If you haven’t read HCG 2.0, it’s all about clean eating or what is also referred to as a whole food diet. Sure, there is the loading phase, similar to that of the original HCG diet protocol, which consists of two days of over-consuming on high fat foods in order to jump start the diet, but after that’s it’s veggies, lean protein and adequate fats.

What you need to avoid are the foods common to the Standard American Diet, appropriately accronym’d SAD. SAD foods are highly processed and are designed more for shelf life rather than your health. That means they’re full of preservatives so they can sit on store shelves for years at at time. It’s also why you’re so often told to only shop the perimeters. This is where you’ll find everything fresh. This is, in fact, good advice in regard to clean eating. Shop the perimeters. If it will go bad in the next 2 weeks, it's ok.

One thing I will say is that if you’re accustomed to a high sugar diet, especially high-fructose corn syrup like that found in soda, you may struggle a bit in the early stages of your HCG protocol as you wean yourself off of these processed sugars. Headaches and achy joints are not uncommon in the first week to two weeks.

My advice is to only eat it if it came from a plant or an animal and you know exactly what all the ingredients are. Your body will thank you.