I feel like my tag line (a skeptic takes on the HCG diet) requires me to do a little retrospective of the last 43 days. You know...misty, water-colored memories of the way we were.
When I started this diet, I thought it was absolute horse shit. I had seen a couple of good friends do well on it and had resisted joining them for months while I maintained a small weight loss and recovered from a serious ankle injury. But once my weight started creeping back up and I regained in a month what it had taken me 15 months to lose, I just panicked. I did my research. I talked about it with everyone I know (and most people fell into two camps: very in favor or very against). I weighed pros and cons. I carefully considered. And then I just did it, telling Shannon privately not to be embarrassed or to feel like a failure if I dropped out after a few days. I honestly did not think I could hack being super hungry.
And I was super hungry for the first week or so. I'm told it could be because I didn't load up properly or it could be because I had a lot of sugar detoxing to do. Who knows. But I was super hungry. And you know what? It didn't kill me! I felt otherwise fine. And I lost a shit load of weight the first week (13.8 lbs the first week alone). I started adjusting my expectations and planned to lose 35-40 pounds; after all, if I could lose almost 14 the first week, surely I could lose 26 more in FIVE additional weeks, right?
Weeks 2-5 were actually pretty easy. I ate mostly chicken and lean, grass-fed ground beef with occasional fish thrown in for variety. I pan fried my meat with no oil in a nonstick pan and usually ate it over a salad of spinach or mixed greens, though I did a lot of cucumber and tomato too. I varied my fruit as much as I could considering I was only allowed to have 4 different fruits. I tried to vary the time of day I ate. I did light exercise (yoga, walking) 3-5 times a week (the advice was to exercise a lesser amount but every day, I did more but not every day). My cheats were so minor that I think they hardly count as cheats, considering I could have binged on pizza or something.
I felt GOOD. I felt physically fine, mentally sharp, and mostly upbeat and positive. I felt so good that I forgot to take my crazy pills for a week (wellbutrin and lexapro) and had a bit of a crash, which manifested itself mostly in feeling really pissed off at everyone all the time. But mostly I felt less depressed and less anxious than I have in years. My theory is that sugar really tweaks my anxiety, but it's a theory I look forward to testing in a very conscious, deliberate way either during maintenance or on my next gorge days.
I don't think I had quite as much muscle strength or endurance as I normally do, but I had plenty to do my daily activities with ease plus some light exercise. I had way more energy at night in the 8-11p.m. time frame than I usually do.
I replaced some of my bad eating habits or routines with better habits: I've been exercising with friends a lot this month (shooting for 3x a week of either walks or pilates classes at the gym). I've been knitting at night while I watch TV (mostly Intervention), which feels relaxing and productive. I know watching TV is not ideal and that reading or doing something around the house would be better, and hopefully that will work well for me soon. I have been blogging a lot here and reading up on the diet, which I think has helped my daytime cravings and habits.
Week 6, I started to get hungry again, and I started to suspect that my body was just DONE, but I stuck with it mostly for bragging rights--I wanted to be able to say I finished the whole t hing. But I lost very little weight (in the following chart, you can see I lost only 1.4 lbs in the last 10 days. That would be a pretty normal rate for me on Weight Watchers, by the way; about a pound a week.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that I didn't lose a little more. My goal was to lose 35-40 pounds (I have now learned that the MD associated with my local group says to stop at 34 no matter what, so I didn't even have a realistic goal in the first place!) and then be better positioned to lose the last 20 or so the old-fashioned way. But I have about 30 left to lose, so I feel fairly certain I'll be doing another round in late January/early February to get the last 30 off. And wouldn't it be nice if I could do it in 4 or 5 weeks instead of 6 weeks? I think Holly (a commenter) is going to do it with me then. Olivia can't start her second round until later in the spring because of various other life commitments, but I know she'll be following along and trying to actively participate in her own maintenance.
So, hearkening back to the pros and cons I did at the beginning before I knew what this diet was about, let me give a new perspective on the pros and cons.
PROS (of this diet, as opposed to diets in general):
1. You lose a lot of weight very fast. This allows you to maintain enthusiasm and will power because it gives you instant gratification.
2. You're eating super healthy food--organic meat, fruit and vegetables, which just makes you feel really good and healthy.
3. Anyone can do this--it's so short! It's only 40 days (or less even). If you hate it, you just have to hang in there for 6 weeks. Anyone can do that.
4. I had plenty of energy the whole time while still losing weight rapidly.
5. My body fat monitor says I have lost fat and increased muscle, despite losing 31 pounds in 43 days.
6. The limited choice of food actually frees you up from thinking about food all the time and figuring out how to game the system. You only have a few choices.
7. My sense of taste is greatly enhanced.
8. I understand more about the difference between cravings and hunger and hope to take that knowledge with me into maintenance and beyond.
9. This has been tremendous validation of my willpower for me, considering I haven't had much faith in it. I almost think a total detox diet like this was the only way I could get out of the sugar rut I was in. Had I done WW or a similar program, I would have cheated because I would have still been eating sugar, which would have let to binges.
10. It is relatively easy, or at least it feels easy. While I have blogged at length about how I think some of the rules are really dumb, they really aren't THAT hard to follow, whether or not you believe them. I swear. I know it looks hard, but it really wasn't. I am giving you the straight skinny here--I'm not selling drops or anything.
11. HUGE health benefits. I have lost 31 pounds, reduced my BMI from 34 to 29 (from obese to merely overweight), and some recent lab tests confirmed that this diet (probably in conjunction with the massive exercise program I undertook from January through July) has reduced my bad cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and raised my good cholesterol. The last time I had labs done was in early 2008 right after having a baby, so it's been almost 3 years, but the exercise and diet are the most likely culprits for the positive changes in my labs.
12. Discipline and confidence--it has got to be good for my weight loss efforts and for my psyche overall to really believe I can do something instead of constantly feeling like a big failure.
CONS (of this particular diet, as opposed to diets in general):
1. I was worried about the impact of this diet on my almost-6-year-old daughter, and in fact she was very aware of it. No matter how I tried to explain it to her in terms of health and shrinking my body to make intense exercise safer, she was constantly offering me food. Somewhere along the line, she learned about Karen Carpenter (probably because her horrible Christmas carol is on the radio every five minutes) and in the last few days has asked me if I am starving myself and if I'm going to die "like that singer." I look at it as an opportunity for education, but I would never, ever, recommend that SHE ever do this diet to lose weight (unnecessarily extreme, at least for anyone under 21), which I recognize is highly hypocritical.
