does anybody take any supplement along with their diet and exercise? i dont mean a miracle pill or anything like that, but things like hydroxycut and acai berry all claim to help weight loss along with diet and exercise, i know there is a group about this but i was just wondering what your thoughts were...

i did the acai berry pill last year along with diet and exercise and it helped, i am thinking about re introducing it...

Ever notice how a pill is never on the market for more than a year or two? They're all scams.

Moreover, even if they do help, they're definitely not healthy and the side effects are not worth it... Alli is probably the least dangerous and it makes you lose control of your bowels! I'm sorry... defecating in public is definitely not worth it!

My doctor put me on an appetite suppressant that worked WONDERS. It didn't make me jittery or anything funky at all...it just made me feel satisfied on way less food than normal.

I wouldn't touch anything on the shelves, but if you need something to suppress your appetite, check with your doctor.

Agreed with Angee on the on the shelves point. Most of those pills are either a. packed with caffeine and will make you so jittery you will "lose" weight or b. act like diuretics. I took hydroxycut back in highschool and it was awful. They tell you to drink so much water because you WILL end up dehydrated. It was mess. Racing heart rate. No thanks. The only thing I take is a simple multivitamin. If you're looking for some sort of appetitie supressant I'd try green tea. I hear it works wonders. As for me, I'm a caffeine girl myself. Diet pop or coffee. Really good when I'm craving and kind of hungry but at my food limit.

I won't do it. My best friend was on something for a while (it was blue, i can't remember what it was called) and it made her moody and super sensitive. If she missed a pill, it was an automatic migraine from the lack of caffiene. I don't want to be tied to something like that. I know some people swear by them, but I'd rather up my work-outs....

im pretty against it personally, because im willing to maintain diet and exercise, but not pill taking for weight loss and I suspect that once you stop those things you gain it back, if they made you lose anything at all. My PT said he wasnt a fan of suppliments either. I think that really the only thing you might consider taking if you are restricting your diet would be a multivitamin

My opinion is the same as the others in this thread. Personally, I also feel people try to medicate their problems away too much. Taking a pill to surpress your appetite may help you lose weight but what happens when you go to maintain and get off the pill? You'll either have to be hunger or live on a pill for the rest of your life. Neither of those options sounds appealing to me.

diet plus exercise plus sleep plus water - and THAT'S ALL! Just my opinion, but this isn't a "diet". It's a "adjust my lifestyle". And pills certainly aren't a part of my short term plan, let alone my long term one.

When you tried the acai berry along with diet and exercise and say it helped, did you do it without as well to compare? And did you double blind, so you didn't know whether you were taking the pill or a placebo, just to make sure your results weren't as a result of you working harder because you expected a result? There's a reason why the fine print on the ads for all those "weight loss supplements" says "may be effective when combined with diet and exercise. Results not typical".

If there was something that worked, had no bad side effects and was readily available, don't you think the manufacturers would be making an absolute fortune? I mean even more than they are. Because every single person in the world who was trying to lose weight would be, and there would be no more fat people.

The reason people are still overweight is because there is no miracle cure or drug that will take it away, and it's bloody hard work! Keep going, keep visiting, and you'll see results eventually.

Most of the acai products on the market today are complete scams. Yes, the acai berry is a powerful antioxidant that has been shown to have some impact on appetite, but almost none of the products available right now have the concentration of acai berry you would need to get these benefits.

If you do decide to try it anyways, do yourself a favor and buy through GNC or any other "real-world" store - DO NOT buy it online from any website offering a free trial. Here's what will happen - the person who referred you to the site (whether through a banner ad, fake blog or other site) will make $30-40 when you sign up and you'll be stuck paying $80+/month (read the fine print) until you cancel, which they make incredibly hard to do. The worst ones will even sell your credit card info to other paid subscription companies, so you'll be stuck paying for them too until you untangle the mess.

Right now, the FTC is investigating these companies, which should be a pretty good indication that they're about marketing, not weight loss.

I'm with everyone else on the use of supplements, but for the record, Alli works if you use it properly. I was on it for a while and it did help, and I never lost control of my bowels because I stayed below the 15g of fat per serving.

The only thing that I didn't like about it was I felt kind of drained - I eat low-fat anyway, so my body just wasn't getting enough nutrients.

My belief is, what you do to lose is what you are going to have to do to maintain. I have a hard time believing that these "supplements" have their place in long term plans to keep weight off. I immediately think "quick fix" and "regain".

I agree with everyone else, even though the pills sound like they'll help you get the weight off faster, it's a trick. Also, all of the acai products are total scams. I had one a year or two ago that almost ruined my credit score due to automatic billing that they put in the fine fine fine print and then whenever I tried to contact them to cancel the billing they claimed that the company was no longer available. (Oh really, then who the heck was billing my card!?)

And I'm pretty sure Hydroxycut has been pulled off the market again - their FDA approval got revoked after they did a new study on it.

I don't think Hydroxycut ever had FDA approval -

The thing with a lot of these "supplements" is that they SAY they're all-natural. If something is claimed "all-natural" the FDA doesn't have to review or regulate it - and if you look at some of the bottles, it will say that.

The thing with Hydroxycut and some others was that they were causing so much damage that the FDA intervened and had them pulled from the market. This happened a few years ago with Ephedra. Yeah, its all natural, it also ruins your kidneys.

Alli actually was regulated by the FDA - it was a previous prescription medication - and there are a few more that can be prescribed that are regulated and studied to make sure they're not going to kill you, but as Junebug said, once you stop taking them, you lose the benefits.

You have to do something to lose that you'll be able to keep up to maintain.

(Although I think they are finding issues with Alli and liver problems now as well - I have to look it up, because when I heard about it I don't remember if it was because people weren't using it correctly - as in taking 2 or 3 pills when they're only supposed to take one - or if it was just from the recommended dosage)

I was going to say no, but the medicine I take for ADD has the side effect of appetite loss. I notice on the days I forget to take it, I get cravings (specifically for sweet stuff) late at night (I used to be a late night snacker before this medicine anyway, so it's not something new).

So no, I don't take anything specifically for the purpose of weight loss, but I do get some help from other medicine I take.

Just like lead, arsenic, mercury, cyanide- all natural does not mean good for you ,