Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (160 page)

HCG METABOLIC REHAB FOR PEOPLE WITH STUBBORNWEIGHT PROBLEMS

There is a subgroup of women, mostly at midlife, who simply do not lose weight no matter what they do. I have witnessed this repeatedly. Imagine the frustration of drinking nothing but green juice for five days (with a total caloric intake of 500 calories per day), then stepping on the scale and not seeing it budge a bit. Well, that’s the experience of many women. After years of yo-yo dieting, the cumulative effects of food additives, and other factors, some women have metabolic systems that simply defy the laws of biology. I used to think this was a myth until I witnessed it in several friends and colleagues.

How in the world is it possible to eat less than 1,000 calories a day and not lose a pound—and in some cases even gain weight? I simply don’t know. What I
do
know is that these women have abnormalities in the hypothalamus and pituitary that respond to a dietary approach that was the exclusive secret of celebrities and the wealthy in the 1950s. Back then, a very well-respected physician named A. T. W. Simeons, M.D., discovered that using small injections of a placentally produced hormone known as HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) along with a very specific five-hundred-calorie-per-day diet resulted in safe and rapid weight loss. What’s more, this dietary approach targeted just the areas of the body where fat needed to be lost, instead of removing “structural” fat, the fat needed to protect organs and joints. Furthermore, people on this dietary plan were found to have normal energy because the HCG works to release fat stores from the body and allows the body to use those calories for energy.

Dr. Simeons’s original protocol is available online (see
http://hcg weightlosshelp.com/pounds_and_inches.pdf
). Author Kevin Trudeau wrote a book about Dr. Simeons’s protocol entitled
The Weight Loss
Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About
(Alliance, 2007), which, while a bit paranoid, is largely accurate.

The plan involves injecting very, very small amounts of HCG into the subcutaneous fat each day for a minimum of twenty-six days and a maximum of forty days per fat loss cycle. If you have achieved your ideal size after that, you’re finished and don’t need to do this again. Your hypothalamus will be reset. After the first round of HCG, you then follow a diet that is free from grains and refined foods for another three weeks. From then on, you follow the healthy low-glycemic-index, additive-free diet that I already recommended. (But you will be able to eat a dessert now and then without weight gain.)

The thing I find most fascinating about the HCG plan is that the body hasn’t “seen” this particular hormone since pregnancy (and if you haven’t had children, it means your body hasn’t seen this since you were being formed in your mother’s womb). So the entire protocol can be thought of as a rebirth! I consider this perfectly safe given that the body experiences much, much higher levels of this hormone during pregnancy—and also because the injections are for such a short period of time.

Though this program is very effective, it is not for the weak of will. Here’s what one of my colleagues had to say:

The first thing I noticed on the HCG protocol was how many times I actually put something in my mouth mindlessly during the day. At first a kind of panic set in. And then I simply got more mindful with myself when my “pain body” came up like that. Before HCG, I had tried everything I knew to get back to my normal size. I hadn’t been able to do it since I had my son and moved to a state I hated, with no support from my husband. Though I exercised vigorously and followed a low-glycemic-index diet, nothing worked. HCG has been a total rebirth for me. I lost 40 pounds and have had no problem keeping it off since then.

I’m very grateful for this approach. But, as a health care professional, I can assure you that this approach will not work for anyone who has out-of-control emotional eating. There’s no way around that issue. No quick fix. If you don’t want daily injections, HCG is also now available in drops that you put under your tongue. This oral form has been found to work just as well as the injected form.
⁶⁷
Though the HCG diet is not FDA-approved, many qualified naturopaths and physicians prescribe it. I recommend that you work with one of them rather than attempt to do this on your own.

For more information on taking HCG, visit the Oral HCG and Obesity Website (
www.hcgobesity.org
) or its sister site, the Oral HCG Research Center (
http://oralhcg.com/English
). To order HCG drops, see
www.hcgdietdirect.com
or
www.hcgdrop.com
. For a helpful Internet video about preparing HCG for injection, visit
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7sTnSUT6RQ&feature=related.
Finally, I also recommend two books about HCG that are especially helpful: Harmony Clearwater Grace’s
HCG Diet Made Simple: Your
Step-by-Step Guide Beyond Pounds and Inches (Volume 1)
(Harmonious Clarity Group, 2009) and Linda Prinster’s
HCG Weight Loss
Cure Guide
(CreateSpace, 2008).

