Do fat loss supplements work?....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-19-2012

There are several answers to this.

1.  First and foremost is that the best results and health protection come from lifestyle upgrades.

 Delete fattening foods and drinks, learn to enjoy and always eat health supporting and far less fattening foods, find a few ways to cut back on calories in a way that avoids triggering your fail safe famine response and avoids making you too hungry; do both strength training and interval cardio every week and do such vigorous exercise most days of every week; and, if you can manage it, also get several hundred calories of mild to moderate activity every week.

If you do each of these well, it may take longer than you’d like; but you will lose most of your excess fat and become far healthier and safer.

Getting that done and maintaining it does take effort.  But it IS both doable and sustainable.

2.  If you possibly can, avoid both supplements and drugs that are basically some form of concentrated “speed.”

The supplement ephedra was in this category but caused some strokes and triggered some heart attacks – and some people died. Similar substitute supplements have tended to have the same problems. 

Phentermine and the newly approved drug Qsymia that contains it also have similar problems and others.  Some of those problems can and sometimes do cause death.

These drugs aren’t THAT effective either and are usually not needed if you do the right things we list above and persist in doing them.

You are MUCH safer if you avoid potential solutions that don’t lose that much extra fat but harm your health and may even kill you.

Moderate or low power stimulants normally used to help people wake up and stay alert help do alertness etc but I’ve not found them to help my fat loss much if at all. 

I used to drink coffee before I got acid reflux.  I drink black tea and green tea and take green tea extracts and I’m trying guarana. On weekends I drink double strength unsweetened cocoa.  I find I’m mentally sharper by doing this and less sleepy while I’m working.  And, all of these except guarana have documented health benefits. 

The green tea extract may help prevent cancer and does have some caffeine.  But I’ve not experienced any noticeable fat loss effect from taking it.

The better news is that these in reasonable amounts are safe to use!

3.  There IS now a fat loss multiplier that does what people want in a fat loss supplement. 

It works to lose fat in addition to or in spite of what you eat or don’t eat.

And, it takes no net time from your busy life to use.

It’s a new category of product; it does take some getting used to; and the current versions are more expensive than I’d like.  But it does exist now.

And, it DOES work.

See my last post, Exercise at your desk to lose fat and keep your health….Tuesday, 7-17-2012.

4.  There are some safe drugs and supplements that help protect you from the health problems caused by being fat or the lifestyle that makes people fat.  Some even help lose fat a bit.

For elevated blood sugar safe choices include: alpha lipoic acid, chromium polynicotinate, berberine, and the drug Metformin if you take it with sublingual B12 daily.  All help lower elevated blood sugar and/or protect you from its harm.  Metformin even has some fat loss and belly fat loss effects.   This can multiply your efforts to solve this problem and lose fat by using the key lifestyle upgrades that protect your health and help you lose fat.

Similarly, for heart disease prevention, here is a long list of foods and supplements that help:

Drink moderate amounts of alcoholic drinks – notably red wine, resveratrol.

Take real niacin, inositol hexaniacinate, sterol supplements such as beta sitosterol.

Eat the spice ginger, the spice turmeric – the yellow component in curries – taken with black pepper or the active ingredient curcumin taken as a supplement with black pepper, AND minimizing fats from grain fed animals and deleting oils such as corn and soy high in omega 6 and sharply minimizing grains including all refined grains and using extra virgin olive oil instead plus eating wild caught fish and seafood and taking omega 3 supplements.

Combined with the lifestyle upgrades, these increase the beneficial form of HDL, minimize and lower the harmful form of LDL, lower triglycerides, and lower or prevent chronic inflammation.  That prevents or partly reverses heart disease.  And, I’ve seen one source make a case that the inflammation lowering helps fat loss a bit by helping you stop eating when you are full a bit better.

But the most important two reasons to use these for fat loss is that it gives you an extra reason for doing and maintaining the lifestyle upgrades that produce fat loss. And you realize as you do those things that you are not only helping lose fat and keep it off; but you are staying healthy and staying healthy for more years too.

(As an example, I no longer eat commercial baked goods over 99% of the time I have the chance. 

Yes that helps me avoid the fat gain eating them would cause me. 

But I easily avoid eating them by reviewing the fat that they almost always contain hydrogenated oils or high omega 6 oils or both, high fructose corn syrup or excessive sugar or both; and they always contain refined grains. 

