What to Eat on the HCG Diet: Food Lists & Phases

The HCG diet is built around an extremely low-calorie eating plan, roughly 500 calories a day, paired with doses of human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone produced during pregnancy. The diet follows a strict phased structure, and the food list during its core weight-loss phase is one of the most restrictive of any popular diet. Understanding what each phase allows is straightforward, but the safety profile of eating so little deserves equal attention.

The Four Phases of the HCG Diet

The protocol traces back to a 1954 manuscript by British physician A.T.W. Simeons, who proposed that HCG injections combined with severe calorie restriction could target abnormal fat stores. Modern versions of the diet follow essentially the same structure, broken into four phases.

• Phase 1 (Loading): Two days of eating as much high-fat, high-calorie food as possible while beginning HCG doses. The idea is to “stock up” on fat reserves before the restriction starts.
• Phase 2 (Weight Loss): The core phase, lasting three to six weeks. Daily intake drops to about 500 calories, following a tightly defined food list. HCG continues throughout.
• Phase 3 (Stabilization): Three weeks after stopping HCG. Calories gradually increase, but sugar and starch remain off-limits. The goal is to hold the weight lost during Phase 2.
• Phase 4 (Maintenance): A gradual return to broader eating, with the expectation that you monitor your weight and pull back if it climbs.

Phase 2 is where the diet lives or dies. It is the longest, most restrictive phase, and it is the one people have the most questions about.

The Phase 2 Food List

During the weight-loss phase, you eat two main meals a day, lunch and dinner, each built from one protein, one vegetable, one fruit, and one small serving of bread. Breakfast is limited to coffee or tea. Here is what the original protocol permits.

Proteins

Each meal includes roughly 100 grams (about 3.5 ounces) of lean protein, weighed raw. Allowed options include chicken breast with all visible fat removed, lean beef, veal, and certain types of white fish. Shrimp, crab, and lobster are also on the list. Fatty cuts, salmon, eel, herring, and dried or pickled fish are excluded. Eggs are sometimes substituted, typically one whole egg plus three egg whites, though this was a later addition not in Simeons’ original text.

The protein must be prepared without added oil, butter, or fat of any kind. Grilling, boiling, and baking on a rack so fat drips away are the standard cooking methods. Marinating in anything containing oil or sugar is not allowed.

Vegetables

One serving of a single vegetable per meal, not a mixed salad. The allowed list is specific: spinach, chard, chicory, beet greens, green lettuce, tomatoes, celery, fennel, onions, red radishes, cucumbers, asparagus, and cabbage. You pick one per meal. Mixing two vegetables in the same meal is technically against the original rules, though many modern practitioners relax this as long as the total calorie count stays the same.

Starchy vegetables like potatoes, corn, peas, and carrots are excluded. So are beans and lentils. The vegetables on the approved list are chosen primarily because they are extremely low in calories and carbohydrates.

Fruits

One fruit serving per meal, chosen from a short list: one apple, one orange, a handful of strawberries (roughly six to eight medium berries), or half a grapefruit. Bananas, grapes, dried fruits, and tropical fruits like mango or pineapple are not allowed. Some versions of the diet permit the fruit serving to be eaten between meals as a snack rather than with the meal itself.

Bread

This is the smallest component. Each meal allows either one grissini breadstick or one piece of Melba toast. Both are thin, dry, and contain very few calories. No other bread, crackers, or grain products are permitted during Phase 2.

Drinks and Seasonings

Water is unlimited and encouraged, with a common recommendation of at least two liters per day. Coffee and tea are allowed in any amount, but only with stevia or saccharin as sweetener. Milk is not permitted, even a splash. The juice of one lemon per day is allowed for cooking or flavoring water. Salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard powder, garlic, basil, parsley, thyme, and marjoram are permitted. Oil, butter, and cream are not.

Why the Calorie Count Is So Extreme

When you add up the allowed foods, two meals on this plan land somewhere between 450 and 550 calories on most days. That is roughly a quarter of what an average adult needs. Simeons argued that HCG would mobilize stored fat to make up the energy difference, meaning your body would draw on its own reserves rather than breaking down muscle. This claim was central to his justification for such a severe deficit.

