Learn which 2 weight loss diet pills do seem to work and are approved by the FDA as such.
Who better than a Skinny Cook to tell you which pill works and which one doesn’t…Wrong! The people you should ask are the people you know and have tried them out. If you know a person who is taking diet pills and who swears they are working, go and investigate:
- has the person changed his or her lifestyle in any other way than using the pills
- is the substance FDA approved and
- what reliable research has been done?
Reliable research means e.g. by the FDA or by well known entities, and not by "Dr. Smith" who got his certificate online and is living offshore selling… the same product he is talking about.
Reliable also means: does everybody agree with what the FDA claims? Natural sweetener Stevia has had a huge FDA controversy: one can imagine that the old artificial sweeteners will try to keep their market safe by influencing FDA not to approve Stevia. Therefore check other countries what they have to say about any food supplement before you want to give it a try.
Do ask your doctor for extra advice: it’s obvious you don’t want to take caffeine pills when you have heart palpitations, lesser obvious interaction from supplements and prescription drugs could be revealed by your doctor.
How do diet pills work?
Weight loss pills could "work" as follows:
- laxative: meaning what you eat will leave your system faster and your body has less time to absorb all the nutrients. Very dangerous if you don’t increase your water intake and you could loose out on having your body taken out sufficient nutrients to keep yourself healthy.
- appetite suppressant: a smart approach: if you have less appetite, you will eat less hence gain less weight or lose the weight. many times caffeine and ephedrine will be the active factor for this. However, FDA considers ephedra as dangerous and caffeine in the long run will increase the bodily production of cortisol which in turn will stimulate appetite more than the caffeine can reduce it.
- blocking absorption of fat: the "I can indulge in fat food"-pil because 30% of the fat will not be absorbed. I have seen friends taking these pills and they do notice that their toilet bowl is quite greasy after eating the pill (not to go into more details…). I am not in favor of these kind of pills: again: it is not clear what else they mess around with in your body.
According to the FDA, possibly safe are chitosan, chromium, CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), green tea extract and guar gum. For Hoodia, that claims to decrease your appetite, the FDA has "insufficient information" (go figure: a supplement that is so widely sold, and the FDA hasn’t made a study yet).
From the above, the following 2 are likely to have some positive effect on weight loss:
- CLA, by helping to reduce body fat and build muscles
- green tea extract, by increasing your fat and calorie metabolism and decreasing your appetite.
Most important conclusion to make is that there is no miracle weight loss diet pill that will get you slimmer without you changing your lifestyle nor changing your food intake. It is sad that people want to make you believe that dieting is something that can be found inside a pill.
You must have seen "The Biggest Loser" where it shows week after week that when you exercise more than what you eat, you will lose weight without pills, without surgery. Know what you eat, know why you eat and if it is for any other reason than hunger, then look deeper in yourself what you are hiding behind the food. Bottom line: losing weight is burning more than you take in.
