After HCG Diet To Do List
Article Source: HealthSnare.com
HCG Diet Information After The HCG Phase
The After HCG Diet To Do list begins after the HCG phase concludes. The last day of the HCG phase is the third day in a row of not taking the hormone, also called the hormone washout period.
On the first day after the three day washout period, you are allowed to increase your calories back to your normal daily caloric requirement, with certain crucial restrictions.
Post HCG Food Period
The first three weeks after taking HCG, sometimes misleadingly called the maintenance phase, is the period when the fat metabolism that you established during the protocol becomes stabilized. The two most important actions that you must take during this phase are: 1) weigh yourself every day, just as you did while taking the hormone; and, 2) eat or drink anything you want except food and beverages that contain sugar or starch.
One exception is a single glass of wine each day, with a meal, during this phase.
The above guidelines are not new information. They were prescribed by Dr. Simeons in the 1950s. Here is why they are important.
The Importance Of Keeping Track
Keeping track of your weight every day ensures that you are not gaining it back. Dr. Simeons insisted that the stabilizing action of this phase would be most effective when his patients kept to less than a 2 pound gain from one day to the next. He said the same thing for a 2 pound loss. The point is to stay within a narrow weight range, starting with your weight on the final day of the hormone phase and staying at that target for the next three weeks.
The Importance of Carb Restriction
This is a simple guideline. Avoid starch and sugar, both of which are carbs. The most dangerous carbs during this phase are those that fill up your liver storage capacity to quickly (i.e., starch and sugar). If your liver takes in too much carb during this phase, it will convert the excess into triglycerides and shove them back out into the bloodstream, on the way to storage in fat cells. Elevating triglycerides and increasing fat storage are not the results that you want.
Foods and beverages to avoid during this phase include potatoes, all breads, pastas, and other starchy products, rice and other grains, grapes, bananas, all fruit juices, soft drinks, and beer. This list could be much longer. Just be sensible.
By the way, the explanation is oversimplified. As Dr. Simeons mentioned in 1954, the true danger during this period is the combination of fats and carbs in the diet. Indeed, if you eat no carbs at all, you can consume more fat without increasing weight again. Remember, you have just spent a month or more establishing a healthy fat metabolism. This is no time to revert back to old habits and mess it up.
If you insist on eating carbs with a lot of fat, then watching your weight daily is the only way for you to easily detect what change this may be causing.
The Proverbial Steak Day
The steak day strategy entails skipping breakfast and lunch, then for dinner eating only a steak and one apple. The necessity for a steak day is any day that your weight reaches 2 or more pounds above the previous day.
The key is to have a steak day that very same day. Putting it off will undermine your recovery. However, a steak day can and often does put you right back on track by the following day.
The reason that I emphasize this is that a steak day is most effective only when it is implemented on that first day of too much weight increase.
A Modern Scientific Viewpoint
Dr. Simeons created his diet based on 1950s knowledge about human physiology. The discovery of the master fat hormone, leptin, in 1994 substantiates his thinking. Leptin and HCG both work by sending signals through brain receptors in the hypothalamus. Lab research with experimental animals is just now starting to show how these two hormones interact to regulate fat metabolism.
The carb connection in this scenario involves insulin, which also has a close interaction with leptin. If either one of these hormones gets out of balance, the other one will, too. Consuming excess carbs will make you fat more quickly than will any other kind of food. These hormones work together to make it so. This is why eating carbs during the three week post HCG phase ruins your newly acquired fat metabolism.
I hope this helps you understand how important it is to do the right thing during this period.
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Article Submitted By:
Dr. Dennis Clark
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Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 Time: 10:40 PM
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