healthy you
W EIG H T LOSS
weight-loss effort, which is eating
healthfully and exercising regularly.”
As adjuncts, pills can jump-start
your diet, making it easier to limit
yourself to those smaller portions
and that healthier food. Similarly,
pills can get you past frustrating
plateaus when the pounds refuse
to drop any more.
maintenance as long as you’re on
the medicine.”
There are a couple caveats to
consider about diet pills. They may
be ineffective or dangerous for certain
people (your doctor will go over this).
And most people regain the lost
weight once they go off the meds.
The best-case scenario is to get to a
What
About All
the Others?
If only a handful of pills are approved
by the U.S. Food and Drug Adminis-
tration, how can there be thousands
of other weight-loss products
claiming to melt your extra pounds?
What these products are doing is
selling hope. "In fairness to people
who use them, weight loss is a tough
area," says Dr. Donald Hensrud, a
physician and weight-loss specialist
at Mayo Clinic. "They want to
believe in these products because
the alternative is so difficult."
Questionable products abound
because they’re sold as supple-
ments rather than medications,
which means they don’t need to
show evidence that they actually
work. And as long as they stop short
of making medical claims—such
as curing diabetes—they can
advertise in even the most
respectable publications.
So how do you navigate your way
through this minefield of marketing
claims? Simple, says Dr. H oward
Eisenson of the Duke Diet and
Fitness Center in Durham, North
I n J a n u a r y , the U.S. Food and Drug
Adm inistration issued an alert listing 69 weight-
loss supplem ents tainted with dangerous
_ _ s u b s t a n c e s . Alw ays check with yo ur doctor
■ ^ b e f o r e buying a w eight-loss product.
A
'
And then there’s diet doctors’
favorite benefit from weight-loss
medication: It discourages
rebounding. “In terms of actual
weight loss, these drugs tend to
plateau after six months or so,” says
Dr. Donald Hensrud, a preventive
medicine physician and nutrition
specialist at Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota. “But you’ll
see lasting benefits for weight
weight at which you stop needing
pills, which only happens if you eat
healthfully and exercise regularly.
“You work on making your lifestyle
changes for the time that you’re
taking the medications,” Hensrud
says. “If your diet and physical
activity habits have become so
established that you won’t return
to your previous weight, you can
try going off the pills.”
Carolina: Just don’t go there.
"No matter how cleverly and
aggressively they’re marketed,
there are no supplements out there
that meet the twin tests of safety
and efficacy,” Eisenson says. "If any
one of them had shown itself to be
powerfully effective for weight loss,
and also safe, we would have seen
that demonstrated in properly
conducted clinical trials. Until that
happens, I would advise not using
these products.”
208 MAY 2009 BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
