The Amazing Hcg diet

A while back, I wrote about the so-called hCG 'diet' drops: homeopathic drops that might just possibly (depending on dilution) contain a molecule of human chorionic gonadotropin (or maybe not), and which supposedly help one to lose weight.

Ooops, nearly forgot to mention that you need to accompany your daily dose of magic water with the greatly reduced food intake that is all you get on a 500 calories/day diet...

Putting aside the nonsense of pseudo-scientific "remedies" (!), one thing bothers me a little about medical assistance for weight loss is that they seem "only" give a short-term reduction in weight (you can't keep taking the pills, etc.) and the long-term success seems to rest on people maintaining their lowered weight. I recall seeing stats for showing that, sure, the patients had great improvements at 6 weeks (or whatever date it was) as the company advertises but if you kept following the patients' progress about 50% had returned to close to their original weight after 12 weeks (or whatever it was). Further inspection suggested that those that the treatment succeeded was due to their maintaining the weight loss and that there was a continual "loss" of patients back to their original weight, so that after a long period of time relatively few had a low weight. It seems to me that, in principle at least, doctors might screen patients: if they can't maintain a diet+exercise program, you could argue there'd be little point in offering them medical assistance as they'd be unlikely to maintain the loss. If they did maintain a diet+exercise program successfully, you could point out that if they just kept that up they'll get there, even if it takes longer. Read a lot of this on this site