This is a common misconception. Of course, we all want to lose the most weight possible. But actually taking more hCG doesn’t actually make you lose more weight (unless you are such a low dosage, to begin with, that it’s not doing anything).
The dosage you should take for best weight loss is the dosage you feel the least hunger on – and for most, this is actually the lower end of the typical dosage range. Surprising huh!
Both too much hCG and too little hCG causes the same symptom: abnormal hunger while on the low-calorie diet. And taking more hCG and being super hungry will not give you better weight loss results, it will just make you miserable.
I talk about how to find your proper dosage for best weight loss and non-hunger in great detail along with many user-stories here.
It helps to know more the role hCG is actually playing. Many think, as I did too at one time, that the hCG hormone itself is causing the weight loss- and if that were true, it would then be natural to think that more hCG would = more weight loss.
But actually, it’s simply the calorie deficit that the 500-800 calorie diet is providing that is “causing” your weight loss. But don’t panic – hCG is still very important in this diet. I remember when I first read the above and realized why it was true and I felt SUPER deflated. I wanted hCG to BE the magic thing MAKING me lose weight. Guess what, it’s actually your body that’s doing the magic thing, and hCG like this big facilitator to it (which is why many women who can’t lose weight with any other diet, can with hCG). So hCG is still important! I would never do this protocol without it. Here’s why.
The 2 main roles that hCG plays in this protocol, and I’d venture a possible 3rd:
- Preserves lean muscle. Normally on such a low-calorie diet, your body would go into what people call “starvation mode” – downregulating your metabolism to match your reduced calorie intake, and burning off more muscle than fat. This is never a good thing because after the diet if you lose muscle your body needs to function, you will gain that weight back pretty easily.
- Changes hunger sensation. Normally if you were attempting to eating 500 calories for 3-6 weeks in a row, you would feel pretty starving and weak. When on the right dosage of hCG however, most of us report feeling pretty normal – as if the 500-800 calories were all our body needed. This is important because not only is it pretty impossible to stick to a protocol like this if you felt starving every day, I also think the potential for eating disorder issues could arise much more easily as well from being in that type of agonizing mental state for multiple days.
- Protects metabolism. This goes back a little bit to point 1. I think hCG is a protective mechanism for your metabolism – both during and for after. If you don’t lose too much muscle while on the diet, afterward, you will have an easier time stabilizing because the more lean mass you have, the higher your resting metabolism is. If you lose a lot of this during a diet, this means that when you finish, your final resting metabolism is lower and that means you must eat less food and calories in order to say that weight. Secondly, I feel it’s very possible that during the diet itself, hCG helps to keep your metabolism about where it was, rather than downregulating. Some feel that hCG even speeds up your metabolism a little bit while on the diet – that may be true, I don’t really have proof of that- if it does, it’s not so significant as to be causing several extra pounds of weight loss though. To me, I think it’s more about preventing your body from feeling the need to reduce it’s resting metabolism to match the low calories you are eating – this allows your body to continue losing weight instead of hoarding the fat and conserving.
All this is just my opinion on what may be happening- please don’t take any of it as scientific fact! I hope that helps.