The research does not support it. A review of HCG diet studies found very few efficacy trials, and only one out of six identified studies showed a meaningful difference in weight loss that could be attributed to the hormone rather than the calorie restriction alone.¹ Double-blind trials, where neither the participants nor the researchers knew who was getting real HCG and who was getting a placebo, have failed to find that HCG offers any weight-loss advantage over a saline injection.² Any weight loss on the diet appears to come from eating 500 calories a day, which will produce weight loss with or without HCG.

The FDA, the American Medical Association, and the American Society of Bariatric Physicians have all taken positions against HCG as a weight-loss aid. The FDA has specifically warned consumers that over-the-counter HCG products, including drops and pellets sold online, are illegal and have not been shown to be effective.

What Phase 3 and Phase 4 Look Like

When Phase 2 ends, you stop taking HCG and enter a three-week stabilization period. Calories increase, though most versions of the protocol do not specify an exact number. The main rules are to avoid sugar and starch entirely while slowly reintroducing foods that were off-limits.

Fats and oils come back in Phase 3. You can cook with butter or olive oil, eat cheese, and have fattier cuts of meat. Nuts and avocados are reintroduced. The forbidden category is anything with a high sugar or starch content: bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, pastries, candy, and sugary drinks remain excluded for all three weeks.

The daily weigh-in becomes important during this phase. The protocol’s instruction is that if your weight climbs more than two pounds above your last Phase 2 weight, you do a “steak day,” eating nothing all day and then having a large steak with a raw apple or tomato for dinner. This is meant to course-correct quickly.

Phase 4 is the least defined. You gradually add starches and sugars back in small amounts, monitoring your weight. In theory, Phase 4 lasts indefinitely and transitions into normal eating. In practice, many people struggle here because the diet has not taught sustainable eating habits, only extreme restriction followed by sudden reintroduction.

Gallstone Risk and Very-Low-Calorie Diets

One of the more concrete health risks of eating 500 calories a day is gallstone formation. When you drastically cut fat intake, the gallbladder does not contract and empty as frequently, which allows cholesterol in the bile to crystallize into stones. This is not unique to the HCG diet; it is a well-documented risk of any very-low-calorie diet.

A large matched cohort study comparing people on very-low-calorie diets to those on more moderate low-calorie diets found that the very-low-calorie group had roughly three and a half times the rate of gallstones requiring hospital care. About 60 percent of those gallstone cases led to surgical removal of the gallbladder.³ Even after adjusting for how much weight people lost, the risk remained significantly higher in the very-low-calorie group. Given that the HCG diet’s Phase 2 sits squarely in very-low-calorie territory and restricts fat more aggressively than most clinical VLCDs, this risk applies directly.

Refeeding Syndrome After Stopping

A less commonly discussed danger is what can happen when you start eating normally again after weeks at 500 calories. Refeeding syndrome occurs when a malnourished or severely calorie-restricted person suddenly increases food intake, causing dangerous shifts in electrolytes like potassium and phosphorus. The body has adapted to running on minimal fuel, and a rapid increase in carbohydrates triggers insulin release that pulls these minerals into cells, depleting them in the blood.

A published case report describes a young man who developed severe muscle weakness two days after ending an HCG diet. His potassium and phosphorus levels had dropped to dangerous lows, and he developed rhabdomyolysis, a condition where muscle tissue breaks down and releases proteins into the blood that can damage the kidneys. His symptoms resolved after his electrolytes were corrected in the hospital, but the case illustrates a risk that most HCG diet guides never mention.⁴

Refeeding syndrome is most commonly associated with patients recovering from anorexia or long periods of starvation, but it can happen to anyone who has been eating at starvation-level calories for several weeks. The HCG diet’s Phase 2, at 500 calories daily for up to six weeks, creates exactly those conditions. If you have followed this diet and plan to transition off it, increasing calories gradually and having your electrolytes monitored by a doctor is a reasonable precaution.

What Happens to Your Metabolism

Severe calorie restriction triggers a metabolic response that goes beyond simply burning fewer calories because you weigh less. Your body actively reduces its energy expenditure below what would be predicted by the change in body size alone. Researchers call this adaptive thermogenesis, and it kicks in fast.