2. It ain't cheap. The drops cost between $20-60 a pop, depending on where you get them and what you get. I needed three "pops." I am lucky to have a friend who has been coaching me to prepare for starting an HCG clinic, but some people also pay hundreds for the coaching.
3. Eating is a pain. We eat out a lot, we eat with friends a lot, and there is just no way to do that safely. The food is too specific. So I had to either eat before I went or bring my own food, either of which leads to questions and logistical annoyances. Plus, the food is so limited it gets boring.
4. I felt a little like a crazy person. I have a lot of smart, rational friends and relatives who looked on this diet at best with bemused acceptance and at worst with hostility. This diet just SOUNDS crazy, and when you tell people about it, they think you are crazy. That won't bother some people, but it was really hard for me. The social support for a radical diet like this is just not there the same way it is for other kinds of eating regiments.
5. You get sort of obsessed with your weight and the diet, which could be a bad thing for people with a history of certain kinds of eating disorders. I thought about food very little, but I thought about the diet a lot. I think it would be hard to be very successful without that kind of focus. But I will say my productiveness at work flagged in the last few weeks, what with maintaining this blog and researching recipes and such.
6. There remains little or no scientific evidence of the validity of this diet, which can make it hard to power through when motivation is flagging (which is why the quick weight loss is such a good reinforcement). There are very few case studies out there on the interwebz of long-term, successful weight loss. There are very few studies of any kind either about the HCG diet in general or the homeopathic HCG drops in particular.
*******
On balance? Not the slightest regret. I am so glad I did it. It started out as an experiment, and now I am 31 pounds lighter in 43 days. The real proof will be whether I have kept it off in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. I feel like I have some things in place that will help me succeed on the maintenance plan, and I have learned a lot about my own body that will serve me well in the next round.
Would I recommend it to someone else? A qualified yes. If you have at least 20 pounds to lose, if you have a history of issues with food, if you feel like you have tried lots of other things and failed, and if you are prepared to really commit to this 100% for 6 weeks of weight loss and 6 weeks of maintenance, then yes, I would recommend it for you.
If any of these conditions aren't true, I would consider a more traditional weight loss program first.
Thoughts? Comments? Agree or disagree with any of my pros and cons?
Showing posts with label Advantages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advantages. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
What My Skepticism Looks Like 30 Days in to the HCG Diet
Two posts ago, I blamed a recent home-stretch gain/plateau on eating ONE ELBOW of macaroni and cheese and on failing to take the proper dosage of drops for about a day and a half. For some of you, this seems like utter horse shit, and you have a hard time buying into a diet that would make such ridiculous claims. For others of you, the evidence that this is a bad idea is SO CLEAR that you cannot understand why I would make such a reckless and libertine mistake.
And this we return to my constant HCG diet theme of "some people think I'm crazy for this reason and other people think I'm crazy for that reason."
The truth of the matter is that no matter how much you love this diet and no matter how much it works for you, it seems you have to admit that there are a lot of strange, specific, and seemingly random rules that have no real scientific evidence behind them. In fact, some of the rules that were insisted upon when I started this diet 37 days ago are now being rethought, as more medical personnel and homeopaths are brought on board to the local team in an official capacity (ex: now they're saying you don't need to wait 30 minutes before and after drops; you can shoot for 10. You can have mint. No more grape tomatoes; they're too sweet. Etc.) It is very much an evolving, trial-and-error process.
Conversely, no matter how much you think this diet is stupid and ridiculous with stupid, nonsensical rules, you have to admit it works pretty damn well and that the people who are actually doing it report that some of these weird rules really help them. All the people who were worried about me passing out, fainting, and freaking out have now seen that I haven't. It's safe, it's sensible, it's healthy, it's effective.
So I've just been thinking in the last few days about what makes sense about this diet and what doesn't; why I do some of the things that don't make sense (and will continue to) and why I don't do some of the things that do make sense.
In short: I'm ornery.
In long: I also have a strange combination of willing suspension of disbelief when it serves me, right along side relentless insistence on evidence when I want it. I can see how this could be frustrating for anyone coaching me through this process. This is why my scientific friends and family members are perplexed that I could "fall" for any of this voodoo, and my HCG friends and compatriots are frustrated that I don't fall for all of it. :)
Examples of HCG diet rules that make sense and/or that have some scientific proof behind them:
1) Eat 500 calories a day. It is a well-accepted, proven, scientific fact that eating fewer calories makes you lose weight. If you are a healthy person with extra weight to lose, it ain't gonna kill you to be hungry, and you will lose weight. Guaranteed.
2) Drink lots of water. Water is healthy. Drinking more water makes you retain less water, which helps you see a "truer" weight loss on the scale. Drinking water helps fill you up and can make you eat less. Water also helps your cells and metabolism function more efficiently.
3) Eat only organic foods (only grass-fed, hormone-free beef, organic chicken and other meats, pesticide-free veggies, no artificial sweeteners except for Stevia). Pesticides and chemicals and fake sugars are bad for you and can prevent weight loss, maybe even cause weight gain. There is some evidence that a lot of chemicals can wreck your metabolism. Believe it or not, one of the best metabolism/endocrinology books I have ever read is Jillian Michaels' Master Your Metabolism. Whatever you think of JM herself (I kind of love her), she knows how to hire experts who really know their shit.
4) Get plenty of sleep (there are lots of studies about this, but here is one). The general principal is that when you are tired, your body actually produces more ghrelin, a hormone that makes you hungrier the next day.
5) Eliminate carbs and reduce fats during reduction. You can probably lose weight eating 500 calories a day, even if you eat 500 calories on M&Ms a day. But getting rid of carbs and severely restricting fats will result in a healthier, more filling 500 calories. [note: I always forget that the purest form of the diet includes two melba toasts or grissini bread sticks a day. So I guess that makes it a low-carb rather than a no-carb diet. I forget because I haven't been eating them at all, and haven't missed them]. Recent studies show that it is not good to reduce fat and carbs forever though...most bodies need all the food groups in moderation, which means they need protein, carbs, and fats to stay healthy.
6) Get some gentle exercise. When you're on a VLCD (very low-calorie diet), it's probably not wise to exercise like a maniac, just so that you're protecting your energy level. But you don't want to do nothing, or you'll be at higher risk of losing some muscle mass while you diet. So walking, yoga, and light weight lifting will help you retain/increase muscle while losing fat.
