Dr Simeons created the HCG Diet in the 1950s to help obese patients lose weight and keep it off forever. I’m going to break it down for you as much as I can, but I still recommend that you read Dr Simeons book Pounds & Inches to fully understand the purpose of the HCG Diet.

The HCG Diet is a 70-Day Weight Loss Program that has 4 phases. Phase 1 is called the Loading Phase. You follow Phase 1 for the first 2 days of the diet. During the Loading Phase, you eat as much high calorie, high fat foods that you can consume. Many people feel sick during these 2 days from eating so much. The Loading Days are supposed to keep you from feeling hungry because your body takes the fat that you consumed those 2 days and burns it for energy, so your not supposed to feel hungry. To be honest, I felt a hungry the first week, but a lot of it was emotional hunger. I think it’s a psychological thing…It always seems that whenever you tell yourself that you can’t have something that you want it that much more! After the first week passed, the cravings got better and I didn’t feel as hungry anymore.

Phase 2 is a very restrictive, low calorie, moderate carb diet that you follow for 6 weeks or 20-40 days. During the 6 weeks, you can take the Medical Grade HCG Hormone by shots 6 days a week or you take the Homeopathic HCG Hormone by drops everyday of the week. The purpose of taking the hormone is to suppress your appetite and to tell your body to burn fat. You might be thinking, why would I want to put hormones into my body that a female excretes when she is pregnant if I could just do the 500-Calorie Diet without taking any hormones?! Good question… in fact I asked the same thing! The logic behind using the HCG hormone is that it tells your body to pull from its fat stores and release them whereas if you were to just follow a 500 Calorie Diet without the hormone, your body would still lose fat, but it would lose more muscle mass than fat. During Phase 2, the strictest phase, you can only eat food that Dr Simeons listed in his book Pounds & Inches. You are allowed 2 proteins, 2 fruits, and 2 veggies each day.  After you complete the 6 weeks, you stop taking the HCG shots or drops and continue to follow the 500-calorie diet for 3 days. After the 3 days then you start Phase 3.

During Phase 3, you follow a Low Carb Diet for 3-6 weeks! The purpose of this phase is to stabilize your weight. You gradually add calories back into your diet every few days. Start with 700 calories for a couple of days, then 900 calories, then 1200 calories, and then stop once your reach 1400 calories. If at anytime you weigh more than 2 pounds over your last Injection/Drop weight, you are supposed to do a Steak Day. Once you are finished with the Low Carb Phase, you start Phase 4.

During Phase 4, you gradually add starches and sugars back into your diet. I’m going to just stay in the Low Carb Phase and stabilize my weight loss by following the Maintenance Phase of the Atkins Diet.

I ate a ton of chicken and fish in the beginning of Phase 2 and I just can't stomach it anymore.  I reviewed Dr Simeons Protocol to see what other options I could have and I saw that vegetarians could eat cottage cheese.  I'm not a vegetarian, but I do like cottage cheese so I decided to give it a try.  The last 2 weeks I've been eating cottage cheese for lunch and dinner and I'm still losing weight at a great rate!  Here are some pics of my typical HCG Phase 2 lunch and dinner. If you have any questions about the HCG Diet, please don’t hesitate to ask. Just leave me a comment below. Thanks for reading!