to change the things we eat if we want to be truly healthy and maintain a healthy weight. It's a complicated issue and there's no one way to do it but we need to be open.

I just wanted to update, after 1 round of phase2 where I've lost 22 pounds
I'm in phase 3 where you eat regularly, only healthy organic foods and no sugar or starch. I've been in this phase for 3 1/2 weeks now. You are supposed to maintain your weight in this phase but not lose. I've had no trouble maintaining. So to all you naysayers out there who still believe that this is a starvation diet and I will just gain the weight back after the shots this is not happening. I am eating whenever I'm hungry and i don't count calories at all, as long as it's healthy and organic, and the scale is staying put.
I will go back on the shots in 3 weeks and lose the last 20 pounds. I'll keep updating and I'd love to hear from others about their success.

Congrats katiepen!
How many phases are there?

Hi Maddie34
There are 4 phases. Phase 1 is a detox phase, eating healthier, detoxing, switching to more organics, etc... It is not essential to do but the more that you can do in phase 1 the easier phase 2 is.
Phase 2 is the shots and 500 calorie vlcd. You do this phase for 21 to a maximum of 40 days. If you need to lose more weight then you do phase 3 for 6 weeks and then repeat phase 2. That's what I'm doing now and I will start phase 2 again in 2 1/2 more weeks.
Phase 3 is for 3 weeks and you eat normally as long as it's healthy with the exception of no sugars of any kind and no starch. This phase is where you reset your hypothymus so that you can easily maintain your weight.
Phase 4 is lifetime. It's basically don't mess up what you just fixed. Eat organically as much as possible, no processed food with chemicals, no msg, no artifical sweetners, no fast food, no chain restaurants, etc... basically avoid the things that mess up your health and the function of the hypothymus.

That's why I love this protocol so much. It really offers a lifetime solution, it's not just another diet.

Ok I get it, thanks.

Yeah, some diets tend to forget the phase 4 part and people don't make that lifestyle change.

Can I ask what got you into HCG injections? I mean, did you try a lot of other diets and they just didn't work out? Who told you about this?

Sorry for the questions, this is all for curiosity's sake so don't worry if you don't want to answer.

No problem Maddie, I actually love to talk about it because I feel like it has given me my life back.

yes, I've tried every diet known to man. I have struggled with my weight my whole life and I did my first diet when I was 12. I have yo yo'd for 28 years since then. I went to Overeaters Anonymous for several years and although it helped me out of my destructive eating disorder it did not bring me peace with food. It was such a struggle to not go out of control, I did it for several years but it was always a struggle to be "good". My life was controlled by food, thinking about food, when I was going to eat, what I was going to eat, blah blah blah.
So finally last year I came across the book The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You To Know About by Kevin Trudeau and I read it cover to cover and it made so much sense to me. How my body was so out of balance, that my hypothymus was not working properly, that the food we were all eating was full of chemicals that were designed to make us overeat, that processed food & especially sugar reacts in our bodies to make us crave more food. This all made sense as to why I could never find peace with food. It was not only in my mind but also physical symtoms of an unbalanced body along with crazy chemicals.
So I started changing things. I started detoxing, I did a 4 month candida cleanse, I started eating only organics, I stopped eating processed food and then I did the shots last year. Unfortunately I didn't finish phase 3, I think that I burned myself out a little, too much too fast so i didn't reset the hypothymus and gained the weight back. So I waited until I was ready again to totally commit. I watched my friends who had done the shots right after me lose the weight and keep it off for a year. I kept my healthy habits but periodically cheated and then I would lose control again. It's amazing how little of the processed food & sugar it took to send me over the edge again. So I finally felt ready to totally commit and do this right and here I am. I've lost 22 pounds so far, I have 20 more to go. I have not cheated once, I have more peace around food then ever and I know that if I stay commited that will not change. I've had to learn that some foods are just not okay not ever and I've had to stop listening to people tell me that I should be able to have a treat now and again, that I should be moderate. I've learned that that is like telling an alcoholic that they should be able to have a beer once in a while. We cannot peridically eat chemicals and processed food that is designed to make us fatter and crave more food and think that will be alright even moderately.
So that's my very long answer to your question. I've been on a lot of forums, so many people with stories just like mine and the hcg protocol has been the answer for them as well. It works for a lot of people but like any weight loss answer it does have to be a lifetime commitment or it will fail like all the others.