All of these rules make perfect sense to me; they are sound, well-researched dieting truisms, and whether or not you agree that they are the best/safest/most effective way to lose weight, they are clearly linked to weight loss. I bet that anyone doing just those 6 things would lose a decent amount of weight in 40 days with or without voodoo drops and the rest of it. Did I miss any HCG rules that are sensible and research-based? If so, leave them in the comments.
And yet there are all these other strange, specific, and seemingly random rules that make no sense to me, but that HCG diet proponents swear make a huge difference in weight loss:
1) No mixing vegetables (You may have spinach OR tomatoes OR onions OR cucumber at each meal, but not more than one at any given meal, though it is preferable to mix it up from meal to meal). This makes no sense. I have not seen any good reason why mixing or not mixing vegetables at individual meals has any impact on metabolism or weight loss.
2) No oils at all, either inside your body via food or outside your body via oil-based moisturizers, bath products, or lip balms. You can't even touch oily/greasy food you're serving to someone else. This makes no sense. No one has been able to explain to me scientifically why HCG would make you so sensitive to oil that touching your kid's tater tot without a glove could cause a two-pound weight gain and a three day stall.
3) Some vegetables are allowed, and some aren't, on a seemingly random basis (example: asparagus is allowed; broccoli is not. Cucumber is allowed, cauliflower is not). It makes a modicum of sense to me that the starchy vegetables (corn, peas, etc.) and the sweet veggies (carrots, sugar snap peas) are verboten, but the super fibrous, healthy, low-carb and lo-cal veggies? NO SENSE.
4) Some lean, organic meats are allowed and not others (example: chicken is allowed, but turkey is not). Again, I understand why they ban fatty meats like pork, but the ban on turkey? NO SENSE.
5) Some fruits are allowed (strawberries, oranges, grapefruit, apples); others are not even though they seem similar in nutritional content to the allowed fruits (tangerines, clementines, blueberries, cranberries). Say it with me now: no sense.
6) The diet claims that if you take drops of homeopathic HCG and you will be less hungry, you will lose weight from the right places (hips, butt, waist) instead of the wrong places (face, boobs), you will lose weight faster, and you will actually cure the hypothalamus. There were two studies done on these claims. The first showed that injected HCG did impact hunger, body shape, etc. The second failed to corroborate the first's findings. In science-land, that means there is no proof. And that's for injected HCG. I don't think homeopathic HCG has even been studied. I do not deny that there is ample anecdotal evidence for the wonders of homeopathic HCG, but there are good reasons why research is not based on anecdotes (scroll down to the section of this post called "What is the difference between anecdotal and scientific data?" for a brief overview.
Read any HCG book, ask any expert about the food restrictions (no mixing veggies, no turkey, etc.) and they will tell you "Well I'm sure Dr. Simeons thought of that, and if he says it's not okay, then it's not okay" OR they will say "well whenever I didn't do that stuff, I gained weight." But to my knowledge, no one has any scientific proof of any of these things. They have case studies and they have anecdotes, which are not totally irrelevant, but are not the same. Especially when you're talking about proving something that doesn't make sense.
Okay, here I am, having lost nearly 30 pounds on the HCG diet, hating on the HCG diet. Except I'm not hating on it! I really am not. I think this diet has given me a lot of gifts. I just want to be honest about my experience with it. I have to live up to my subhead, man.
I have developed my own theory of why this diet's strange, specific, and seemingly random rules work and why I'm doing them anyway, even though I don't totally believe in them all.
I think it's because this diet provides a really strange and successful blend of being able to pay almost no attention to what/when you eat while also maintaining an almost hyper focus on the details that keeps you from falling off the wagon.
If you are eating 500 calories a day without following any of the HCG protocol (as Kristoise is*), then you have endless options. If you are also someone with a food problem (which Kristoise is not), then you would be constantly tempted to work in "danger" foods while still staying under 500 calories, e.g. "how many M&Ms can I have for 500 calories? If I have one pancake, can I skip dinner to make up for it?" This kind of approach for problem eaters or food addicts makes it harder because you are constantly trading and bargaining with yourself and you are thinking about food ALL THE TIME. One of my main issues with Weight Watchers (FOR ME) all along has been that I think it encourages a different kind of eating disorder (FOR ME). To be successful on WW, I had to literally count every sip or bite of anything that I had. So WW may have cured an overeating disorder, but it fostered a new kind of obsessive eating disorder. The latter may be physically healthier (MAY be) but I'm not convinced it's a psychological improvement.
On this diet, I never think about food. There are only 2-3 proteins that I enjoy, 4-5 veggies, and 4 fruits. That is a pretty limited number of combinations. There is no thinking about what kind of salad to have, can I have extra red peppers instead of green, etc. There are no choices. Not thinking about food all the time frees me up to think about what makes me think about food. Ha. Does that even make sense? What I mean is this: if I never have to think about food, then when I start to really want a specific food or a specific feeling of fullness, I have more space to think about why I want it, what I would normally do, and what I should do. On WW when that uncomfortable feeling of WANT WANT WANT arises, I just eat 3 skinny cow ice cream sandwiches, still manage to stay under points, and call it a day. I learn nothing and make no real behavior changes.
For that reason, I think the strictness of this diet related to food (no mixing, only certain foods) is a huge advantage for someone who struggles with food even if it doesn't make chemical sense. I do not believe that the freedom to mix cucumbers and tomatoes in a single meal would stop my metabolism. I do think it would make me think about food a lot more.
So that's the bit about the diet being almost completely thoughtless when it comes to food. Yet there are so many other rules--no mint**, no gum, no artificial sweetener, no oil on your hands or face or body--that you end up thinking about the process of dieting a lot, which keeps you honest. It results in a situation that is unique to any diet I have ever tried: you rarely think about food, but you are always thinking about what will make you successful, and you are always thinking about self care. It's a very interesting approach.
I bet you almost anything that my stalls and gains were not actually caused by Thanksgiving turkey, one elbow of macaroni and cheese, or oil-based lip balm. Shannon, I know you are going to hate me for saying that, but I really think they were natural fluctuations that were caused by who-knows-what and resolved by who-knows-what. I bet when someone is eating 500 calories a day, they will have plateaus no matter what they do, and they will break plateaus. But when you're on a diet with silly and specific rules, you give credit or blame to whatever you did last. It you pet a horse on the day before you gained, someone, somewhere would be blaming the horse petting.
I BET that if you structured a similar diet with the same basic core principles (low cal, low carb, low fat, healthy foods) but changed the details and insisted with the same rigor on new rules (like no hair brushing, no nail polish, no chicken, no petting horses or other hooved animals) that you would have similar success.
