Has anyone ever had any luck with diet pills?
I bought some pills called Total Lean today from the General Nutrition Center... supposed to boost your metabolism and give you energy and it is ephedrine free. The guy working there said it is the best one on the market. So I will start them tomorrow and see what happens.
I truly do not recomment diet pills to anyone-whether or not they contain ephedra. If you lose weight with diet pills-you will have a much harder time keeping the weight off when you stop taking them. I am most against them though because of the potential side effects. In the 1980's everyone thought the original Dexatrim was just great, and when bad side effects, heart attacks, and other problems started being associated with it, they took it off the market and changed formulas. After that, up until this past year the big thing was ephedra-now problems are being associated with it, so this year everything is advertised as "ephedra free!" So what is in it now, and when will people start having bad effects from these new ingredients??? The diet pill industry makes tons of money on desperate people wanting to lose weight-they don't care what these pills are doing to our bodies-and the workers at GNC-it is their job to push these supplements and pills at us. (From my experience-I know more about the ingredients and side effects in diet pills, protein shakes, herbs, vitamins, and such than those GNC workers do.)
The best way to go is to get a control on your eating, eat foods that are as least processed as possible-and to get regular exercise. What is most important is to set reasonable goals-we did not gain 20 pounds in a month-we cannot expect or aim to lose it in a month. Slow and steady wins the race.
Getting fit is up to us and whether or not we are willing to commit to exercise and eating right for the rest of our lives-no pill, lotion, or gadget is going to do it for us.
I personally think that the money spent on these pills would be better spent on a gym membership, a new exercise video, or a subscription to a magazine like Fitness or Shape-where you can get great information on all aspects of fitness and nutrition.
Please be careful with the pills-your body is the only one you will ever have.
Aphil
I completely agree! Also, I'd like to mention that you should not rely on the salespersons comments. They get their information from the manufacturers, which of course train them to sell their products. The information is biased with the intent to sell.
Like Aphil said, no diet pill actually makes you lose weight. The most they can do is behave as a stimulent and possibly affect your appetite. Controlling what you eat, and increasing your activity level is up to you, and those are the only things that can make you lose weight.
The active ingredient in Total Lean is caffeine , with a 2 tablet dosage providing the same amount of caffeine that is contained in 2 or 3 cups of coffee. The other ingredients (black tea extract, grape skin extract, ginger root extract, grape seed extract, and dill weed extract) have not been proven to assist in weight loss in any manner. These are just the latest "miracle" products that are included in this and other weight loss supplements based on some very unclinical observations. Some of these items ARE antioxidants and can be helpful in the treatment or prevention of heart disease and cancer. Unfortunatley, the Total Lean label doesn't tell us how much of these antioxidants are in each serving, so they may not contain enough to benefit a bird. Also, since these products are unregulated, they may contain any amount of any of these ingredients, from a miniscule fraction of one thing, to dangerously high levels of another. They may also contain contaminants.
Total Lean comes with a 14-Day Meal and Exercise Plan. THIS might help you to lose the weight, but you don't need to buy the product for that.
By the way, I'd be leary of ANY herbal supplement, whether it contans ephedra or not. I received an email from a woman that tried the stimulent free Leptoprin last week and she was hospitalized. The description of her problems was very bad, and I'm requesting permission from her, to publish her letter on the site. Their attempts to get an ingredient list from customer service were met with hostility, and would only release it if the ER doctor faxed them a request for it. I won't go into any more detail at the moment, but let's just say this woman's experience should be a warning to anyone to avoid herbal diet products. I'll post more about this later, after discussing it with her again.
The main sales guy at my local GNC actually tells people who ask about this or that 'fat burner' pill "don't bother, they don't work".
He's obviously (from his physique) a bodybuilder with a great sense of humor. I rarely buy anything there, but when I'm at the mall, I like to stop by and say howdy to him.
Oh BTW...most of the time the people asking BUY THE PILLS ANYWAY! Amazing!
Something else I wanted to say is - the supplement industry (heck, the diet industry in general!) spends WAY more on marketing and advertising than they do on product research.
They have the best people in the advertising business working for them - they KNOW what to say in those ads to entice even the most skeptical person to whip out their wallets. There are lots of people out there looking for the magic pill. Folks, it doesn't exist - the magic is changing your diet and exercise...PERMANENTLY. That's what's worked for me!
And about those "Before-and-after" photos you see in the Hydroxycut, Xenadrine, and other advertisements...here's a snippet of a most interesting article...
Quote:
Apparently, the appeal of before and after pics is a lesson that plenty of other supplement companies have learned. Just this past week, the Federal Trade Commission released a lengthy report entitled, "Weight Loss Advertising: An Analysis of Current Trends." I've read the all 52 pages and suffice it to say, the FTC isn't too thrilled with the state of the art. The report, rife with statistics, studied the advertising of some 200 companies and determined that they use any one or combination of nine different techniques (or ploys), as the FTC strongly indicates.
