Weight-Loss Apocalypse

DIETS: A WASTE OF YOUR BODY'S INTELLIGENCE

2012-02-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

Control is what you pay for when you sign up for a diet or fitness program. You feel insecure about your body in some shape or form. You pay someone who says they have the secret recipe through either food intake or exercise, or both, that will change your body-- thus fixing your insecurity.
They give you a list of rules: don't eat this, eat that, burn calories this way, eat at this time, only eat this much, exercise this way, for that long, etc. You succumb to whatever rules they give-- in desperate hope you're body can be transformed into what you think will make you a happier person. Or at least to what will make you feel better about that certain body part you don't like.

If the diet plan works, you're left to believe you can't stop, because now you're dependent on it to keep your body secure from regressing back to the way it was. For example, you've lost all of your excess fat with the hCG protocol, yet you still think you need to follow some sort of diet plan to keep you from gaining it all back. You're still dieting and have a diet control mentality, even though your body doesn't need to be under a contstant fueling restriction.

You're now controlling even more out of fear you're body is on the verge of regaining. You think you still have leptin resistance, you still believe your body is all messed up, and you still believe you have to diet to keep your fat off, even though you may have less than 30 pounds of fat on your body (which is very lean for a female). The choice to control your body not only perpetuates your feelings of insecurity, but it makes your need for more control even worse. This is like losing weight running half-marathons and such. Then you feel compelled to continue to enlist in races out of fear you'll gain fat back without that type of training. You are now dependent, or at least think you are.

Have you ever considered your body's innate subconscious intelligence? That every cell in your body has the capacity to control (of which your conscious mind can't even begin to conceptualize) and maintain homeostasis without your help? Think of it this way, you have a body that your mother's body created perfectly. Did your mother have to meddle in the business of your body to make sure you were created in a way that would survive the climate of our ever changing environment? I have three children and my intelligence can't even start to comprehend how I am (and they are) still alive under the circumstance of labor and delivery!!! What would make us believe that we have even the slightest idea about the capacity of the human body to control itself? How does it maintain life under polar opposite stress, which is under polar opposite stress, in a 4-dimentionsal plane, infinity, and so forth?

The idea that we can control the human body stems from insecurity. It is an idea that there is something wrong based on our idea of what is right. But if what is right is based on our limited level of understanding, and our intellectual understanding isn't even a sliver of the body's capacity, aren't we dumbing down the human body to our limited view? The more we know of the human body, the more we recognize our understanding is far less then what we thought. But even with that awareness, food is one thing we do control. We control what it is, when we eat it, how much, and we justify eating for whatever bias we have. But what is the controls by which the body dictates it's need for food? Hunger.

If you're not hungry your body isn't communicating the need for food. This concept is similar to urination. If you don't have the sensations to urinate, then you don't have an emmint reason to go to the bathroom. Would you sit on the pot if you didn't have the sense to urinate? Would you go to the bathroom and sit on the toilette for fun? To distract from sad? To celebrate? NO! Then why would you eat without hunger too?

Hunger is the foudational signal that it is time for you to prioritize eating. It is the body's own way of controlling your behavior and it is highly reliable as a means to eat less without the need to control your food intake from a diet. Why? Because your body knows more than any business person who created a diet in order increase their profit margins. The human body knows when and how much food you need. Once you've masted listening to hunger and doing as it says, it is then your job to make wise choices with what you eat.

Without this trust and teamwork with the body, you'll always seek control, you'll always have to count calories, you'll always need to measure whats coming in and whats going out, and you'll always feel as if your body is messed up. Until you are willing to trust that your body knows much more about what it needs and when, you're at the mercy of someone else'se intellingence. Is their motive to control your food intake for the health of your body or the health of their wallet? Before you enlist in a diet of any type, start by learning your hunger and using it as a guide. Then make the intelligent choice of what to eat.

CONTROL: WHAT YOU DO TO FEEL BETTER ABOUT YOURSELF.

2012-02-10T09:33:00.000-08:00

One of the funniest things we do as humans is try to control things, especially controlling how we are perceived by others. We follow an idea of how something should be and we try to force the idea within ourselves and others. A perfect example of this is clothing.

Observe how jeans have changed in the last thirty years. It starts with an artist who designs a shape, a color, or a logo. Then there is judgment of anything other than that. The people who want to control others to feel better about themselves are the most critical and in order to perceive themselves as higher in a pecking order of value, they judge others who don't wear the trend. Then followers who are defined by how their clothes are judged, follow the opinion of the most critical, again, to avoid judgment and to feel more valuable. As the fear of judgment and fear of being less valuable in the eyes of others continues as a ripple affect, the overall dress code changes. From bell bottoms to straight leg, to skinny jeans, back to bell bottoms, and again skinny jeans, and etc.

Recognize this cycle with music, make-up, careers, cars, religious rules, the house you live in and where it's located, the wrist-watch you wear, the purse you carry, how you do your hair, etc. Notice how you control your children, so that they are also perceived as more valuable to others, so that you are perceived more valuable to others. Do you force your daughter to wear her hair in a way she doesn't like, just so that you don't feel like a "bad" mother? Do you make your children wear certain clothes so that they are perceived as better? Have you changed their personality to match what you think makes a better person, in your opinion?

The most critical controls of values are religion, politics, money, and looks. We perceive our value by the what the most addicted, judgmental, and opinionated people vocalize. It's the extremists that teach fear, who judge, who reject and abandon, who hate, and who have the smallest sense of worth that is defined by hierarchy, control, and the manipulation of others.

If that critical person was your parents, your spouse, and is now you, you probably have an addiction and you're probably miserable with life. You constantly judge others, fear others, hate others, and can't figure out why life is so awful. Do you really believe that by following rules that you are a better person and that people will like you better? If someone likes you better because you follow their rules, judgment, and change yourself to avoid their criticism, aren't you now a slave to their opinion? Does that opinion define you as a person?

Are you dictating someone to change who they are to make you feel better about yourself, to meet your insecure demands? Did your parents do this to you and are you continuing to do this to your children and other people? Is your addiction what you control because you don't want to hurt another person like other people hurt you? Did they abuse you because they made it your job to make them feel better about themselves, similar to how you use your addition of choice to make you feel better?

The problem is the false definitions of value that others enforce with their piercing judgment and criticism. Their criticism comes from their own insecurity, and the more insecure someone is the more judgmental they get. By judging you and trying to change your rules of value to theirs, you're less likely to judge in return and much easier to control. Eventually, we are all the same (like robots) and we're all safe from judgment! But if we are all the same, how would we know who is more valuable or higher in the pecking order of value?

Judgment requires there be a reference point of value so we'd have to continually change what defines a person better than another. That's why people who need to be highest on the pecking order change what is acceptable, or make the rules more strict. This is how we get extremests, fundamentalists, and people who are dangerous to others and justify abuse-- even to children.

So people get meaner, things get more expensive, rules get stricter, people get more critical, and you never feel at peace with what exists because someone out there is always looking down at you like a puny little spec of nothing. But that large need to look down on others is only a reflection of how small they feel inside. And in reality, you needing them to tell you what to do, and their need to control who and what you are is all in the same: fear of no value and resulting rejection.

But without fear of outside opinion of value, we are still the same. Without judgment one persons value isn't more or less than another persons. And the truth is, we all have undescribable and unique value, and not one person has more value than another. But when we seek our value from the opinion of others, we are trying to define that uniqueness and attempting to create a control of it, and that is where everything gets out of balance. As soon as you give someone the power to define your value, you are now a slave to their opinion and if they use that power to feel better about themselves, the pendulum swing begins. This is an "every action has an equal or opposite reaction" situation.

If your self-worth is developed from what is real and without outward definition, then no-one has the control or power to take away or give to your value with their opinion. With that you can love others unconditionally, the same as you love yourself unconditionally. The pendulum balances in the middle and what exists just exists and you accept what is and nothing becomes nothing and you become something. That something exists without control.

ADDICTION: FORCING LOVE AND HIDING FROM THREAT

2012-02-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

Do you have any memories as a child where you actually felt loved? A moment when you received a positive feeling that your mom or dad thought you were special? If it wasn't from your parents was it from someone else? A teacher, a friend's mom, the toys you played with, the new clothes you wore, the friends you had in junior high, a boyfriend/girlfriend, a piece of cake, music, a drink of alcohol, your religious measure, watching your first porn, gambling, sex, or something else that made you feel good about yourself?

Usually that feeling of love gives you butterflies, a feeling of importance, a sense of pride, a moment of acceptance and security, and that feeling is what we continue to seek for the rest of our lives. But for many, that love was only received under a condition (let's say sex) and you're forced to submit or to accept that condition (even though it feels like fear and trauma), just for a moment of feeling loved or valuable. If it wasn't molestation, it may have been getting good grades (which took you away from playing as a child). It could be the way you looked and being the prettiest girl in school. For me it was religion, and following what ever rule that was defined for me.

What you thought gave you that feeling of love, can become your sense of definition, or becomes what you think you are. But as soon as the source of love and acceptance is threatened you'll immediately defend it. Even if that includes abusing someone else (even your own children) to protect it. You feel angry, justified, entitled, euphoric, a fleeting sense of power and control, even unstoppable. But if what you do that gives you love isn't judged as appropriate, then you hide.

There's confusion for why you feel so out of control, have no willpower, and you feel shame, guilt, fear, and intense vulnerability to the ultimate threat: rejection or abandonment if you're caught. We eventually stop seeking the creation of love, but instead run away from losing what makes us feel that fleeting love. This is the life of addiction. This is how someone justifies molesting someone else. This is why you continue to molest your own body with food or addictive dieting and extreme exercise.

It all started when you realized someone else had the power to make you feel good about yourself, but also when they also had the power to take that good feeling away and replace it with a bad feeling about yourself. Usually, it starts with your own parents. Take a moment to write down the first time you felt loved. It could be as simple as tying your shoe and getting a hug for the accomplishment. For me, it was my mom buying me a pack of Rolo's at the store, and I didn't have to share with my siblings. Still to this day, every time I go to the market and see Rolo's I feel that love from my mother. I'm smiling even as a write this now.

My other first memory of getting love taken away was when I was about 24ish months. I remember one of my brothers and one of my sisters arguing over who was going to change my diaper. My brother ended up having to change my diaper and he was pissed. From that time forward, I felt like a burden to my siblings. I remember feeling really bad and I continually felt as if I needed to do what they said to avoid that feeling of "burden".

The moments we remember that gave or took away our value, changed our sense of value. But these are false definitions or lies. They aren't real and aren't true. Those moments are reflections of what defines value and love to others, and you were taught that it was your responsibility to give it to them. That is where things went wrong. As you become aware of how simple this is, and how understandable behavior is under this type of dependency for love (and fear of losing it) you can empathize. You can see why people take advantage of others, why we cheat, steal, hate, and abuse. Why we are entitled to what we think makes us happy, and punished or angry when someone threatens our security.

What is your security? What do you need and have to get to feel love? What threatens that love, and does your behavior and choices reflect an offensively taking, or a defensive avoidance of losing it? Are you the abuser or the enabler? Are you vindictive or are you a martyr? Is that the truth or are you just continuing the trauma, passing down the conditional love, and giving your children the idea that others have that much power to give or take from their life?

It's time to start over. Start by loving yourself the way you wish you could have from the start: unconditionally. That way it isn't anybody else's job to take care of you and nobody can take that away.

NOT CARING: FINDING EXISTENCE WITH NOTHING

2012-02-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

Caring was my addiction. I cared so much that I psychotically controlled everything to avoid fat gain. Because I cared about being thin, fat gain was what I thought was hell, and what I thought would be the death of my value. CRAZY. When I made the choice to not commit suicide, I knew I would have to submit to the fact that when I let go of control, my worst nightmare would happen and I had to just assume I was going to end up weighing 600 pounds.

I decided not to care, and to accept obesity if that was indeed the result. I chose to put my ego aside, and to instead trust that if I were to listen to my body, and give it a chance to lead the way, that I was willing to find out what the outcome would be. I would not eat without hunger, I would not control what and how much I ate, I wouldn't judge the food (which always ended in shame, fear and guilt), and I would never again exercise to compensate or to relieve the anxiety. I would surrender my control, feel the physical anguish that was inevitable, and let that feeling of death win. The fight wasn't worth it and the only way out of the battle was to surrender my control.
I had nothing to lose because the only other way out was physical death. So I wept on the floor, sobbed as the anguish manifested, and I watched it from afar. I lifted my arms, closed my eyes, and fell backwards over the cliff. It was the cold, damp, dark and cavernous cliff I was running away from. I knew it would cause my emotional death and my loss of existence. The loss of what I thought defined who I was.

Who would I be if I didn't judge my body? If I didn't judge, that meant I couldn't have a definition of value, and there wouldn't be rules that I had to follow to feel better about myself. That meant I would have to create my value from within, because if there was a formulated rule or definition to follow, I would still be a slave to the vulnerability of judgment. If I were to live I would have to let go of judgment, and find peace with something inside my soul that existed without judgement, without someone else to tell me what it requires, without needing to do anything to achieve it. Falling from the cliff required I let go of all outward definition of value, and despite what rejection and judgment others way entitle upon my value, I would have to not care.
Not caring saved my life. It forced me to seek an existence that didn't require validation from any person, action, or object. My soul exists beyond what my body physically can define. No other person, religion, culture, nor energy of this world could create a fake version of what I am, can duplicate what is me, nor is it possible for me to give you a definition it. I exist. I am undefinable. I am beyond what anything that exists can explain.

In that awareness, I cannot define you. I don't judge your soul because you are unique to me, and your existence would diminish if I even attempted to define or control you. I unconditionally love myself, therefore I don't need you to feel better about me. I have no void for you to fill, and I accept all that you are and all that you're not. Because I don't care, I am innately happy. I can live in life without being define by my clothes, make-up, job, and what I do or don't attain. I am creating my own happiness so I can share. I can give and I don't have any expectation or need reward in return. That existence doesn't change. It just exists and there is no need to improve it.

EATING: YOUR COMPENSATION AND DEFINITION OF VALUE

2012-01-30T06:37:00.001-08:00

Somewhere along the line you were told you suck. You were parentedor “friended” into being something other than yourself. You were told to changewho you are, otherwise your mom and dad wouldn’t like you, your friends wouldn’taccept you, society wouldn’t praise you, and without someone’s opinion to tellyou if you were doing a good job− you’d never know what your value was. Inshort, your value is externally created. It has to be earned.

When someone says you’re doing great! They add to yourvalue. When someone judges you negatively, they have the power to take from yourvalue. Think about how you react when someone angrily honks their car horn atyou. Do you react by feeling angry and defensive? Does that random strangerhave the power to make you feel emotionally threatened? Is that because other’sreaction to you is so important to your perceived value? You are at the mercyof other’s judgment, other’s opinion, and other’s validation in order to defineyour success, the quality of your soul, and the value of your life.

When this type of value based on external approval isinstilled from childhood, you’re doomed to believe that how people perceive youis the truth of your value. You’re judged on your religion, what you wear, howyou talk, your education, your job, how much money you make, how many friendsyou have, how big your breasts are, how big your truck is, your children’s successfollowing the rules, and any other definition of value that isn’t necessarilythe truth. So eventually we are all the same, wanting the same exact things inlife, and we are waiting for someone or something to tell us what to do.

This is why consumerism has become such a large part of ourculture. Businesses tell you what services and products you need to feel betterabout yourself. They create the illusioneveryone is buying it, they slap their logo on what it is and the more peopleyou see with that logo, the more you feel you need to buy it. Some of the mostvaluable things that increase value are: money− or buying power, education, where you got your education, yourjob, your house, your car, your clothes, your parent’s/childen’s accomplishments onthis scale, and your ability to have and attract sex. The sadpart is that if any of those ideals are taken away or lost, you actuallybelieve your value is less.

Because you’ve given outside influence the power to defineyour value, that influence has the power to control you, your actions, yourspending, you motivation, the way you make decisions, and how you perceive yourself. You don’t have self-worth but instead, money-worth,clothes-worth, religious-worth, sexual-worth, body-worth, fill-in-the-blank-worth. Those outsideinfluences are what you think brings you happiness, but also are the influencesthat can be lost to create stress and sadness.

How much of your life was created for you? Decided for you?Directed by something else you thought was in charge of your happiness? What I’venoticed is that when the most important dictators of your value judge youpoorly, the easy way to feel better about it is to seek out another form ofvalidation. For example, if someone in your family is sick (which tests theidea that you were taught happiness comes when there are no problems) and youhave to take them to the hospital, do you eat to feel better about it?

When one level of value is decreased, in order to feelbetter about it you’re going to need to find something else to compensate. Howmany of you compensate with food? Do you eat to feel better about all of thevulnerabilities in life? Has eating become the only stable emotional reinforcementthat only you control? Finding a way to control emotional stability is why wehave behavioral addiction.

The question I have is what if you decided your value wasn’tdefined by your parents, religion, spouse, children, job, money, and your body?What is your true authentic value? Ifyou were the creator of your value and didn’t need an action, object, or personto define you, your happiness would be something you create rather than receive.

If you eat to compensate for the vulnerability of the world,I suggest you start by thinking about the things, people, objects, and actionsyou believe define your value. Recognize why they’ve become such a large partof your identity. Seek to find your identity without those addictions, and fromthere, allow the inevitable vulnerability and fear of rejection, when you allowyourself to be authentic. No matter what others judge and what their opinion ofyour value is. This is the foundation of self-worth and is the only true sourceof happiness that isn’t vulnerable to anything other than existence of life.

IS EATING YOUR EXPERTISE?

2012-01-23T06:37:00.000-08:00

How much energy and judgment each day do you give to your weight, what you are eating, the diet you are following (or not), and to your overall value as a person? If I were to throw out a percentage of people I help who spend over 90% of the day thinking about these things, I would say over 85% of my clients are obsessed with their body, diets, and food. It's a co-dependent nightmare.

I remember when I was obsessed. I was so afraid of being fat that most of my waking time I'd think about the food, calories, my strategy of control, the exercise I'd have to do, and everything that needed perfect order so that I'd avoid gaining fat. Fear of fat gain became my identity and my expertise. How many of you reading this have the same fear, or have opposite fear?

The opposite fear would be not getting to eat again. Wondering what you will be eating next, when you will get the opportunity to eat, feeling sadness over the foods you think you are entitle to but are being denied of, and also fantasising about what you will be eating the moment your diet is over. Is eating your obsession, addiction, and your expertise?

If we lived even just 150 years ago you wouldn't have the access to food the way you do today and eating/dieting/weight obsession wouldn't exist. So what would you be doing with your time then? What are your natural talents and how would you express your creativity? If eating/dieting wasn't your main talent, then what would all of your energy and time go towards? How would you express your uniqueness? What if the time, education, and studying you've put into diet after diet after diet went towards a college education? How many of you would have a PHD? The sad part of being identified by eating, food, dieting, and weight is that you are wasting your authentic talent, creative gifts, and your life away on something that doesn't give to the world, but instead isolates your unique and special gifts away from being exposed. Have you ever considered the amount of incredible power you've given away to eating that could be harnessed toward creating something magnificent?

Looking back I can see the incredible amount of power I had, that was going inward towards fear, isolation, and control. Now, that same incredible power is going outward, manifesting something creative. Each and every person has unique power that shouldn't be defined by food and your body.

The power you think you are receiving from food is in reality, your own power to create. What are you capable of with that power? It's time you find out.

SCARE TACTIC: HAIR LOSS ON THE HCG PROTOCOL

2012-01-21T10:44:00.000-08:00

I've observed over one thousand hCG protocols and personally assisted over 500 people through multiple rounds. From what I've observed with patients, daily administering 125 iu of hCG with Dr. Simeons' very low calorie protocol, only 4 people have brought to my attention their hair loss. The first was a trans-gendered woman (male to female). The second was a woman who lost hair during pregnancy and wasn't worried as she knew her hair would grow back. The third patient had a sensitivity to dry climate (after adding back conditioner her hair stopped falling out). And the fourth, started her second round of the protocol while experiencing debilitating stress and depression, she eliminated both proteins from her diet, and she cheated consistently each week with sugar. Needless to say, if we had known the mental state of this fourth patient, we would not have prescribed her a second round of the hCG protocol.

The question I'd like to ask is why are there so many people on the Internet discussing fear of hair loss during the very low calorie protocol? I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, especially when people don't have the appropriate dosage of hCG, when they don't take adequate breaks between rounds, if they don't use nutritional supplementation, if they cheat with sugar type foods, or if they reduce or restrict protein intake to what is less than prescribed. There are great risks for hair loss with such drastic reductions in food intake. However, it is NOT caused by the caloric value of food, but rather abrupt hormonal shifts that may occur, especially when they eat the very low calorie diet without adequate hCG, or if the patient cheats.

There are a couple of issues I will assume happens when someone cheats during the protocol, specifically with a sugar based foods. First, the abrupt rise and fall in leptin would cause a similar reaction to the thyroid and thyroid hormones. This will not help a hair loss matter. Second, the rapid rise in insulin with leptin, creating an increase in testosterone. This might cause androgenic alopecia. Over time, and repeated bouts of cheating during the hCG protocol, the polar shifts in leptin and resulting hormonal dysregulation and inflammation could increase the risk of hair loss for both reasons. On the other side, if hunger is tolerated and persists, sustained drops in leptin causes a rise in cortisol, which would increase the risk for the most aggressive form of hair loss: telogen effluvium.

Because 98% of my observations have been with prescription hCG protocols, I haven't been able to compare the prevalence of hair loss to homeopathic hCG protocols. But one thing I know for sure, because most skeptics of the hCG protocol have no idea how hCG prevents starvation, they assume the typical symptoms of starvation are the risks. However, if hCG stimulates adequate leptin to reduce the risk of starvation, and the very low calorie protocol reduces the risk of problems caused from excess leptin, we could safely assume (when combined with a good multi-vitamin) hair loss associated to hormonal extremes of binging and starving would be minimized.

I've come to believe that in my opinion, people are sensationalizing the risk of hair loss to scare people out of doing the hCG protocol, or they want to manipulate the consumer to do the protocol differently than Simeons suggested. But, I'd like to know what others have observed. Dr. Simeons discussed the small risk he observed in Pounds & Inches, but I agree with his point of view. The hormonal ramifications of keeping fat are far worse then the risk of keeping hair.

Until we have proper laboratory research we are all speculating, including myself. However, what I do have to use as a reference point are the 4 people who have lost hair, compared to the thousands who haven't.

WHAT HAVE YOU OBSERVED? IF YOU HAVE LOST HAIR, DID YOU CHEAT? DID YOU EXPERIENCE SEVERE HUNGER? DID YOU LOAD PROPERLY? DID YOU ELIMINATE PROTEIN INTAKE? DID YOU TAKE A MULTI-VITAMIN?

Please comment if you've experienced hair loss and what was your experience.

STOP BLAMING FAT FOR BEING FAT

2012-01-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

The biggest failure of the weight-loss and diet industry is the fixation on the consequence of fat. Fat causes disease. Fat creates hormonal problems. Fat can make you self-conscious in our superficial culture. WE HATE FAT AND FAT IS TO BLAME. I believe the blame on fat as the problem is very misdirected and is the reason why the majority of people who lose fat, gain it back.

Fat is an organ, not a cancer. It doesn’t release fuel or multiply and create more fat cells without having been stimulated, or demanded to do so. Fat gain is a side-effect, a consequence, a reaction that preserves life and prevents death by continually adapting to maintain fueling balance.

Your fat cells provide the majority of fuel your entire body uses, both at night and during the day. It functions as the body’s most influential fueling source and when adequately provided, fat fuel prevents major drops in blood glucose, which prevents death. On the other hand, when fuel has over-saturated your system, and threatens life, fat provides life saving storage. Miraculously, fat is capable of multiplying to meet incredible stocking demand, adapting quickly to create more storage sites, and preventing death by flooding and drowning in fuel. How does fat know how to do release fuel and stock fuel? Leptin.

The key that unlocks the flood gates to fat fuel is the hormone, leptin. How much fuel is released is relative to how much leptin you have. How much leptin you create is relative to how many fat cells you have. How much fuel you get is relative to how big the fat cells are. The bigger the fat cell, the more leptin produced, which means the more fuel is released. That sounds like a good thing right? Wrong.

The problem arises when there’s more leptin than needed, and fat floods the body with fuel without the need, or demand. This threatens life because of fuel flooding. This is comparable to a clogged drain. The spout releases too much water and the drain can’t remove water as quickly as the spout gives water, which causes a back-up and flooding issue. But the incredible adaptability of the body is capable of creating an overspill hole (the same one you have in your own bathroom sink). The spill hole provides an extra drainage site, and prevents over-flow and drowning. But the overflow fuel must have a place to go and this is where fat’s ability to multiply comes in handy. The more fuel overflow you have, the more fat you create and these new fat cells are bigger and can accommodate more fuel spillage. But let’s not forget, these new and bigger fat cells create more leptin and also release more fuel, creating a higher risk of too much leptin, over-fueling, flooding, and even more fat gain as a life-saving consequence. Remember, leptin doesn’t just seep out of fat without cause. It requires a stimulus.

Leptin is created by fat only when there is a stimulus. Hormones stimulate the release of leptin, but the most influential stimulus daily, is food intake. All food stimulates fat cells to produce leptin, especially sugar. This is where hunger comes in.

Hunger is an alarm signal from the brain, forewarning that there isn’t enough fuel being released from fat because of a drop in leptin. If we use our example of the sink and the water spout, hunger is a sign that the water is almost completely drained, and the sink almost empty. Eating would stimulate leptin to turn on the spout and for fat to release more fuel. Once enough fuel has been released and the sink comfortabley filled, the brain turns off the warning signal, and hunger subsides. The problem occurs when hunger isn’t used, and eating continues. Then there is a risk of fuel overflow, the need for a spill hole, and accommodation for the excess fuel with new fat cells. Fat is miraculous! The real problem isn’t the fat, but is any stimulus that forces fat to release fuel, without need. This is like turning on the water when the sink is already full. In other words, eating without hunger.

Have you ever been told by a diet to only eat when you are hungry and to stop when hunger subsides? Probably not. That would eliminate your need for whatever they are selling. By telling you when and how much to eat, you are dependent on them, and need to pay them for their information. If you actually relied on your own body, and used the built in mechanism that perfectly gives notice for when and how much to eat, you wouldn’t need anybody.

The problem is that most people in our culture have lost touch with hunger, don’t know what it feels like, don’t know when it goes away, and have no idea how the body communicates it’s need for food. Why? Our emotionally driven food culture, and emotionally driven diet culture. We emotionalize eating excessively, and emotionalize the need for control. To make matters worse, we blame fat for being the problem.

Until we stop blaming fat for excess fuel release, and start pointing the finger at the unwarranted stimulus caused by eating without hunger, we’ll never take personal responsibility. We’ll continue to be at the mercy of our cultural gluttony, and under the control of the diet industry.

Fat isn’t a cancer, it doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It requires a stimulus to release fuel, and a cause that forces the need to create new fat cells. If you eat without hunger, you are the problem. If you eat until you are full, you are the stimulus. Stop blaming fat, and start taking personal responsibility for putting food in your mouth before the brain tells you it’s necessary.

IF YOU ARE NOT HUNGRY, DO NOT EAT.

LEPTIN RESISTANCE: NOT DURING THE HCG PROTOCOL

2012-01-15T07:31:00.000-08:00

I have been asked on numerous occasions why I don't discuss leptin resistance, or even mention the fact that all science speculates that the more leptin you produce the less it works. First, I am not an expert. I am a motivated person who really appreciates explanation for why and how things works. If there isn't an answer I'm not afraid to work to find one that might make some sense of things. Second, the idea that there is leptin resistance is because scientists are still not quite sure why the body is doing what it's doing because there is still an incredible amount of research to be done, and leptin resistance is an easy way to explain that something changes from what we'd expect, which creates a point of diminishing returns. To make this easier to understand: leptin resistance = more doesn't function the same as less.

I see leptin from two angles:
1) Leptin within the endocrine system,
2) and leptin within fat cells for fueling purposes.

The science of leptin began in the brain, observing the function of hunger. When obese mice have elevated leptin levels they won't eat, even when they have an abundance of food available. The feeding behavior of mice is very predictable based on their hypothalamic (brain) leptin levels. Because the method of thought has been (and for most still is) to assume "calories in vs. calories out" all fat people, based on this concept, have to eat more than they expend in a day (which could total more than 4000 calories per day). Scientists have assumed fatter people must be hungry all the time and therefore must be eating, all the time. NOT TRUE. They first hypothesized the more fat a person had, the less leptin they have which is why they must eat all the time. Well, that turned out to be false. The more fat you have, the exponentially higher your leptin levels are.

In order to eat as many calories it requires to gain fat, they speculated there must be a problem with leptin that would force Americans to eat so much. They have to be hungry all the time, so there must be some resistance. Now this is where I have observed the opposite.

The more fat a person has the less hunger they have, and the less they eat relative to their expenditure. Per calorie burned they eat less then their leaner counter parts! (ready why skinny b*tches eat more) Mice may not eat when their leptin levels are elevated, but put a bunch of Americans in a room with food, and there is no discussion of hunger but instead, how good the food must taste, how deserving we are to eat it for whatever reason, and it's free! Eat up! Eating in our culture has NOTHING to do with hunger. NOTHING.

Here's what I've observed: the more fat a person has the less hunger they experience- whether they are on the protocol or not. More fat = less frequency of hunger. (read my blog on why breakfast isn't as important as we thought it was)

Where leptin resistance does make complete sense is within the endocrine system and team of organs that directly work for and against leptin. As fat cells multiply, and new fat cells are bigger and more explosive than the original fat cells, the amount of leptin a person is capable of producing grows at an accelerated rate. A serious problem occurs when corresponding organs can't grow in size and cannot create the correlated response at the same rate. For example, as fat accumulates and more and more leptin is produced, the pancreas is challenged to match the output of leptin with insulin. As fat cells get bigger, and continue to multiply, the pancreas hits a rate limit that can no longer match the output of leptin, unless the pancreas were to grow in size. There comes a point where it is impossible for the pancreas to excrete insulin at the level that fat is excreting leptin, because fat cells outweigh and outnumber what the pancreas is capable of. The only solution would be for the pancreas to grow in size (which is impossible) or to inject insulin to match the output of leptin from fat.

On the other hand, if leptin suppresses an organ, the more leptin you have the more suppressed the organ becomes. For example, leptin in the anterior pituitary suppresses the signal to the adrenals. The adrenals stimulate your fight-or-flight response and produce hormones that help you feel active, motivated, and excited. The more leptin you have the more suppressed the activation from the brain is to the adrenals. However, there is a point where the adrenals can't suppress any lower because those organs would die. My point is that each organ that corresponds to leptin has a limit and the more leptin you have there does come a point where that organ can no longer respond. This would be leptin resistance.

Lets discuss leptin and it's function in fat cells. Each fat cell produces over six hormones! Leptin has been the main focus of science because of it's influence on the entire endocrine system, and also because of it's control over fueling from fat cells and energy homeostasis. This is where I believe there is no leptin resistance. Why? Because fat cells can increase in size and can multiply and spread, so there is no limit with the function that leptin has within fat cells for fuel. The more leptin you have the more fuel is released.

THE MORE LEPTIN YOU HAVE THE MORE FUEL IS RELEASED!

There is no cap, no rate limit, no resistance. Otherwise, every obese person would be in continual starvation with severe hunger, have severe drops in blood glucose uncountable times daily, would have muscle wasting, and would have difficulty gaining fat. If there was leptin resistance in fat cells, there would be a limit to how much leptin is created, how much fuel is released, there would be a limit to how much fat is gained, and there would be a bell curve graph to fat's function as more fat is accumulated. This is NOT the case. The curve is an exponential curve, that shows only acceleration. As fat increases, leptin levels increase even more. If fat cells were "leptin resistant" there would be a point of deceleration within the function of fat and this is not the case.

If leptin resistance does not apply to the function within fat cells and energy fueling, then the body has the ability to adapt, to create more fat cells, and to and store more fuel, which would make sense based on the human body's need to survive chronic famine. I believe, based on what I've witnessed and observed through thousands of hCG protocols, fat metabolism doesn't have resistance to leptin which is why hunger is not resistant to leptin either. Hunger is in direct proportion to fueling and is communicated in response to maintain fueling balance. This is why I never force anyone to eat breakfast, meals, or pre-portioned food because hunger is a better assessment of fueling needs then anything else. The more fat you have the more fuel you get, the less frequent you experience hunger, and the less hormonal need you have for food. It is that simple.

So I speculate that corresponding organs that cannot grow in size to match fat's growth will absolutely have leptin resistance. Fat on the other hand, has no resistance to leptin due to the fact that as leptin increases so does fat cell count, and so does fat's fueling function.

I COULD BE WRONG, BUT IF I WAS- THE HCG PROTOCOL WOULD NOT MAKE SENSE.

IS EMOTIONAL EATING YOUR NEW RELIGION?

2012-01-11T07:54:00.001-08:00

Have you ever attached to something so intensely that you modified your character for it? Did it change the way you talk, dress, act, behave, the people you allow yourself to engage with, and change the direction of your life? Maybe that something was your parents, your religion, your friends in Jr. High or high school, a boy/girl friend, your spouse, or even drugs, work, education, a hobby, etc.

When you made the decision (or was forced) to change who you were to match that “something” did you have to memorize or conform to a certain dress code, like specific things, was there a certain music you listened to in order to be liked by others with the same label, or to avoid being different? Did you give yourself a name such as a “hippie”, “religious name”, “EMO”, “athlete” or any title that lets people know the general list of character traits they should expect from that label? I have− in many areas.

I was raised religious from the day of my birth. I memorized character traits, language, and uncountable times even called myself by the name of the religion. In other ways, I conformed to my siblings, what they liked− I liked. How they dressed− I dressed. My sisters played volleyball− I played volleyball. Then in junior high I remember changing the way I held my posture to match the other girls that I thought were “cool”. If I was with a group of people I would change the music I liked to match what they liked, so they’d approve of me. Changing who I was to please other people and to gain acceptance, began the moment I learned about positive and negative reinforcement. And the boundaries I were to follow were blunt and the enforcement was pretty extreme. It makes sense that my self-worth became “others”-worth. My entire childhood was to please others, which required I define who I was to match other people, so they’d like and accept me.

When I got to college this completely backfired. That’s when my toddler like self-esteem was put to the test. Pre-marital sex in the religion my identity was molded around, was deemed “the next closest sin to murder”. Within weeks I was propositioned to have sex. I was so afraid of causing a problem, making the other person mad, hurting the other persons feelings, and fearful that if I rejected to proposition that they wouldn’t like me or wouldn’t continue to be my friend, that I passively accepted. It felt like rape.

I worried that the sex was awful for the other person, and if I did have sex maybe they’d want to be my boyfriend. It was over in minutes, and the same boy never put the same effort into talking to me again. You could imagine the rejection I felt, but worse, the complete trauma over the fact that I was going to Hell. If my family found out I’d be judged, scorned, and shamed. The event was extremely traumatic and even worse− I felt profound guilt and anxiety over what a bad person I was. This was the beginning of a downward spiral that ended up in a severe mental illness.

In short, instead of relying on others to define me, I decided I would find a way to feel good about myself and I chose my body. My body became my new religion, family, and friends. I could define what was good and bad and no one else could give or take from my new security. I obsessed over the way I looked, would measure my stomach at least 5 times a day. I’d exercise an hour on top of the three hours of collegiate volleyball training. I counted calories precisely so at the end of the day, the exercise and caloric intake would end up at zero. Within three months I lost physical strength to play volleyball, checked out of college, and lost a full-ride scholarship. All for my new “body” religion.

Here I am today, writing about emotional eating rehab, and what do I know? I’m not a therapist or a psychologist. But I do know this: if you’ve been defined by other people, objects, actions, or a belief system, you might want to rethink when that identity was created, why and who defined it for you, and if it came from a place of fear, vulnerability, rejection, or need for acceptance.

If you could go back in time, could you imagine the person you are that isn’t defined? If you weren’t in a body, what does your soul feel like? If you were reborn into a new body with a new life, would your soul feel the same? Would you, by choice, recreate the same life you have knowing what you know? Most people would love a do-over, but feel chained to what they’ve already been defined by, and can’t see a way out.

But that isn’t true. The moment I chose not to commit suicide, I realized that the only other way out was to live the same life that existed, as if I was getting a do-over. I had the same family, parents, husband (I got married at 20 during my psychological illness− my poor parents!), and instead of killing myself, I’d be authentic, let go of all definitions they created for me, and allow the incredible atomic bomb of vulnerability, as they might reject me. I recognized that allowing that horrific vulnerability was no different than suicide, so I might as well let the world know the real me, and accept any rejection, before I ended this life altogether.

Who would I be, and if I gained fat− would that make me worse of a person? Would being fat lessen the value of my soul? If not, than my extremist body-religion was misdirected and wrong. I was going to have to find out. That’s when I left the severe safety my body-religion, the religion my parents enforced me to be, the idea that sex made me a bad person, and all that traumatized and falsely defined the value of my soul. I gave nothing the power to define me, because the value of my soul had to existe with nothing. No person, clothing, action, music, hobby, education, and nothing of this visible world could completely define what I felt of myself. That moment of realization, awakened me to a level of consciousness that instantly changed my perception of life forever.

My point− find happiness and love for who you are with nothing. Seek who you are that isn’t definable by the way you look, how you act, what your job is, nor from what you see, hear, or feel. Recognize that losing weight won’t improve your life (accept that the body you have won’t be so uncomfortable, and may last longer). And if you think once you achieve that thin body that it improves your value, you’re now define by that, and will have intense fear and vulnerability of gaining the fat back. WHAT A NIGHTMARE! This is why I exercised for hours on end, and why I now have severe arthritis at age 34.

Being thin doesn’t make you a better person, nor should being fat make you less valuable. The liberty to eat excessively may be your means of gaining freedom from a constraint you really don’t like. The need to restrict food may be a way that you are seeking a new outward definition rather than accepting authenticity. Think about who you are, move past the superficial definitions, and find what is indefinable. This is where unconditional love and self-worth starts and where emotional eating or “eating-religion” loses value.

EATING FOR MOMMY AND DADDY

2012-01-06T06:43:00.001-08:00

How many of you link your over eating and emotional eating to your parents? There must be some memory you have, sitting at the table, being forced to eat. Or you accomplished something they approved of, wanted to give you positive reinforcement, and rewarded with a cupcake or some other food of their choice. Or maybe you grew up in a large family like myself (9 siblings) and remember the scarcity of food and the frantic feeling when the dinner bell rang. As soon as the blessing was said we were hyenas, fending for ourselves. I was number 9 of ten children so eating dinner was pretty intense.

Today I’m 34, have three children and a mild mannered husband who eats methodically and slowly. There is no threat of hunger, and no panic over how much food we have to share, and no need to continue to eat so quickly. Then why do I continue to eat as if I’m an 8 year old girl competing for food with an 18 year old brother, and everyone in between? The more I observe other adults and their eating habits, much of their eating habits started when they lived at home with their parents, and they’ve never considered if those same habits would still apply today.

For example, one woman started eating excessively at 25. It all started after her parents forced her to get an abortion, which was extremely traumatic for her. She chose to go along with the abortion, not because she wanted to, but to avoid disappointment, criticism, rejection, and possible abandonment from her parents. Although when looking back, she realizes her parents would never have abandoned her if she had kept the baby. However she believed because of their intense opinion as to what she should do, that in order to please them she’d have to go through with the abortion. So she did. Not because she made the decision out of her choice, but out of a reactive emotion to please them. All along, feeling traumatized by their control and the incredible fear of their rejection. Immediately she started drinking alcohol and spent the next 5 years drunk. Once drinking became a problem she stopped, and immediately turned to food to replace what was hiding those traumatic emotions. She thought she was an alcoholic, and by letting go of her need to drink, she thought everything was fixed. But instead of drinking she turned to food-- without understanding the behavior that drove her need to hide her emotions. She would hide in her basement with large amounts of candy and she’d watch TV and movies for hours on end, to distract her from the trauma. The obvious result: obesity.

She sat in front of me 17 years later. She was happy, content with her life, and was in a loving marriage. We discussed her eating history, she became aware that her need to eat emotionally began after she stopped drinking. She’d never made that connection before. Once she realized that was an obvious behavioral and emotional lateral move, she began to cry. She recognized that the emotional trauma she thought was fixed when she stopped drinking, had continued, but instead of drinking she ate. She was once again being challenged to process the trauma that started when she felt emotionally forced to get an abortion.

I asked her, “Knowing what you know now, and how your life has turned out, would you go back in time and make the same decision? Would you choose to get the abortion, or would you take the risk of your parent’s disapproval, and keep the baby?” She sat and thought, and to her own amazement, she said, “I am content with my life today. I am deeplly in love with my husband, and if I was given the choice to go back? Robin, I would go through with the abortion again.” She was surprised by that thought, but I could see the calm and peace in her expression. I could feel and see the incredible emotional weight lifted off of her. I asked her, “Going back in your mind and making that decision regardless of your parents fears, does it still feel traumatizing?” She started to cry in relief. The trauma was over, simply by going back in her mind and processing the decision from a new place of self-worth.

From that moment forward, her need to eat emotionally began to diminish. She recognized that her behavior today, was continued based on the trauma she felt at 25, which didn’t make sense any more. If she could go back with the level of self-worth she values today, her choice would be the same, but her response to the situation would have been very different. The outcome: less trauma and need to emotionally compensate.

My point with this example is to show how many of us in adulthood continue to eat based on what was appropriate and defining in the past. But if you stop to evaluate those decisions and why they made sense to you in the past, would those reasons to eat still make sense today? Stop and think about why you eat and ask yourself if your relationship with food is still appropriate.

DO FAT CELLS GO AWAY?

2012-01-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

You can always tell when someone really understands what they are talking about. The first sign is by how humbled they are by the astronomically large amount of information we don't quite understand yet. The more they know, the more they realize they know very little. These individuals want to know more, want a deeper understanding, and are willing to dig deeper for information to questions unanswered.

On the other hand, there are others who think they know everything, have no desire to seek new information and continue to believe there is nothing more to learn. The less they know, the more they think there is nothing else to learn. They only discuss the superficial information, and never go deeper to understand the human body. In this case, because they know very little they are naive to how complex the body really is, so they can't go deeper than memorized statements. The more you know, the more complex the body becomes, and the more information you seek to learn.

Here's an example. How many "experts" profess that once you have a fat cell they only shrink, and will never go away? This is one of the most naive, and quite sad, claims about the body. Once a cell loses it's function, it will go through natural cell death, or apoptosis. When fatty acids are depleted from an adipocyte, the cell has lost it's primary function and will go away. This is a "use it or lose it" situation. In the case of hCG, does hCG "unlock the hypothalamus"? Does hCG convert fat into energy? No. Not at all.

This was written in Dr. Simeons' "Pounds & Inches" in 1967. Let's get updated into 2012. You'd think that by now, self proclaimed hCG protocol "experts" would have looked deeper into the human body, but because most people selling hCG products or programs don't really know that much about human physiology, they continue to proclaim Dr. Simeons' theories as fact. Without thought to the idea that we understand the human body more profoundly than we did in 1967. These protocol experts don't realize that they look naive and superficially motivated to others who study the human body and physiology.

The most interesting observation I've made is that I've yet to meet a doctor or physiologist who wasn't interested in a modern hypothesis. These doctors may have written books, workbooks, and created an entire program based around Simeons' theories, and yet they still were thrilled to know the modern science that might relevantly explained why hCG prevents starvation. Where have a met resistance? Self-proclaimed experts who don't understand human physiology. People who don't have the education or understanding of the human body to a level that is necessary in order to comprehend the complexity of the endocrine system, and the hormonal influence on energy homeostasis would rather repeat Simeons' theories. The more the listener knows about the human body the more they appreciate the profound explanation. The less the listener knows, the less valuable a complex explanation is.

In writing a hypothesis for why hCG prevents starvation, I did the best I could with what I could understand. My hope is that another person who may have a deeper understanding than myself, will take what I've started and will describe it to an even deeper level. I look naive to a micro-cell biologist, similar to how others seem naive to me. Why am I writing this? Because the standard "expert" in the hCG diet industry doesn't really know much at all. Really? Fat cells don't go away? Now that's naive.

It's time we set the bar quite a few levels higher and it's time for many of these "experts" to go back to school. Until then, the hCG diet industry will continue to look naive, stupid, and money hungry, just like the rest of the diet industry.

THE SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS: WHY LOW DOSE HCG PREVENTS STARVATION

2012-01-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

“I have never had an opportunity of conducting the laboratory investigations which are so necessary for a theoretical understanding of clinical observations, and I can only hope that those more fortunately placed will in time be able to fill this gap.”

– Dr. A.T.W. Simeons, Pounds & Inches

DR. SIMEON'S HCG PROTOCOL: A NEW HYPOTHESIS

By Robin Phipps Woodall, Author of Weight-Loss Apocalypse http://www.mindbodyhcg.com/

HCG injections of between 100IU and 150IU might stimulate, from fat cells, sufficient amounts of leptin to prevent symptoms of starvation imposed by the very low-calorie protocol (VLCP), as described by Dr. Simeons. The controlled hCG/protocol environment should stimulate enough leptin to minimize hunger, to maintain a normal and healthy thyroid signal, and to prevent significant reductions in lean body mass by effectively maintaining energy homeostasis through fatty acid oxidation of leptin-sensitive fat stores.

The controlled demand imposed by participant adherence to the VLCP will prevent fat gain by offsetting the susceptibility to over-stimulate leptin. This controlled demand with optimized fat utilization should, with time and physical adaptation, up-regulate mitochondrial biogenesis. During the second phase, as energy demand on fat is significantly reduced, new smaller mitochondria might progressively increase oxidative power, measuring an increase in resting energy expenditure (calories, per pound of body weight, per day).

Using this hypothesis as the basis of future research might explain what is observed during the protocol.

The following material is meant only to start new discussion about how hCG might influence energy homeostasis when food is removed.

ENERGY HOMEOSTASIS

To start, let’s acknowledge the inherent difficulty of understanding the body’s integrated system of organs, each requiring its own nourishment and energy demands, in addition to understanding the systems of tissues dependent upon these organs. The energy needed to sustain our organs and tissues is a system that feeds and depletes. It gives and takes from one organ to the next, all while accommodating the complex influence from both physical activity and food. This balance of energy demand and energy sharing is called energy homeostasis, and maintaining homeostasis sustains these integrated systems during both feast and famine.

All systems integrate fuel and energy demands not only daily, but over a lifetime. This constant striving for homeostasis is what stimulates the feelings of hunger that prompt us to eat, and to stop eating when we’re satiated. Perhaps the most critical element in achieving homeostasis is maintaining a stable blood glucose level.

We are fed from many sources other than food; some sources of fuel are fat, muscle and liver glycogen, body protein, and blood glucose. These “tissue” fuels are not stocked equally. Some have more reserves than others. Fat and body protein by far surpass the fleeting amount of energy reserves held in both glycogen and blood glucose. The total integration of these fuel systems for short and long-term metabolic homeostasis is vital to life, hourly, and over the period of our body’s life.

The energy our body captures is powered not only by food, but also by our tissue reserves. However, these substrates must be converted into what can be captured before the body can use it as energy. As you eat, the food you consume is not yet in a form that can be captured as energy, so tissue reserves are readily available to meet immediate demands. But for tissue reserves to be released, key hormones that determine when and how much energy is needed must be accessed.

Leptin is one of the most important energy-controlling hormones. Since its discovery in 1994, we more fully understand leptin’s key role as a fatty acid synthase (FAS) inhibitor, and most notably as an anorexigenic hormone affecting the signal of hunger, the function of the thyroid, and fat metabolism. ^{2 15}

Similar to insulin, leptin levels fall and rise in coordination with blood glucose, signaling to the body and brain when and how much energy reserve is available. ³ Leptin helps maintain blood glucose levels by regulating fatty acid use in skeletal muscle for energy, and preserving blood glucose for other more important organs to use. ⁴

Leptin is primarily found in white and brown fat cells, but could also be produced in the mouth, placenta, ovaries, skeletal muscle, stomach, mammary cells, bone marrow, pituitary and liver. ^{5 6}The rise and fall of leptin levels influence hunger, thyroid stimulus, fat metabolism, and fat gain. To successfully apply the modern science of leptin’s functions to Dr. Simeons’ protocol, I will discuss leptin as it relates to four areas; the hypothalamus, skeletal muscle, fat, and the thyroid.

LEPTIN: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN THE HCG PROTOCOL AND HUNGER.

As a diet begins, and food is restricted, blood glucose levels fall. As blood glucose levels drop in the body and brain, leptin also depletes. ^{7 12} As leptin levels fall, there is a reduction in malonyl-CoA, a recognized intermediate, in the hypothalamic-signaling pathway that controls feeding behavior and energy expenditure. ¹⁵ Recent evidence suggests that food deprivation, and the associated decrease in hypothalamic malonyl-CoA, increases the expression of neuropeptide Y (NPY) and agouti-related protein (AgRP), which produces the sensation of hunger. Conversely, as blood glucose and leptin levels rise after eating, the resulting increase in malonyl-CoA reduces the expression of NPY and AgRP, producing feelings of satiety when hunger is alleviated. ^{7 10}

Studies have shown administration of a fatty acid synthase (FAS) inhibitor (such as leptin) to the central nervous system in obese mice, dramatically reduces feeding behavior, with the increase in hypothalamic malonyl-CoA concentrations.^{13 25} These findings show that during very low-calorie diets, a stimulant of a FAS inhibitor like leptin, would raise malonyl-CoA levels, and decrease the expression of NPY and AgRP. Theoretically, this should sustain feelings of satiation for longer periods of time with less food.

LEPTIN: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN THE HCG PROTOCOL AND FAT MOBILIZATION.

Leptin is primarily expressed and secreted by fat cells. As fat mass increases during energy surplus, blood leptin increases and interacts with its receptors in the central nervous system (CNS), leading to increased malonyl-CoA expression in the hypothalamus, and decreased hunger. ²² Although there could be fat loss due to lack of hunger with a FAS inhibitor, studies have shown central administration of FAS inhibitors transmitted to the skeletal muscle from the CNS, increases fatty acid oxidation and, with time, increases resting energy expenditure. ^{16 23}

As FAS inhibitors increase in skeletal muscle, the result is a decrease in muscle malonyl-CoA. This outcome essentially determines whether or not fat is used for energy. ⁴ Muscle malonyl-CoA is a potent allosteric inhibitor of muscle carnitine palmitoyltransferase (CPT-1). CPT-1 is like a doorway on the mitochondrial membrane, opening or shutting access for fatty acids to enter and be converted into fuel for the body. When CPT-1 is deactivated by muscle malonyl-CoA, entry of fatty acids into mitochondria for β-oxidation is inhibited. ¹⁵

Muscular malonyl-CoA formation is catalyzed with increased activity in the enzyme Acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC). ACC is strongly inhibited by AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), which is stimulated by leptin. ¹¹ So, as leptin levels decrease, AMPK is deactivated, which activates ACC. ACC creates malonyl-CoA, which inhibits CPT-1, and thus reduces fatty acid oxidation. ^{13 15}

This happens as a response during starvation when blood glucose and leptin levels fall, preserving fat for longer periods of time, and forcing muscles to use other tissue substrates instead.¹² However, eating has the opposite effect.

After eating, when blood glucose and blood leptin levels increase, the activation of AMPK deactivates ACC, which decreases muscular malonyl-CoA. As muscle malonyl-CoA declines, CPT-1 activates and opens access for fat into the mitochondria, where energy can be supplied through β-oxidation. ^{4 11} This might explain how eating food that is not yet in a form that can be captured as energy, stimulates the use of stored fuel for immediate use.

New science has shown that this system can be successfully manipulated, not only to counteract symptoms of starvation, but to improve metabolic rates. Centrally administered FAS inhibitors during food restriction, rapidly increases the expression of skeletal muscle peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α (PPARα), a transcriptional activator of fatty acid oxidizing enzymes, and uncoupling protein 3 (UPC3), a putative thermogenic mitochondrial uncoupling protein. ²³¹⁵ Daily administration of FAS inhibitors over time increases the number of mitochondria in white and red skeletal muscle. This could explain why studies show increases in metabolisms tested through indirect calorimeter. ^{23 26 27}

To prevent the natural decline in fat mobilization with a very low-calorie diet, there must be an alternative way to stimulate leptin to decrease muscular malonyl-CoA, This allows fatty acids to have continuous access into the mitochondria, where fat could provide substantial fuel for the body without significantly depleting blood glucose. This optimized fat utilization would prevent the need for the body to use lean tissue reserves during extreme caloric deficits and, over time, stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis, ultimately increasing the rate at which a person burns energy fuel at rest.

LEPTIN: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN THE HCG PROTOCOL AND FAT GAIN.

High levels of leptin in adipose tissue, without equally sufficient expenditure, have the opposite effect. Studies show that extremely high levels of leptin, similar to those seen in the obese, increase peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPAR-gamma), which is the master control switch for fat storage. ^{21 22 14}

PPAR-gamma activates a host of enzymes that promote the esterification of fatty acids to create triacylglycerides (TAG), and advances the formation of lipid droplets from these TAG. When administered to mice, high levels of leptin increased the cellular expression of PPAR-gamma by 70-80%. ¹⁴ Leptin signals to the brain that there’s ample energy in storage, but also forewarns pre-adipocites to make room for more fat cells.

The more fat a person has, the more leptin his or her body produces. ²¹ Essentially, if you were to compare two people who have the same exact metabolic rate, but extreme variance in body fat composition, their bodies would have a different response to the same food. If they ate the same exact amount and type of food, the more obese person would have much more blood leptin stimulated, due to their larger amount of body fat.

The excess amount of leptin, without equal excess energy expenditure, can cause an imbalance in energy homeostasis, making the body more sensitive to resulting fat gain as a need to recapture and compensate for the imbalance. Leptin’s stimulus of PPAR-gamma would complement insulin as a survival mechanism to make room for more fat, aiding in the preparation for more energy storage cells as an adaptation for long-term energy homeostasis. A person with less fat would have less leptin, which might better compliment their metabolic energy balancing system, thus making him or her less sensitive to fat gain—even when eating the same exact meal as a more obese counterpart. Hence, fat gain and loss is not a linear function of calories eaten and expended because fat hormones, such as leptin, greatly influence energy homeostasis, and the body’s resulting compensations.

Both fat-preserving and fat-creating effects of leptin will function to conserve fat during starvation, and to form fat when food is excessive. Leptin’s fat burning and storing/preserving relationships seem to follow an “inverted U” model. Leptin’s fat-conserving functions are maximum with high and low levels, and its fat-burning functions are optimal in the middle.

If leptin is stimulated by an outside influence, there might be less necessity for food and more sensitivity to over-stimulate leptin production. This excessive stimulus of leptin relative to expenditure would cause an expression of PPAR-gamma and an increase in fat when relatively small amounts of food are consumed.

LEPTIN: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN THE HCG PROTOCOL AND MAINTAINING THYROID FUNCTION.

Leptin’s elevation and depletion in the brain signals a fed or starved state, not only through hunger, but also through the metabolic suppression or stimulus from the thyroid.⁸ When elevated, leptin stimulates thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) that controls the release of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH). TSH acts on receptors in the thyroid to promote synthesis and release of the thyroid hormones (T3 and T4), which increases the body’s basal metabolic rate. ⁸ As blood glucose levels fall with very low-calorie diets, the depletion of leptin in the brain inhibits this cascade affect, resulting in a weaker metabolic signal from the thyroid. ⁹

The natural drop in thyroid signal is an essential, life-sustaining mechanism that occurs during starvation. This mechanism slows down the rate at which the body needs fuel, thus preserving energy stores and life for a longer period of time. However, when leptin is administered during induced starvation, the thyroid signals stay strong. ¹⁰ If the thyroid signal stays strong, the body maintains a normal basal metabolic rate, and requires the same amount of fuel as if in a fed state.

To counteract the natural metabolic suppression of the thyroid, an energy-preserving survival mechanism, during sustained very low-calorie diets, an alternative stimulus of leptin would be needed.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN LOW DOSE HCG AND LEPTIN.

Not only is there clear evidence that the placenta produces leptin, but there’s evidence that hCG might exert a negative feedback loop on trophoblastic release of leptin.^{17 18 19 20} This means that specific quantities of hCG stimulate leptin production. If there were too much hCG, leptin levels would decline. If there were too little hCG, not enough leptin would be produced.

Based on these findings, hCG could be a viable stimulant of leptin. But the question yet to be answered is, would injections of hCG with Simeons’ protocol:

· Stimulate sufficient blood leptin levels to interact with its receptors in the participant’s central nervous system, acting as a potent FAS inhibitor in the hypothalamus, reducing hunger? In the hypothalamus to sufficiently stimulate the thyroid?

· Stimulate enough leptin production in the skeletal muscle to increase fatty acid β-oxidation? The right amount of leptin in the fat cells to prevent fat storage? And enough time and constraint for mitochondrial biogenesis to significantly increase resting energy expenditure?

· Could other forms of hCG administration, including homeopathic hCG, do the same?

Simeons’ findings left many questions unanswered, and science uncharted by the refuting research of his protocol. Based on the evidence I’ve presented, hCG isn’t burning fat, it doesn’t directly reduce the appetite, and it doesn’t stimulate the metabolism. Rather, it is the energy demand of the protocol, combined with how hCG influences leptin, in the brain and body, that allows the body to metabolize fat and function as if fed, when food is not available.

BUY THE BOOK

REFERENCES

(1) Lijesen, G.K.S., et al. 1995. The effect of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) in the treatment of obesity by means of the Simeons’ therapy: a criteria-based meta-analysis. The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. 40:237-243

(2) Zhang, Y., et al. 1994. Positional cloning of the mouse obese gene and its human homologue. Nature. 372: 425-432

(3) Morton, G.J. 2007. Hypothalamic leptin regulation of energy homeostasis and glucose metabolism. J Physiology. 583.2: 437-443

(4) N.Y. Ann. 2002. Regulation of fat metabolism in skeletal muscle. National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 967:217-235

(5) Margetic, S., et al. 2002. Leptin: a review of its peripheral actions and interactions. International Journal of Obesity. 26: 1407-1433

(6) Groschl, M., et al. 2001. Identification of Leptin in Human Saliva. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 86(11): 5234-5239

(7) Mars, M., et al. 2006. Fasting leptin and appetite responses induced by a 4-day 65% energy-restricted diet. International Journal of Obesity. 30: 122-128

(8) Rosenbaum, M., et al. 2002. Low dose leptin administration reverses effects of sustained weight-reduction on energy expenditure and circulating concentrations of thyroid hormones. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 87:2391-2394

(9) Flier, J.S., et al. 2000. Leptin, nutrition, and the thyroid: the why, the wherefore, and the wiring. The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 105(7): 859-861

(10) Ahima, R.S., et al. 1996. Role of leptin in the neuroendocrine response to fasting. Nature. 382: 250-252

(11) Kahn, M.Y. 2003. Role of AMP-activated protein kinase in leptin-induced fatty acid oxidation in muscle. Biochemical Social Transactions. 31(pt 1): 196-201

(12) Flier, J.S. 1998. Clinical Review 94: What’s in a name? In search of leptin’s physiologic role. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 83(5):1407-1413

(13) Wolfgang, M.J., et al. 2007. Regulation of hypothalamic malonyl-CoA by central glucose and leptin. The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 104(49): 19285-19290

(14) Qian, H., et al. 1998. Leptin regulation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma, tumornectrosis factor, and uncoupling protein-2 expression in adipose tissue. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 246(3): 660-667

(15) Wolfgang, M.J., et al. 2008. Hypothalamic malonyl-CoA and the control of energy balance. Molecular Endocrinology. 22(9): 2012-2020

(16) Orci, L., et al. 2003. Rapid transformation of white adipocytes into fat-oxidizing machines. The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 101(7): 2058-2063

(17) Islama, D., et al. 2003. Modulation of placental vascular endothelial growth factor by leptin and hCG. Molecular Human Reproduction. 9(7): 395-398

(18) Maymo’, J.L., et al. 2009. Up-regulation of placental leptin by human chorionic gonadotropin. The Endocrine Society. 150(1): 304-313

(19) Linnemann, K., et al. 2000. Leptin production and release in the dually in vitro perfused human placenta. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 85(11): 4298-4302

(20) Islami, D., et al. 2003. Possible interactions between leptin, gonadotrophin-releasing hormone and human chorionic gonadotrophin. European Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology. 110(2): 169-175

(21) Considine, R.V., et al. 1996. Serum immunoreactive-leptin concentrations in normal-weight and obese humans. The New England Journal of Medicine. 334(5): 292-295

(22) Friedman J.M., et al. 1998. Leptin and the regulation of body weight in mammals. Nature. 395:763-770

(23) Cha, S.H., et al. 2005. Inhibition of hypothalamic fatty acid synthase triggers rapid activation of fatty acid oxidation in skeletal muscle. The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 102: 14557-14562

(24) Schwarts M.W., et al. 2006. Central nervous system control of food intake. Nature. 404: 661-671

(25) Cha, S.H., et al. 2003. Hypothalamic malonyl-CoA as a mediator of feeding behavior. The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 100: 12624-12629

(26) Cha, S.H., et al. 2006. Hypothalamic malonyl-CoA triggers mitochondrial biogenesis and oxidative gene expression in skeletal muscle: role of PGC-1α. The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 103: 15410-15415

(27) Thupari, J.N., et al. 2002. C75 increases peripheral energy utilization and fatty acid oxidation in diet-induced obesity. The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 99: 9498-950

(28) Lederman, S.A., et al. 1999. Maternal body fat, water during pregnancy: do they raise infant birth weight? American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 180: 235-240

HOW EATING LESS THAN 500 KCALS A DAY INCREASES METABOLISM

2012-01-02T06:46:00.001-08:00

“In treating obesity with the HCG + diet method we are handling what is perhaps the most complex organ in the human body. The diencephalon’s functional equilibrium is delicately poised, so that whatever happens in one part has repercussions in others. In obesity this balance is out of kilter and can only be restored if the technique I am about to describe is followed implicitly. Even seemingly insignificant deviations, particularly those that seem to be an improvement are very liable to produce most disappointing results and even annul the effect completely.” -Dr. A.T.W. Simeons, Pounds & Inches

Unfortunately, because most participants and practitioners know very little about the new science of leptin and its role in starvation, the protocol is still misunderstood, and misdirected, and many have attempted to “socialize” it, to make it appeal to the masses.

In particular, new methods that include more food, are now being introduced—and not because of proper laboratory research, but marketed to ease the fears of those who’ve yet to fully understand how the protocol works (and to make money selling a system or product). Unfortunately, the majority of people who have morbid obesity would metabolically benefit less from this type of approach. But on the other hand, those who have less fat, or who are taking a weaker (or non-existent) dosage of hCG, eating more would makes sense, especially when they have hunger that merits more leptin stimulus from food intake.

But until there is sound laboratory research, clinical evaluations, and conclusive evidence, we are all speculating—some more intelligently than others. Claiming effectiveness based on clinical study comparing weight, is very naïve. Any educated and trained person in the field of physiology understands weight is sub-standard evidence for (or against) a hormonal therapy.

One of the main reasons eating less is better for people who have more fat is for improving metabolic rates. New science has shown that the metabolic system can be successfully manipulated, and improved by finitely balancing leptin levels. Centrally administered fatty acid synthase (FAS) inhibitors (such as leptin) combined with high fuel demand, rapidly increases the expression of skeletal muscle peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α (PPARα), a transcriptional activator of fatty acid oxidizing enzymes, and uncoupling protein 3 (UPC3), a putative thermogenic mitochondrial uncoupling protein. With fuel demand, daily administration of FAS inhibitors over time increases the number of mitochondria in white and red skeletal muscle. This adaptation to demand increases fueling capacity, which explains why most people who properly follow the 500 calorie protocol show increases in metabolisms, when tested through indirect calorimeter.

Here is our initial statistical analysis done for 40 participants, before and after the 500 calorie medical hCG protocol. Since this report was done in 2009, we‘ve collected data for hundreds of participants and the trend is only improving as we’ve understood eating less (relative to hunger) is ideal. Again, eating more could be ideal only if the dosage of hCG is too weak, but the charted acclimation wouldn’t be as sloped or powerful.

Preliminary Statistical Analysis (for the first 40 participants)

This preliminary analysis was done by Lee Hannah of Boise State University-Boise, Idaho.

Lee Hannah, DVM, MS, MPH
Assistant Professor, Medical Epidemiologist, Boise State University

The data set is small, containing only 12 variables. Of interest was the person’s gender (only 4 males to 36 females), weight at the beginning of the hCG protocol, resting energy expenditure(REE) at the beginning of the protocol, calorie/lb/day at the beginning of the protocol, weight at the end of the protocol, REE at the end of the protocol, and calorie/lb/day at the end of the protocol.

Because we have pre- and post-information on the same individuals, I used a paired t-test to look for a significant change from post to pre for both weight and REE.

Weight: For weight, there was a significant reduction in weight across the protocol. On average, across all 40 individuals, weight went from 202.73 pounds to 180.35 pounds (a change of 22.38 pounds). This was statistically significant, with a p-value <0.001.

REE and calorie/lb/day: REE also dropped between the pre and post time periods, with an average reduction of 69.48; however, this difference only reached borderline significance, with a p-value = 0.07. What is more important to the study is the fact that the calorie/lb/day (which is calculated as the REE divided by body weight) increased across the 40 participants. At baseline, the participants were burning 9.51 calorie/lb of body weight and at completion of the protocol the average participant was burning 10.30 calorie/lb of body weight. This was statistically significant, with a p-value <0.001.

Table 1: Paired Samples Statistics
		Mean	N	Std. Deviation	Std. Error Mean
Pair 1	post weight	180.35	40	48.085	7.603
Pair 1	pre weight	202.73	40	55.404	8.760
Pair 2	Post REE	1828.40	40	451.720	71.423
Pair 2	Pre REE	1897.88	40	413.026	65.305
Pair 3	calorie/lb/day2	10.3013	40	1.58841	.25115
Pair 3	calorie/lb/day1	9.5094	40	1.36931	.21651

Table 2: Statistical significance of differences observed

		Paired Differences
		95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
		Mean	Std. Deviation	Lower	Upper	Sig. (2-tailed)
Pair 1	post weight - pre weight	-22.375	9.953	-25.558	-19.192	.000
Pair 2	Post REE - Pre REE	-69.475	232.489	-143.829	4.879	.066
Pair 3	calorie/lb/day2 - calorie/lb/day1	.79190	1.23300	.39757	1.18623	.000

These results were achieved with test subjects who were limited to eating fewer than 500 calories/day, sustained from four to six weeks.

This evidence shows that if there was a way to safely increase a FAS inhibitor such as leptin, as well as create energy demand with food restriction, the response over time should be to acclimate with more mitochondria, resulting in a higher caloric-burning capacity. But without finite control of leptin combined with demand, one should expect with the same food restriction to see a slowed loss in fat, increased loss of lean tissue reserves, and a resulting decline in resting energy expenditure. And even with a controlled leptin stimulus, eating more would decrease the demand, which would reduce the potential mitochondrial biogenesis and improved resting energy expenditure.

By providing this data, I don’t intend to convince anybody of the efficacy of the hCG protocol, but to confirm what others have observed, and to also motivate more data collection by those who are on the front lines of observation. If we could find a point of hormonal balance and stability, the body will do what it does best: adapt. The question is: if we want to improve the overall hormonal adaptation, should the protocol be dynamic? Does increasing food intake for everyone make sense based on this adaptation? Should we take into account the emotional ramifications when more food is added, which would give more wiggle room to justify cheating?

More research is desperately needed. Especially since we have people taking advantage of the hCG protocol as a diet, marketing it with superficial value, and underestimating the protocol as a hormonal therapy. The sooner we get laboratory research the better.

OBSESSIVE WEIGHING: A SIGN YOU EAT EMOTIONALLY

2011-12-19T07:35:00.000-08:00

You should see the weird looks I get when I tell my hCG protocol patients not to weigh themselves. And the responses I get are very predictable:

· “But I read on the Internet I’m supposed to weigh every day!”

· “How am I going to know if I should do an 'apple-day' when weight-loss stalls?”

· “If I don’t weight myself how am I supposed to know if the protocol is working?”

· “The only reason I’m doing this is to lose weight, so what am I going to use as motivation?”

The amount of fear and anxiety people have after I suggest they not weigh is not surprising. In general, people only pay and enlist in diets because they hate how they look and are disgusted by their body fat. Most people have physical ailments because of their obesity, such as sleep disturbance, symptoms of adrenal fatigue (tired, lack of motivation, etc.), heart burn, hair-loss, skin problems, high blood pressure, decreased libido, hot flashes, high cholesterol, poor body-image, embarrassment in social settings, and many more issues associated with having too much fat and resulting fat hormones.

They’ll tell you these symptoms are profound reasons to lose weight, and they’ve convinced themselves these reasons are why they are enlisting in the hCG protocol. However, their main focus and source of motivation is centrally focused on watching the scale go down. After the first week, they notice significant relief from most, if not all, of the symptoms listed above. Patients profess how amazing they feel. But if the scale doesn’t budge one day−they're discouraged, and if weight on the scale stalls more than a few days− they're irritable and frantic. They quickly forget about how good they feel, and the incredible relief they get from their physical ailments. If weight doesn’t go down (no matter how physically theraputic the protocol is) they really don’t want to continue to restrict themselves from eating.

Once reward and motivation from the scale loses momentum, so does their desire to continue restraint, and in order to feel compensated for following the protocol, they rationalize a reward: cheating. What does this reaction to the scale tell you about their intentions? Do all of the hormonal ramifications that cause disease and early death, really have anything to do with why they are doing the hCG protocol? If so, why does the scale have such a large influence on motivation to continue the protocol or not?

You could notice the obvious improvements in energy, how much better you feel, how sleep has markedly improved, and how heart-burn and hot-flashes have disappeared, but if the scale doesn’t go down like you thought, the effort isn’t worth it. Worth what? If you’re not experiencing physical hunger, what are you giving up? Most likely, you are feeling emotionally deprived. This emotional deprivation is why people say it takes “self-discipline” to follow the protocol restraints, and why weight is used as bait or emotional reward.

Emotional delights, entertainment, fun, ego protection, and all reason we eat that have nothing to do with hunger, are what causes feelings of deprivation when dieting. People feel punished, even when there isn’t hunger, and there’s relief from hormonal ailments and symptoms that plagued their body. We’ve been confused to believe that weight is the problem, and not our emotional desires to eat.

Americans have been so misguided by the diet industry to believe that weight is a plague, and is the only reason you need to pay them to eat less. Yes, you pay a multi-billion dollar industry to eat less, to obsess over your weight, and to feel guilty about food. And you do this over and over again, even though this approach has never worked.

When did you start obsessing over weight? I bet it started with your first diet. They taught you weight defined success or failure and since then you’ve probably defined your value based on weight. Do you constantly feel guilty when you eat, and do you tend to binge eat whenever you don’t eat perfectly? The diet industry has caused major emotional problems by selling weight as the problem, and judging food emotionally.

Because of how judgmental and extreme the diet industry is, most people feel vulnerability and guilt when they eat. When you emotionalize what you eat, you lose your ability to make rational decisions. For example, most people have enough intelligence to understand a bite of pie is very different than a piece of pie, which is very different than eating the whole pie. However, when you’ve been taught pie is bad, one bite is just as bad as a piece, and is no different than eating the whole pie. If you’re going to have a bite you might as well eat the whole thing! Sound familiar? If this is how you think, you’ve fallen victim to the diet industry, and as a result you may have an emotional eating disorder.

I suggest you stop weighing yourself so you can actually fix the cause of the problem. Monitor the profound physical relief you get when you stop eating emotionally, and how emotionally vulnerable you feel without eating. Change the definition of diet, so that success is measured in a decline in the desire and need to eat emotionally. Think about it this way: if you didn’t like eating excessively or emotionally, would you have a weight problem? Would you have to “battle your weight”?

If you didn’t like eating for fun, for entertainment, and for emotional reasons you wouldn’t feel deprived by eating less and you wouldn’t need to weigh yourself as reward. The goal is to eat less, because you want to, and with this−you’ll never obsess over your weight again.

THE HCG PROTOCOL AS A THERAPY FOR POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME (and other leptin induced hormonal imbalances)

2011-12-15T08:37:00.000-08:00

PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) is on the rise and it affects millions of women in the United States alone. The more fat a person has the more leptin is produced when stimulated. This magnified leptin response affects the sex hormones LH (leutinizing hormone) and FSH (follicle stimulating hormone). While this over-production of leptin in adulthood affects LH and FSH resulting in reproductive and sexual problems, in adolescence this hormonal reaction can change the way the individual looks, their hair, and resulting body-image issues.

PCOS is characterized by high testosterone levels and insulin resistance. Typical symptoms are:

· infertility,

· male pattern balding,

· high blood pressure,

· pelvic pain,

· irregular menses,

· acne,

· and the development of Type 2 diabetes at a very young age,

Excessive consumption of sugar combined with obesity is probably the driving force behind PCOS. To explain, the over production of leptin (which is strongly stimulated by blood glucose) increases the levels of neuropeptide Y (NPY). NPY in the body increases in production of LH and FSH, although the effect on LH is significantly more pronounced.

As leptin levels increase in the hypothalamus there is a stimulus of the hormone galanin like peptide (GLP). GLP acts to increase the production of LH releasing hormone (LHRH) which further increases LH production from the ovaries. The combination of high LH and high blood glucose levels (insulin resistance) increases the production of a hormone called Inhibin B. Inhibin B in the brain further decrease FSH, creating a polarization between LH and FSH levels. The more LH levels rise and FSH levels decrease, the more testosterone increases over estrogen.

Having excess fat that magnifies the production of leptin, combined with excessive sugar intake, is strongly correlated to the occurrence of PCOS. With the rise in childhood obesity and the incredible amount of sugar in the American diet, there is no doubt the occurrence of PCOS will exponentially increase. The solution? Reducing body fat and decreasing sugar intake. This is where the hCG protocol could be used as a hormonal therapy.

Because low dose hCG strongly stimulates leptin, if administered properly the patients hormonal need for food dramatically reduces. You could say because PCOS is linked to high levels of leptin that with hCG their chances of exacerbating the issue could increase, which is true. However, if the very low calorie protocol is strictly followed these risks go away. Especially if the participant only eats when there is hunger.

Hunger is the conscious signal from the brain indicating that leptin levels are decreased, which is a sign there is a need for an external stimulus (such as food) to improve leptin levels. Eating would then stimulate the production of leptin which would ultimately cause a problem if too much food is eaten. This is why pre-calculated portions of food would be contraindicative during this type of therapy. When hunger goes away, the patient needs to stop eating, and at the end of the day it may have only taken 350 calories in food to keep their leptin levels optimal. If they continue to eat even though hunger is removed, the participant would be causing a hormonal imbalance that may aggravate their hormonal symptoms.

We must keep in mind that humans eat without hunger all the time because we have the ability to ignore physical mechanisms for emotional desire. This is what makes the application of feeding behavior of mice very inappropriate for the feeding behavior of humans. Mice do not eat when their hypothalamic leptin levels are elevated and hunger is removed. Humans eat all the time with high leptin levels and without hunger. We are an emotional species that validates and justifies eating at any time and for whatever reason, even though it conflicts with the feedback from the body. For the hCG protocol to work as a hormonal therapy, the hormone leptin must be controlled. To do this the patient must fully understand hunger and use it as there only guide for when and how much to eat (similar to how a mice would eat).

This concept requires that we stop using the outdated science of calories. That we stop using nutritional guidelines to dictate how much a person should eat. Obviously by limiting food intake to what the body needs hormonally, there is a risk of malnourishment. This is why vitamin and mineral, and electrolyte supplementation is so important during the process, and why protein is the most important food choice when hunger manifests. As fat is markedly reduced and food is only eating with hunger, the hormonal imbalances that cause symptoms such as PCOS, will go away. However, to prevent the reoccurrence of these symptoms the patient must learn from their past behavior and continue to only eat when hunger manifests and to stop eating as soon as hunger goes away.

This is a change in behavior that must be done without using the superficiality of weight as motivation. The diet industry has taken advantage of the most obvious result of the very low calorie protocol, which is weight-loss, and used it to make a quick buck as the superficial diet. It’s not longer called a protocol but a diet.

When you consider the hormonal cause of diseases in America, most of which are linked to too much leptin, using the protocol as a diet and with the same diet mentality is selling it very short. Weight is a shallow measure in comparison to the incredible hormonal therapy the protocol could provide− only if it was approached with intelligence. The weight-driven and money hungry diet industry has made the hCG protocol another fad diet, which is sad because weight is just the beginning and only a superficial indication of how incredible the hCG protocol is.

Any self-proclaimed “expert” who continues to market and value the protocol based on weight-loss is part of the diet industry. You will never get respect from the medical community until you understand the depth of knowledge it takes to fully comprehend how the hCG protocol influences the endcrine system. There must be a standard of intelligence that applies the protocol from a hormonal point of view and this is where the medical hCG protocol industry needs to regain control. I suggest you as "experts" understand the protocol from a hormonal perspective, and no longer tout this protocol as a diet.

HCG PROTOCOL MEDICAL EXPERT REVIEWS WEIGHT-LOSS APOCALYPSE

2011-12-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

I’d like to start by letting you know I did not write the book I am about to suggest, I have no financial investment in this book, and if you choose to use this book in your clinic, I do not profit from its sales. However, because I own an hCG protocol clinic, I believe the more people who read this book, the more credible the hCG protocol will be, which would benefit all medical hCG clinics. With that said, I would strongly encourage every medical professional and hCG protocol patient to read Weight-Loss Apocalypse.

I was first introduced to the hCG protocol at a medical symposium 5 years ago. After listening to a short seminar about the protocol (which didn’t provide any information that I couldn’t find myself in Dr. Simeons’ manuscript), I decided to do the hCG protocol myself. After having an incredible experience, I’ve been prescribing for others, ever since.

I’ve read just about every hCG protocol book available. All of them explain the hCG protocol in the same manner: repeating Dr. Simeons’ theories of three types of fat, “unlocking” the hypothalamus, etc. As a doctor, I’ve always known this explanation was insufficient, but no other explanation exists. Because of my own success and the success of my patients, I continued to prescribe− convinced Dr. Simeons’ theories must be correct. Until now.

When Robin Woodall asked me to read and review her manuscript of Weight-Loss Apocalypse, I really didn’t want to be bothered to read another hCG protocol book. I figured there couldn’t be anything in the book that I didn’t already know. But because of the sub-title (Emotional Eating Rehab Through the HCG Protocol) I was intrigued to read what Robin was presenting. The biggest difficulty with patients is emotional eating, and even though the protocol gives an undeniable weight loss opportunity, people cheat all the time. If this manuscript was giving suggestions for how to deal with this, it would be worth my time to read and review. I accepted the manuscript and committed to reading it and giving Robin my honest review.

I was not prepared for and could not have imagined, what I was about to read. As Robin explained the science of hunger, starvation, energy homeostasis, and the relationship between low dose hCG and leptin, my excitement grew. The manuscript not only gave a credible scientific hypothesis that explained why hCG prevents starvation, but it also provided great insight that would hold accountable the conflict patients have with emotional eating. I was floored by the intelligence, integrity, and passion Robin put into her book. I’ve read the medical references used to create the hypothesis and I’ve also read her manuscript another 5 times. My conclusion: Weight-Loss Apocalypse will revolutionize the entire weight loss industry as a whole, it legitimizes the hCG protocol as a hormonal therapy that reduces diseases associated to obesity, and presents a meaningful approach that holds accountable the cause of the problem: eating without hunger.

Now that the book is published, each patient that goes through our program gets a copy of Weight-Loss Apocalypse and we’ve added the Mind:Body Method to our program. Cheating occurs less often, patients don’t complain about weight anymore, and the new approach has been described as a “life-altering” experience. We continue to receive emails and messages from patients, thanking us for giving them Robin’s book, expressing how much it has helped them and has permanently changed the way they eat. Needless to say, reading Robin’s manuscript was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Here is my review:

“I've been prescribing hCG for weight loss for over four years, and nothing I've read comes close to having this level of expertise. Without questions, this is the most informative and enlightening book about Dr. Simeons' hCG protocol available."

−Dr. Ed Hagen, OBGyn and HCG Protocol Medical Expert

BREAKFAST ISN'T AS IMPORTANT AS WE THOUGHT

2011-12-10T06:27:00.001-08:00

The diet industry has continued to neglect the value of hunger. Unfortunately, this has continued dysfunctional eating by focusing on rules and boundaries that have very little to do with feedback from the body. A perfect example is using caloric expenditure to determine how much a person should eat.

Science describes that our body is fueled by stored substrates (fat, muscle, glycogen, blood/cellular glucose), which is regulated hormonally. Using calories to quantify daily food intake, assumes the food you eat is immediately digested into these molecular forms, which are converted into human fuel and used the same day you eat it. If you eat strait sugar, this is accurate. But if you eat anything complex, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Using calories to determine how much you should eat also neglects to include that your body already has stored fuel that has completed the digestive process and is ready to be used. Food is complex and must be digested and distributed among the four fueling substrates before it can be used. So there are hormones that eating stimulates that regulate the release of fuel from already stored substrates, while food is digesting. This is a cycle that ensures the body is fueled adequately, even though the food you are eating is no where close to being in a molecular substrate.

What regulates the hormones that control this fuel release? The answer is complex and requires a finite balance between other hormones, expenditure rate, oxygen, and hormonal stimulants, such as food. All food stimulates your fat to release hormones and how much hormones you get is relative to how many fat cells you have, the size of your fat cells, and the potency of the food you ate. An easy way for you to understand if you have enough of these hormones is through hunger.

If you’re not hungry, you don’t need to stimulate more of these hormones. Leptin is the hormone your fat creates that also removes the physical irritation and urgency to eat. So if you’re not hungry, your blood leptin levels are elevated, and you do not need to eat, otherwise you’ll release more leptin, which not only has over-fueling ramifications, but can cause a host of hormonal imbalances elsewhere in the endocrine system.

When made aware of the hormonal regulation of hunger and the link to fueling mechanisms, it makes sense why people who have more fat experience less hunger. They have more fat cells that create more leptin, which releases more fuel from fat, so they need weaker stimulus− less often, and they also have less need to “restock” fuel from food. The more fat you have, the less food you need! (Refer to why skinny b*tches eat more and don’t get fat.)

Here is a prime example of how messed up the diet industry is. When you wake up in the morning, are you legitimately hungry for breakfast? Probably not. The more fat you have, the less likely you are to experience hunger after you wake in the morning.

How many of you have been demanded to eat breakfast, even though you have very little hunger? I was taught at the university level that breakfast starts your metabolism. It was described by the “thermic effect of food” which would start the calorie-burning process. That was in the year 2000.

At that point science wasn’t readily available to explain that by eating breakfast all of your fat cells would be stimulated to create the hormone leptin, which would as a reaction, release fuel into your body. If you’re not hungry and your leptin levels are already elevated (which indicates that your body is already adequately fueled by your fat) do you need to stimulate more? No! Chances are those calories you burned through the thermic effect of food didn't come close to the over fueling from fat that causes a host of problems.

If you’re not hungry you already have enough leptin, you’re already receiving fuel from your fat and by eating anyways, you’ll be causing an over production of leptin and an over-fueling situation. In short, wait until you are hungry to eat breakfast.

BUY THE BOOK: www.weightlossapocalypse.com

NEW HYPOTHESIS FOR WHY HCG PREVENTS STARVATION DURING THE HCG PROTOCOL

2011-12-09T20:10:00.001-08:00

"I have never had an opportunity of conducting the laboratory investigations which are so necessary for a theoretical understanding of clinical observations, and I can only hope that those more fortunately placed will in time be able to fill this gap.”

Dr. ATW Simeons, Pounds & Inches -privately published in 1967

Laboratory investigation requires first, that there be a hypothesis that is testable in a scientific laboratory to observe the finite mechanisms that explain molecular physiology. In the recently published book, Weight-Loss Apocalypse, Robin Woodall has composed a new hypothesis that describes why Dr. Simeons observed his clinical observations. This hypothesis will open the doors immediately for laboratory investigation.

If you, in any way, would like the hCG protocol to have credibility as a hormonal therapy, I suggest you read the book, understand the new hypothesis, and change the way you market your hCG business as well as how you explain why the hCG protocol works. Using measurements of weight to prove (or disprove) the protocol is not only naïve, but is insufficient data that directs the public towards old and outdated research that discredited Simeons' observations, with and without hCG.

The FDA continues to devalue the protocol based on this outdated research which compared double-blind studies based on weight lost, perceived hunger, and circumference measurements− all of which didn't show a statistical significance. However, to disprove or prove that hCG prevents starvation there must be laboratory investigation studying the hormone hCG and how it may influence the hormonal regulation of starvation when administered in low doses (125 iu) daily, when food is significantly reduced for weeks at a time. This laboratory research is what Dr. Simeons did not do, thus he wrote the quote at the top of this post.

Recently (2009), there has been a defined negative feedback loop between hCG and the hormone that controls energy homeostasis; leptin. Leptin is a fat derived hormone that was discovered in 1994. This very recent discovery between hCG and leptin could very well explain why Dr. Simeons observed the miracles he couldn't fully explain (nor prove) during his very low calorie protocol.

Today, we are the "more fortunately placed" and it's time to fill the scientific gap. We need to put the new hypothesis to the test and hope laboratory evidence proves we’re not all crazy and the hCG protocol isn’t too good to be true.

BUY THE BOOK www.mindbodyhcg.com

BULLSH*T THE DIET INDUSTRY TELLS YOU AND WHY YOU’RE STILL FAT

2011-12-08T10:17:00.001-08:00

Look at all the gadgets, products, and weird diets we’ve wasted our money on because their advertisements said we’d lose weight. So far, how successful has the diet industry been at doing what they say? Has the hundreds of billions of dollars Americans spend every year made us the leanest, slimmest country in the word? Not yet. No matter how gimmicky the diet seems, if the website says it works, we’ll buy it. Proclaiming “weight-loss” is a cash cow! Why do we continue to believe their billshi*t?

It’s amazing how Americans spend the most money on food and have the most gluttonous culture, but yet we spend the most money trying not to eat any of it, and we’re still the fattest society on the planet.

We’re so side-tracked by the diet industry telling us we need to lose weight, that we skip the part where we are individually accountable: excessive eating as the norm. We pay them, temporarily submit to eating less, but only because we want to lose weight. When the weight isn’t lost fast enough, restricting food isn’t worth it any more. Sound familiar?

READ THE "WHY WEIGHTING SUCKS" BLOG NEXT

Let’s get real. The problem is that our culture loves to eat emotionally and excessively as the norm and until we changes this, we will continue to have growth in the obesity epidemic (no matter how much money we continue to waste on diets). The diet industry makes billions duping you into believing the only reason to eat less is to lose weight. That’s why weight is the foundation of how they measure success. They give you a temporary system that controls how you eat less and you pay them for it. YOU PAY TO EAT LESS.

This ploy keeps you from changing your personal desires to eat that have nothing to do with body fat and everything to do with emotions and cultural behavior. This keeps your focus on their diet plan, gives them credit if you do lose weight, and makes you believe your body must have some sort of flaw when you go back to eating with our gluttonous culture and gain back the fat. Thus, you pay more and more and more until you realize their plan sucks.

The diet industry is an enabler, and you are now co-dependent. Why would they want you to eat less without them? If that was the case you wouldn’t have a weight problem and you wouldn’t want to pay or think you needed help. Instead they teach you there are secrets to losing weight. Secrets you need to pay for in order to lose fat, because fat is a mysterious growth. Fat is a plague and you need their secret remedy in order to remove it. BULLSH*T!!!

Here is an easy way to see how messed up this dysfunctional co-dependency with the diet industry is. Let’s say there was something cataclysmic that happens that completely obliterates our access to food. How would you eat?

In this situation you’d have to ration the food you have for as long as possible. Would you eat when you were bored? Would you eat without hunger? Would you eat until you were full? Would you refuse certain food because it’s “bad” for you? No, no, no and no. Eating without hunger doesn’t make instinctual survival sense. If you were to limit eating to only when you experience true hunger, and only ate when hunger is tolerably removed, wouldn’t you lose weight easily (eating whatever you want)? Why wait for cataclysm? If our entire culture did this as the norm, obesity would be something we rarely see, the diet industry that has failed us so miserable would go away, the pharmaceutical industry would reduce to less than 90%, etc., etc., etc. You get the gist.

Eating emotionally and excessively is a cultural norm and is somehow excusable and accepted. Haven’t you excused yourself from a diet because of some form of stress or social engagement, believing emotional eating is justified and “normal”? Diets will never market solutions for emotional eating because if you stop, you’d never have a fat problem. Also, they wouldn’t make any money because you’d never pay for something you don’t want. Our culture loves eating to gratify emotions, but we detest the physical outcome. Therefore, you temporarily submit to the diet and obsessively monitor fat loss.

Why do diets suck and why are you fat? Because you have never been held accountable to change your desires to eat that have nothing to do with physical hunger. Either you’ve never recognized that as the problem, or you don’t want to. No matter how much fat you lose with any short-lived diet, until you create a desire to eat less, you might as well accept obesity as the outcome.

In short, the focus on weight by the diet industry is the foundation for why they never work. Until we stop believing that eating is emotionally rewarding, you’ll always feel deprived by diets and you’ll always believe that weight-loss is the only reason to eat less. In other words, you should want to eat less whether you lose weight or not.

http://www.mindbodyhcg.com/

HCG BUSINESS'S LOOP HOLE AROUND THE FDA AND FTC

2011-12-07T07:57:00.001-08:00

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just announced there will be penalty for selling “homeopathic” HCG products online and in retail outlets, as oral drops pellets, and sprays. Why? Because of unsupported claims made and marketed by hCG diet businesses. Their biggest problem isn’t the hCG but rather the claims that hCG induces weight loss.

They believe weight lost is not due to the hCG but because of the very low calorie diet the protocol suggests. In the press release David Vladick, the director of the FTC’s Beureau of Consumer Protection, says, “Deceptive advertising about weight loss products is one of the most prevalent types of fraud.” It is the scam-like advertising they disapprove of.

Click here to read their news release: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/BuyingUsingMedicineSafely/MedicationHealthFraud/ucm282465.htm

Can any of you argue the diet industry has been the biggest fraud? How many of you have spent thousands and thousands of your hard earned money on products that claim you will lose weight, have leaner bodies, and will look like the model selling it, without results? The hCG protocol has become huge business and I can see why there are red flags, especially when hCG businesses are claiming weight loss in excess of 30 pounds in less than 40 days. Seriously, didn’t you think the hCG protocol sounded like a scam when you first heard these types of claims? They sound ridiculous especially when the business implies there is no personal responsibly or need for change to the way you eat regularly. But, once you’ve done the protocol, skepticism turns into converted believer.

What weight-loss business (that has integrity and has your long term health in their best interest) would advertise this way? None. So I don’t blame the FDA and FTC for being so harsh and skeptical. However, the only way to get their attention and to let them know this is a consumer driven product is to switch things up. The hCG protocol industry needs to completely change the way they are selling the product s. We need to change our claims to something the FDA would have to do further research to disprove. And better, let’s claim something that has integrity so they look bad by disproving it.

Here’s the loop-hole: HCG protocol businesses need to abruptly change the way they advertise. Remove all ads that claim weight-loss and instead, claim the hCG protocol will help you learn to eat less. How could anyone argue with this statement? The obvious long term result of weight-loss doesn’t need to be the center of attention. As the consumer, you can blog, discuss, post, and say anything you want about how much weight you’ve lost. Weight-loss as a result of eating less is something the FDA cannot stop the consumer from claiming.

In short: Businesses advertise eating less. Consumers post their incredible results.

The diet industry is ruthless and there are thousands of books, products, and services that have been making the same superficial claims for decades. In order for the hCG protocol to stand out we need to take a very different approach. Let’s market it in a way that the FDA will have difficulty proving us wrong.

Yes, the hCG protocol helps you eat less. It will change the way you eat so that you never go back to the dysfunctional eating that caused your fat gain in the first place. Let’s make the protocol a way to change our gluttonous culture. The hCG protocol is an emotional eating rehab. This is a cause and a claim the FDA will want us to continue.

