It seems like every day brings a new weight loss product, or "secret" way to lose weight revealed.
I don't know how old you are, but I am 68 years old and have been seeing this process for decades.
I have seen diets, pills, creams, and other weight loss products suddenly become popular and gradually die out.
Is it that none of these things really work, or do better weight loss options keep being discovered?
Well, maybe a little of both.
That's part of the problem, you see. Another part is, that if these things DO work, the claims made are often way more than what the product can actually deliver.
Let's look at three items recently mentioned by a well-known doctor on his show. These three items are garcinia cambogia, raspberry ketones, and green coffee bean extract.
At the moment, these are still pretty hot topics, although the claims have been around for a while, but the "next best thing", is right around the corner.
Garcinia cambogia is extracted from the rind of the tamarind. Claims are that the extract can help burn fat and prevent storage of fat.
Raspberries contain an enzyme, Ketone, which increases metabolism and energy, and helps burn fat. It takes a lot of raspberries to get any effect, but a way has been found to extract the enzyme and put it in a pill.
Green coffee bean extract comes from... wait for it... green coffee beans! It seems that roasting destroys most of the Chlorogenic Acid found in the beans. Studies show that this substance can help burn fat, AND have antioxidant qualities as well, which makes it a good general health product.
Now, the point here is, that like so many highly touted weight loss products of the past... and future, each of these by themselves can only do a small part of the weight loss process for those who take them. Even worse, while the studies which seem to support the claims made for these products, actually can be a little bit discouraging if you think about them.
For example, a study of one of these products indicated that the subjects lost an average of 17.5 pounds over roughly a three month period. This was accompanied by a reduction of overall body weight by 10.5 per cent.
This immediately sounds good, and I'm not knocking it. I could recommend a product with results like these, assuming that there are no other health issues.
However, let's look just a little bit more deeply at this information.
The overall, and average, weight loss mentioned are slightly less than one pound a week. Nothing wrong with that... especially if you consider that the subjects supposedly made no other changes in their lives. That's just a little bit less than what weight loss experts consider to be an optimum progression.
One thing of interest is that the subjects were all young adults and there were only 16 people involved. Something else to be considered is that this small group was split so that some got more of the product than others. The good news is that those who took the full dose are the ones who lost the most. Also, if some got more and some got less, and some lost more and some lost less, the "average" means that those on the full dose lost more than the 17.5 pounds.
For the most part, most of the studies used to back up claims made by most other products follow the same pattern.
Okay, so what's the problem?
No real problem. However, the same results can easily be obtained by most people simply by making a few simple lifestyle changes, such as decreasing sugar consumption and increasing physical activity. Another issue is that losing weight by restricting food intake, or redirecting the body's processes, often can result in loss of lean muscle mass... a result which makes the body a teeny bit less healthy and a bit more prone to gaining weight back.
If you look carefully, most of these products, somewhere on their packaging, or in their website or advertising copy, will have some sort of statement to the effect that the product works best when combined with regular exercise and proper nutrition. The bottom line is that, while these products might HELP you lose weight, you will lose MORE weight and build a healthier body by using them while getting regular exercise and eating more wisely.
At this moment, I am personally aware of dozens of products which all make just about the same claims. Those that DO work seem to work to about the same level. Probably, the next best weight loss product is going to do about the same. Whatever these products do, nothing as yet has been shown to work as well as a healthy lifestyle based on exercise and nutrition.
Maybe, after all, the next best weight loss product is actually the oldest... and the one that has been proven to work for just about anybody.
Donovan Baldwin is a 68-year-old exerciser, freelance writer,
certified optician, and Internet marketer currently living in the Dallas
- Fort Worth area. A University Of West Florida alumnus (1973) with a
BA in accounting, he has been a member of Mensa and has been a Program
Accountant for the Florida State Department of Education, the Business
Manager of a community mental health center, and a multi-county Fiscal
Consultant for an educational field office. He has also been a trainer
for a major international corporation, and has managed various small
businesses, including his own. After retiring from the U. S. Army in
1995, with 21 years of service, he became interested in Internet
marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing
poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently
publishes original articles on his own websites and for use by other
webmasters. To learn more about diets and weight loss, read his report, Why Diets Don't Work at http://nodiet4me.com/index.html.
