The maintenance phase of the HCG Diet others called it as phase 3 lasts for three weeks. Here’s what you need to remember each week:
First week of the maintenance phase: The NO starches or sugar week
- Start slowly as abrupt changes can cause weight gain.
- The recommended calorie intake during the first week is between 900 to 1500 calories a day.
- You should not eat anything that is considered starch or sugar.
- No starches mean avoiding cereals, pasta, oatmeal, and bread. No sugar means avoiding ice cream, table sugar, candy desserts, and sweet fruits.
- Lean heavily on the HCG diet approved phase 3 food list. Focus more on protein-rich food. Protein is a very important part of the Maintenance phase as it will help keep your weight off for good.
- High protein foods include:
- Greek yogurt
- Beef jerky
- Eggs
- Meat (unprocessed)
- Cheese in a small amount
- Healthy fats such as olive oil, avocado. and salmon
- Nuts in a small amount
- Protein bars
Second week of the maintenance phase: Little starch or sugar
- Gradually increase your calorie intake from 1000 to 1200 calories.
- Add back sugar and starches into your diet very, very slowly. It’s best to add sugar first such as natural sugar from fruits and then starches from starchy vegetables.
- After adding starchy veggies and natural sugars from fruits you can reintroduce foods like pasta, whole wheat bread, and table sugars back into your diet.
- Have protein at every meal as protein is still an important aspect during this phase. Higher protein consumption usually leads to an easier time maintaining your weight loss and long-term results. This time try incorporating protein bars and whey protein powder.
Third week of maintenance phase: All approved Phase food list
- Increase your calorie intake from 1200 to 1500 calories.
- Good foods for the second and third week of the HCG Diet maintenance phase are:
- All approved HCG diet phase 3 food
- Any fruits including those high in sugar like melons and banana
- Any veggies including those high in carbs like corn, potato, and yam
- Lots of salad with any type of dressing
- Oatmeal, low carb, high-fiber cereals
- More dairy products like yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese
- A little more nut
- Protein bars
Other things to keep in mind when on phase 3 of the HCG Diet:
- Your goal is to let your body learn a new weight set point. Your new weight set point is your weight during your last injection of the hormone.
- Stay within the 2-pound range (2 pounds above and below your weight set point) while you are on the maintenance phase.
- Perform a steak day on the day your weight went even an ounce higher than 2 pounds, say around 2.1 pounds.
- In doing the steak day, eat nothing all day. You are only allowed to drink water, coffee, and tea. For dinner, eat a large steak followed by a tomato or an apple. This will put your weight back down 2-5 pounds.
- Continue weighing yourself every day and see how your body reacted to the foods you ate a day before. Getting your daily weight is an important aspect of the maintenance phase.
- If you happen to go over the 2-pound range, you can do another steak day. If you do not lose enough weight even after doing a steak day, you can do another steak day but remember that you can only do a maximum of 2 steak day in a row.
- Don’t forget to log on to your HCG diet journal or apps everything you eat. If in case you gain weight, you can easily look into your journal and see what are your trigger foods.
- If you were able to do the very low calorie diet phase properly then you won’t be having any problems on phase 3.
