Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Syringes + Starvation = Weight Loss?


This looks smart:
Every morning, Kay Brown engages in a ritual similar to a heroin addict’s, or a diabetic’s: she sticks herself with a syringe. Only hers contains hCG, a pregnancy hormone.
Ms. Brown, 35, is not taking hCG to help her bear a child. She believes that by combining the hormone injections with a 500-calorie-a-day diet, she will achieve a kind of weight-loss nirvana: losing fat in all the right places without feeling tired or hungry. “I had a friend who did it before her wedding,” Ms. Brown said. “She looks great.”
Only kooks like Dr. Oz thinks this "syringe 'n starvation" diet is worth a second look. Most others (I hope!) have figured out that the weight loss is prompted not by the (useless and risky) injection of urine-derived pregnancy hormones, but by taking in fewer calories than a typical ten-pound human infant.

[Source: NYTimes]