Get Enough Sleep

There’s a connection between getting enough sleep and maintaining a healthy weight. A study published in 2005 by Columbia University psychotherapist James Gangwisch, Ph.D., found that those who sleep four hours a night or less are 73 percent more likely to be obese than people who sleep seven to nine hours each night.
⁶⁸
Those who got five hours of sleep were 50 percent more likely to be obese, and those who got six hours were 23 percent more likely to be obese. One explanation is that when you don’t get enough sleep, your body produces less leptin (a hormone that signals the body that you’re full) and more ghrelin (a hormone that tells the body you’re hungry). This delivers a one-two punch: The higher levels of ghrelin make you feel hungrier, but the lower levels of leptin keep you from feeling satisfied.

Step Ten: Nutrient Yourself Optimally

For more than twenty-five years, I’ve recommended nutritional supplements to my patients, friends, and family, and I have taken them regularly my self. There is a profound shift going on in the scientific community concerning nutrition. We’re now realizing that there’s a huge difference between adequate nutrition (enough to prevent deficiency diseases) and optimal nutrition (the amount that results in peak function).

Nutritional supplements bridge the gap between adequate and optimal nutrition. And this is what really makes a difference. Today, we’re living longer, and we all want to be active and healthy into our seventies, eighties, and even nineties. Receiving the right amount of nutrients from food sources and nutritional supplements can help everyone achieve this goal. The Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) were first established in 1941 by the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) and have been updated only a few times in the last sixty years. At the time, the board looked at large populations to determine how to prevent diseases due to gross vitamin deficiencies. Based on their studies, the FNB set the RDA for vitamin C at 60 mg—the amount needed every day to prevent scurvy—and determined the RDA for vitamin D to be 400 IU (international units)—the amount required to prevent rickets. While it seems obvious that those levels are antiquated by today’s standards, many still hold on to the belief that you can get all the nutrition you need from a healthy diet. Although you were meant to get the nutrients your body needs from what you eat, it’s nearly impossible to do so today—even if you eat a diet of whole foods with lots of organic fruits and vegetables. That’s because over the last fifty years, the soil has been depleted of nutrients—especially minerals—due to overfarming, chem ical fertilization, and other practices. As a result, the nutritional value of many foods has declined. In addition, our fruits and vegetables are rarely eaten straight from the garden. Instead, they’re picked, shipped, and stored—losing nutrients along the way. (One of the reasons that the food tastes so good in Italy and France is that it’s picked at the height of freshness and eaten very soon thereafter!)

Nowadays, we’re also exposed to many more environmental hazards, including pollution, pesticides, and chemicals in cleaning products. Your body must detoxify these assaults—and it requires the right nutrients to get the job done properly. Toxins that remain in the body can cause a variety of health problems and lead to DNA damage. When the DNA in your cells is altered, your risk of chronic degenerative diseases (such as heart disease, certain cancers, arthritis, macular degeneration, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s) increases significantly. Studies have shown that taking the right nutrients can protect you from this type of cellular damage.
⁶⁹
Although the RDA classifications are still used as the basis for nutritional supplements (not to mention being upheld by many mainstream medical organizations), the empha sis at the FNB has changed over the last few years. They’re now looking at nutrition as a way to reduce the risk of chronic disease, as opposed to just preventing vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Focusing on optimal versus adequate nutrition is a giant step in the right direc tion, since there can be a huge difference between the two.

Vitamins and minerals, also known as micronutrients, can help do all of the following:

Enhance your immune system
⁷⁰

Reduce oxidative stress and damage from free radicals

Support healthy brain function

Protect your cardiovascular system and lower risk of death from heart disease
⁷¹

Lessen joint pain and enhance the health of your bones and joints