Here’s another guest post from Maggie. She is looking very cheerful these days, and it’s all because she’s found a diet that actually works – combining cycling with the HCG Diet Plan! Read on …
“A few weeks ago I wrote a post about reaching 1,000 kilometers as a bicycle commuter. It was a huge milestone for me and one that I was extremely proud to reach.
That is until I realized that I hadn’t lost a single pound after burning an additional 44,000 calories.
I calculated this by totalling up the number of hours it took me to reach 1,000 kilometers, multiplied this by the average number of calories consumed per hour of cycling, and then divided this by 3,500 calories which is what you need to burn to lose approximately one pound of weight. By my reckoning I should have lost at least 10 to 12 pounds. This was depressing because weight loss was one of the goals that got me on my bike in the first place. I had read many many stories of exceptional fitness and weight loss goals people had reached by cycle commuting and I was sure I would be one of them.
So what went wrong?
One of my work buddies said that maybe I had dodged a bullet and not gained 10 to 12 pounds instead. Hmmm, had my eating crept up? I thought about it and realized that no, it hadn’t. My eating and drinking habits had remained essentially the same. Joe and I eat a balanced, healthy diet, drink a lot of water and follow the 90/10 rule to keep life fun. Not only that, but we had both recently decided to take wheat out of our diet and follow a Paleo Diet routine, so there was a huge source of bad carbohydrates that I was no longer consuming. Joe and I are also moderately to highly active. We walk, hike, swim, cycle and garden, in addition to our cycle commutes.
I’ll confess to being a big fan of the Biggest Loser, and Bob and Gillian too. However, I cringe when I see people get on the scale after a week of intense training, only to see a 1 to 2 pounds loss, or maybe even no loss at all. The self-deprecation that ensues is horrible to watch, especially when Bob or Gillian pipe up with “It’s a numbers game. Calories in, Calories out” Bullcrap!!! There is more at work here than math.
What I’ve come to realize is that medications, gender and age are major contributors to metabolism and are just as important as food, water and exercise. So, like the contestants on the Biggest Loser, you sometimes have to take drastic measures to remove stubborn body fat.
I compared stories with another colleague. She had done an intense boot camp three times a week for one year, and she also did not lose a single pound. Clearly our post-40’s metabolisms had decided to pack it in. So what could we do?
My colleague told me that she had starting using HCG drops and the HCG Diet Plan, and was losing 1-2 pounds a day.
Best of all, the weight loss was coming from the stubborn body fat accumulations, not from muscle. The basic theory of the HCG Diet Plan is that you take drops and reduce your calorie intake drastically (to just 500 calories a day). The homeopathic HCG drops are supposed to optimize fat loss, suppress appetite, enhance metabolism, maximize fat loss, reduce cravings for food between meals, reduce body fat, increase slim muscle mass, and reset the hypothalamus so that the extra weight problem is solved for good. Apparently they achieve that by convincing the body that you it is pregnant. (And this applies regardless of your gender.)
I don’t fully understand it, but what I do know is that Canucks anthem singer Mark Donnelly used HCG drops and lost 172 pounds in about a year. The HCG theory has been around since the 1950’s, so this is an old fad, not a new one. Critics refer to HCG drops as dangerous and irresponsible, but I have researched and cannot find anything dangerous about them. It does seem to be hazardous to eat just 500 calories a day, but I have not done that. I am definitely NOT eating 500 calories a day – not even close.
Although I don’t understand how the diet words, I just call the HCG drops a miracle. After years of being unable to lose weight, it is suddenly dropping off. I have been on the program for 9 days and have lost 7 pounds – all from my mid-section – which is where I need to lose it. I am on a restricted diet but it is for a specific time period and then I will slowly start increasing my calories until I find my proper level or consumption.
This is a win-win-win solution for me because I’ve already done the hard work, which is getting regular exercise and maintaining a healthy diet. Now, I just need to see and feel results fast. And so far, I am. I’ll keep you all updated on my progress!”
Thanks for sharing, Maggie – I am intrigued as I have the same issue. Where did you get the drops, and how many calories a day do you think you are eating/exercising? I would not want to do 500, but if you are still losing weight, I’d be inteerested in giving it a try.
Replying on Maggie’s behalf as she is not logged in – she definitely did not do 500 calories – closer to 1,500. She bought the drops online, just Google HCG. It definitely worked for her and she is looking GREAT. However, it did NOT work AT ALL for me, so it’s not for everyone … for me, I might just as well have been taking water drops. Maybe I just did not believe … I could NOT get the logic of fooling my body into thinking it was pregnant, as that is a physiological impossibility … however, it did work for Mark Donnelly, so who knows? For me personally, the only thing that has ever worked is the Paleo diet, combined with tons of exercise, and a huge dose of sheer good luck (because usually nothing hurts).
Wow, that is some great news! Congrats on the bike commuting milestone and the new found weight loss. Being a large cyclist myself, I am in a similar boat. I can workout consistently and not drop any weight. Most of the time, though, it’s because I increase my calories as my metabolism ramps up.
Right now, I’m doing a weight lifting routine and actually gaining a little weight. I keep telling myself that I’m just adding muscle weight. There is some truth to that, but my calorie intake has increased, too. I’ll get to weight loss with more bike riding and less calories in the coming months.
Keep up the great work!
Hi Brian. I am replying on Maggie’s behalf, as she (a) is offline and (b) has a crying grand-baby in her arms. Thanks for the good wishes. She is looking great, and the weight loss has come after a good few years of not being able to lose weight with any diet or exercise combination, so clearly it is the magic bullet for her. However, HCG drops did not work for me at all. Instead, I am at a stage where exercise seems to make me GAIN weight (like you). I would LIKE to think it’s muscle, but the reality is that most guys over 40 cannot gain more than 5 pounds of muscle a YEAR, and even that is only if they work out for about 2 hours a day. So I actually don’t think my weight gain is from muscle growth – in my case, I think that all the exercise I do leads to increased healthy blood flow, which in turn somehow encourages my stomach to grow …