Avoiding Sugar on the HCG Diet

Avoiding Sugar on the HCG Diet

Avoiding Sugar on the HCG Diet

I’ve been thinking about sugar lately.  If you are on the HCG Diet then you know you must avoid it like the plague for both P2 and P3.  Generally, my opinion is it is just plain best to avoid it altogether or minimize it in your life even after the diet is over.  I was recently at a family gathering and there were these little lemon cakes and some kind of peach punch so I thought… Okay, I’m going to have a taste.  I don’t eat a lot of sugar in my regular diet but I thought “Those lemon cakes look good so why not?”  After I noshed on a bite of the lemon cake and had a sip of the juice and I swear it was just awful!  I threw it in the trash.  Seriously!  Too sweet.  My tastes have changed!

Before I found the HCG Diet, I had massive cravings for sugar.  I remember as a child hiding one of those big bags of M & M’s under my bed and just munching on them all day long.  As an adult when I was working in a Physical Therapy clinic, patients would bring in scads of donuts, cookies, all manner of sugary stuff and it was so normal to go grab one for a quick energy pick me up.

Well, after the HCG Diet, I found my cravings nearly gone!  So, I’m happy to report that watching the sugar in my diet and replacing it with a healthy green drink, natural sugars in fruit, and just plain eating right has not only helped me maintain but my cravings for starch and sugar are simply nonexistent.

So, I encourage, anyone who is on the diet to seriously rethink your diet and lifestyle and consider minimizing or eliminating the sugar after the diet is over.  Use this opportunity on the diet to break your cravings and get back to whole, natural, healthy food.  The best part is that you can really enjoy almost anything you want as long as you choose a healthy version of it.

All the recipes in my cookbooks are made with stevia.  I choose stevia when I want something sweet.  It comes in great flavors and I put in my morning coffee, drizzle it on fresh berries, and whip it up in a fruit smoothie.  Delicious.

Avoiding sugar on the HCG Diet – Helpful Tips

1.  Read your food labels.  Anything ending in “ose” is some kind of sugar.  Get familiar with the different sugars in ose.  The most damaging are high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, and even fructose can spike the blood sugar or cause problems on the HCG diet.

2.  Watch out for restaurant meals.  Restaurants tend to put sugar in everything from dressings to sauces to marinades.

3.  Make your own home cooked meals.  A lot of processed food uses sugar so by cooking your own meals you can control how much goes in.  When you make your own food it is way healthier than peeling off the plastic and microwaving it.

4.   Switch to all natural stevia.  It doesn’t spike your blood sugar or cause cravings and comes in a variety of delicious flavors.  My favorite brand is Sweetleaf.

5.  Kick up the spices.  When you enhance the flavor of your meals with a good mix of spices you won’t miss the sugar.

6.  Juice vegetables or have a green drink.  I have a theory that when the body is getting proper nutrition then sugar and carb cravings naturally decrease.  Juicing fresh vegetables like tomato, celery, greens, carrots (caution on P3 with raw carrots) and others can give you a power punch of nutrition and help decrease your cravings.  Note that I do not recommend fruit juicing anymore due to the high fructose content.  Fruit is wonderful for you but choose to eat the whole fruit complete with skin and fiber to get the best benefit.

7.  Avoid sodas.  One of the worst food invention on the planet is soda.  Both the sugared varieties (just pour a cup of sugar in your mouth or eat a snicker bar, it’s more efficient) and diet varieties can seriously derail your before, during, and after weight loss efforts.  (I’ll blog about the dangers of aspartame another day)  Instead of soda, consider a mineral water with a splash (just a splash) of pomegranate or apple juice and stevia or, a few squeezed slices of lemon for a light lemonade or even add some root beer, orange, or grape flavored stevia to make your own homemade sodas.  Stevia sodas or stevia lemonade are great for P2 and you can add the splash (no more than a splash now) of fruit juice safely on P3 especially if it is fresh juice or has no high fructose corn syrup in it.

It is absolutely critical to avoid all sugar and starch on P2 and P3 of the HCG Diet.  Avoiding sugar on the HCG Diet as well as starch and starchy additives will help you to lose the weight you want on P2, stabilize properly on P3, and continuing to minimize or eliminate sugar in your diet on P4 and for life will help you maintain your new weight and metabolism.  Good luck to you all.