Got Calipers?

A few days ago, I posted that I seemed to drop about two pounds every three or four days. In between, however, my weight loss was not unlike the "loss you would expect without the HCG."  That is, I was seeing my actual loss mirror my projected loss, which I got from subtracting my caloric intake from my daily caloric need - basic 'man on the street' dieting.  I was looking at these trends to help answer my overarching question: does HCG work?  Put differently, I have been driving my entire analysis on the premise that it was the pounds that would ultimately tell the story.

That is, until Christian Walker of http://officialhcgdietx.com left me this post:
You mention that you lost the weight you'd expect to lose on a 500 calorie a day diet without hCG. HCG Does not boost weight loss. It is the 500 calorie a day diet that causes weight loss. hCG's roll in this is to redirect the hypothalamus to use your body fat as the fuel source to make up the calorie deficit. The real question you should be asking is not "Does hCG make me lose more weight?" but "Is my primary weight loss due to fat loss and not lean muscle tissue." The problem with very low calorie diets has never been the weight loss, it has been what kind of tissue has been lost. Without hCG you should experience considerable loss of lean muscle tissue and show signs of malnutrition. Including fatigue, dizziness, weakness in the long muscles of the legs, lack of concentration, and general malaise. With hCG you should not experience any of these issues because your weight loss should be primarily from fat. So do not use the rate of weight loss as a benchmark when determining the effectiveness of the hCG diet. Instead use calipers and calculate your lean bodymass to body fat ratio and repeat this every week to determine the effectiveness of the hCG diet. One last note. Since lean muscle tissue is 4 times as dense as fat. You will lose weight faster on just a 500 calorie a day diet than you will on a 500 calorie a day diet with hCG since you will be losing a lot more lean muscle tissue. I would also like to caution anyone who experiences any of the symptoms I have mentioned, no matter what diet they are on, to discontinue what they are doing since such symptoms may indicate that they are doing damage to vital organs such as their heart. 
Wait wait WEIGHT!  It was the calories that caused the loss?  Not the HCG?  My whole understanding of this nourish/nutrient debate was that Side 1 said it was the HCG and Side 2 said it was the calories.  Was this a Side 1 defection?  But Chris seemed like a pretty knowledgeable dude, if his web page was any indicator of what he had going on.

So I read it again.  And that's when I think I finally heard him (and I take full responsibility if I misinterpreted Chris's comments):  on a 500/day CU diet, one can expect to lose with or without HCG.  With HCG, a body looks to fat to make up the caloric deficit; without HCG, it looks to muscle tissue.  Thus, pure scale numbers aren't enough to answer The Big Question one way or the other.  To do that, one needs to know WHAT is lost, not just THAT a loss occurred.  More simply put:  whether I lose a lot or a little, for the data to be useful in any conclusion-forming way, I have to know the composition of that loss, be it fat, muscle, or both.

Wow.  When I finally connected, it was like learning that man really didn't evolve from lower forms of hominids (I know, I know, I'm asking for it).  While the scale numbers have value, the real marker has to be our change in body composition.  If I'm not collecting that - and I'm not - I can report back with a zillion pound loss.  However, unless I can point to the source of that loss, the loss alone proves or disproves zilch.

Way deep, dude.  Mariana Trench deep.  Love that; many thanks, sir.

At the end of my post, I casually noted that I would get my body fat measured.  However, message received:  from now on, that won't be a casual gauge, it will be among THE critical variables I use to measure effect.  My new calipers, measuring tape, and body fat scale all arrive next week.