How Long Should I Stay on a Diet?

Some diets last forever. The balanced diet recommended for diabetics is a lifetime program. Others are very short term, designed to last only a few days or weeks. Fasting and the grapefruit diet are intended to take off a few pounds quickly. Staged diets combine the two. They start out with one level of restriction and go through one or more stages before reaching a long-term maintenance level. For example, the new Atkins Diet starts with a very restrictive elimination of all forms of carbohydrates. This phase is short, followed by gradual addition of carbohydrates until you reach a level of steady weight loss. Once you reach your goal weight, you add food until you establish a stable weight.

Fake Diet Pills

Are the diet pills you are taking the real thing? In February, police in New Jersey raided a company that was manufacturing and selling fake Stacker 2 diet pills, according to a report from a local ABC News affiliate. They were being sold in two local health food stores. The store owners were arrested. The pills looked like Stacker 2, but the color was slightly different.

When you purchase diet pills or supplements, do your research to choose the appropriate pill, then purchase your diet pills from a reputable outlet.

Are You Taking Any Other Medications?

Possible drug interactions are an important consideration when taking diet pills or any other medication. Be sure to review all your prescription and non-prescription drugs and dietary supplements with your doctor or pharmacist before starting to take diet pills. Be sure to include everything, including herbal products. Some medications cannot be taken together, but can be taken several hours apart. In other cases a different diet pill may be required.

While Taking This Pill, Do Not

Your doctor or pharmacist may warn you, the label may remind you, or the package insert may spell out in detail specific things to avoid while taking medication. A common caution is to not operate heavy equipment or drive until you know how the pill affects you. Others warn of unpleasant or dangerous side effects or reactions. Digestive problems such as nausea, gas, flatulence, and diarrhea are sometimes caused by not following directions indicating when to take the pills and what foods and liquids should be restricted. Taking some pills after a meal may be ineffective, while taking others before meals can cause nausea. Always read the instructions, and if you can’t remember the restrictions, make a note of them and carry it along with your pills.

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Single Food Diets

The ‘single food’ diet is an extreme diet choice. On one of these diets you eat only one food, and nothing else. The grapefruit diet, the Jello diet, and the water diet are just a few. Probably any food will work, if you stick to it. A diet consisting solely of ice cream, for instance, would make you ill because of all the fat, and you would not be able to eat much. All of these leave you seriously deficient in vitamins and minerals, even with multi-vitamin supplements. They have serious effects on your digestive tract, which was works best when provided with a variety of foods and lots of fiber. A healthy sustainable diet requires a variety of foods.

Why Diet?

Why diet at all? Why exercise, or take diet pills, or give up sweets and fats? Vanity? Romance? To please someone else? To boost your career? Because of health problems? To avoid health problems? To feel disciplined and in control? All of these are good reasons, if their effect is not extreme. Anorexia can stem from a need to feel in control. Dieting to please someone else is fine if it is an effort you have freely chosen to make, but dieting because someone is pressuring you probably won’t work. Losing weight because you believe you will be a more effective salesperson if you present a more energetic image is one thing, meeting the standards most models are held to is another, and dangerous, reason. Perhaps thinking about why you are dieting will help you choose the most appropriate approach to weight loss.

Most Apples Are Red, Some Berries Are Blue

Varying the color of the fruits and vegetables you eat will make you healthier. If you have a red fruit (strawberries) with your cereal, and an orange fruit (oranges) with lunch, then have something green (broccoli) and something blue (blueberries) with dinner, your meals will be more interesting. They will also provide you with a greater variety of vitamins and anti-oxidants than you would get if you ate the same few fruits and vegetables. Watching and varying the color of your foods is an easy way to improve your diet and nutrition.

Now It’s the Lawyers

Those who took the diet pill fen-phen and suffered heart damage as a result were awarded $400 million dollars in damages. After legal fees, approximately $135 million should have been allocated among the 440 plaintiffs. According to an article in the New York Times on-line, only $74 million was disbursed. The lawyers kept the rest. A judge has ruled against the lawyers in a subsequent suit, but damages have not been awarded yet.

Make sure you check out reviews for diet pills before you buy!

Phentrazine 37.5 Promotion Warning

Phentrazine is now available without a prescription (as Phentrazine 37.5) and is being promoted heavily with offers of free samples. Unfortunately these offers seem to come with heavy strings attached. People who have accepted these offers have reported that the free samples frequently require long term commitments. When you order the pills, you may be automatically enrolled in a plan which will charge you every month for a supply of the pills. You may be given a limited time to cancel the enrollment. Before responding to any of these offers, read all the information very carefully.

