As one might expect, physicians from all over the world began using HCG in their weight loss practices. It became the method of choice in the 1970’s for weight loss. However, in 1976, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ordered physicians treating overweight people with Dr. Simeons’ HCG protocol to stop claiming that HCG was safe or approved by the FDA for weight-control. The FDA ordered that obese patients seeking treatment with HCG be informed in writing:
“HCG has not been demonstrated to an effective adjunctive therapy in the treatment of obesity. There is no substantial evidence that it increases weight loss beyond that resulting from caloric restriction, that it causes a more attractive or “normal” distribution of fat or that it decreases the hunger and discomfort associated with calorie-restricted diets.”
More recently, as reported in USA Today in January 2011, Elizabeth Miller, the FDA’s leader for the Internet and health fraud team said, “There is no evidence the oral over-the-counter(my emphasis) products (HCG) are effective for weight loss. While they may not be dangerous, they're at least "economic fraud,"
About three years ago, I began to use HCG almost as exactly as Dr. Simeons wrote so many years ago—rigid diets and inject able HCG. I found that some of Dr. Simeons' observations were true: most of my patients were not hungry, had more energy and lost often an amazing amount of weight. Gradually, I began to hear questions from my patients, Why do I have to use injections? Why not drops? Do I really need to binge? Can I add a zero calorie, zero sugar soda? What about breakfast, you said it’s so important? What about those zero calorie desserts? To answer these and to see if I could make the HCG diet more palatable to many of my patients, I began my search into Dr. Simeons' reports including the original booklet, Pounds and Inches written in 1954. What I found led me to modify and update Dr. Simeons’ original protocol which forms the basis of this book.
Part 1 How We Became an Overweight World and Why Lose Weight
Chapter 1.
Why Do I Need to Lose Weight?
For over 50 million Americans, having to lose weight is not about looking good in that new dress, the suit they wore last year, or their beach wear. Talking about good looks seems to have become the most important thing in many people’s lives. The reasons to lose the extra weight are a lot more serious. If you want to be able to take that trip and do all the things you dream about once you’re able to retire, or want to be around to see your children grow up, you must lose that extra weight. Doing so can even become a matter of life or death!
Here Are the Important Complications of Weight Gain:
•High blood pressure
•Heart Disease
•Strokes
•Diabetes (type 2)
•Cancer
•Infertility (such as polycystic ovaries)
•Sleep Disturbances
•Gall Bladder Disease
•Osteoarthritis
Here is What Excess Fat Can Do:
•If you are 40 lbs overweight, you are cutting 3 years off your life.
•If you are 100 lbs. overweight, your are cutting 10 years off your life.
•Being extremely obese leads to the same chance of death as smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day.
•People that are only moderately overweight (BMI 25-30) cut a year off their life.
•People with a BMI greater than 30 cut as much as 5 years off their life.
•For every 5 point increase in BMI, chances of early death increase by 30%
Excess Food is Stored In Fat Cells Around Our Abdomen
Research on obesity has now concluded that the excess food we eat, and do not use, is stored away in ever-enlarging fat cells, mostly around our waists and inside our bellies. These fat cells do a lot more than just make you look fat. They have the ability to produce new dangerous and even life-threatening chemicals and absorb chemicals from the blood stream.
Abdominal Fat cells can:
•Raise blood pressure and blood cholesterol.
•Injure blood vessels and cause heart attacks and strokes.
•Raise blood sugar and cause diabetes.
•Make us feel permanently hungry.
These conditions do not simply “go along” with being obese, as previously thought. The reality is that these engorged fat cells are the cause of all problems. The only way to reverse the situation, and to stabilize vital bodily functions, is by forcing these overgrown cells to shrink back to their original size and return to their “normal” metabolic functions.
How Can a Collection of Fat Cells Cause So Many Problems?
This combination of symptoms in individuals with fat around
Watch a You Tube video of how fat cells cause us so much damage at http://tinyurl.com/fatcells.
Different Levels of Weight Gain
The first issue that we need to address is the definition of obesity. Although I tell my patients that their ideal weight is the weight they feel comfortable with and the weight they can maintain without feeling anxious or deprived, everyone wants a number. We need to be careful here, because “ideal weight” based on fashion trends, celebrities’ physical appearance, or an idealistic body image rarely reflects healthy weight.
In 1998, the National Institutes of Health correlated excess weight with different health problems and determined three guidelines for defining overweight individuals.
These three guidelines are used for diagnosing obesity:
1.Ratio of body weight to height (BMI)
2.Circumference of one’s waist
3.Presence of risk factors related to heart disease
1. Body Mass Index (BMI)—Measures Fat and Muscle Mass
The ratio of body weight to height is called the body mass index (BMI), and reflects the total fat as related to one’s height and weight. Your BMI can be determined by using the following chart:
Find your height on the left side and follow the line until it intersects with the line representing your weight, as listed at the bottom. If your BMI is in the white zone, you are underweight; if it is in the green zone, you are of normal weight for your height; if in the Yellow zone, you are overweight; and if in the red zone, you are obese and are in the morbidly obese zone, or the high BMI group. BMI may give false information for muscular individuals because the extra weight may be because of the extra muscles. Calculate your BMI at http://www.bmi-calculator.net
Almost all medical professionals and nutritionists