Hot Shot

Despite calls that it’s unsafe and unsustainable, the popularity of the injectable hCG diet continues to peak and trough. Eugenie Kelly looks at why it won’t go away …

- Eugenie Kelly

MANY WOMEN WILL RELATE to 39-year-old Rachel’s* morning ritual. Six am: wake; stretch; whip up a protein smoothie; coerce kids out of bed. But here it gets what some might perceive as hairy. At 6.30am, she quietly slips into her bathroom and injects herself in the stomach. No, she’s not an ice addict or a diabetic. In fact, size-zero Rachel believes she is in her best shape ever. And she attributes it all to her prescription-only twice-daily HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) injections — a hormone derived from the urine of pregnant women that allows her to exist on 500 calories a day.

The theory that hCG could help people lose weight — particularly from stubborn spots where abnormal fat deposits may sit, such as the belly and thighs — was pioneered by a British endocrinologist, Dr Albert T. W. Simeons, in the 1950s, with the treatment peaking in popularity in the ’70s when clinics started popping up in Europe. Criticism from the medical fraternity that supposedly misunderstood the strict conditions it came with (more on that later) saw it being discredited, thus it waned in popularity.

Around 2010, in the US, sales of a homeopathic version (drops placed under the tongue; lozenges; and sprays) were newly rampant due to the explosion of Amazon and eBay. But once women realised the health implications of not having it professionally monitored, they turned to doctors whose clinics lent it an aura of respectability, some charging a whopping $1300 a month at the time for the injections and dietary advice.