Getting a little cranky while on the HCG Diet? Supplementing your diet with HCG can lead to several minor side effects including headache, and mood swings, especially if you don’t see a drop on the scale.
In reality, weight loss can actually make you more prone to feeling angry, depressed, and other mood-related issues. When you try to lose weight, sometimes you may feel irritated, agitated, and grumpy. Often, these feelings occur because of your frustration over not meeting your weight loss goals. In the case of the HCG Diet, mood swing can happen because of:
- Hormonal changes: Your daily HCG shot is a natural hormone that can negatively affect your mood. In pregnancy, HCG stimulates the production of progesterone and estrogen. These two hormones can cause mood swings many women encounter during pregnancy. Since the amount of HCG used during the HCG diet is very minimal, the possibility of mood swings is also very unlikely.
- Food withdrawals: Cutting back on junk foods, and processed foods can sometimes lead to physical and psychological symptoms like cravings, headache, anxiety, poor sleep, and mood swings. Food withdrawal symptoms usually peaked during the first few days on the HCG Diet.
Before the HCG diet, your daily diet likely includes a lot of processed foods, carbs, and sugary foods which you call comfort foods. When you are deprived of these feel-good foods that your body used to have, mood swings can happen. You feel irritable, grumpy, and agitated.
- Stress: Stress can cause mood swings even if you are not on a diet. Stress can make you grumpy, and everyone handles stress differently. Some dieters on the HCG Diet may find it stressful to stick with the calorie restrictions and eventually quit. Don’t let this happen to you.
But there are ways to beat mood swings.
How to beat mood swing on the HCG diet
- The best way to get over mood swings on the HCG diet is to kill them with awareness. If you realize that your “mood swings” in on because of the diet and not because of other reasons, move on and get over it quickly. Remember that mood swings on the HCG diet are just temporary, just like other minor side effects. Mood swings on the HCG diet are very rare, and if it happens to you, get over it quickly.
- Eating only 500 calories a day is hard and even harder if you are not doing the protocol correctly. You will feel hungry and your hunger pangs can trigger low blood sugar leading to low energy levels, headache, and mood swings. How to beat all these negative side effects? Strictly adhere to the protocol. If you can’t really follow the 500-calorie intake a day, do the modified version. Increase your calorie intake to at least 700 calories per day, perhaps it can help.