One study measuring 24-hour energy expenditure found that after just one week of calorie restriction, participants were burning on average about 178 fewer calories per day than their change in body composition would predict. People whose metabolisms slowed the most during that first week went on to lose less weight over the following six weeks, even though they were eating the same restricted diet.⁵ A separate study confirmed that this metabolic adaptation is a meaningful predictor of how long it takes people to reach their weight-loss goals, adding about 46 fewer calories per day burned on average after weight loss.⁶

For HCG dieters, this matters in two ways. During Phase 2, the metabolic slowdown means weight loss can stall even at 500 calories, which is psychologically brutal and often leads people to cut even further or extend the phase. After the diet, the suppressed metabolism makes regain more likely because your body is burning less energy than someone of the same size who never dieted so aggressively. The more severe the calorie deficit, the stronger the adaptive response tends to be.

Nutritional Gaps at 500 Calories

It is essentially impossible to meet your body’s micronutrient needs on 500 calories a day, no matter how carefully you choose from the approved food list. The diet provides no dairy, no whole grains, no legumes, no nuts, and only a narrow selection of fruits and vegetables. Key nutrients that fall short include calcium, iron, zinc, B vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin E, and essential fatty acids.

Most clinical very-low-calorie diets (the medically supervised kind used in obesity treatment programs) are formulated as meal-replacement shakes specifically designed to deliver adequate vitamins and minerals despite the low calorie count. The HCG diet’s food list was not designed with this in mind. Simeons’ protocol predates modern understanding of micronutrient requirements, and the original text does not address supplementation in any systematic way.

Some HCG diet providers recommend a daily multivitamin, but a standard over-the-counter multivitamin does not fully compensate for the absence of dietary fat (needed to absorb fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K) or the low total protein intake relative to what is needed to preserve lean mass during rapid weight loss. If you are following this diet, a multivitamin is better than nothing, but it does not make a 500-calorie whole-food plan nutritionally complete.

Why the HCG Component Persists

Given that controlled trials have not found HCG to add any weight-loss benefit beyond the calorie restriction itself, why does the hormone remain central to the diet’s identity? Part of the answer is psychological. Taking something, whether it is an injection, a sublingual drop, or a pellet, creates a sense of active treatment. You are not just starving yourself; you are on a protocol. That framing makes the suffering feel purposeful and can improve adherence to the calorie restriction, at least for the duration of Phase 2.

There is also a commercial incentive. HCG products, clinics, and coaching programs generate revenue precisely because they offer something beyond “just eat less.” The hormone is the product. Removing it would leave nothing to sell except a calorie target that anyone could follow for free. This dynamic has kept HCG weight-loss products on the market despite repeated regulatory actions, with new formulations and delivery methods appearing as old ones are pulled.

The original clinical studies all used HCG injections, which require a prescription. Most products sold online today are homeopathic formulations that contain little to no actual HCG. The FDA has stated that these products are fraudulent and that homeopathic HCG is not a recognized treatment for anything.¹ If you are considering this diet and believe the HCG is doing something, the controlled evidence suggests it is not. The food list and the calorie count are the entire mechanism.

Common Modifications People Make

In practice, many people who attempt the HCG diet end up deviating from the original Simeons protocol. Some of the most common modifications include raising the daily calorie target to 800 or even 1,000 calories, which is still very low but somewhat less extreme. Others expand the vegetable list to include things like broccoli, bell peppers, and zucchini, which were not on the original list but are nutritionally similar to the approved options.

Mixing vegetables within a meal, adding a small amount of healthy fat like a teaspoon of olive oil, and substituting Greek yogurt for one of the protein servings are all departures from the original rules that practitioners sometimes allow. Some modern HCG clinics have updated the protocol to include a broader range of lean proteins such as turkey breast and bison. These changes generally make the diet slightly less nutritionally barren, though they also move it further from the protocol that was studied, limited as that research was.

The more a person modifies the diet, the more it starts to resemble a standard very-low-calorie diet without HCG, which raises the obvious question of why the HCG framework is needed at all. A medically supervised VLCD with proper nutritional formulation, electrolyte monitoring, and gradual refeeding guidance would achieve the same caloric deficit with considerably more safety infrastructure in place.