[PearFreak]

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[nelie]

Have you read the sticky about hoodia?
http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42591

Basic synopsis is the specific Hoodia plant in Africa is a wonderful natural appetite suppressant when the leaves of the plant are chewed on. There are similar plants but don't have appetite suppressant qualities. One company has the patent on trying to extract the appetite suppressant qualities from the plant but they have been unsuccessful so far. So the only way currently is to chew the leaves of the plant which is only available in Africa. There are currently no products on the market that contain 'real' Hoodia.

So how do you get all these products with "Hoodia"? Who knows. Some of them may contain parts of the similar plant but not the actual plant. Some of them probably don't contain anything remotely related to Hoodia. What we do know is "Hoodia" pills contain lots of fiber which naturally fills you up. which means you could either eat foods with lots of fiber in them or you could take inexpensive fiber supplements.

Do you find hunger is one of your issues? If so, I would highly recommend looking at the foods you currently eat and see if they are filling. If you want to try a fiber supplement, there are plenty of the market including things like metamucil and benefiber.

[kitten]

i had used hoodia a couple of years ago, with success. i lost weight, but then stopped taking them because i wasnt enjoying food at all. i know thats stupid but it was how i felt at the time.
i plan on trying it again. in the first few days i used it, i had a lot of burping, but it eventually passes. i got cheap hoodia at walmart and took less than the recommended dose. it was still effective for me.

[Beautiful Ace]

I ordered those pills once when I was 16... They didn't do anything for me.

Edit - I would assume there is more than one pill that contains hoodia, but I don't remember what the one i tried was called. It was a clear capsule with brown sand looking stuff inside.

[imula]

I also tried Hoodia - bought on the Internet- didn't do anything whatsoever for me. Maybe it was just chalk!!!!

[imula]

Did anybody have long-term success with the Cambridge Diet, ie keeping the weight off???

[BelovedImzadi]

I like Phytobase Hoodia Delite. It's a low calorie drink mix that contains Hoodia. When I was using that I did feel like it was surpressing my appetite. Unfortunately it is too expensive for me to use regularly.

TrimSpa did nothing for me. I tried some other Hoodia supplements that also did not do any good.

[Suzanne 3FC]

It's not really hoodia in the Phytobase product, they pack it with other products such as fibers that swell and mimic a full feeling.

Have you heard the latest news about hoodia? First Pfizer Pharmaceuticals pulled out after spending millions of dollars and could not create a hoodia product that actually worked. Then Unilever (major company, also produces SlimFast) jumped in and spent millions more. A couple of months ago, they thought they finally had a viable product they could market. However, safety tests on humans failed. The subjects became very ill, and none had significant impact on appetite and calorie reduction. Unilever has officially pulled out.

If these two major and very reputable corporations spent millions and millions of dollars and still couldn't create a hoodia product that worked, why would all the mass marketed unknown brands be any better? It's all a marketing scam

The only known way for hoodia gordonii to work is by eating a chunk of the fresh plant, about 4 inches worth. Even then, there have been no safety tests. Bushmen don't exactly undergo routine medical exams and monitoring. They also don't eat it every day, it's something used occasionally when they go on long hunts in the desert, and not for weight loss.

The whole hoodia scam industry bothers me They take advantage of the rest of us.

[Amarantha2]

I also think the people who naturally use hoodia gordonii as an appetite suppresant have historically used it to aid in times of famine. I doubt if they were interested in losing weight during those times, just in surviving.

Also I think there's a placebo effect in some of these weight loss/appetite suppresant supplements. We are looking for something that will aid us in the journey we want so hard to succeed in, a magic pill that will take the edge off our appetite, maybe. Some promising supplements rise up out of the field and some scientist studies it and says, "Well, maybe ..." ... companies market it, stories get told around the internet by totally sincere people who feel it might have helped them (which could well be true, who knows) and so it goes.

To me, it's just really a bad idea to put a lot of over the counter supplements in one's only body on a well-maybe basis. Eating a chunk of a plant that your forefathers ate for untold generations and that grows in the area you live in and has proven effects thought to be beneficial to control hunger for very real reasons that everyone is familiar with is a lot different than standing in Wal-Mart with a box of pills in your hand about which you can't possibly really know exactly what is in it or exactly what effect it is going to have in YOUR body just seems dangerous to me.

It's a jungle out there, best be safe and just count calories and workout.

[Goldfish085]

I tried a over the counter hoodia supplement I got from CVS Pharmacy a year or so ago. It didn't do me any good...I was just as hungry as before!

[AlphaGal]

i've used hoodia and it works!
i got it from a local vitamin store. i had to ask the person behind the counter to give it to me. don't remember the brand...wish i did