Yes on pickles! You just have to know which ones you can have and which ones you can’t, so we’ll go over that now.
Before we do, you can also check out several hCG recipes I have that use pickles! Including….a P2 pizza, no joke.
So first – pickles are cucumbers, and cucumbers are on the original Dr. Simeon’s P2 food list for the hCG Diet, so these are fine…as long as the other ingredients used to make the pickles are on protocol too.
The only real trouble with some pickles is that some are “sweet” and have sugar added. So you just want to avoid those.
Safe P2 Pickles
These will usually just have vinegar, some spices, and the cucumbers. These will often be:
- Dill pickles
- Baby dill pickles
- Cornichons or Gherkin Pickles (as long as they are not a “sweet” kind) (I love Maille brand)
Under grams of sugar it should ALWAYS say ZERO. When you can, I really recommend getting organic dill pickles, not conventional because the regular kind have all these needless dyes like yellow # whatever and blue #500 ;0. Here’s some organic dill pickles I have that are perfect for P2:
I personally love BABY dill pickles- the skin is less tough and they are just so yummy.
Pickles to usually avoid:
- Bread and Butter pickles- these have lots of sugar in the brine
- Pickles with the word “Sweet” in the title.
Here’s an example of the nutrition facts and ingredients of bread and butter pickles:
So you can see that’s a problem right? 8g of sugar for 3 small “chips” (slices) of pickle, and has high fructose corn syrup in the ingredients.
Water Weight and P2 Approved Pickles
One other thing to note is that you can gain a little water weight depending on how many pickles you eat because of their higher sodium content. Now personally, this doesn’t bother me and I usually tell my blog audience not to sweat gains that aren’t fat – you should be able to have food and enjoy it. But if it’s doing to drive you crazy, then in that case you might want to be careful how many you eat – and drink your water with them regardless to compensate for the extra salt too!
Want an hCG recipe using pickles? This is an alternate protocol recipe, but check out our Reuben Plate P2 recipe. It utilizes ham, which is an alternate protocol protein (I ate sugar-free ham on my 5th round of hCG no problem).
Check out my P2 recipes that have pickles in them! There are some tasty surprising combos I think you’ll love:
