Urine Injections for New Weight Loss Fad?

I can't believe there are people going into these extremes in losing diet. Can't people just take it simple these days? Just the other day, I was watching a TV program on swallowing tapeworms to help lose weight. While it is going to be effective, those tapeworms will eventually find its way to your brain and cause a whole host of problems besides helping you to lose weight.

I think the media is to blame for all these body image and diet fad problems!

A 500 calorie diet is never sustainable, it is unhealthy to even consider. The injection thing sounds very unsafe to me, and moreover the fact that it is easily available on the internet is even more worrying. You don't even know who's urine you are injecting, God only know what infections and diseases might come along. People sometimes gets desperate when they don't see much progress in their weight loss goals, and such companies coming up with these unhealthy diets makes the most out of it.

The only thing good that i found in this article is the little quote from Dr. Barry Ramos, proper exercise and diet is the only way to go, keep at it and the results will follow. Patience and persistence is the key.

I don't want to keep posting on this subject so just one last post here.

If you’re on 500 calories and you lose weight that means you’re in a deficit of some sort (otherwise you would not be losing weight), therefore if you go off the diet you have that deficit worth of calories to eat plus whatever you were eating before you should start to gain weight.

For example:

Your losing 5lbs a week on a 500 calorie daily diet - that is a daily caloric deficit of 2500 calories per day (5lbs x 3500 calories = 17500 calorie deficit per week, 17500 / 7 days = 2500 calories). Theoretically you could go off this 500 calorie diet and eat 3000 calories a day and not gain weight. That should be your maintenance plan, 3000 calories a day, but more realistically you it would probably be around 2500 calories because the math is never that clean with human physiology. Of course this is just one example and it will vary (sometimes wildly) from person to person. Also once your body stops burning as much fat for fuel it will start to want to store fat so some adjustments may need to be made further down the road.

I think if you remove the statement that HCG comes from urine; it becomes much less dramatic where it comes from because anyone that has had to have a blood infusion is using someone else’s bodily fluids. Also about sharing body fluids, they pull the HCG out of the urine similar to what happens when you donate blood plasma, they pull out what they need and get rid of the rest and yes it’s all very sterile.

Again I am not defending the use of HCG in this diet, I am just making a point that HCG by itself is not totally out of the realm of possibilities of something that could assist with health or weight loss, as it’s already being used for other health concerns.

I am also not completely defending the use of 500 calorie diets, but merely stating they may not be as detrimental as people seem to think. Our physiology has had to withstand a lot more then missing a meal or two over the course of time, we are much hardier then that or else we would have failed as a species shortly after we appeared on the scene. In fact even the less hardy of us out there should be able to go 2 weeks without food, with the most hardy easily capable of 40+ days (although you do need water). I have personally been intermittent fasting for about a month now, I don’t eat for 16 hours out of the day and its usually a lot more than that, I have not felt this good in a long time and I am having the best workouts of my life (in my fasted state none-the-less). Eating 6 times a day made me feel a lot worse, I think because my blood sugar and hormones were up and down constantly due to food plus my body’s energy was constantly tied up with digestion. I am so glad to have found this way of eating for this reason alone and it is not even that hard to manage. I have lost 11lbs this way, but that was mostly in the first two weeks and the past two weeks have not shown anything on the scales other then my normal day to day fluctuations (I work out a lot so water weight bounces me around a lot), although my strength and cardio performance has risen substantially. Maybe I am recomping or maybe I am just already on a plateau, I already eat healthy about 75% of the time and of course that means there is room for improvement but I think I will need to lock down my diet in terms of calories as well to get to my final goals. I don’t see myself doing 500 calories, but I might be tempted to do 1k again, but most likely I will probably try to start out at 1.5k and work from there. If I were older and not active 500 calories might be a better choice.

Again I am not defending the HCG diet, but just remember to keep an open mind about aspects of the diet because the world used to be flat and everyone absolutely knew it was.

My concern with a 500 calorie diet is what does the person do after they've reached their ideal weight. Even if they managed to avoid any deficiencies by taking vitamin and mineral supplements during the diet phase, they are not learning to eat in a way that is sustainable in the future.

And I'm not sure that injections of urine sound like a very good idea. No science to back up my feeling but the sharing of body fluids has lead to so much disease and suffering over the years. Now obviously, it will be sterilized etc but maybe there are things that we don't know about yet.

How many times has medical studies taken what looked like a leap forward only to find they needed to quickly reverse as some unexpected health problem occurred.

This is not a diet plan I would follow.

Hi Jarret

Interesting article. I have always eaten healthy and done regular exercise.I have never had to diet so I can't relate to people doing extreme measures. Maybe they have tried all else and are desperate to try something that maybe will work this time around.

The sad thing is someone makes heaps of money from these people and usually these extreme diets don't work! 500 calories would have anyone getting thinner I would imagine but not to be recommended.

Patricia Perth Australia

John,

I am not defending HCG as I said, I am just saying sometimes things don’t work like everyone says they do, and it’s a bit annoying when people keep insisting something is true 100% of the time when it may only be true 80% of the time.

How can you go on any diet to lose weight without having some starvation? You have to eat less to lose weight, and if your still eating and you have excess fat to burn your technically not starving your just burning up your fat reserves. There have been lots of tests on the “starvation response” and it does not occur just because you skip a meal or two, you could probably skip 4 days worth of meals before the real starvation response will even get close to kicking in. Besides you are not skipping every meal for several days anyways, you are still eating some calories daily and basically encouraging your body to use fat for fuel.

HCG has been used for fertility in men for years, and more recently as T replacement or as a supplement to T therapy since artificial T shuts down your testes which causes “cosmetic” issues if you understand what I am saying. It's not a new chemical produced in a lab but derived from a biological source; it may be that they are using it in a new way but I don’t think that makes it necessarily a scary prospect.

When I was on my 1k calorie diet (not HCG), I did not regain my weight immediately after I went off of the diet. In fact it took me 3 months to regain 5lbs and I was eating A LOT more food than 1k calories because at the time the only source of relief I had from work was food. Their maintenance plan was around 2k calories of lower carb based foods (including lots of vegetables) but I was not able to adhere to that due to work. Now after that ~3 month point I regained a lot but you have to consider my life situation through all of this as well. I went off the supervised diet because I had to go out of country for work and I also changed from 40-45hr weeks at work, to 60-80wks with intermittent scheduling (nights, days, evenings) so basically all I was able to do was work and eat. When I started to gain the most weight was right after I had other issues at work with my management, in short terms my stress levels went up 10,000% so it is no wonder my weight did.

Again I am not defending the specifics of the HCG plan and I don’t even know the specifics of the plan, just stating that parts of it may be justified or rational in some situations. Not everyone can remove 500 calories a day and lose a pound of fat a week; they may need to remove 1000 calories a day or even 1500 calories to achieve that same result. This sounds really unfair, maybe it is, but maybe those same people could also survive famines or other harsh environmental standards if they are ever called upon to do so – maybe there is a flip side that isn’t the greatest thing these days with mass food availability.

It is not always about doing it FAST as much as it is just being able to even achieve it. I have been trying to do the “slow and healthy” way for like 4 years with the exception of my ~3 weeks on the medically supervised diet. It is just not working like that, people keep saying relax, loosen up, give it time but WTH does that mean? I am 32 now and at this rate I will be 65 before I get to a more ideal weight. There is only so much patience and struggle a person can deal with, it is not instant gratification I am looking for I am just looking for some success that is tangible. Watching the scale move back and forth 5lbs day to day isn’t doing it, especially when the overall curve is flat.

I also have another theory that I am wondering if the resistance to weight loss is also tied with a resistance to weight gain, meaning some people may need to go to extremes to lose the weight but may have a lot more freedom once they do and thus that is part of the maintenance plan. I know in my case I seem to be able to maintain weight fairly easy, it is just moving the scale downward that is really hard.

Let's review

1. Starvation diet - will ultimately slow metabolism making a normal caloric diet virtually impossible in the future

2. Take shots of HCG, urine or whatever you want to call it which is unclear how it effects your body/metabolism both short and longer term.

3. No maintenance plan, no provisions for how to live a normal life at times like eating out for dinner, vacations or holidays

4. Pay a bunch of money for the privilege of following this plan

Hmmm, sounds like a really sustainable diet plan for life to me....

Why even consider such a plan when there are so many other ways proven to lose weight-- what good does it do to lose it FAST if you are on a plan there's no way you can stay with and in the case of this particular plan no way you would want to???

Jon
The EET Fitness Plan
www.eetfit.com

Interesting, I keep seeing "HCG diet" all over the place but never looked into it. It only sparked my interest because HCG is sometimes used to treat low testosterone because it acts like Luteinizing Hormone.

In terms of the HCG part of this diet, I don't know if this is necessary or safe, however it is a viable low T treatment and it’s actually something I may end up exploring if I am not able to cure my own low T naturally with diet. I think it’s a better way to boost T because it’s closer to "normal" because it is your body creating the T, you’re not adding T to the system artificially.

In terms of the 500 calories a day, I would never recommend anyone try that low of calories, however from my personal experience it may be "ok" as long as you have supplements to ensure you’re getting the nutrients you need. I went on a 1k calorie medically supervised diet, I was working out nearly as hard as I am now and I felt fine after about 3-4 days of my body shifting over to fat burning. I lost 16lbs in 18 days and less then 1lb of that was muscle it was almost pure fat. That is like having a 22k calorie deficit weekly, my blood work also improved dramatically as well going from borderline in several areas to normal with nothing showing a negative result other then my calcium level went up higher then desired (most likely from supplementation).

My point is not to say the HCG diet is ok, I am just saying under the right supervision it may not be terrible. I have been battling weight for many years now and not having the successes I want to have, in the end I may need to go back to a very low calorie (not 500) diet as other means have thus far not proven as effective or dependable at eliminating fat. I feel great right now, I have tons of energy, I am very strong and active and can keep up with anyone else in my chosen activities even if they are not “fat” like me, but I just can’t seem to get the darn fat off without what seems to be extreme measures.

Maybe others have this same issue, I have noticed there are some genetic research that indicates some people do not respond to reduced calories and increased activities in terms of weight loss:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Search&db=pubmed&term=12917707

In these situations maybe extreme measures such as this is the only way for them to achieve the desired results. I know everyone says eat less and move more and that is all it takes, but we need to be careful in how we see/judge others because I think some of us may need to be eating EXTREME diets and having EXTREME workouts to achieve the same things. It is not fair but what in life is?

Well, it sure has made me feel amazing. I have a lot more energy I would recommend this diet to anyone....

That's really funny, as I was reading the article I was thinking it sounded a lot what I had read in Kevin Trudeau's book a few years back. And yes, any calorie restricted diet will help you lose weight. When the concept behind weight loss is so simple (eat less, move more) I still can't figure out why people don't understand it, or go to extreme circumstances to achieve it.

I can't believe there are people going into these extremes in losing diet. Can't people just take it simple these days? Just the other day, I was watching a TV program on swallowing tapeworms to help lose weight. While it is going to be effective, those tapeworms will eventually find its way to your brain and cause a whole host of problems besides helping you to lose weight.
I think the media is to blame for all these body image and diet fad problems!

I have met a few women who defend their use of this diet with real anger against it's critics. It's a topic that really does seem to elicit quite an emotional response, but that may be because of the severe hormonal imbalance, I'm not sure. I believe the way the diet is sold, you're told that 500 calories of food is plenty because the injections are nutrient rich enough to sustain you. Also, the big gimmick is that it's supervised by a doctor-- one is who paid huge amounts of money to explicitly dole out this one product, sadly. When I asked a friend (I asked kindly, btw) why she didn't want to just diet and exercise normally and lose 1-2 lbs a week, her response was, "you don't know what it's like to never be able to lose weight. My metabolism is slow, my genetics are messed up. I've dieted, I exercise all the time." Sigh. I didn't say anything, but thats when I realized the appeal of HCG: it takes the responsibility out of the individuals hands. If weight loss doesn't happen, it's because the doctor screwed up, not because she failed.

A 500 calorie diet is never sustainable, it is unhealthy to even consider. The injection thing sounds very unsafe to me, and moreover the fact that it is easily available on the internet is even more worrying. You don't even know who's urine you are injecting, God only know what infections and diseases might come along. People sometimes gets desperate when they don't see much progress in their weight loss goals, and such companies coming up with these unhealthy diets makes the most out of it.
The only thing good that i found in this article is the little quote from Dr. Barry Ramos, proper exercise and diet is the only way to go, keep at it and the results will follow. Patience and persistence is the key.

I don't want to keep posting on this subject so just one last post here.
If you’re on 500 calories and you lose weight that means you’re in a deficit of some sort (otherwise you would not be losing weight), therefore if you go off the diet you have that deficit worth of calories to eat plus whatever you were eating before you should start to gain weight.
For example:
Your losing 5lbs a week on a 500 calorie daily diet - that is a daily caloric deficit of 2500 calories per day (5lbs x 3500 calories = 17500 calorie deficit per week, 17500 / 7 days = 2500 calories). Theoretically you could go off this 500 calorie diet and eat 3000 calories a day and not gain weight. That should be your maintenance plan, 3000 calories a day, but more realistically you it would probably be around 2500 calories because the math is never that clean with human physiology. Of course this is just one example and it will vary (sometimes wildly) from person to person. Also once your body stops burning as much fat for fuel it will start to want to store fat so some adjustments may need to be made further down the road.
I think if you remove the statement that HCG comes from urine; it becomes much less dramatic where it comes from because anyone that has had to have a blood infusion is using someone else’s bodily fluids. Also about sharing body fluids, they pull the HCG out of the urine similar to what happens when you donate blood plasma, they pull out what they need and get rid of the rest and yes it’s all very sterile.
Again I am not defending the use of HCG in this diet, I am just making a point that HCG by itself is not totally out of the realm of possibilities of something that could assist with health or weight loss, as it’s already being used for other health concerns.
I am also not completely defending the use of 500 calorie diets, but merely stating they may not be as detrimental as people seem to think. Our physiology has had to withstand a lot more then missing a meal or two over the course of time, we are much hardier then that or else we would have failed as a species shortly after we appeared on the scene. In fact even the less hardy of us out there should be able to go 2 weeks without food, with the most hardy easily capable of 40+ days (although you do need water). I have personally been intermittent fasting for about a month now, I don’t eat for 16 hours out of the day and its usually a lot more than that, I have not felt this good in a long time and I am having the best workouts of my life (in my fasted state none-the-less). Eating 6 times a day made me feel a lot worse, I think because my blood sugar and hormones were up and down constantly due to food plus my body’s energy was constantly tied up with digestion. I am so glad to have found this way of eating for this reason alone and it is not even that hard to manage. I have lost 11lbs this way, but that was mostly in the first two weeks and the past two weeks have not shown anything on the scales other then my normal day to day fluctuations (I work out a lot so water weight bounces me around a lot), although my strength and cardio performance has risen substantially. Maybe I am recomping or maybe I am just already on a plateau, I already eat healthy about 75% of the time and of course that means there is room for improvement but I think I will need to lock down my diet in terms of calories as well to get to my final goals. I don’t see myself doing 500 calories, but I might be tempted to do 1k again, but most likely I will probably try to start out at 1.5k and work from there. If I were older and not active 500 calories might be a better choice.
Again I am not defending the HCG diet, but just remember to keep an open mind about aspects of the diet because the world used to be flat and everyone absolutely knew it was.

My concern with a 500 calorie diet is what does the person do after they've reached their ideal weight. Even if they managed to avoid any deficiencies by taking vitamin and mineral supplements during the diet phase, they are not learning to eat in a way that is sustainable in the future.
And I'm not sure that injections of urine sound like a very good idea. No science to back up my feeling but the sharing of body fluids has lead to so much disease and suffering over the years. Now obviously, it will be sterilized etc but maybe there are things that we don't know about yet.
How many times has medical studies taken what looked like a leap forward only to find they needed to quickly reverse as some unexpected health problem occurred.
This is not a diet plan I would follow.

Hi Jarret
Interesting article. I have always eaten healthy and done regular exercise.I have never had to diet so I can't relate to people doing extreme measures. Maybe they have tried all else and are desperate to try something that maybe will work this time around.
The sad thing is someone makes heaps of money from these people and usually these extreme diets don't work! 500 calories would have anyone getting thinner I would imagine but not to be recommended.
Patricia Perth Australia

John,
I am not defending HCG as I said, I am just saying sometimes things don’t work like everyone says they do, and it’s a bit annoying when people keep insisting something is true 100% of the time when it may only be true 80% of the time.
How can you go on any diet to lose weight without having some starvation? You have to eat less to lose weight, and if your still eating and you have excess fat to burn your technically not starving your just burning up your fat reserves. There have been lots of tests on the “starvation response” and it does not occur just because you skip a meal or two, you could probably skip 4 days worth of meals before the real starvation response will even get close to kicking in. Besides you are not skipping every meal for several days anyways, you are still eating some calories daily and basically encouraging your body to use fat for fuel.
HCG has been used for fertility in men for years, and more recently as T replacement or as a supplement to T therapy since artificial T shuts down your testes which causes “cosmetic” issues if you understand what I am saying. It's not a new chemical produced in a lab but derived from a biological source; it may be that they are using it in a new way but I don’t think that makes it necessarily a scary prospect.
When I was on my 1k calorie diet (not HCG), I did not regain my weight immediately after I went off of the diet. In fact it took me 3 months to regain 5lbs and I was eating A LOT more food than 1k calories because at the time the only source of relief I had from work was food. Their maintenance plan was around 2k calories of lower carb based foods (including lots of vegetables) but I was not able to adhere to that due to work. Now after that ~3 month point I regained a lot but you have to consider my life situation through all of this as well. I went off the supervised diet because I had to go out of country for work and I also changed from 40-45hr weeks at work, to 60-80wks with intermittent scheduling (nights, days, evenings) so basically all I was able to do was work and eat. When I started to gain the most weight was right after I had other issues at work with my management, in short terms my stress levels went up 10,000% so it is no wonder my weight did.
Again I am not defending the specifics of the HCG plan and I don’t even know the specifics of the plan, just stating that parts of it may be justified or rational in some situations. Not everyone can remove 500 calories a day and lose a pound of fat a week; they may need to remove 1000 calories a day or even 1500 calories to achieve that same result. This sounds really unfair, maybe it is, but maybe those same people could also survive famines or other harsh environmental standards if they are ever called upon to do so – maybe there is a flip side that isn’t the greatest thing these days with mass food availability.
It is not always about doing it FAST as much as it is just being able to even achieve it. I have been trying to do the “slow and healthy” way for like 4 years with the exception of my ~3 weeks on the medically supervised diet. It is just not working like that, people keep saying relax, loosen up, give it time but WTH does that mean? I am 32 now and at this rate I will be 65 before I get to a more ideal weight. There is only so much patience and struggle a person can deal with, it is not instant gratification I am looking for I am just looking for some success that is tangible. Watching the scale move back and forth 5lbs day to day isn’t doing it, especially when the overall curve is flat.
I also have another theory that I am wondering if the resistance to weight loss is also tied with a resistance to weight gain, meaning some people may need to go to extremes to lose the weight but may have a lot more freedom once they do and thus that is part of the maintenance plan. I know in my case I seem to be able to maintain weight fairly easy, it is just moving the scale downward that is really hard.

Let's review
1. Starvation diet - will ultimately slow metabolism making a normal caloric diet virtually impossible in the future
2. Take shots of HCG, urine or whatever you want to call it which is unclear how it effects your body/metabolism both short and longer term.
3. No maintenance plan, no provisions for how to live a normal life at times like eating out for dinner, vacations or holidays
4. Pay a bunch of money for the privilege of following this plan
Hmmm, sounds like a really sustainable diet plan for life to me....
Why even consider such a plan when there are so many other ways proven to lose weight-- what good does it do to lose it FAST if you are on a plan there's no way you can stay with and in the case of this particular plan no way you would want to???
Jon
The EET Fitness Plan
www.eetfit.com

Interesting, I keep seeing "HCG diet" all over the place but never looked into it. It only sparked my interest because HCG is sometimes used to treat low testosterone because it acts like Luteinizing Hormone.
In terms of the HCG part of this diet, I don't know if this is necessary or safe, however it is a viable low T treatment and it’s actually something I may end up exploring if I am not able to cure my own low T naturally with diet. I think it’s a better way to boost T because it’s closer to "normal" because it is your body creating the T, you’re not adding T to the system artificially.
In terms of the 500 calories a day, I would never recommend anyone try that low of calories, however from my personal experience it may be "ok" as long as you have supplements to ensure you’re getting the nutrients you need. I went on a 1k calorie medically supervised diet, I was working out nearly as hard as I am now and I felt fine after about 3-4 days of my body shifting over to fat burning. I lost 16lbs in 18 days and less then 1lb of that was muscle it was almost pure fat. That is like having a 22k calorie deficit weekly, my blood work also improved dramatically as well going from borderline in several areas to normal with nothing showing a negative result other then my calcium level went up higher then desired (most likely from supplementation).
My point is not to say the HCG diet is ok, I am just saying under the right supervision it may not be terrible. I have been battling weight for many years now and not having the successes I want to have, in the end I may need to go back to a very low calorie (not 500) diet as other means have thus far not proven as effective or dependable at eliminating fat. I feel great right now, I have tons of energy, I am very strong and active and can keep up with anyone else in my chosen activities even if they are not “fat” like me, but I just can’t seem to get the darn fat off without what seems to be extreme measures.
Maybe others have this same issue, I have noticed there are some genetic research that indicates some people do not respond to reduced calories and increased activities in terms of weight loss:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Search&db=pubmed&term=12917707
In these situations maybe extreme measures such as this is the only way for them to achieve the desired results. I know everyone says eat less and move more and that is all it takes, but we need to be careful in how we see/judge others because I think some of us may need to be eating EXTREME diets and having EXTREME workouts to achieve the same things. It is not fair but what in life is?