Among these categories are claims of fast results with no diet or exercise; use of natural ingredients; promises of long-term results; guaranteed results with preposterous claims; use of testimonials; and, you guessed it, use of before and after pics.
Here's what the FTC study had to say specifically on the subject of before and after pics:
Before and after pics usually fall into one of two categories: (1) the illustrated personal testimonial, and (2) the clinical comparison of isolated body portions. The former type often contains the following elements:
Before picture: Snapshot quality photograph of the subject that incorporates poor posture, neutral face expression, unkempt hair, unfashionable attire, poor lighting, and washed out skin tones.
After picture: Brightly lit (sometimes studio portrait quality) pose of smiling subject in fashionable attire, shoulders held back, tummy tucked in, with a stylish hairstyle and carefully applied makeup.
...often the only discernible difference in the before picture and the after picture is a change in posture and body control. In the before picture, the subject's shoulders are slumped, the abdominal muscles relaxed, and the pelvis thrust forward to emphasize body fat. The after picture shows the subject holding in his/her abdomen and/or holding back his/her shoulders to emphasize lean body mass. A close examination of the before picture in this type of ad raises the question of whether the subject needed to lose weight and suggests that little or no weight was actually lost.
Some before-and-after photographs clearly appear to have been altered, usually by placing an image of the after subject's head on the photographic image of another (very obese) subject's body.
Remarkably astute observations by the ol' FTC, don't you think? Granted, we made some similar observations about before and after pics used by one of our competitors before, specifically, pointing out that one of the people used in their ads as a "before" was actually pregnant. That little fact, however, wasn't disclosed in the ad...
Look how easy it is! The following "before and after" pics show T-man Davin Ramatour, who first appeared in Chris Shugart's Dawg School column in issue #105. Davin, looking sallow and portly in his before pics, used our new fat burner for just 6 weeks and look at the amazing transformation:
"6 weeks ago I weighed 240 pounds. Whenever I went to the local Sea World, people would become alarmed, throw a net over me, and dump me back into the walrus exhibit. It wasn't too bad, though. Got kind of friendly with one of the females and we dated for awhile. After I started using Biotest's new product, though, I lost a lot of blubber and I became grossly unappealing to her because, well, you know, walruses like blubber. Anyhow, thanks to Biotest, I was able to find the courage to ask out the girl who touts buckets of mackerel to our exhibit. We'll soon be moving in together, far, far away from any marine mammals."
Okay, so maybe you noticed the dates on the side of the film. The truth is, the before pics were taken about 5 minutes before the after pics, or as long as it took Davin to change his shorts, put up a different background, and readjust the lighting.
You can see how easy it is to do an ad that appeals to products of a failed educational system. So why don't we do it?
Maybe it's because we continue to make the mistake of trying to appeal to smart people, people who make value judgments by using their brain instead of some old dried up sponge that kinda' looks like a brain.
I know this is going to sound self-serving and a bit self righteous and maybe even holier-than-thou, but we don't want to make a living by courting dumb people. I know it would be oh-so easy to really spew out the BS and really rake in the dough, but darn it, we're the ones who want to go to sleep at night without having to wrestle with demons—big guys who'd no doubt emerge from our subconscience to take huge dumps of steaming guilt on the upholstery of our brains.
Hey Guys,
I don't mean to be mean, but this is why I don't post that often. As soon as I post, everyone is jumping on me... Isn't there a nicer way to tell me I'm wrong?
Ramsgirl, I'm sorry if you got your feelings hurt, I am sure that wasn't anybody's intention! I promise, all the negativity spoken here is directed totally to the manufacturers that are making billions from pills and potions, and not toward you, I promise!
That's very true! We get so frustrated because the manufacturers and sales staff are so well trained at making the public think we need their products to lose weight. We get especially offended when new or young dieters such as yourself are exposed to their pitches, because it can set you up for a lifetime of diet problems. In the end, the best way to lose weight is just through diet and exercise. No pills necessary. They are not going to tell you that, because it cuts into their profit margin. We do lash out at the manufacturers often, as they give us a lot to lash out at. I'm really sorry you thought it was directed towards you, because it wasn't. But I can see where we came off very strong, and I'm sorry that it came out the way it did.
I was just reading my mom's People magazine, and saw an ad for "Xenadrine EFX - No Ephedra!" and the picture on the page, looked promising. So I checked out the webpage, and saw some of the "testimonials", and you could definitely tell some of the pics were either doctored, or people were sticking their guts out and then sucking in... it's sad, really.
Diet Pills
