The most often recommended form of delivering HCG into your body is via HCG diet drops. The drops are tasteless (meaning they have no taste—not that they’re tacky) and generally do not even have a bad smell. Even if they did have a little flavor it wouldn’t matter because you don’t really have taste buds under your tongue, which is right where you put them.

The HCG diet drops is administered through a liquid base containing a miniscule amount of alcohol (as are many common medicines) so if you do experience any taste it will probably just be a little bitter. If you have an especially sensitive mouth, the alcohol also might feel a little tingly under your tongue with the first couple doses, but it should go away with subsequent doses.

As before mentioned, the alcohol content is very, very low. You will get no alcohol-induced side effects from the drops.

Basically, you take 15 drops (precisely) three times a day. 15 is actually a big number to count to when you have to hold up your tongue and put something under it. So, it might be best to count your 15 drops into a small cup and then put them under your tongue.

The tricky part is making sure you take them either at least 20 minutes before a meal or 20 minutes after a meal–but it sure beats getting a shot every day doesn’t it? Also, there are things you can do to help you remember each dose. Taking the drops at the same time every day will help and you can set reminders on your phone if you have a set schedule.

A good method for making sure you’ve either not eaten food or are not going to eat food for at least 20 minutes is to set a timer.

You can take your drops, set the timer for 20 minutes, and then prepare your meal as the timer is going if you prefer taking the drops before a meal. Just make sure you wait until the full 20 minutes have passed before eating—even if your food gets done sooner.

If you’d rather eat first and then take the drops, you can set the timer for 20 minutes once you’ve finished eating. If you wait longer than 20 minutes after you eat, that’s fine. 20 minutes is just the minimum amount of time given. Basically, you need to give the drops 20 minutes of time to get absorbed into your body without the added distraction of food.

Probably the last time any of us had to put something under our tongues (besides HCG) was when we were kids and were using a thermometer to see if we had a fever. Apparently, the reason that makes the underside of the tongue a good place to stick a thermometer is the same one that makes HCG drops administered under the tongue more effective.

There are lots of blood vessels and soft tissue under the tongue so it’s easier to ascertain your body temperature there as well as absorb HCG drops into your system. Neat, huh?

HCG is taken either through drops or injections—whichever form sounds most palatable to you. This hormone actually doesn’t cause the weight loss per se; it needs to be paired with a special low-calorie diet to result in weight loss. The diet causes the weight loss and hCG helps maintain the body’s muscle (which is actually very important when you’re losing large amounts of weight) and keep you from feeling as hungry.

The diet is low in calories and carbohydrates, but high in protein. So, since you have a limited amount of calories to work with each day during the diet phase of the hCG diet plan, the foods you consume must be low in calories and carbs and high in protein.

Although your food quantities are limited during the diet phase of the plan, you are able to (and strongly encouraged to) drink at least eight cups of water each day. You are also advised to stay away from lotions, oils, and makeup that contain oils. These products often contain fatty substances that the hCG may target instead of your body fat.

Most people go on the diet phase of the plan for about three to six weeks (23 to 40 days). You may diet for shorter periods of time but it’s not a good idea to go for longer than 40 days. After you hit your target weight, you stop taking the hCG and continue the diet for three more days to get it all out of your system. Then, you go into a maintenance phase (no starches or refined sugars) for three weeks.

The hCG diet plan lists your food servings and allotments in three meals a day, but you can change that to five small meals (e.g. eating a part of what you would eat for lunch earlier) if you prefer. You simply need to consume only the amount of food specified throughout the day.

The diet listed below is obviously a quick run-down of the diet. You will want to get more information before you jump into the program as there are a few tips and tricks that aren’t within the scope of this article to go into.

The breakfast meal seems pretty sparse so I would definitely substitute something from lunch to get me going in the morning. Here are the breakfast guidelines: you may have coffee or tea in any quantity as long as you don’t add more than a tablespoon of milk in a 24-hour period or any sugar. Liquid Stevia or saccharin can be used to sweeten as needed.