The point is not what the rules are, the point is that you pay attention. That's why it works. Because once you start to slack on paying attention to silly, irrational rules, maybe you are also slacking on the food and exercise that is helping you lose.
My scientific brain (small as it may be) believes everything I am saying in this post. But my fear-based brain suspects that I will do this the exact same way if I do a second round in January because it has worked, and why mess with something that works? So why am I taking drops that I might not believe in? Why NOT? If someone told me to take arsenic to lose weight, I wouldn't do it. But when someone tells me to take something that is at best effective and at worst a placebo, WHY NOT? Why not follow the rules about mixing vegetables? Why not stay away from turkey? It costs you nothing to follow the rules, and they just might be onto something for some reason you don't understand.
The funny thing is, I have apparently gotten a bit of a reputation in our local group as a rebel; a doubter; a skeptic. I think Shannon thinks I am breaking rules left and right, willy nilly. But though I ask a lot of questions, I have broken very, very few rules. I have actually followed this protocol just about as closely as anyone. Turkey and one elbow of macaroni and lip gloss are hardly the kind of cheats that sink diets.
And if someone else were doing this diet, I would tell them to follow all the stupid rules too. Because why not? What have you got to lose? It's 40 days. You can do anything for 40 days.
So see what I did there? You thought I was going to write a big post about how stupid the HCG diet is. And I sort of did. But I still think it works and will probably still try it again.
*Kristoise chimed in the comments of my last post that she was doing a 500-calorie a day diet (inspired by this one) but without all the voodoo. It still works, even without the voodoo. She is a vegetarian, so she is eating eggs, grains, dairy, etc. and is still losing an average of 0.7 pounds a day. I will point out a few things:
1) people doing HCG usually lose a lot more than one pound a day in the first week
2) K only has 5-10 pounds to lose total, which should mean she is losing at a slower rate than someone with a lot to lose
3) K has no symptoms or history of food addiction or binge eating
4) She's been doing it for a full week
5) She says she is not starving or miserable, in fact, she reports less hunger in her first week than I did, and that was without the loading days or the HCG
6) the only element of the diet that she is mimicking is the 500 calories. No drops, no restricted foods, etc.
I asked K to write a blog post about what she's doing, how she's finding it, what she thinks, etc., and she demurred, worried that readers who have a lot emotionally invested in the HCG diet will find her post insulting or upsetting (because basically, she'll make the case that all you need to do to lose weight is eat 500 calories a day whether or not you take drops and mix vegetables.) I would not be at all insulted and think it would be interesting to read. She is a real scientist, yo. Besides, there are enough differences that I don't think her case or experience necessarily translates to other people who feel desperate for a weight loss solution. Anyway, chime in in the comments if you would be interested in a guest blog post about what it's like to do this diet without the drops and food restriction. Or chime in if you would actively not like to read that.
**no mint: as of last night and according to a new HCG book and a new homeopath that has been brought on board locally, the mint rule is now rescinded. Long live mint!
And this we return to my constant HCG diet theme of "some people think I'm crazy for this reason and other people think I'm crazy for that reason."
The truth of the matter is that no matter how much you love this diet and no matter how much it works for you, it seems you have to admit that there are a lot of strange, specific, and seemingly random rules that have no real scientific evidence behind them. In fact, some of the rules that were insisted upon when I started this diet 37 days ago are now being rethought, as more medical personnel and homeopaths are brought on board to the local team in an official capacity (ex: now they're saying you don't need to wait 30 minutes before and after drops; you can shoot for 10. You can have mint. No more grape tomatoes; they're too sweet. Etc.) It is very much an evolving, trial-and-error process.
Conversely, no matter how much you think this diet is stupid and ridiculous with stupid, nonsensical rules, you have to admit it works pretty damn well and that the people who are actually doing it report that some of these weird rules really help them. All the people who were worried about me passing out, fainting, and freaking out have now seen that I haven't. It's safe, it's sensible, it's healthy, it's effective.
So I've just been thinking in the last few days about what makes sense about this diet and what doesn't; why I do some of the things that don't make sense (and will continue to) and why I don't do some of the things that do make sense.
In short: I'm ornery.
In long: I also have a strange combination of willing suspension of disbelief when it serves me, right along side relentless insistence on evidence when I want it. I can see how this could be frustrating for anyone coaching me through this process. This is why my scientific friends and family members are perplexed that I could "fall" for any of this voodoo, and my HCG friends and compatriots are frustrated that I don't fall for all of it. :)
Examples of HCG diet rules that make sense and/or that have some scientific proof behind them:
1) Eat 500 calories a day. It is a well-accepted, proven, scientific fact that eating fewer calories makes you lose weight. If you are a healthy person with extra weight to lose, it ain't gonna kill you to be hungry, and you will lose weight. Guaranteed.
2) Drink lots of water. Water is healthy. Drinking more water makes you retain less water, which helps you see a "truer" weight loss on the scale. Drinking water helps fill you up and can make you eat less. Water also helps your cells and metabolism function more efficiently.
3) Eat only organic foods (only grass-fed, hormone-free beef, organic chicken and other meats, pesticide-free veggies, no artificial sweeteners except for Stevia). Pesticides and chemicals and fake sugars are bad for you and can prevent weight loss, maybe even cause weight gain. There is some evidence that a lot of chemicals can wreck your metabolism. Believe it or not, one of the best metabolism/endocrinology books I have ever read is Jillian Michaels' Master Your Metabolism. Whatever you think of JM herself (I kind of love her), she knows how to hire experts who really know their shit.
4) Get plenty of sleep (there are lots of studies about this, but here is one). The general principal is that when you are tired, your body actually produces more ghrelin, a hormone that makes you hungrier the next day.
5) Eliminate carbs and reduce fats during reduction. You can probably lose weight eating 500 calories a day, even if you eat 500 calories on M&Ms a day. But getting rid of carbs and severely restricting fats will result in a healthier, more filling 500 calories. [note: I always forget that the purest form of the diet includes two melba toasts or grissini bread sticks a day. So I guess that makes it a low-carb rather than a no-carb diet. I forget because I haven't been eating them at all, and haven't missed them]. Recent studies show that it is not good to reduce fat and carbs forever though...most bodies need all the food groups in moderation, which means they need protein, carbs, and fats to stay healthy.
6) Get some gentle exercise. When you're on a VLCD (very low-calorie diet), it's probably not wise to exercise like a maniac, just so that you're protecting your energy level. But you don't want to do nothing, or you'll be at higher risk of losing some muscle mass while you diet. So walking, yoga, and light weight lifting will help you retain/increase muscle while losing fat.