If you want to take control back, we need to act fast. Post this to every hCG site you can and hope things change quickly. Find out more about the author at http://www.mindbodyhcg.com/

DOES YOUR HCG BUSINESS LOOK LIKE A SCAM?

2011-12-02T09:04:00.001-08:00

If you sell or prescribe hCG you might want to rethink how you advertise it. The reason the hCG diet will eventually disappear like other "fad" diets is because there is very little emphasis placed on the behavioral change required to maintain weight that was lost. Without this fundamental lesson learned, participants will gain the weight back, just as all ignorant skeptics have predicted.

It's as simple as making sure all participants know that no amount of weight lost will change emotional desires to eat. So until they change their desires to eat emotionally, they might as well accept the fact that their bodies will always have extra fat, no matter how much weight they temporarily lose.

The entire diet industry needs a revolution. This revolution will only happen if we, the hCG protocol industry, make the protocol very different than any other diet. The difference: holding accountable the emotional changes that the participant must make to perminently end the mistreatment of their body with food. Fat is not a cancer, it is a force of creation cause by hormonal imbalance. For the majority, this imbalance is caused and self-inflicted by eating behavior. Until we hold our cultural emotional eating disorder accountable and stop blaming fat as the problem, no diet ever created will work perminently and nothing will heal the diseases caused by over-eating.

If you sell or prescribe hCG, I highly suggest you stand out from the crowd and start advertising something other than 30 pounds lost in 40 days. Now when you look at that advirtiesment, you are no different than the rest of the short-term, quick-fix scams that have come and gone. Don't taint the most incredible hormonal therapy with your lack of integrity. Sell vaccuums instead.

DO HCG DIET EXPERTS REALLY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT?

2011-11-30T11:51:00.001-08:00

There are many "experts", practitioners and businesses prescribing hCG for Dr. Simeons' protocol. But how many of them actually understand why it works and how hCG could prevent starvation? Most have no clue. They know it works, but they don't understand why, so they repeat what they read in Simeons' manuscript, Pounds & Inches.

Here are 5 questions that reveal if an hCG diet business knows why the hCG protocol works:

1) Does the hCG business discuss 3 types of fat? This is a hypothesis Simeons' created, however it has never been laboratory tested or explained. As of today, there are two different types of fat (brown or white fat). We know that larger fat cells function the same as smaller fat cells, but with a more magnified response. Meaning they do the same things small fat cells do, but in a bigger way. Larger fat cells produce more hormones, and provide more fuel than the smaller fat cells. As for three types of fat: science hasen't discovered a third type.

2) Does the hCG diet business profess that hCG burns fat. This could not be further from the truth. HCG DOES NOT BURN FAT. However, hCG does stimulate the hormone that regulates fat metabolism; Leptin. If you are not up to date with the new science of energy homeostasis you need to start studying recent research that has summarized what we know about the hormone leptin and its regulation of the thyroid, adrenals, testicles, ovaries, etc. Leptin is a primary regulatory hormone of the body's fueling systems. It also regulates the body's hormonal response that causes symptoms of starvation. Low dose hCG stimulates leptin, which would reduce one's hunger but also increases the fueling response from fat cells. This is the same thing food does hormonally, but with hCG- you don’t need as much food! This is described thoroughly in the newly published book, Weight-Loss Apocalypse. (www.weightlossapocalypse.com)

3) Does the hCG diet business monitor success, only by weight? Weight is a superficial and insufficient measure of success, and by obsessing over weight for motivation you are creating a short term diet out of an incredible hormonal therapy. For example, is the hCG diet business telling customers/patients to weigh every day and to do an “apple-day” if they plateau? Are they suggesting that you can flush out fat with apples??? Obsessive weighing creates adverse emotional consequences that could encourage emotional eating disorders. Weight is too superficial when compared to the profound hormonal healing that the hCG protocol provides when its followed.

Weight cannot compare to the rewards of better sleep, improved adrenal function, diminished heart burn, improved breathing, reduced inflammation, improved sex drive, etc. Measures that include body fat composition and an assessment of hormonal symptoms are much more telling and more valuable than a number on a scale. Weight should be the least of your concerns when considering the long term change of lifestyle it will take for you to maintain whatever weight you lose. And weight should not be responsible for the motivation it takes to eat less among gluttons.

4) Does the hCG diet business monitor calories? The measure of calories in food is old and outdated information. In fact, how the protocol works completely conflicts with the idea that we are fueled from the food we eat that day. The caloric value in food is irrelevant as it concerns the body’s hormonal response to food. For example, we now know that artificial sweetener (zero calories) stimulates leptin and this response stimulates fat's fueling mechanism. The reason the hCG works to prevent starvation is because it stimulates the same hormone that food stimulates (leptin). For this reason, your body doesn't respond to starvation like it would without the hCG. Calories have nothing to do with starvation because starvation is defined scientifically by a measure of hormones. Look it up: leptin and its relationship to starvation.

5) Does the hCG diet business profess you’ll lose a pound a day or 30 pounds in 40 days? This is a sign the business is run by people who have no clue how metabolism works, they have no interest in long term results, and they are more interested in one thing: money. This same business probably sells appetite suppressants (another sign they have no idea how the protocol works and that they want more money), fat dissolving injections, meal replacements, and other means to make money. Most of these are sold to take advantage of and to prostitute the desperation of people who need to lose fat and are willing to pay anyone who promises quick results.

Unfortunately most of the hCG diet industry is run by businesses that have no clue what they are doing. These businesses know the hCG protocol works and with that, they know they can make money. But where’s the integrity? Where’s the responsibility? Without understanding how the protocol works, it has been marketed as another quick fix diet. Without giving the patient personal responsibility – it’s a scam!

But if you’ve done the protocol properly, you know− IT’S NOT A SCAM. Then why market it in a way that has very little integrity? Why portray it in a way that looks just as fake as the rest? The only way the hCG protocol will make a significant impact on America’s overwhelming obesity epidemic, is if the hCG diet industry rethinks how the hCG protocol is portrayed, taught, presented, and advertised.

· If you own an hCG diet business, do you want to look credible? Then know how it works hormonally.

· Do you want to stand apart from the hCG diet businesses that market it like another fad diet? Than market it as a hormonal therapy.

· Do you want your patients to have long lasting results that heal both the body and the mind? Than hold your patients accountable to change the way they eat emotionally.

I believe the hCG protocol has the potential to change our culture both physically and emotionally. If we as “experts” continue to mirror the same approach as the diet industry, we will fail. It will be another diet, another fad, and another attempt at losing weight, just to gain it all back.

For more information...BUY THE BOOK TODAY: Weight-Loss Apocalypse: Emotional Eating Rehab Through the HCG Protocol.

Available at www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com

THE QUESTION: HOW DOES HCG PREVENT STARVATION?

2011-11-28T08:49:00.001-08:00

Today most of the information people get about the hCG protocol is from the Internet. Because no other explanation exists other than what Dr. Simeons wrote in Pounds & Inches, a large amount of speculation, skepticism, and inaccurate assumptions (based on Simeons’ theories and observations) have developed for why and how it works—or doesn’t work.

But because Pounds & Inches was written in 1967, Dr. Simeons could NOT have formulated a theory to explain his observations in a way that makes sense, based on today’s level of scientific understanding. In other words, Pounds & Inches is outdated.

Dr. Simeons himself wrote: To argue for or against Simeons’ theories is a waste of time. We need to skip over how he thought it worked, and start anew. We need a new explanation for why such a small amount of hCG could prevent starvation—not applied to the invalid assumption based on calories, but applied to the modern and proven science that describes starvation as a consequence regulated by hormones.

Dr. Simeons Said, “I have never had an opportunity of conducting the laboratory investigations which are so necessary for a theoretical understanding of clinical observations, and I can only hope that those more fortunately placed will in time be able to fill this gap.”

The modern hypothesis discussed in Weight-Loss Apocalypse will force the entire weight-loss and diet industry to change. Not only because the more people who do the protocol correctly will significantly reduce the occurrence of obesity, but because new science destroys the outdated idea of “calories in, calories out.” No more counting, no more measuring.

WHY WEIGHING YOURSELF SUCKS (and results in fat gain)

2011-11-14T09:16:00.001-08:00

If you think that by losing weight, your self-esteem will improve so much that your motivation to eat less will have everlasting motivation−you’re fooling yourself.

Monitoring weight is the biggest flaw in the foundation of a diet. Why: because desires to eat food have nothing to do with body fat. For example, how many of us sabotage our temporary diet in order to eat for emotional celebration?

How often have you eaten food at a party, then felt guilty about breaking your diet’s rules, as a result decided your desire to eat was bigger than your desire to lose weight at that moment, and instead of feeling guilty, you’d rather let go of that desire to lose weight, so that you could eat all that you’d like− without guilt. And because you can just “start over” the next day, you end up eating more than you actually want, which compensates for the impending diet restrictions that you don’t want in the first place. Sound familiar?

This is typical of most when attempting a weight-motivated diet. Consider the failure of the entire diet industry. Consider how much fat our country gains each year compared to how much fat we lose. How’s weight as motivation working? Not well. With all of the differences between one diet to the next, the one consistency between them all is their hyper-focus on weight. The long term result: more fat gain.

If you observe the obsession over weight-loss during the protocol (or any other diet) you’ll find that as soon as weight-loss stops, or slows down, complaints go up. Why? Because there’s emotional hardship when choosing to eat less−which is why there’s a desperate need for weight-loss as reward. We falsely believe weight is the problem and temporarily submit to a reduction in food intake−but only if weight is lost. Without holding accountable our desires to eat excessively and emotionally, fat is falsely accused as the problem.

Have you ever considered that the normal way you eat is the real challenge? Without weight loss, would you voluntarily eat less? If you continue to have desires to eat at every party, every social event, every moment you feel bored, and whenever you feel emotionally tested − your body will always be forced to accumulate fat.

Go ahead −obsess over your weight while dieting. Find out if your weight will motivate you to eat less the rest of your life. Or, decide you’re disgusted by our cultural gluttony. Recognize that you’ve stopped using your creativity, which is why you’re bored and use food for entertainment. Acknowledge that eating has become your best friend, your hobby, your crutch, and without eating at all social functions, you feel punished. You might hate the amount of money you’ve spent to lose and gain weight over and over again−but eventually, you’ll recognize that weight isn’t the problem and that using it as motivation, will always fall short.

Without changing your desires to eat, anything less will feel punishing, and each time you restrict, that desire to eat will magnify even more. Stop kidding yourself. If you have emotional desires to eat and want to continue this dysfunctional relationship with food, you might as well accept the outcome.

If you want permanent change, consider transforming the normal way you eat

to a realistic “new normal”, that doesn’t require you eating emotionally

−whether you lose weight or not.

Motivation to eat less is profound, especially when you live in a culture that eats excessively as the norm. Especially, when the diet industry has plagued us with constant guilt about what we eat, and the food industry is continuously shoving food down our throats.

You have to understand that obesity isn’t the problem−it’s the inevitable outcome of gluttony. So if you continue to assume that losing weight will change your desires to eat, you’re fooling yourself−again.

THE HCG PROTOCOL IS NOT FOR SISSIES

2011-11-08T07:12:00.000-08:00

Have you ever considered what it would emotionally feel like to be limited to less than 500 calories of food, while living amongst gluttons? For most, when considering the benefits versus the risks of the hCG protocol, emotional hardship isn’t well thought-out. Instead, the biggest influence when deciding to do the protocol, is potential weight-loss.

They’re tired of battling with weight, and frustrated with the diet industry’s failure to make a difference. They think, “If what thousands of people proclaim on the Internet is true-- eating such a small amount of food must be worth it.” There’s no hunger, the food is simple, and if the weight is lost as fast as everyone says, how could the protocol be difficult?

This mentality is naive. The hCG protocol requires the participant eat 500 calories in food for about a month, and when done correctly, hunger may limit eating to even less. Take a step back and observe this amount of food. Compare it against the backdrop of our normal cultural eating behavior. Notice the difference? Our culture is the most gluttonous and dysfunctional culture with food --in the Universe.

We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on food,

and what’s ironic is that we spend billions, trying not to eat it.

The hCG protocol is the extreme opposite.The naivety is in thinking that weight-loss will perpetually motivate us to eat less, even amongst friends, family, and coworkers who eat significantly more. And to believe that without hunger you’ll be emotionally resilient-- is crazy!

How many of you eat without hunger? When you’re bored, when you’re celebrating, when you’re drunk, have the munchies, when you’ve had a difficult day at work, to suppress negative feelings about someone, or to avoid having to talk to strangers in social settings? Anybody who thinks that hunger is why American’s eat too much, needs a reality check.

If you ask anybody who is obese how often they’re hungry (I’m talking true physical hunger), they will tell you they’re not hungry that often. However, for reasons I’m not going to explain in this blog, their hunger occurs more rapidly than others who have less fat. In general, they’re not hungry for breakfast; they could wait hours and hours before feeling that physical irritation and urgency to eat, and they don’t need as much food to reduce hunger.

This makes sense, considering the science that has proven the more fat a person has, the higher (exponentially) their blood leptin levels are. Leptin, in the brain, reduces hunger. So it makes sense that if you have more leptin, you’re going to experience hunger less often. But does lack of hunger and weight loss keep you from continually eating with the rest of our gluttonous culture? Probably not. Otherwise the first diet you ever attempted would have worked long term.

The hCG protocol is not as easy as you think. It requires you eat less than what small children eat, and for over a month. If you live in America, that means you’re going to be constantly surrounded by food commercials, surrounded by restaurants and fast food joints on every corner, and will have invitations to eat all the time-- for any reason. Our culture is defined by eating and food, so to think any amount of fat loss would completely overhaul your desires to eat is naïve.

Before considering the hCG protocol, take into account the desire and emotional strength you’re going to have to develop to let go of excessive emotional eating. And to keep from gaining fat back, you'll have to let go of emotional eating forever. Are you ready to divorce this gluttonous way of life? Do you really want to let go of food emotionally? Are you seeking an intrinsic desire to eat less, whether you lose weight or not? If so, the hCG protocol will change your life. Your body will heal and your relationship with food will too. With freedom from emotional eating as your goal, consider yourself anything but a sissy, and ready to take on the hCG protocol challenge.

WHY SKINNY B*TCHES EAT MORE(and don't get fat)

2011-11-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

By the time I first meet with a client, they’ve already decided they want to do the hCG protocol. Not because they want to completely overhaul the way they eat, but because they’ve convinced themselves losing weight will improve their life.

On some level, they are absolutely correct. Fat cells are organ cells that create and stimulate all sorts of hormones, and because these clients have too many fat cells, weak stimulus results in a strong hormonal response.

Do you understand the hormonal difference between a leaner body compared to a more obese body? The more fat you have the weaker hormonal stimulus you need. On the other hand, the less fat you have the stronger hormonal stimulus you need.

Similar to hormones, food (all food) stimulates your fat cells to release hormones. As a result, in order to maintain hormonal balance, those who have more fat need significantly less food. If you continue to eat similar to others who have less fat, you’ll inevitably have hormonal problems. This is why those who are leaner (skinny b*tches) can eat more without gaining fat or having hormonal problems. And a person who has more fat, eats less, gains fat, and has hormonal problems. (This is thoroughly explained in Weight-Loss Apocalypse)

Because of this magnified hormonal response after eating, the larger you are, the more you end up feeling like crap if you eat “normal” amounts of food. You're tired, fatigued, have suppressed adrenal function which makes you less motivated to do anything, have hot flashes, daily symptoms of heart burn, erratic sex drive, inflamed joints, breathing issues, night sweats, sleep disruptions, etc. These symptoms don’t occur with people who have less fat-- unless they binge eat or have a hormonal cause, such as thyroid, ovary, or other organ problem.