Don’t let breakfast scare you off. Lunch sounds much better. It’s actually a bigger lunch than I usually get without being on a diet, but I digress. Here’s what you get: 3.5 ounces (weigh it before it’s cooked) of chicken breast, veal, beef, white fish (fresh—no fish sticks), lobster, crab, or shrimp.

One of the following vegetables: green salad, tomatoes (not a vegetable, but whatever), spinach, chard, chicory, beet greens, celery, fennel, onions, red radishes, cucumbers, asparagus, or cabbage. You also get one Italian breadstick called grissini or one piece of Melba toast (often found near the croutons).

Lastly, you need some fruit to finish off your lunch. You may have an orange, apple, a handful of strawberries, or half of a grapefruit.

Your dinner choices are exactly the same as the lunch choices, but given the amount of meats, vegetables, and fruits you are given to choose from you can actually vary (and should vary) your meals quite a bit.

The HCG diet is actually quite simple to understand—it’s just hard to do because it is very specific. You do take HCG via injection and drops and yes, you do lose weight on the diet, but it’s not actually the HCG that makes you lose weight—this is where people get confused.

It is actually the low-calorie diet paired with your drops or injections that causes the weight loss. The HCG just makes your body handle the low-calorie portion of the diet better and helps to curb hunger. If you ask me, the biggest benefit is that it keeps your body from feeding on your muscles rather than your fat stores when you cut your calories.

For some reason, our bodies go for our muscles first (instead of our readily-available, all-you-can-eat fat stores) when it feels that food is getting scarce. This is where the HCG diet comes in. It’s basically a way to lose weight by cutting your calories way down without the negative side effects of doing too much cutting too soon.

Interestingly, on the low-calorie portion of the diet you don’t actually count calories. You measure the weight or quantity of your food instead. The diet will bring your daily caloric intake to about 900 calories—sometimes more, sometimes a little less depending on your food choices.

As you may have already realized, 900 calories is a little less than half of the average 2,000-calorie diet the USDA uses to compare the relative nutritional values of all foods. This is why the diet works. You consume less calories and your body loses pounds.

You must lose 3,500 calories from your diet (either by not eating them or burning them through exercise) to lose a pound. That’s a lot of calories—more than the average daily intake! That doesn’t mean you can quit eating for a day though and see results on the scale.

Eating lower amounts of calories—especially if you drop your calories down suddenly—changes the rate at which your body burns calories. So, if you don’t do it right, eating less calories may just train your body to subsist on less calories. Meaning it slows your metabolism way down and you still aren’t losing weight.

As mentioned before, the key to the HCG diet is consuming fewer calories. Exercise is actually not needed or recommended. If you plan on exercising more than by jogging or walking a mile or two each day, you will need a special plan for this diet to work.

The reason for this is that exercise also burns calories and, again, if you cut out too many calories too soon, your body primitively thinks it’s come into times of starvation and needs to keep all the fat on you it can. This causes major problems when you’re trying to lose weight.

So, if cutting calories (as opposed to exercising more) sounds like the right way to lose weight for you, it might be good to look into the HCG diet. The big caveat is that once you’ve lost all the weight you need to with the HCG diet, you can’t completely go back to your old eating habits. You don’t have to be as stringent as you were when dieting, but you will need to balance the amount of calories you consume with the amount of calories you burn to maintain your losses.

From here, you will gradually increase your calorie intake; you must go into a controlled-calorie meal plan of approximately 800-1000 calories. You still must avoid all sugar and starches.

Phase III may begin after any of the following circumstances:
• You have been on the maintenance phase for 21 days and you have reached your weight loss goal.
• You have been on the maintenance for 40 days.
• You have lost 34 pounds during the maintenance phase.

If your weight loss goal is more than 34 pounds; and you have not reached that during the first round, than it is advisable to proceed with another round – only after a six week break is complete.

