Whether you are trying to lose the huge amount of weight gained after giving birth or, like most, you were living in denial and ignoring the weighing scale until you finally saw a photo of yourself and realized your metabolism has stopped with age, and you are about 30 pounds or so overweight—well, this article is for you.

Those of us who have a lot of weight to lose tend to be frustrated and easily discouraged at the snail’s pace at which diet and exercise yield results. There is a treatment and solution called the H2 Injection and Aivee Diet, which yield an average weight loss of a pound or two per day from day three to 20 or day three to 40, depending on what program you choose.

Human chorionic gonadotropin or HCG is a naturally occurring hormone that the body creates to protect and nourish the fetus, by taking the stored fat reserves and transforming them into nutrition for the placenta.

Ever wonder how malnourished moms in countries with famine like Somalia and Ethiopia give birth to healthy- weight babies? That’s the HCG hormone at work.

Fact: There are three types of fat: structural, which is needed to protect our internal organs; normal reserve fat, which supplies our body with energy when calorie intake is too low; and our mortal enemy, abnormal fat, which is responsible for those bulges on our hips, thighs, butt, and stomach and has no useful purpose for us.

Abnormal fat is the only kind HCG drains, and that is why the H2 treatment is very promising for treating the obese.

If you just diet without the HCG, the body will not discriminate among which fats to use up, so you end up burning normal and structural with the abnormal.

If your diet is lacking in proteins and vitamins, which is likely in an unsupervised low-calorie diet, you destroy lean muscle mass and risk organ damage from the burning of protective structural fat, so when you come back to eating normally, weight gain comes back fast as abnormal fat.

500 calories a day

What is it, and how does it work? The H2 program is a second-generation modified HCG treatment consisting of 20-40 daily H2 injections with the Aivee Diet, where one consumes no more than 500 calories a day.

The meals will be delivered to your house daily like the South Beach Diet, so food preparation is nothing to worry about. The program is divided into three phases.

In Phase 1, you are told to build up your fat reserves so you get to eat as much of everything you want for the first two days with the first two daily injections. In Phase 2, for the next 20-40 days, you are on the Aivee diet and still get your daily injections.

Injections are P2,000 per shot, and you have a choice of going to the clinic daily or having a nurse go to your house to administer them. You absolutely cannot go out of town during the entire program, unless you are willing to inject yourself daily.

Phase 3 is the maintenance part of the program, where you change your lifestyle by eating less and healthier, and increasing physical activity. You only get the first two days of Aivee diet on this phase, then the rest is up to you. Eat normally, but limit your sugar and starches. Check last week’s article on how Aivee adjusted her lifestyle and eating habits to stay thin successfully.

Both men and women can try the H2 program, and it can be repeated after six weeks if more weight loss is needed.

How is this different from other HCG or H2 injections others offer? This modified version gives more consistent weight loss throughout the days of the program, and minimizes hunger pangs that one may get with the low-calorie Aivee diet.

The patients do not feel weak or food-deprived, so the experience is not at all unpleasant.

Each daily injection is performed by the doctor or registered nurse, and the diet is prepared by celebrity chef Florabel Co.

The charge for the injections and the diet are separate, so you may want to make sure how much you will end up paying.

Call 4033245 or 5562533, Fort Bonifacio branch; Alabang, 822-1546. For readers based in Singapore, call +656-2352343.