In response to comments made by retired doctor Warren Bailey about my article, The HCG Diet: Fat or Fiction, I would first like to say that it is good to see you are continuing your education by never missing an article of Medicine 101. Impressive!
For someone who claims to have no training or experience in weight loss management, he is pretty familiar with the 500 cal/day menu. By the detail he provided, it sounds like you know a lot about the outdated Dr. Simeons’ HCG diet.
Regardless, thanks to Dr. Bailey for raising his concerns about the HCG diet. I couldn’t agree with him more.
I too believe that a 500 calorie a day diet is unnecessarily extreme. I hesitated over incorporating the HCG diet protocol as laid out by Dr. Simeons because it did not seem to fit with my principles.
I do not promote virtual starvation as a remedy for obesity. Without divulging every detail, you may recall that I am using a modified protocol with my patients.
Other physicians who are using the HCG diet protocol are discovering that 500 calories a day is not a requirement for successful outcomes.
Dr. Alex Martin of Hollywood, CA, is more in favour of 1000-1200 calories per day. Current understanding suggests the HCG hormone triggers the hypothalamus to help the body access stores of energy.
So, the patient is surviving on the food from a low calorie diet (though not as low as 500 calories per day) along with the energy produced from what is in storage.
One wants to feel good while getting the fat cells to shrink. In the book, The Best Diet You’ve Never Heard Of, by Dr. Connie Odom, she explains how the modified HCG diet protocol is working for people and tries to alleviate any safety concerns doctors may have in using this strategy.
If losing weight was so easy, everybody would be doing it. The fact is that thousands of Canadians struggle with weight management and some are at their wits end.
Most allopaths tend to fall back on “eat less, exercise more,” and leave these patients with a guilt complex and an oversized sense of failure.
Medical weight management is complex. When it comes to weighing the risks of health complications associated with obesity against the possible benefits of the modified HCG diet protocol under a physician’s supervision, choosing the program looks pretty good.
So far my patient’s are not disappointed.
Diet plans can be good, but the addition of the HCG hormone has given my patients even better weight loss. They report satiation, good energy levels and smaller clothes sizes.
The weigh-ins and waist circumference measurements speak for themselves.
Where is the science to support that HCG is a valuable addition to a diet plan? The only answer I have is “they are in process” and I would be happy to accept any funding and proposal to conduct a scientific study that definitively clarifies the question.
With enough time and resources, we just might come up with something.
— Dr. Tara Macart owns Opti-Balance Naturopathic Medicine in Qualicum Beach with her husband Jonathan.