Dr. Simeons outlines a couple of rules that you should follow during this three week phase. The first rule being that you should continue to weigh yourself daily. This will help you monitor your weight and allow you to recognize any violent changes. The second rule being that you must remain within two pounds of your weight from when you came off of the maintenance phase. This may be either two pounds over or two pounds under. The third rule is that you can not consume any sugary or starchy foods.

It is also extremely important to consume a great amount of protein during these three weeks; this will help you avoid carbohydrates and will help you to fend off HCG side effects. The purpose of the three week stabilization phase is that it takes this amount of time to determine whether or not the treatment has been effective and your weight can remain stable. This allows you time to diagnose any major fluctuations after consuming foods that you otherwise did not consume during Phase II. Carbohydrates will be your worst enemy during the stabilization phase and should be avoided no matter what. There is incredible emphasis on this and should not be disregarded. Otherwise, disappointment and weight gain is inevitable. This period of time acts as monitoring phase and adjustment phase.

The recommended way to approach the HCG stabilization phase is to count 72 hours after you take your last hCG drop or injection. You will want to continue on the VLCD during those first 72 hours. Then you may start your stabilization dieting. You will use the weight you were at on the morning of your last drop or injection as your monitor.

It’s important to remember that now that you’ve reached your goal weight, you must make a valiant effort to live a healthy lifestyle and keep the weight off. Continue to eat healthy foods such as your lean meats, vegetables and fruits. This will contribute to the hardwork you’ve done and keep your weight down forever, as well as give you more energy and an overall sense of well-being.

First of all, hCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin (or gonadotrophin if you prefer) and is a hormone pregnant women produce to maintain the corpeus luteum (this has to do with controlling production of other hormones such as progesterone–ask your local endocrinologist about this one).

The use of hCG for weight loss was discovered by the British endocrinologist, Albert T. W. Simeons. As he was studying pregnant women with food shortages in India, he observed that they lost fat rather than muscle tissue when given low doses of hCG.

Furthermore, he observed that hCG produced the same effect when a low dose of it was used to treat patients with Frölich’s syndrome (a problem of the pituitary gland—individuals with this condition are commonly referred to as “fat boys”).

Dr. Simeons determined that in pregnancy, hCG helps protect a developing fetus by telling the brain to burn the mother’s extra fat rather than attacking lean tissue. He explains this concept in much more detail in his book Pounds and Inches.

Interestingly, although HCG is mostly referred to as a weight loss tool, the use of hCG is not actually what causes you to lose weight. It’s actually the low-calorie, high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that is paired with your hCG injections or drops that causes the weight loss. HCG merely helps mitigate feelings of hunger and keeps your body from consuming your muscles in response to a lower-calorie diet.

The biggest benefit of the hCG diet is that it allows you to eat dramatically lower amounts of calories over a period of about 23 to 40 days (resulting in dramatic weight loss) without damaging your precious, hard-earned muscles.

The diet is actually quite simple to understand—it’s just a little harder to follow. But if you can keep on it, you can get results. As before mentioned, it’s a high-protein, low-carb, low-calorie diet so your food choices must fit within all those parameters.

For example, breakfast on the diet includes tea or coffee without any sugar. Unsweetened tea and coffee actually contain negligible amounts of calories so you can consume as much as you like—as long as you keep to one tablespoon of milk or less in a 24-hour period. You may use a no-calorie sweetener like saccharin or liquid Stevia.

The good thing about this diet is you can substitute items from the lunch and dinner allowances if you don’t do tea or coffee in the morning, or you’re at your hungriest early in the day. The key is to stick to the serving sizes and amount of food specified in the diet. You can spread them out throughout the day as needed, but you need to only consume the quantity of food listed in the diet.

There have been shortages in the US of the injected form of hCG—which has resulted in several over-the-internet providers popping up. It’s good to note here that no matter what the vendor may tell you, hCG is expensive. Don’t go for a steal of a deal on this one—if it is the real thing, it’s probably too low of a dose to do you any good.