All of these rules make perfect sense to me; they are sound, well-researched dieting truisms, and whether or not you agree that they are the best/safest/most effective way to lose weight, they are clearly linked to weight loss. I bet that anyone doing just those 6 things would lose a decent amount of weight in 40 days with or without voodoo drops and the rest of it. Did I miss any HCG rules that are sensible and research-based? If so, leave them in the comments.
And yet there are all these other strange, specific, and seemingly random rules that make no sense to me, but that HCG diet proponents swear make a huge difference in weight loss:
1) No mixing vegetables (You may have spinach OR tomatoes OR onions OR cucumber at each meal, but not more than one at any given meal, though it is preferable to mix it up from meal to meal). This makes no sense. I have not seen any good reason why mixing or not mixing vegetables at individual meals has any impact on metabolism or weight loss.
2) No oils at all, either inside your body via food or outside your body via oil-based moisturizers, bath products, or lip balms. You can't even touch oily/greasy food you're serving to someone else. This makes no sense. No one has been able to explain to me scientifically why HCG would make you so sensitive to oil that touching your kid's tater tot without a glove could cause a two-pound weight gain and a three day stall.
3) Some vegetables are allowed, and some aren't, on a seemingly random basis (example: asparagus is allowed; broccoli is not. Cucumber is allowed, cauliflower is not). It makes a modicum of sense to me that the starchy vegetables (corn, peas, etc.) and the sweet veggies (carrots, sugar snap peas) are verboten, but the super fibrous, healthy, low-carb and lo-cal veggies? NO SENSE.
4) Some lean, organic meats are allowed and not others (example: chicken is allowed, but turkey is not). Again, I understand why they ban fatty meats like pork, but the ban on turkey? NO SENSE.
5) Some fruits are allowed (strawberries, oranges, grapefruit, apples); others are not even though they seem similar in nutritional content to the allowed fruits (tangerines, clementines, blueberries, cranberries). Say it with me now: no sense.
6) The diet claims that if you take drops of homeopathic HCG and you will be less hungry, you will lose weight from the right places (hips, butt, waist) instead of the wrong places (face, boobs), you will lose weight faster, and you will actually cure the hypothalamus. There were two studies done on these claims. The first showed that injected HCG did impact hunger, body shape, etc. The second failed to corroborate the first's findings. In science-land, that means there is no proof. And that's for injected HCG. I don't think homeopathic HCG has even been studied. I do not deny that there is ample anecdotal evidence for the wonders of homeopathic HCG, but there are good reasons why research is not based on anecdotes (scroll down to the section of this post called "What is the difference between anecdotal and scientific data?" for a brief overview.
Read any HCG book, ask any expert about the food restrictions (no mixing veggies, no turkey, etc.) and they will tell you "Well I'm sure Dr. Simeons thought of that, and if he says it's not okay, then it's not okay" OR they will say "well whenever I didn't do that stuff, I gained weight." But to my knowledge, no one has any scientific proof of any of these things. They have case studies and they have anecdotes, which are not totally irrelevant, but are not the same. Especially when you're talking about proving something that doesn't make sense.
Okay, here I am, having lost nearly 30 pounds on the HCG diet, hating on the HCG diet. Except I'm not hating on it! I really am not. I think this diet has given me a lot of gifts. I just want to be honest about my experience with it. I have to live up to my subhead, man.
I have developed my own theory of why this diet's strange, specific, and seemingly random rules work and why I'm doing them anyway, even though I don't totally believe in them all.
I think it's because this diet provides a really strange and successful blend of being able to pay almost no attention to what/when you eat while also maintaining an almost hyper focus on the details that keeps you from falling off the wagon.
If you are eating 500 calories a day without following any of the HCG protocol (as Kristoise is*), then you have endless options. If you are also someone with a food problem (which Kristoise is not), then you would be constantly tempted to work in "danger" foods while still staying under 500 calories, e.g. "how many M&Ms can I have for 500 calories? If I have one pancake, can I skip dinner to make up for it?" This kind of approach for problem eaters or food addicts makes it harder because you are constantly trading and bargaining with yourself and you are thinking about food ALL THE TIME. One of my main issues with Weight Watchers (FOR ME) all along has been that I think it encourages a different kind of eating disorder (FOR ME). To be successful on WW, I had to literally count every sip or bite of anything that I had. So WW may have cured an overeating disorder, but it fostered a new kind of obsessive eating disorder. The latter may be physically healthier (MAY be) but I'm not convinced it's a psychological improvement.
On this diet, I never think about food. There are only 2-3 proteins that I enjoy, 4-5 veggies, and 4 fruits. That is a pretty limited number of combinations. There is no thinking about what kind of salad to have, can I have extra red peppers instead of green, etc. There are no choices. Not thinking about food all the time frees me up to think about what makes me think about food. Ha. Does that even make sense? What I mean is this: if I never have to think about food, then when I start to really want a specific food or a specific feeling of fullness, I have more space to think about why I want it, what I would normally do, and what I should do. On WW when that uncomfortable feeling of WANT WANT WANT arises, I just eat 3 skinny cow ice cream sandwiches, still manage to stay under points, and call it a day. I learn nothing and make no real behavior changes.
For that reason, I think the strictness of this diet related to food (no mixing, only certain foods) is a huge advantage for someone who struggles with food even if it doesn't make chemical sense. I do not believe that the freedom to mix cucumbers and tomatoes in a single meal would stop my metabolism. I do think it would make me think about food a lot more.
So that's the bit about the diet being almost completely thoughtless when it comes to food. Yet there are so many other rules--no mint**, no gum, no artificial sweetener, no oil on your hands or face or body--that you end up thinking about the process of dieting a lot, which keeps you honest. It results in a situation that is unique to any diet I have ever tried: you rarely think about food, but you are always thinking about what will make you successful, and you are always thinking about self care. It's a very interesting approach.
I bet you almost anything that my stalls and gains were not actually caused by Thanksgiving turkey, one elbow of macaroni and cheese, or oil-based lip balm. Shannon, I know you are going to hate me for saying that, but I really think they were natural fluctuations that were caused by who-knows-what and resolved by who-knows-what. I bet when someone is eating 500 calories a day, they will have plateaus no matter what they do, and they will break plateaus. But when you're on a diet with silly and specific rules, you give credit or blame to whatever you did last. It you pet a horse on the day before you gained, someone, somewhere would be blaming the horse petting.
