Many people love the HCG diet because, as many customers have pointed out to us over the years, it helps them to control their appetite and keep their metabolism high. Often customers tell us that they are struggling to even eat their 500 calories per day (or 700 calories per day on the modern approach) as they simply don’t feel hungry enough. Yet, regardless of how great this is, our bodies do not always cooperate with our weight loss and our diet. Many studies have shown the difficulties faced when attempting to lose weight over a long period just by calorie control. Our bodies will actually fight the effort strongly, making it very difficult to maintain weight loss over the long term. Your body’s own metabolism shuts down, and weight loss slows, even with the help of HCG.

HCG is designed primarily to help people boost this metabolism and keep it at a high level, however, this is not a perfect solution. Many of our customers experience a metabolic “plateau” somewhere in the 25-35 day range in phase two.  This is normal and has been documented in studies (note: for just dieting, this time period for a plateau is much sooner). There are, however, some effective methods to bypass this problem and help kick start metabolism again in phase two. Several have been advised by Dr. Simeons originally, but others are now recommended by various physicians that prescribe the HCG treatment.

Plateau Busting Methods for Phase 2

There are several ways that we can bypass many of these problems and help our bodies to keep its metabolism stable over long periods of time. One of the easiest ways to do so is by going on what is known as a “fruit day” in phase two. This was originally advised by Dr. Simeons during his development of the protocol in Pounds and Inches. However, for our customers it has proven to be an effective solution to lose weight loss progress in phase two of the diet.

A fruit day is defined as a day where you substitute your typical foods, such as protein and vegetable sources each day for a single fruit choice.  Typically this fruit choice is either apples or grapefruits. This continues for the entire day, without limitation on how much of these foods you can eat. This change in diet along with the vitamins and minerals found in these foods, help to boost your metabolism back up to a high level.

Another popular choice that has only been introduced in recent years is what’s known as a “steak” day. Complex proteins are hard to digest so it was thought that by eating large amounts of them for a day, your body would have to work overtime to process the food.  This has proven to be a successful treatment alternative with a lot of people reporting positive outcomes. On this day you eat a lot of lean steak, or other lean meat (not fish or chicken) and only that for lunch and dinner. There’s no strict limitation on how much you can eat, similar to the fruit day. Most people, however, do report surprising results from doing this method as well, often kick starting their metabolism to continue through phase two of the protocol.