The HCG Diet Plan Makes Dieters Give Up Processed Foods

Over sixty percent of Americans are either obese or overweight. And the rise in childhood obesity has been significant over the past 10 years. What is happening to fuel this weight gain across adults and children alike?

One of the main components of the answer is processed foods. Since the 1980's there has been an impressive rise in the population consuming ultra-processed food and drink products. Processed foods are generally those that come in a foil-wrap, jar, cardboard container, and often a can. Think of fast foods and you'll get the drift.

Processed foods have a lot less nutrients than natural ones. The food industry plays on processed foods by including sugar, salt, and fat to ignite pleasure sensors in the brain. This leads to a customer that is satisfied, has a pleasant memory of the food, and will hopefully get addicted to it. These processed foods often contain twice the daily calories that the body needs with less than 25% of the essential nutrients needed to optimize health. A diet that persists in processed foods may lead to high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer.

The HCG diet program is an extremely popular diet in the US that has shown exceptional results. One of the benefits of the diet is that nothing in it is processed. The meals consist of fresh vegetables and fruits in sufficient qualities, as they contain a lot of nutrients and not that many calories.

In the beginning of the diet, patients actually binge on high calorie foods for 3 days. This stores up fat reserves and then patients shift into the very low calorie diet by the 4th day. The use of HCG allows patients to avoid hunger and focuses on pulling fat reserves for weight loss. The amount lost will typically vary from 1 to 2 pounds daily. The initial HCG injections or drops are continued for three to four weeks, and then a period off of the HCG is begun.

The next phase is the maintenance phase and is completed over the next 3 weeks after the HCG diet. This phase resets the body's metabolism and "locks" it in through the hypothalamus. Patients can eat almost anything they want at this point as long as it's not sugar, starch, or processed foods. At a certain point some starch is allowed back in as well.

The benefits of the HCG diet can be immense in addition to weight loss. This can include lowered blood pressure, blood sugars, and reduced cholesterol.