I BET that if you structured a similar diet with the same basic core principles (low cal, low carb, low fat, healthy foods) but changed the details and insisted with the same rigor on new rules (like no hair brushing, no nail polish, no chicken, no petting horses or other hooved animals) that you would have similar success.
The point is not what the rules are, the point is that you pay attention. That's why it works. Because once you start to slack on paying attention to silly, irrational rules, maybe you are also slacking on the food and exercise that is helping you lose.
My scientific brain (small as it may be) believes everything I am saying in this post. But my fear-based brain suspects that I will do this the exact same way if I do a second round in January because it has worked, and why mess with something that works? So why am I taking drops that I might not believe in? Why NOT? If someone told me to take arsenic to lose weight, I wouldn't do it. But when someone tells me to take something that is at best effective and at worst a placebo, WHY NOT? Why not follow the rules about mixing vegetables? Why not stay away from turkey? It costs you nothing to follow the rules, and they just might be onto something for some reason you don't understand.
The funny thing is, I have apparently gotten a bit of a reputation in our local group as a rebel; a doubter; a skeptic. I think Shannon thinks I am breaking rules left and right, willy nilly. But though I ask a lot of questions, I have broken very, very few rules. I have actually followed this protocol just about as closely as anyone. Turkey and one elbow of macaroni and lip gloss are hardly the kind of cheats that sink diets.
And if someone else were doing this diet, I would tell them to follow all the stupid rules too. Because why not? What have you got to lose? It's 40 days. You can do anything for 40 days.
So see what I did there? You thought I was going to write a big post about how stupid the HCG diet is. And I sort of did. But I still think it works and will probably still try it again.
*Kristoise chimed in the comments of my last post that she was doing a 500-calorie a day diet (inspired by this one) but without all the voodoo. It still works, even without the voodoo. She is a vegetarian, so she is eating eggs, grains, dairy, etc. and is still losing an average of 0.7 pounds a day. I will point out a few things:
1) people doing HCG usually lose a lot more than one pound a day in the first week
2) K only has 5-10 pounds to lose total, which should mean she is losing at a slower rate than someone with a lot to lose
3) K has no symptoms or history of food addiction or binge eating
4) She's been doing it for a full week
5) She says she is not starving or miserable, in fact, she reports less hunger in her first week than I did, and that was without the loading days or the HCG
6) the only element of the diet that she is mimicking is the 500 calories. No drops, no restricted foods, etc.
I asked K to write a blog post about what she's doing, how she's finding it, what she thinks, etc., and she demurred, worried that readers who have a lot emotionally invested in the HCG diet will find her post insulting or upsetting (because basically, she'll make the case that all you need to do to lose weight is eat 500 calories a day whether or not you take drops and mix vegetables.) I would not be at all insulted and think it would be interesting to read. She is a real scientist, yo. Besides, there are enough differences that I don't think her case or experience necessarily translates to other people who feel desperate for a weight loss solution. Anyway, chime in in the comments if you would be interested in a guest blog post about what it's like to do this diet without the drops and food restriction. Or chime in if you would actively not like to read that.
**no mint: as of last night and according to a new HCG book and a new homeopath that has been brought on board locally, the mint rule is now rescinded. Long live mint!
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Um, Wow. (P2, D34)
I hit two big milestones today.
I have officially lost 30 pounds.
I am under 200 pounds, so my weight starts with a "1" for the first time since when I got pregnant with my daughter almost seven years ago.
When I lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers in 1999 (and kept *most* of it off for the better part of five years), it took me NINE MONTHS to lose 30 pounds. It has taken me just over one month to lose that much this time.
For my dieting/blog buddy Olivia, 200 was a huge mental threshhold. For me, it just feels surreal. It definitely feels like a big barrier has been broken, but I really just can't wrap my mind around this just yet.
Dancing last night was fantastic. I was all sick and sinusy, so I told R I was just going to go dance for an hour and I'd be home at 10:30. I didn't even look at the time until it was midnight. I wouldn't say we were the oldest ones in the club, but I would say our group of seven women raised the average age by quite a bit. But there were enough of us there and we were having fun, so we didn't care. I wore false eyelashes. I wore skinny jeans (skinny for me: size 16). I wore a shirt that showed off my rack, red lipstick, and huge dangly earrings. I felt very pretty.
The bouncer and bartender mildly flirted with me. I didn't have my ID with me but said I wouldn't be drinking so I didn't need a bracelet. He said "how old ARE you?" I answered 35, (not sure why I said that; I'm actually 34, and my birthday is in February.) He leaned in really close, squinted, surveyed my face, looked at my eyes and said, "What, did you get collagen in your eyes or some shit? You ain't got no wrinkles!"
So that was nice.
Then the bartender flirted with me even though I was only getting club soda to drink. So that was nice too.
We danced our little asses off (or, in some cases, our big asses) to Lady Gaga, Madonna, and M.I.A., and were not even discouraged when we realized that 95% of the people in the club had not been born when Lucky Star was originally released (1984). I'm not even kidding. Since most of the people there were college kids, that means they were born in the vicinity of 1990.
Today was my son's class birthday party, and it was mayhem, but fun mayhem. I wore a pretty new scarf/shawlette thingy I knitted for myself over the past month to keep my hands busy at night when I couldn't eat. It was pretty and I felt pretty and thin. Everyone said I looked thin.
It has been a good weekend.
Tonight I made macaroni and cheese for the kids for dinner, and it looked sooo good. My mouth was watering. So I had one elbow, just to see if it tasted as good as my memory. It totally didn't! The pasta tasted cheap and grainy, the cheese sauce was watery, the flavor was completely flat. Have my taste buds changed or am I just paying attention now? And what was weird was that even knowing that it didn't taste as delicious as I thought it would didn't stop my cravings.
This is the first morsel of food I have put in my mouth in 34 days that was not on the plan, with the exception of lean, skinless, fat free turkey on Thanksgiving. It is getting harder and harder to say no to yummy looking foods, I think because I'm bored with what I'm eating, because I've been so good that I feel I "deserve" pizza and a cupcake at my kid's birthday party, and because it's just been a long time. The ridiculous structure of the diet has been a big asset in that regard.
Still hungry, running out of drops and trying to make them stretch til Monday night when I see Shannon to get more. I'm sure that's not helping with the hunger. Realllly looking forward to maintenance. Nuts... eggs... milk... ham... berry smoothies... cheese..... I'm also looking forward to Diet Coke, which is so ridiculous because it isn't even good, and I'm sure it's horrible for you. I should just stay away from the stuff or give myself some kind of monthly limit (maybe one per week).