What about other diets that would split into phases as well?

An obvious misconception with diets is that you can ration and portion what you eat until you lose the amount you want then you can go right back into eating as you always did (only to gain the weight lost and then some within a few months).

Do you think other diets would have worked had you been able to commit to a healthier lifestyle afterwards (as you are doing with HCG injections now)?

I really am happy for you, I'm just trying to understand this a little better (They don't really teach you about HCG in health class )

I think that the re-setting of the hypothymus is a key component of future success. I'm not sure what else would do that, maybe a lot of cleanses, I'm not sure. Whatever will bring the body back into balance and generally diet & exercise alone don't do that. I'm sure there are other ways to do that, it's not that I think that hcg is the only way, it's just one of the ways and I love the way it works. And the speed of it also is very motivating, it's very hard for people to stay motivated for long periods of time and then people get discouraged and quit. When you are weighing every morning and seeing 1/2 to 1 pound a day(sometimes more) coming off it is very motivating to stick with it.
You're very right about most people and dieting. You can't just lose weight and go back to the way that you always ate and think that you will not gain the weight back. In OA they say that the defintion of insanity is to do the same thing over and over but expect a different result. A lifetime commitment to healthy eating is always imperative for success not only with our weight but also our health. I don't want to be skinny and sick. I want vitality and health!

HI all...i am a medical dr and I am here to tell you that its not the hcg shots making you loose weight. ANYONE can loose the weight with eating a 500 calorie a day diet!!! The fact is most Americans consume 2500-3500 calories a day, reducing your caloric intake to 500 will show dramatic weightloss. Throw in the little exercise that these dr's are telling you to do and there you go...20 lbs the first month. Of course...its simple... you are dramatically cutting calories and you are burning more by exercising!!!!!!
There have been many double blind studies and none of them show any proof of more weighloss with the hcg injections. I support all weighloss attemps and dont want to discourage anyone. Those of you that have lost weight with this just need to be reminded that its your reduction in calories thats causing the weightloss not the hcg!

I started taking HCG about 2 weeks ago. I learned about this protocol from reading Kevin Trudeau's book. I also purchased the book titled "HCG Weight Loss Cure Guide" by Pounds and Inches Away, LLC. So far so good. I'll be on the program for 6 weeks and then move to Phase 3 & 4. I also followed most of the suggestions from Trudeau for Phase 1. I really think this will be the key to keeping off the weight. I have already loss 14 lbs. So hopefully I'll lose another 28. I am on a 500 calorie diet - meats, vegetables and fruit so I feel pretty good. I'm also allowed to have melba toast or grissini breadsticks but I choose not to.

Anyway, my physician prescribed really ease to use kits. He stated to inject intramuscular however the HCG book I have states to inject subcutaneous. After reading some of the posts here, it seems like intramuscular is the way to go and I haven't had any pain at the injection site. I was a bit apprehensive about self injections but so far so good. After this phase (phase 2), I will then be on phase 3 which means that I am no longer limited in the number of calories I consume but I'm not allowed any sugar or starch. The final phase is similar to phase 1 in Trudeau's book where you slowly incorporate sugar and starch. I am really looking forward to cream in my coffee. I'll continue posting my progress in the weeks to come. I can't wait to get back down in size so I can resume my physical fitness activities!

HI! does anyone know a safe site to order the hcg from? im from Texas and a small town, just wanted to make sure im ordering the right hcg!

thanx =]

Thanks for all the info everyone, I still have some research to do. My goal is about 25 pounds, that I have put on over the years, I am a young healthy woman. I have tried everything, it is sooooo hard. I work out, try and eat right and nothing I remain the same even getting bigger. I am excited to try hcg, I hope it works. I live in Texas and found a center in my city that gives the injections. What is the cost? When should I see a difference? Along with working out and eating better, or stay within 500 cal (as most of you say) I am a little worried about that one. Yikes...Please tell me more! I need to get back in to my skiny jeans, & happy & fit again:)))

THANKS!
Gayle