Diet Supplements, Friend or Foe?

By The Hoosier Diet Team

There are many supplements for dieters on the market today that promise you quick weight loss without the time and efforts of exercise and/or changing your diet.  There are two main problems the moment  you start taking them.  The first is that you are never really losing the weight you may lose, since you are not backing it up with anything. So as soon as you stop taking the diet supplements, you also will put back all the weight you lose, similar to crash and burn diets. 

Second, some supplement can also be bad for your health if you take them in excess. You are not going to get any healthier overall by taking diet supplements if you don’t do anything else other than pop those pills.  It is possible to be skinny and extremely unhealthy, and that’s why eating disorders have more negative side effects than simple malnourishment.

 However, there are some that can help you lose weight if you use them in accordance with a healthy food diet and with regular exercise. Thus you lose weight faster and you are also developing a healthy routine to keep the pounds off in the future.  Here are a few of the natural ones you are probably aware of and an explanation of how these will work to help you lose weight.

Caffeine- You may have heard of caffeine pills that help keep you up all night such as NoDoz and other brands.  Well, many diet supplements use caffeine as well as their primary diet stimulant since it speeds up your metabolism.  The problem with an excess amount of caffeine is that an overdose can actually lead to strokes or heart problems, and most of them rarely tell you that you may be having the equivalent of 30 cups of coffee when you take them.

 If you wouldn’t drink red bull 6 times a day, you probably should not use caffeine pills either as diet supplements.  Plus, remember, energy drinks make you crash after they wear off, so will caffeine pills because you likely will exert more energy you do not really have while racing through your day on them.

EGCG- EGCG is the antioxidant in green tea that has been proven to help you guard against cancer and heart disease.  The supplement EGCG does not really work on its own as it claims however, because really it’s the caffeine in the green tea that is activating it, so therefore while it may boost your metabolism, it only is doing so because of caffeine.  Taking these types of diet supplements will work a little, without the added health risks, but it’s only a mini-effectual diet supplement.

 I thank you for reading our article, I hope that it was interesting and I recommend reading through the next article Four Diet Tips To Help You Lose That Weight.