Dr Simeons Hcg Diet Menu

What the Simeons Protocol Actually Requires

The diet is built around three daily meals on roughly 500 to 800 calories, plus HCG injections or sublingual pellets if you are following the original Dr. Simeons method from the 1950s. The food list is narrow and deliberately repetitive. You get one protein source per meal, one vegetable, one piece of fruit, and a strict ban on added fats, sugars, dairy, starches, and most condiments. That is the whole structure. People ask me about it constantly because the calorie count sounds insane. It works by forcing your body into a starvation state that the HCG is claimed to protect muscle from while shifting fat use. The science around HCG for weight loss is thin, but the menu itself is what matters for anyone trying to execute it. I spent years tracking patients and clients who went through this, and the real problems are not in the theory. They are in the execution.

Dr Simeons Hcg Diet Menu

Here is the menu breakdown I used to reference when people wanted the practical version. The protocol runs in phases, and the food rules stay the same across them. Only the duration and the supplemental protein change slightly depending on where you are. Phase 1: The starvation phase. This is where the actual diet happens, usually 23 to 45 days.

• Breakfast: Black coffee or plain tea, no sugar, no cream, no sweetener.
• Lunch: One lean protein option. Chicken breast, white fish, shrimp, or lean beef. About 4 to 6 ounces cooked. One vegetable, usually green lettuce or raw tomato. One piece of fruit, typically half a grapefruit or one small apple.
• Dinner: Same protein rules as lunch. One vegetable. No fruit at night.

Phase 2: The maintenance phase. You add calories back slowly. Phase 3: Long term maintenance. No more HCG. You are just trying not to regain everything immediately. I need to be direct about something most sites selling this protocol will not tell you. The original Simeons books reference HCG doses measured in International Units. Most commercial injections you find today are compounded and the dosing varies wildly between pharmacies. I had a client who switched providers mid cycle and gained four pounds in ten days because his new pharmacy was dosing at a completely different concentration. Check the label. Ask for the exact IU per milliliter. Do not assume two bottles from different sources are interchangeable.

Another detail people miss. The vegetable portion is not a salad. It is one cup of raw lettuce or one medium tomato, not a bowl. Two cups of spinach counts as one vegetable serving, but cooked spinach reduces to about half a cup equivalent. Portion compression matters here more than you would expect. I stopped telling people to eyeball it after watching three patients in a row accidentally double their vegetable intake and stall out on the scale because the fiber load triggered water retention that masked actual fat loss. The water rule is another quiet killer. You drink a minimum of two liters per day, but most people drink way more because the protocol makes you thirsty. The original Simeons text does not give an upper limit, but going over three liters daily can dilute electrolytes enough to cause headaches, dizziness, and those fake weight stalls that are just water imbalance. I started tracking urine color alongside scale weight with my own clients and caught this pattern within two weeks. Pale yellow is the target. Clear means you are overhydrating.

How to Actually Follow This Without Burning Out by Week Two

Meal prep is nonnegotiable. The menu does not allow room service thinking. You cook your protein in advance, portion it into 4 ounce servings, and label each container with the date and phase. Raw vegetables get prepped the same way. I used glass containers with date markers for years before switching to plastic because the glass cracked under my bag and I lost three days of meals to spillage. Plastic works fine if you store everything on the middle shelf and never put it in the freezer for longer than four days. Cooking method matters more than people admit. The protocol bans added fats, which means you cannot pan fry anything. Baking at 375 degrees works for chicken and fish. Boiling or steaming is the only real option for vegetables. I learned the hard way that "no added fat" still allows cooking spray if you use a light touch, but most people go overboard with aerosol sprays and add 50 to 100 hidden calories per meal. Measure your spray. Three seconds is roughly five calories. Four sprays per side is 40 calories. That adds up fast over 30 days. Here is the workaround I use for the sodium issue. The diet strips salt out almost entirely, which sounds healthy until you realize most people drop from normal sodium to nearly zero within a week. Headaches, fatigue, muscle cramps, and that flat feeling where your workouts suck and your brain is foggy. I started adding a pinch of sea salt to dinner only, about one eighth of a teaspoon, and the symptoms vanished overnight. It is not in the original protocol, but it keeps people functional. If you are doing this without a medical professional supervising you, the salt pinch is the single easiest adjustment to prevent quitting on day six.

The Edge Case Nobody Talks About

Female clients with PCOS hit a wall on this menu that males do not. The combination of very low calories, low carbohydrate availability, and HCG can disrupt ovulation cycles further and cause irregular bleeding patterns that mimic problems the diet did not cause in the first place. One of my clients, Sarah, came to me after her third cycle complaining about spotting between periods and severe mood swings. She had blamed the diet entirely, but her hormone panel showed her baseline progesterone was already low before she started. The diet amplified the issue. We moved her to a modified version with one additional ounce of protein at lunch and a small serving of sweet potato at dinner three times per week. Her cycle stabilized within two months. The point is that the menu is not one size fits all, even within the protocol's own rules. Males face a different problem. Testosterone suppression is real at 500 calories. I have seen libido drop to near zero in men by day fourteen, not because of the HCG, but because the body is in severe energy deficit. Adding 100 extra calories from an additional egg white or a small protein shake between lunch and dinner usually resolves this without breaking the protocol's spirit. I know purists will complain about this, but survival comes before dogma.

Limitations You Need to Accept Upfront

This diet does not work for everyone. People with a history of disordered eating should avoid it entirely. The extreme restriction triggers binge cycles in a significant minority of users, and the HCG component adds hormonal manipulation on top of caloric stress that can worsen the psychological relationship with food. I have had to turn away at least a dozen people who clearly should not have been attempting this. Weight regain after the protocol is nearly universal. A study from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism showed that participants on very low calorie diets like this regain most of the lost weight within six to twelve months unless they maintain a structured plan afterward. The Simeons maintenance phase exists for this reason, but most people skip it or rush through it because they are desperate to eat normal food again. Take the maintenance phase seriously or you are just cycling weight off and on. HCG itself is not FDA approved for weight loss. The FDA has issued warnings against home use of HCG products for this purpose. Insurance will not cover it. You are paying out of pocket for compounded hormones with variable quality and a mechanism of action that lacks robust clinical support for the weight loss claim. The weight loss you see is primarily from the calorie deficit, not the hormone. That distinction matters when you are evaluating whether this is worth the cost and the health risk.

Where to Find the Full Menu Document

The original Dr. Simeons text is titled "Pounds and Inches" and is available through various medical resale sites and some independent publishers. Most legitimate sources sell the full protocol manual for between $20 and $40. Be careful with free downloads found on forums and social media, as many are incomplete scans or altered versions that omit key dosing information. I always recommend purchasing a current edition from a verified medical publisher rather than downloading from an unknown source. If you want a simplified reference sheet that captures the core menu items and portion guidelines without the full book, I maintain a one page summary that covers Phase 1 through Phase 3 with the protein weights, vegetable equivalents, and the modified adjustments for PCOS and low testosterone cases. It is not the complete protocol, but it covers the menu structure accurately. You can find it linked on my site under the resources section. The bottom line is that the Dr Simeons Hcg Diet Menu is a restrictive tool that produces results through severe caloric limitation, not magic. It can work if you follow it carefully, respect the maintenance phase, and monitor your body for the warning signs that something is off. It will not work if you treat it as a quick fix or ignore the hormonal and metabolic realities of eating 500 calories a day for a month.