has any one tried an over the counter diet pill trhat really works. i have tried aldi and it did nothing for me. thanks

Nearly all diet pills seek to do one thing and one thing only, suppress hunger.

On the surface that may seem like a great way to solve the Calories into Calories Burnt Equation - however that equation is only a good theory and does not work in reality.

Fat gain is caused by eating too much fat and sugar and not getting enough exercise. It has nothing to do with suppressing appetite and skipping meals. If you do that your body will go into 'survival mode' it is designed to survive famines and has many nifty tricks to survive, from causing you to slow down and 'dumb down' to conserve energy, to devouring its secondary and tertiary organs - What are those organs? Anything that is not brain or heart.

Diet pills are only a 'temporary fix'. Yes you most likely can lose some weight for the short term, but as soon as your body gets accustomed to mega-doses of caffeine or to amphetamines, hunger will rear its ugly head and you will be compelled to eat. If your diet is crap you will gain weight, if all you do is sit on your arse you will gain weight.

There is at least one good book out there, 'Bodystat: How to Reset Your Fat Thermostat Permanently:' by Eric Witt and Carol Wirth.

I strongly urge you to go to the local library and check out that book. Once you read it and gain a basic understanding of how the body works, and why diets fail, then you can move on to the other related materials that are footnoted in that book. Eric and Carol took the technical jargon and reduced it to everyday English, laid out a 'severe' course of action and a more moderate long term lifestyle change. They also took time to explain in great detail how the body works and why diet pills, starvation diets and chelation 'fad' diets are bad for you and ultimately lead to your having a far harder time to losing weight.

In the end, that must be true, David, as proven by just looking around We had two women in our office, both young, one who was always overweight and dieting and one who was always slim and didn't really understand why anyone dieted.Sitting at table with them, it was obvious to the observer why there was a weight difference and why they both thought as they did.Evidently without being conscious of it, the slim one chose things on the menu that would add no weight.That happened to be what she liked. She liked fish, she liked green vegetables without sauces, she preferred potato 'in its skin' (baked whole), she didn't like puddings, though she might take a little sorbet, and so on.

The heavy one was the reverse.Most of what she chose was 'fattening' in comparison, even if it was not obviously so.

The other feature they had was in talking. The slim one stopped eating to talk and would happily leave the plate unattended to whilst she chatted. The heavier one had the food as more of a priority.She would stop her conversation to eat. At the end, the slim one might have food left but the other had cleared the plate.

The lesson, if any, seemed to be in changing thinking and habit.If the heavier one had learned, or happened to prefer,to eat the 'slim' food and conducted herself as the slim one did, she'd have no problem (or very much less of one)

[That's easy for me to say, at 9 stone ( 126lbs) but I feel uncomfortable at near 10 stone (140 lbs), which I have, briefly, been in the past.As a young man I was 8 stone 4, 116 lbs for years and years ]

i don't sit home on my butt-i go to exercise class 5 times a week, but i'm having trouble losing the last 10-15 pounds, so i thought maybe a diet pill would give me a jump start.

quote:

Originally posted by misty45:
i don't sit home on my butt-i go to exercise class 5 times a week, but i'm having trouble losing the last 10-15 pounds, so i thought maybe a diet pill would give me a jump start.

When I said you in that sentence it was not YOU personally, it was a general 'you' as in everybody who does X. And it was an IF YOU - laying out a possibility of a cause.

Sadly, in most cases those 'last 5-10' pounds of body fat that people are trying to get rid of is their attempt to reach a body image manufactured by advertisers and society and has no bearing on their genetics.

IF you have had a body fat percentage measurement then we can discuss if you really have 5-10 pounds of 'stubborn fat' to lose. The reality is that you are probably using the scales to judge your body fat percentages, if this is the case you are most likely never going to reach that ideal 'weight'.

Body fat percentages are best measured by professionals. The best method is a 'dry' weight and a 'wet weight'. What this means is that your weight is taken while you are sitting in a set of scales that is suspended in the air, then your weight it taken while you are in a pool of water. The difference between the two weights gives your displacement - or your density. From their the density difference can be either muscle (which is denser than water and sinks) or fat (which is less dense than water and floats). More often than not a person battling with that 'last 5 pounds of fat' find out that their body fat percentage is great or even low.

Especially if you are working out 5 times a week. You most likely have replaced fat with muscle- muscle is in itself denser and heavier on MOST people, however there are genetic exceptions to that.

Further many people are genetically wired to carry more fat than the guys and gals that sell us our body image. Think Classical Greek roundness of woman and you are thinking 'average' female human.

YOUR ideal weight may be different from BMI charts and poster girls.

If you have reached your optimal weight, then taking a diet pill is foolish and will only lead to other troubles.

Another thing you have to take into consideration is that it is winter time.

We ALL gain weight during the winter, we also gain a higher level of hunger and crave fatty foods starting in autumn. It is our instinctual body at work, preparing for the lean winter months and cold. You can not undo millions of years of evolution.

Most likely your 'last 5 pounds' are winters packing on of extra pounds to get you through the lean times. ON AVERAGE people tend to be 10 pounds heavier in winter than they are during the summer. If you live in a colder, snowier place you are more likely to gain a wee bit more than folk living in sunny California/Florida, Hawaii, etc. where winters are milder. And if you live near or on the equator your body weight may not change at all, due to the length of the day being about the same year round. Light being one of the triggers, along with cold.

quote:

Originally posted by FredPuli:
In the end, that must be true, David, as proven by just looking around We had two women in our office, both young, one who was always overweight and dieting and one who was always slim and didn't really understand why anyone dieted.Sitting at table with them, it was obvious to the observer why there was a weight difference and why they both thought as they did.Evidently without being conscious of it, the slim one chose things on the menu that would add no weight.That happened to be what she liked. She liked fish, she liked green vegetables without sauces, she preferred potato 'in its skin' (baked whole), she didn't like puddings, though she might take a little sorbet, and so on.

The heavy one was the reverse.Most of what she chose was 'fattening' in comparison, even if it was not obviously so.

The other feature they had was in talking. The slim one stopped eating to talk and would happily leave the plate unattended to whilst she chatted. The heavier one had the food as more of a priority.She would stop her conversation to eat. At the end, the slim one might have food left but the other had cleared the plate.

The lesson, if any, seemed to be in changing thinking and habit.If the heavier one had learned, or happened to prefer,to eat the 'slim' food and conducted herself as the slim one did, she'd have no problem (or very much less of one)

[That's easy for me to say, at 9 stone ( 126lbs) but I feel uncomfortable at near 10 stone (140 lbs), which I have, briefly, been in the past.As a young man I was 8 stone 4, 116 lbs for years and years ]

Many people are unaware of what they eat, how they eat or how much they really are eating.

Meal times being squeezed between everything else is usually readily forgotten, thus many people think they ain't eating that bad, or eating that much until they start keeping an accurate log of each and every bite they take.

I think the big girl may have had the forgetful memory part and most likely thought she was eating, in general, healthy.

Eating is a complex thing for some (maybe many) people. They don't just eat because they are in need of fuel, they eat to fill emotional holes, or eat in a way to prevent being deprived of something (not just the food).

In AA we had several people going to Over eaters Anonymous, part of their program was to keep a log and they all said they were shocked to learn just how much they really were eating and how bad. People are not aware.