This question comes up frequently so I’ll give you some food for thought on it. Many of you ladies may have 50-100lbs of weight lose and so it’s quite tempting to begin the diet thinking you will get it all off at once without stopping.
It’s not that you can’t do this. Definitely some have – and in weighing the pros and cons, I’d like to give you an example of one woman who emailed me, who successfully did this, but you can also see she ran into trouble:
Written to me on May 10 2018: “I started my journey in November 2017 with in this time frame I have lost 76lbs with only one three week break. I loaded when I started my newest round and gained 7lbs. I’ve only lost 10lbs in 1 month. I recently added light exercise but this doesn’t seem to help I keep bouncing back and fourth on the same 3lbs. Should I stop the hcg and take a 6 week break? I was still losing weight on my last break. I have 35lbs to go. Please help!”
So if you’ll notice – she was on hCG straight, with only one 3 week break, for 6 months, at the time of her writing me. She lost 76 lbs in that time! Which is like, wow awesome right? At the same, we are seeing in her experience the downside of what can happen – your body gets overly taxed and even though you are following the same super low calorie diet, your body becomes resistant to weight loss- whether this is your metabolism down-regulating, or adrenal fatigue and other hormone imbalances starting to creep in as a result of being on a such an extreme protocol for so long a time without time to recover, or all of these things, we can’t exactly be sure.
But her experience is not singular.
Outside of the potential health challenges you risk when you do this, there is also the mental aspect – I have only see a small percentage of women be this committed this long on a diet as strict as this. It’s definitely possible, but the vast majority of us by week 6 when it’s time to get off hCG anyway are like, “GOOD, because I’m so OVER this diet.” It’s good to stop the hCG program at a time when you think you are mentally feeling really done with it so that you avoid cheating too much on hCG which can quickly mess up a good amount of your hard-earned weight loss.
But let’s say you are one those small percentage of ladies who is really committed and you can do this thing for 3-6 months straight and really stick to it. I do have these major concerns about health imbalances cropping up as a result – and this isn’t just about weight loss slowing down too much – because of course, 75 lbs is still a huge chunk and it’s appealing to at least achieve that before stopping for awhile right? But the concern is that if your metabolism has slowed down too much, and/or you have lose too much lean muscle mass, stabilizing that weight loss may prove to be quite difficult even if you do everything right dietarily on Phase 3. And you may feel very fatigued if you’ve started to experience adrenal fatigue as a result. Which can make choosing good eating decisions very iffy.
If you choose to go ahead and do this anyway, your best bet for stabilizing that weight loss will be something very structured and gradual when it comes to getting back to a more normal amount of food – the P3toLife program is good for that.
So ultimately, yes you can do this, but I personally do not recommend it as a good idea- if you do, just know you are playing with fire a little bit – if you do get burned, it’s not irreversible – it can be fixed- but you will need to nurture your body and give it time to heal and recover.
Also please see my post on Extended Rounds of hCG to see some short video clips of other ladies experience with this – sometimes an extended round of more like 8 weeks like some of these ladies did may be a better choice over staying on hCG much longer.
If You’ve Already Done hCG a Long Time and Are Having Trouble Now:
If your experience is similar to the lady who emailed above, my suggestion is to definitely take a break from hCG for at least 3-6 months now. I know that can be a hard ask when you are not done losing weight- but learning to be happy with your new body even though it’s not “finished” yet, is really quite valuable anyway. You are seeing a new you every week and month on hCG as you lose weight. You shouldn’t have to wait till you’re completely done losing weight to be happy with what you see in the mirror. Appreciate your current progress compared to where you started from. After my 1st round of hCG, even though I was still overweight, I was 27 lbs lighter than 6 weeks prior, so I felt pretty stinkin’ good about myself! It was so fun wearing smaller clothes again and seeing how my makeup looked on my thinner face. Later I continued to get smaller but you can be happy with your current place in relation to where you were.
So yes, take a break from hCG for a full 3-6 months, follow something structured and guided for P3 like P3tolife, and learn to be content – challenge yourself with this – it will help you grow as a person. I know it did for me. Start working out and build muscle to rebuild your metabolism. And expect this to cause a LITTLE weight gain during this time too- muscle both weighs something, and takes up space on your body. Make allowance for this. Then after 3-6 months of this, your body should be in a much better place to respond better to your weight loss efforts with hCG again.