I'm kind of curious to see if I will have what will now be called the "macaroni-and-cheese effect" on any other foods that I'm dying to eat again. How awesome would it be if I taste former binge foods, really pay attention, and find out that their flavor is not worth my time? Totally awesome, that's how awesome.
Here are my weights for the week; tomorrow is the last day of week 5.
I have officially lost 30 pounds.
I am under 200 pounds, so my weight starts with a "1" for the first time since when I got pregnant with my daughter almost seven years ago.
When I lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers in 1999 (and kept *most* of it off for the better part of five years), it took me NINE MONTHS to lose 30 pounds. It has taken me just over one month to lose that much this time.
For my dieting/blog buddy Olivia, 200 was a huge mental threshhold. For me, it just feels surreal. It definitely feels like a big barrier has been broken, but I really just can't wrap my mind around this just yet.
Dancing last night was fantastic. I was all sick and sinusy, so I told R I was just going to go dance for an hour and I'd be home at 10:30. I didn't even look at the time until it was midnight. I wouldn't say we were the oldest ones in the club, but I would say our group of seven women raised the average age by quite a bit. But there were enough of us there and we were having fun, so we didn't care. I wore false eyelashes. I wore skinny jeans (skinny for me: size 16). I wore a shirt that showed off my rack, red lipstick, and huge dangly earrings. I felt very pretty.
The bouncer and bartender mildly flirted with me. I didn't have my ID with me but said I wouldn't be drinking so I didn't need a bracelet. He said "how old ARE you?" I answered 35, (not sure why I said that; I'm actually 34, and my birthday is in February.) He leaned in really close, squinted, surveyed my face, looked at my eyes and said, "What, did you get collagen in your eyes or some shit? You ain't got no wrinkles!"
So that was nice.
Then the bartender flirted with me even though I was only getting club soda to drink. So that was nice too.
We danced our little asses off (or, in some cases, our big asses) to Lady Gaga, Madonna, and M.I.A., and were not even discouraged when we realized that 95% of the people in the club had not been born when Lucky Star was originally released (1984). I'm not even kidding. Since most of the people there were college kids, that means they were born in the vicinity of 1990.
Today was my son's class birthday party, and it was mayhem, but fun mayhem. I wore a pretty new scarf/shawlette thingy I knitted for myself over the past month to keep my hands busy at night when I couldn't eat. It was pretty and I felt pretty and thin. Everyone said I looked thin.
It has been a good weekend.
Tonight I made macaroni and cheese for the kids for dinner, and it looked sooo good. My mouth was watering. So I had one elbow, just to see if it tasted as good as my memory. It totally didn't! The pasta tasted cheap and grainy, the cheese sauce was watery, the flavor was completely flat. Have my taste buds changed or am I just paying attention now? And what was weird was that even knowing that it didn't taste as delicious as I thought it would didn't stop my cravings.
This is the first morsel of food I have put in my mouth in 34 days that was not on the plan, with the exception of lean, skinless, fat free turkey on Thanksgiving. It is getting harder and harder to say no to yummy looking foods, I think because I'm bored with what I'm eating, because I've been so good that I feel I "deserve" pizza and a cupcake at my kid's birthday party, and because it's just been a long time. The ridiculous structure of the diet has been a big asset in that regard.
Still hungry, running out of drops and trying to make them stretch til Monday night when I see Shannon to get more. I'm sure that's not helping with the hunger. Realllly looking forward to maintenance. Nuts... eggs... milk... ham... berry smoothies... cheese..... I'm also looking forward to Diet Coke, which is so ridiculous because it isn't even good, and I'm sure it's horrible for you. I should just stay away from the stuff or give myself some kind of monthly limit (maybe one per week).
I'm kind of curious to see if I will have what will now be called the "macaroni-and-cheese effect" on any other foods that I'm dying to eat again. How awesome would it be if I taste former binge foods, really pay attention, and find out that their flavor is not worth my time? Totally awesome, that's how awesome.
Here are my weights for the week; tomorrow is the last day of week 5.
| Day 29 | 11/29/2010 | 203.2 | -0.4 | -26.4 |
| Day 30 | 11/30/2010 | 203.2 | 0.0 | -26.4 |
| Day 31 | 12/1/2010 | 201.4 | -1.8 | -28.2 |
| Day 32 | 12/2/2010 | 201 | -0.4 | -28.6 |
| Day 33 | 12/3/2010 | 200.8 | -0.2 | -28.8 |
| Day 34 | 12/4/2010 | 199.6 | -0.8 | -30 |
Thursday, October 28, 2010
The Pros
In no particular order of importance:
1) I feel desperate and terrified of never getting this under control. I don't want to be 60 years old and watching every bite that goes in my mouth and every pound that shows up on the scale. I am sad, and tired, and desperate.
2) I feel like I have tried everything. I have so conscientiously done Weight Watchers, South Beach, Jillian Michaels, Intuitive Eating. I have tried exercising like a maniac. I’ve tried moderate exercise. I have tried cutting calories in a responsible way. I have tried cutting calories and exercising at the same time. Hell, I trained for a triathlon. I did Jillian Michaels’ online exercise program five days a week for 70 minutes a day for six months. I lost 10 pounds. Do you know how insanely hard that exercise program is? I felt great, I felt strong, and I felt accomplished. I even felt a tiny bit smaller. But it would take me more than three years to lose the weight at that rate.
3) I keep getting injured, which slows down the fitness part of losing weight. Two years ago, when I was training for my first 5k, I started to have terrible shin and heel pain. I went to see a sports medicine doctor who said I had stress fractures in my shins. You know, from RWF (running while fat). I was so heavy that the weight of my own body was causing tiny, tiny fractures in my shins. That was a proud moment. I had a bone spur on one heel and plantar fasciitis on both feet, also weight related. Those injuries healed, I dropped 15 pounds and started training for a sprint triathlon (300 meter swim, 12 mile bike, 5k run). Three days before the race, I tore two ligaments in my ankle while riding my bike. I am confident that my weight made the injury more severe and made recovery take longer. As I’ve started training again, 4 months after the injury, I know that my weight makes me more susceptible to a repeat injury. My ankles are carrying around 60 pounds more than they should have to.
4) I’m so tired of feeling ashamed. I’m so tired of feeling repulsed when I look at my naked body in the mirror and wondering if my husband feels the same repulsion.