Each of these ingredients helps cause heart disease in addition to adding fat to me.

Why would I spend money and take heart protective supplements and then eat heart attack starter? 

I don’t!  So these kinds of foods don’t make me fatter either!

5.  But what about the 3 supplements now talked of for fat loss?

Each one may work.  But each one may not work or do very little.  They are a bit of pain to take as suggested.  And each of the 3 is pricey.

Last, none of them will lose fat for you if you don’t do and keep doing the lifestyle upgrades too. 

That said, each of the three currently shows enough promise that I emailed a friend who found a link to a site promoting one of them noting both their potential value and likely drawbacks.

(He had found a link saying:  “Check out Health Lifestyles - Health News - National News - African Mango” .  Entering that exact phrase in Google yesterday found the link and a good bit of related commentary.) (The supplement of African Mango is called Irvingia.)

“The story is certainly interesting.  Fat loss and inches off your waist with no diet or exercise needed or doing different from what you are already doing.

There are 3 supplements I’ve thought of trying for fat loss.  This is one of them.  

A.  The downside and unknowns:

1.  One way they each seem to get part of their effect is the pain in the ass requirement of how to take them.  They each require you to take them with water half an hour before you begin eating at every meal.  The thought occurs to me that even taking a completely inert placebo pill that carefully every time certainly tends to make you mindful of what & how much you eat at the meal following.  I’ve not heard of any of the 3 passing that test with 100 or 200 people over a 4 month or longer trial by comparing them in people who were consistent at taking them right where some got placebo and some got the supplement.

2.  Secondly, since they do have such compelling stories, they tend to be a bit pricey.  I’ve not been rich enough to afford extra supplements at $60 a month or more just yet.  Taking all three, this one –Irvingia; one I think may work, Fucoxanthin from Wakame seaweed; and green coffee bean extract that sounds like it might be real -- would run nearly $200 a month!  Worse, if they do work, you wouldn’t want to stop taking them.

Third, the more extensive studies of supplements that once had similar stories such as Hoodia, and others found less effectiveness than claimed or none or side effects or both.  This does tend to throw cold water on things pending more research.

4.  I like food and enjoy eating.  My goal is to have fat loss and continue to enjoy eating.  Even if they are effective, I’m less interested in appetite reducers.  So that’s a consideration too.

B.  The possible promise and best uses.

1.  However, it does interest me that Irvingia and Fucoxanthin have tested in small studies to remove belly fat.  Since most of the fat I want most to lose is in my belly and just losing fat overall hasn’t been very effective, when I can afford it later I might consider them. I may pass on green coffee bean extract; but I do plan to do other things first, increase my income, and then test Irvingia and fucoxanthin.  Fucoxanthin too is said to help you lose belly fat. 

(When I lost on the scale down to my goal weight, my belly was still at least 2 to 4 inches too fat; and it & I still looked fat!)

2.  Also, for people who have money and want to start losing fat, there is a conflict with cutting back on overall calories too much at first causing the famine response and guaranteed failure and needing to get enough results at first that they feel the program is working and then keep going.

So this quote from a doctor who tried the Irvingia is of interest:

“While test subjects did find initial improvements, more research needs to be done to see if continuous supplementation would yield any additional benefits. In fact, Tanya Edwards, MD, M.Ed. (one of Dr. Oz's correspondents) wrote on her blog that when she tried the supplement herself, she lost an initial seven pounds, but did not keep losing with continued use (and noticed the same with her patients).”

That way a program that loses 2 or 3 pounds a month with small diet cut backs and some added exercise would lose 5 pounds the first two months which might disappoint some people but would lose them more like 12 to 15 pounds with some visible fat loss on their belly instead.  That could make a truly important difference.

That way people could begin a long term program and lifestyle upgrade that will lose them well over 7 pounds of fat in a year and maybe over 100 pounds in two years in some people.  But instead of dropping out when they didn’t lose much at first, they would succeed since they would lose that initial 7 to 10 extra pounds too."

If and when I get more information or news on these three supplements I’ll do a post on the news of information.  

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Almost all the time comments entered here as anonymous or no name listed are spam for websites having no relevance or very little relevance for the post topic.  I'm getting ads for drugs from questionable sources, handbags oddly enough, software, and even porn sometimes.  I also get stuff with links in languages other than English.  So instead of taking half an hour a day or more to mark each one separately as spam, my new policy is to do a "pocket veto" and just delete them instead.

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