That Full Glass of Water

We are always told to “Take this medicine with a full glass of water.” What does that really mean? Most people take the pill with the first swallow then force the rest of the glass down. The correct way to take the pill is to drink half the glass of water, take the pill, then take the other half. The goal is to have the pill land in water. Then it will have something to dissolve in, and be absorbed slowly without having the side effect of irritating your stomach.

Choose Frozen, Not Fresh

A critical part of getting the most from your vegetables is their freshness. Vegetables begin to lose vitamins and nutrients as soon as they are picked, so the longer they have been stored the less benefit you get from them. Cold slows the loss, and freezing stops it. So the quicker they get to your table or are frozen, the better they are for you. In the US, vegetables and fruits are picked, processed, and frozen right in the field. The fresh vegetables in any grocery have been picked at least a day before, and it may be several days until you eat them. Therefore, surprisingly, the most nutricious choice really is frozen vegetables.

Will I Experience Side Effects?

Many people assume that because a drug has side effects, they will experience them. They make this assumption even for rare, rather than common, problems. Most of them never experience any of the documented problems. Also, side effects tend to be minor compared to the benefits of the medication. Some disappear after a short time. Others can easily be managed, for instance by eating before taking medication that causes nausea. Before rejecting medication because of the possible side effects, read the literature, and consider the benefits. See a discussion of side effects and adverse side effects in the Diet Pill Review forum.

A Healthy Variety

Variety is important in almost every aspect of maintaining good health. We need a variety of foods to provide us with nutrients, vitamins, and trace elements such as zinc. We need variety in our exercise programs in order to be truly fit. Retaining mental acuity requires a variety of new experiences as we age. People with a wide variety of friends, acquaintances, and family members are generally happier. And, of course, a life filled with variety is a lot more fun. For more information, see the Diet and Nutrition and the Exercise and Weight Lifting discussions in our
weight loss forum.

The Good Side of Side Effects

Are there side effects? A good question, but asking it implies that side effects are always undesirable. Side effects can be positive. They sometimes are more important than the original purpose of the drug. Birth control pills clear up acne, alleviate cramps, and regularize menstrual cycles. They are sometimes prescribed for those benefits, which are really side effects. Prozac was originally developed to treat obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), but became one of the most successful prescription drugs in history because of its effect on depression. So don’t turn away from a drug just because it might have side effects. You may like them. See a discussion of side effects and adverse side effects in the Diet Pill Review forum.

Byetta Off-Label Usage for Weight Loss

Byetta is a relatively new injectible treatment for Type II diabetes. The drug has several advantages over insulin, including weight loss. Because of this Byetta is being prescribed by some doctors as a weight loss drug. This off-label use has not been tested and is not being promoted by the manufacturer. Two injections a day are required, the drug must be refrigerated, and there are quite a few side effects. Even if Byetta itself never becomes a recommended weight loss agent, research in this area could eventually lead to better options for weight loss.

Which type of diet pill?

Once you have decided that you want to take a weight loss supplement, you are faced with several choices. One factor to consider is how you want the supplement to help you. If hunger is your biggest problem, choose an appetite suppressant. If you want to boost your metabolism, you will want a different type of pill. Other pills block the processing of carbohydrates or fats in your digestive system. Once you know the type of help you want, you can start to evaluate the supplements that are available. For additional information, look at
diet pill guidelines.

Can I just take a pill?

Which diet pill is best? This is a common question, as you can in these posts here. But there is another question that should be asked first, and that is, “Should I use a diet pill?” The answer depends on many factors. Of course, as with any new diet and exercise regime, you should check with your doctor. You should also consider your reason for being interested in diet pills. Do you want to take a pill and let it do all the work? Then you shouldn’t be considering pills at all. Most are for use in conjunction with diet and exercise. They are not a substitute for adopting a healthier life style.

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Managing Xenical and alli side effects

Reduce fat intake while using alli, the new lower dose non-prescription version of Xenical. These drugs combine with fat in the digestive system. They are then excreted through the bowels. If your fat consumption is too high, the elimination of these fat will cause loose stools, an oily anal discharge, or diarrhea. To manage these side effects, reduce the amount of fat in the digestive system. See posts in our forum, here and here.

FDA approves non-prescription version of Xenical

An over-the-counter version of Xenical has been approved for use in weight loss by the FDA. The over-the-counter version will be half the strength of the presription dosage and will be called alli. The generic name for the drug is orlistat. The pill helps in weight loss by blocking the absorption of fat by the body. Fat intake needs to be kept low to reduce side effects. See the discussion about Xenical here and here.