5) I feel like this diet could actually give me the brain space to think about the binge eating in a way that no other diet ever has. When I was on Weight Watchers, I thought about food all.the.time. When I was on Jillian Michaels 1400 calorie diet, I wondered if I should trade my 7 almonds for an extra ¼ cup of cottage cheese. Eating five to six times a day is hard. That’s five or six times a day you have to think about what you can and can’t have. On this diet, you eat so little food and you have so few choices that I have a sneaking suspicion that it might actually be easier than eating more calories with more choices.
6) Seeing quick results might just provide me with the inspiration to keep it off. It’s hard to maintain enough strength and willpower to lose 60 pounds when you’re losing at a rate of 10-15 pounds per year. There are a thousand choices a week that can set you back or keep you moving forward, but you get no instant gratification from those choices, while you do get instant gratification from just eating the damn candy bar. If I can lose 20-30 pounds on the first round of this diet, I will look and feel so much better. That could take me from a size 18 to a size 14. Knowing I’ve had success, knowing how good I feel may just be enough to help me make healthy choices without having to wait weeks/months/years for the payoff.
7) What if there is something to this HCG thing? I must admit, while the scientific evidence isn’t convincing (it doesn’t actually exist, for that matter), the anecdotal evidence is very compelling. And I’m an English major for heaven’s sake, not a scientist. Homeopathic teething tablets worked on my kids when they were babies, and that couldn’t have been psychosomatic because they didn’t know they were supposed to work. I don’t really believe in reiki but my first and only formal reiki session was so healing and transformative, it made me a believer. Some shit works even if you can’t explain why it does.
8) I have three friends who swear by this diet. And no, if they jumped off a bridge, I wouldn’t also jump off a bridge. But these are people who really get what I’m going through in a way that people who haven’t had lifelong weight struggles just cannot understand. It is hard to resist when they talk about how wonderful and easy it is. These are not people in infomercials trying to sell me something. These are my friends who have done it themselves.
9) What do I have to lose? I had my scientist friend check it out, and look, it’s not unsafe. The homeopathic HCG has basically no HCG in it. It’s possible I am blowing $60 on a placebo, but I’m not going to get cancer or something. The low-calorie diet is not going to starve me or give me a heart attack. There are a couple of worst-case scenarios as I see them, and neither of them is dangerous or devastating: either a) I can’t hack the 500 calories, I am miserable and starving, and I quit OR b) I succeed in losing a bunch of weight but gain it all back.
10) It might just work.
1) I feel desperate and terrified of never getting this under control. I don't want to be 60 years old and watching every bite that goes in my mouth and every pound that shows up on the scale. I am sad, and tired, and desperate.
2) I feel like I have tried everything. I have so conscientiously done Weight Watchers, South Beach, Jillian Michaels, Intuitive Eating. I have tried exercising like a maniac. I’ve tried moderate exercise. I have tried cutting calories in a responsible way. I have tried cutting calories and exercising at the same time. Hell, I trained for a triathlon. I did Jillian Michaels’ online exercise program five days a week for 70 minutes a day for six months. I lost 10 pounds. Do you know how insanely hard that exercise program is? I felt great, I felt strong, and I felt accomplished. I even felt a tiny bit smaller. But it would take me more than three years to lose the weight at that rate.
3) I keep getting injured, which slows down the fitness part of losing weight. Two years ago, when I was training for my first 5k, I started to have terrible shin and heel pain. I went to see a sports medicine doctor who said I had stress fractures in my shins. You know, from RWF (running while fat). I was so heavy that the weight of my own body was causing tiny, tiny fractures in my shins. That was a proud moment. I had a bone spur on one heel and plantar fasciitis on both feet, also weight related. Those injuries healed, I dropped 15 pounds and started training for a sprint triathlon (300 meter swim, 12 mile bike, 5k run). Three days before the race, I tore two ligaments in my ankle while riding my bike. I am confident that my weight made the injury more severe and made recovery take longer. As I’ve started training again, 4 months after the injury, I know that my weight makes me more susceptible to a repeat injury. My ankles are carrying around 60 pounds more than they should have to.
4) I’m so tired of feeling ashamed. I’m so tired of feeling repulsed when I look at my naked body in the mirror and wondering if my husband feels the same repulsion.
5) I feel like this diet could actually give me the brain space to think about the binge eating in a way that no other diet ever has. When I was on Weight Watchers, I thought about food all.the.time. When I was on Jillian Michaels 1400 calorie diet, I wondered if I should trade my 7 almonds for an extra ¼ cup of cottage cheese. Eating five to six times a day is hard. That’s five or six times a day you have to think about what you can and can’t have. On this diet, you eat so little food and you have so few choices that I have a sneaking suspicion that it might actually be easier than eating more calories with more choices.
6) Seeing quick results might just provide me with the inspiration to keep it off. It’s hard to maintain enough strength and willpower to lose 60 pounds when you’re losing at a rate of 10-15 pounds per year. There are a thousand choices a week that can set you back or keep you moving forward, but you get no instant gratification from those choices, while you do get instant gratification from just eating the damn candy bar. If I can lose 20-30 pounds on the first round of this diet, I will look and feel so much better. That could take me from a size 18 to a size 14. Knowing I’ve had success, knowing how good I feel may just be enough to help me make healthy choices without having to wait weeks/months/years for the payoff.
7) What if there is something to this HCG thing? I must admit, while the scientific evidence isn’t convincing (it doesn’t actually exist, for that matter), the anecdotal evidence is very compelling. And I’m an English major for heaven’s sake, not a scientist. Homeopathic teething tablets worked on my kids when they were babies, and that couldn’t have been psychosomatic because they didn’t know they were supposed to work. I don’t really believe in reiki but my first and only formal reiki session was so healing and transformative, it made me a believer. Some shit works even if you can’t explain why it does.
8) I have three friends who swear by this diet. And no, if they jumped off a bridge, I wouldn’t also jump off a bridge. But these are people who really get what I’m going through in a way that people who haven’t had lifelong weight struggles just cannot understand. It is hard to resist when they talk about how wonderful and easy it is. These are not people in infomercials trying to sell me something. These are my friends who have done it themselves.
9) What do I have to lose? I had my scientist friend check it out, and look, it’s not unsafe. The homeopathic HCG has basically no HCG in it. It’s possible I am blowing $60 on a placebo, but I’m not going to get cancer or something. The low-calorie diet is not going to starve me or give me a heart attack. There are a couple of worst-case scenarios as I see them, and neither of them is dangerous or devastating: either a) I can’t hack the 500 calories, I am miserable and starving, and I quit OR b) I succeed in losing a bunch of weight but gain it all back.
10) It might just work.
It feels terrifying even to type that. What if it just works?
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