As soon as clients begin the very low calorie protocol and their food intake is regimented and minimal, they notice how much better they feel. Energy for most improves. Hot flashes and heart burn disappear. The more fat they lose, the more their sleep improves, etc. However, many people look past how incredibly better they feel to instead, base all of their motivation on their weight. If they lose more weight, they want to continue. If they don’t lose enough weight, they feel burdened by the reduced food intake.

Weight on the scale is a very superficial reason to eat less. When you consider the disease and hormonal problems associated to obesity and eating’s hormonal magnification, don’t you think there are more profound motivations to eat functionally?

Unfortunately, the diet industry has plagued us with the idea that weight is the only measure of success. Why? Because you pay for it. The more you obsess over your weight, the less focus you put towards ending the reasons you eat that have nothing to do with true physical hunger, and have everything to do with why you have excess fat. Weight motivated diets don’t realistically prepare you to live in our culture of normalized gluttony.

This time, instead of enlisting for another shallow diet that judges food, causes guilt every time you eat, and encourages you to weigh obsessively-- do something very different. Choose to eat less to feel better, and to reduce your hormonal problems. If you’re never going to lose the damn weight anyways, wouldn’t you at least want to lose all the sh*tty hormonal symptoms?

For the next couple of months try this: stop judging food. Eat anything you want. HOWEVER, the boundary is that you must have true physical hunger to eat, and you must avoid fullness at all cost. Throw away your scale, and choose to eat functionally no matter what the result. You’ll notice you physically feel much better. Binging because of diet guilt will immediately stop, food isn’t such a big deal anymore, and neither is your weight.

Because you aren’t allowed to eat without hunger, you’ll have to find other things to do with your spare time. Projects you’ve started will finally get finished; you’ll try new hobbies, and have more creative drive. Emotionally, you’ll be held accountable. This is similar to a baby and a pacifier. If food is your pacifier, you’re going to have to learn to handle change and life without superstitiously thinking food will make things better. Truthfully, letting go of food emotionally will get you back to the way you used to eat as a child.

Children spend their time playing, thinking, and creating. Eating is only necessary when they get the physical irritation of hunger, which eventually can’t be ignored. They eat, but only enough for the pang to go away. Then they bolt out the door, back to the fun and creativity they only left, because of hunger. No fullness, no emotional high, no emotional guilt, no fear of gaining fat, and no caring about weight.

This is a challenge of your ability to understand what physical hunger feels like, and to understand the difference between true physical need to eat, from emotional desire. Ultimately, as you no longer need food as a pacifier, your emotional confidence will grow. Eating less won’t need motivation or feel like punishment. With hormonal balance, you’ll immediately feel better, and the obvious result will be fat loss. This immediately solves hormonal problems that created fat gain, and were caused by eating without hunger in the first place.

This is one of those win/win situations: Eat what you want, but only when there’s true physical hunger, and avoid fullness at all cost. I challenge you to try this, and let me know how it goes!

INTRODUCTION TO WEIGHT-LOSS APOCALYPSE

2011-10-27T06:09:00.000-07:00

I first heard about the hCG protocol from my sister, a registered dietitian. She’d already finished her first week on it before she called to tell me about her experience. I’m sure she waited because she expected me to criticize what she was doing.

You could say I was skeptical, considering I’m a personal trainer, and my college degree is in exercise physiology. Obviously eating less than 500 calories in food causes weight loss, but what about muscle loss, too? Destroying your metabolism? And preparing you for what? You can’t eat 500 calories the rest of your life! Yes, I was critical.

At the time, I thought I was thoroughly informed as to how the body uses fuel, and how the body responds to starvation. Before I read Dr. Simeons’ 1967 manuscript, Pounds & Inches, I assumed it was written by a con man taking advantage of our desperation due to the obesity crises. But to my surprise, the manuscript made some sense. I could relate to his theories because his observations of fat gain and loss paralleled my own during three pregnancies, and what I’d witnessed with many clients over my ten-year career.

I’d observed, measured, and assessed body fat compositions for thousands of people. Some of those clients meticulously exercised and reduced their food intake—without results. I watched as female clients gained abdominal fat during menopause, even though they were eating less and exercising more. I observed clients before, during, and after pregnancy, and witnessed the shape of their bodies change, adding fat in some areas, and losing it in others. I knew through experience that fat gain and loss were linked to hormones.

I was excited when Simeons’ observations validated mine.

Dr. Simeons assessed scale weight for decades to deduce the strict guidelines of his protocol. He had theorized, based on his observations, that the pregnancy hormone, human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG), somehow prevented symptoms of starvation during a 500-calorie protocol. In 1967, he privately published his findings and hypothesis in a manuscript called Pounds & Inches: A New Approach to Obesity. Dr. Simeons’ believed the brain determines where and when fat is used for fuel. He observed that hCG redirected the brain to use abnormal fat (fat that’s difficult to lose) for energy. He observed that 1) participants felt minimal hunger, 2) their weight loss was rapid, and 3) their losses were specific to areas that regular diet and exercise didn’t influence.

Dr. Simeons was convinced that by tricking the brain with hCG, and manipulating fuel demand with the 500-calorie protocol, the brain would “re-set” its fat-burning capacity. Ultimately, this would allow the participant to eat normally without having the same susceptibility for fat gain when the protocol was over.

After understanding his protocol, and finding a doctor willing to prescribe it, I decided to present the information, as well as the opportunity to do the protocol, to appropriate clients. They had to allow me to follow, measure, and record their progress, and in particular, compare their metabolic rate before they started, and after they finished.

Six clients agreed to participate. Before starting the protocol, I did a battery of tests. These included a record of: metabolic testing to find out how many calories they burned in a day, a cardiovascular endurance test done on a treadmill, blood pressure, resting heart rate, flexibility testing, push-up and sit-up tests for muscular endurance, bench press to measure their estimated strength, two different body-fat composition assessments, as well as circumference measurements.

I continued to measure everything weekly during and after the 500-calorie protocol, except for the fitness testing and metabolic rates, which I measured again at the end. I wasn’t surprised by their significant fat and size loss but I was not prepared for the drastic amount of fat lost in the stomach area. Quickly I added three additional circumference measurements to that stomach area to ensure I was accurately assessing their size change.

All participants agreed they had minimal hunger, and most said their energy level was good. Completely shocking were the fitness and metabolic testing results after the protocol was completely over. Not only did the fitness tests improve, but the amount of calories their body burned in a day significantly increased. Considering each participant ate less than 500 calories for over a month, these results were astonishing.

I knew there had to be a logical explanation. I worked with new clients on the protocol, and continued to perform all of the tests before, during, and after the protocol. After collecting data for over 40 people, a local university statistically analyzed my metabolic testing results. When the results came back they were the same as my own observations. The metabolic rates significantly increased after the protocol. At this point, I was determined to find legitimate reasons for the increase.

After all, my findings completely conflicted with everything I was taught regarding calories, fat loss, muscles, metabolism, and what’s supposed to weaken during chronic starvation.

I compiled the data, and searched for local doctors of endocrinology that specialized in organs and hormones of the body, hoping they would be interested in my findings. I assumed they’d be able to explain how the hCG could influence the body in a way that prevented typical symptoms of starvation during such drastic caloric restrictions. I wanted to know why all my participants had overall improvements, after the fact. Only one doctor was willing to meet with me. After 45 minutes of discussing what I’d been doing, and my hope for some answers, he suggested I create a hypothesis that might make sense of what I observed. I was taken aback that he didn’t have any answers, and that I would have to do my own research to understand what I’d been witnessing.

If this endocrinologist, who had a Ph.D., and also owned his own diabetes center, couldn’t help, then I was definitely on my own. That evening I started from square one, searching for scientific explanations for the physiology of hunger, energy, fueling, and how the body regulates fat metabolism, starvation, etc. This was a huge undertaking that required the ability to read scientific journals and reports to understand the cellular physiology.

Fortunately, my degree focusing on physiology came in handy. However, I was not prepared for what I found—thousands of medical journals written since I graduated in 2000— describing new hormones, new mechanisms, and new explanations for how the body regulates metabolism, hunger, and its complex fueling systems.

For two weeks I spent 12 hours a day, cross-referencing, reading and re-reading material over and over. I created charts and my own dictionary of organs, hormones, and functions, basically teaching myself the new physiology of energy homeostasis/equilibrium. The difficulty was not in finding the answers, but in understanding the new terminology and mechanisms I was not taught in school, or with any of my certifications.

Once I understood the most influential hormones involved in hunger and metabolism during both starvation and feeding, I formed a hypothesis that made the most obvious sense to me. Based on the modern science I studied, hCG must stimulate sufficient leptin in order to prevent all symptoms of starvation.

I felt like I was about to answer a million-dollar question, because I was so confident that the link between hCG and leptin had to be the answer. Within seconds of entering those two key hormones into a search engine, all of my hard work and focus became worth the effort. Immediately I found studies that connected hCG to leptin. Some specifically indicated the most powerful relationship between the two hormones occurred at almost the exact amount Dr. Simeons prescribed for the hCG protocol. My heart was racing, and I literally jumped up and down with excitement.

Not only did scientific evidence exist that could easily explain how hCG, through the stimulus of leptin, could prevent symptoms of starvation during a very low-calorie diet, but a huge body of science also explained the reason for significant metabolic increases. Any scientist involved in the new studies of the hormone leptin, as it concerns starvation, fat gain, and fat loss, would find the answer obvious. The only reason a person would have minimal hunger, increased energy, and wouldn’t experience lean tissue loss during a 500-calorie protocol, is if hCG adequately stimulated blood leptin levels.

I wrote a hypothesis, but unfortunately the doctor who suggested I find the answers never responded. I continued to collect data and be amazed at the protocol’s physical results. Today, I’ve closely monitored over 500 people through protocols, and continue to follow Simeons’ method. However, I use only modern science to explain how it works.

I’ve met with doctor after doctor, but so far all of them have been unaware of the new science, and most haven’t a clue as to the function of leptin. The protocol “experts” on TV, or who’ve written books on “new and improved” protocols, have yet to even mention new science, and continue to reference Dr. Simeons’ outdated and insufficient theories. It’s not surprising, considering the amount of time, effort, and extensive research it took for me to educate myself to formulate an answer.

Each person I met with to discuss the protocol, continued to reference what he found on the Internet, which is based on misinformation that inaccurately explains the protocol.

But, with the lack of relevant scientific explanation, and the majority of hCG sold on the Internet by people who aren’t necessarily educated in weight loss or human physiology, it makes sense to repeat the theories found in Simeons’ manuscript. No other explanation is out there. Unfortunately, there are many people attempting the protocol don’t follow it the way Dr. Simeons intended.

Most participants are completely unaware that eating and hCG directly influence the hormonal response from all of the organs in the body, and without strict compliance to the protocol, there could be harmful consequences. It’s approached like a diet, and businesses have started to manipulate and change the protocol to increase their profits and to make it more appealing to the masses. It’s unfortunate, considering the decades of observation and work it took Dr. Simeons to deduce the specificity of protocol. But Dr. Simeons didn’t really know how the protocol worked either, and even he admitted laboratory explanation and proof was needed.

If he had known what was going to happen with our culture, as it concerns over-eating and obesity, and the lack of integrity in the hCG diet industry, he would have written and presented the protocol differently Dr. Simeons didn’t foresee his protocol would be used, prostituted, and misdirected as a short-term fix by the consumer. He had no idea we were going to have a massive, cultural, emotional eating disorder, and that we’d continue to blame the consequences of fat gain on everything but ourselves. Just because you have minimal hunger, doesn’t mean you won’t eat. Just because you have significant fat loss, doesn’t mean you will be motivated to change the way you eat forever.

My goal in writing this book is to start a new conversation about Dr. Simeons’ protocol that has relevance, not only as a hormonal therapy, but as a means to end our national eating disorder. Instead of continuing to apply the protocol as a short-term diet, I’d rather it be discussed as a real solution, a tool to end irrational eating for emotional fulfillment. We are dealing with a crisis that is an addiction to emotional eating, and the obvious result is the overwhelming increase in obesity.

Think about the number of people in our culture who eat without hunger. How many people eat to gratify emotions? How many eat because they’re bored? When you observe our nation’s behavior with food, it’s very clear that fat isn’t what we should be obsessed about, and weight shouldn’t be the target of the problem. We need a genuine desire to eat less, one that isn’t dependent on weight loss as a reward. This requires each of us to be accountable for our own emotions, and find happiness in life not centrally stimulated by food.

· Can you find a different hobby when you’re bored, instead of eating?

· Can you deal with stress without using food as a pacifier or distraction?

· Can you create happiness without having to eat?

If you can, then eating less would not be such a big deal, and you wouldn’t have to pay for a diet to help. For most people, eating is almost entirely an emotional decision and behavior. If we forced the majority of our society to eat functionally, it would be torture for them, especially if you didn’t allow them to monitor their weight.

Even if someone has little hunger, and no symptoms of starvation, his or her emotional distress is far worse than the physical when it comes to eating less on the protocol.

We’ve created a society that is so emotionally connected to eating that any form of restriction feels like punishment. Shouldn’t there be some personal accountability? Look at the overall implications that emotional eating has on medical costs, health care, and the occurrence of disease directly linked to obesity. However, the decision to find emotional strength without eating must come from an individual’s internal desire. It can’t be forced; otherwise we’ll end up with even more psychological problems.

As more and more people choose to free themselves from emotional eating, we would see a social movement with a new cultural distaste for excessive eating. Eating minimally would be sanctioned and encouraged by peer pressure, and emotional accountability and strength would be the next “big” thing.

I believe the protocol provides the ideal atmosphere for participants to rethink the role that eating and food plays in their lives, and to develop emotional strength without needing a crutch. By letting go of food, and eating a minimum amount during the protocol, your emotional strength can be tested, and you can experience a life of eating less. However, for there to be a drastic impact on a participant’s overall relationship with food, he or she has to approach the protocol with that as the ultimate goal, eliminating the need to monitor weight for motivation.

Many people falsely assume that when they lose the weight, they’ll change their relationship with food.

This makes absolutely no sense, considering the role food plays has very little to do with body fat, and everything to do with their lack of emotional security. How many people have lost a substantial amount of fat, just to gain all of the weight back when they return to their “normal” relationship with food? Most.

It’s time to set a new standard for ourselves, fulfilling ourselves emotionally without needing to eat for emotional support. We have to want to limit ourselves, eating less even though we don’t have to. Then losing weight wouldn’t matter because you’d want to continue to eat less even without a weight problem. This would require a new approach to reducing our food consumption, an intrinsic desire that no diet could enforce or create. Eating less must be a personal decision— a life-lasting change.

One of my favorite quotes is by Albert Einstein.

“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”

In the case of our culture, solving the cause of obesity would require us to allow ourselves to feel vulnerable when emotionally tested; the ultimate goal being an awakening to our own emotional strength without needing to eat. This confidence would remove the need to eat as a pacifier, and eventually the physical result would be fat loss or prevented fat gain.

The protocol provides the perfect environment to rehabilitate our emotional strength. If the hCG protocol provides a hormonal environment that indeed prevents starvation while drastically reducing the need for food, then each participant has the opportunity to re-establish his or her emotional well-being independent of food.

With the right frame of mind, participants can observe their desires to eat often have nothing to do with hunger. They can redevelop a sense of true physical hunger that would help them control their functional need for food.

The hCG protocol would revolutionize our culture. Not only because of the mass reduction in obesity, but because when people are able to develop emotional strength and well-being without needing to eat, society would be healthier, happier and more productive.

Eating less—not because we have to, but because we want to.