Your smartphone really is smart. If you’ve ever notice a rush of ads about diet pills after you’ve searched for information about weight loss or worse yet, after you’ve discussed losing weight while your phone was in the room. Obesity is a problem that’s increasing year after year and so are the number of weight loss supplements and diet pills. Do they really help or are you wasting money on diet pills? Can they actually be dangerous? Here’s the scoop on diet pills and their side effects.
Do diet pills boost your metabolism?
Some diet pills contain stimulants, which do increase your metabolism, but have other side effects. At one time products that contained ephedrine alkaloids were quite popular, until they were banned in 2004 because of health issues. It was often combined with caffeine and created heart palpitations, nausea, psychiatric problems and vomiting. Using products with caffeine have remained on the market. However, drinking coffee is less expensive and can be more satisfying. Make sure your coffee has no additives, like sweetener or cream.
Get a capsaicin boost.
Where does capsaicin come from? Hot peppers. It’s what makes them hot. Rather than paying for the pills, why not spice up your cooking instead. It’s far cheaper to add chili peppers to your food and create a spicy dish, than popping pills. In fact, many of our weight loss recipes include spicy foods. You can burn up to 50 extra calories a day when you increase the amount of capsaicin in your diet. That means you’ll lose one pound in 70 days. Eating healthier is faster and far more enjoyable.
Your body turns fat into energy with L-carnitine.
Your body makes L-carnitine naturally in the kidneys and liver, but it’s also in some foods like nuts, meat, legumes and dairy. It’s good for treating other things, besides melting fat. It can help peripheral artery disease, heart disease and diabetic neuropathy. While it works to burn fat, whether a supplement helps burn more fat is questioned. What is known is that taking too much has potentially dangerous side effects such as high blood pressure, rapid heartbeat and seizures.
- Some supplements contain chromium picolinate. If you have a chromium deficiency, it can help you, but as for weight loss, so far there’s no evidence that it helps.
- Conjugated linoleic acid-CLA- is found in some diet pills. You can get a higher amount of it in your diet by replacing regular beef and milk products with those that come from animals that are grass fed.
- You’ve heard the benefits of green tea for good health, so it seems like a win-win that it contains phytochemicals that also help you lose weight. Don’t waste your money on diet pills when you can drink a few cups of the real thing for less and get even more benefits.
- Rather than paying high prices for diet pills, making a few changes in your diet can give you all the benefits with no side effects. Resveratrol can come from snacking on grapes inexpensively or you can pay a high price by buying a pill. The same is true of all the diet supplements.
For more information, contact us today at Sci-Fit Nutrition