The Llama Truth

I have bit my tongue about a diet that is all over my university and my church, but it is far past time for someone to say something. 

The hCG diet, was a  fad in the 70s, and recently had a resurgence of popularity. After watching a dozen people I care about go down this dangerous path, I snapped  after seeing another beautiful girl look absolutely ill (as every one looks on this diet) because she was on this plan. 

“We’re so desperate to have good solutions for weight control that a lot of people with good common sense literally suspend it when it they confront weight-loss claims,” Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, said. “This diet is appalling. It takes irresponsible diets to new heights.” 

The ability of hCG (synthetic form included) to aid in anything other than appetite suppression is dubious at best and it is much more likely that the diet is quite dangerous. 

It’s reckless, irresponsible, and completely irrational,” says Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Can you lose weight on it? Of course, but that’s mainly because you’re hardly consuming any calories… 

Even if it could release more calories from fat, your body still can’t get adequate nutrients  from your own fat storage.( Just as you couldn’t get adequate nutrition from eating only fats.) Your body still needs protein, amino acids, and vitamins to handle daily functioning. 

When a body is subsisting off 500 calories a day, the body leeches protein from the heart, and this makes the heart muscle irritable, which can lead to ventricular tachycardia and sudden cardiac death, said Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center in Connecticut.

Do you lose weight, sure. But is that all that matters in life? You don’t have to be emaciated for malnutrition and related symptoms to be a problem. 

If you have weight to lose, don’t worship thinness and speed so much so that you sacrifice your own health.