Weight loss products are popular due to marketing efforts, but many of these products simply don’t work. Most of these trendy products have faulty health claims and are expensive.
Famous dieting trends, immediate detox cleansing, and coolsculpting are all attractive and still on the market. From magic powders to fitness apps to sprays to one day Chinese diet pills to freezing body wraps, there’s no shortage of weight loss ideas.
Many humans are impatient when it comes to their weight loss goals. But do these methods really work? What happened to safe, innovative weight loss? People want to lose weight, however, has general wellness and safe practice gone out the window?
If taken to extremes, many fast weight loss products and severe diet attempts are ineffective and expensive at best. And, most quick fixes are down right dangerous.
1. Weight Loss Sunglasses
A Japanese company called Yumetai believes the color blue wards off hunger. They’ve decided to capitalize on this concept by selling blue tinted specs that claim to suppress your appetite by making food items less appealing.
While certain colors—especially blue hues—can affect food consumption, the sunglasses may not alter your caloric intake.
Portion control, high fiber, and protein rich foods may do more to satisfy your hunger.
2. Slim Green Reduce Cream
Slim Green is a sculpting cream made with chemicals, paraffin oil, mineral oil, and water. Simply rub this slim on your belly, buttucks, thighs, legs, and arm fat, and POOF—it sculpts your body! Magic, without even taking a pill or powder.
There’s no scientific proof that Slim Green works on fat reduction. Slim Green's oils might have laxative effects when consumed orally, but laxative effects if rubbed on the skin are unknown.
Laxatives never work for weight loss. Pass.
3. A Stomach Balloon Pill
Not yet for sale in the United States, the Obalon Balloon System is a pill that has an attached tube and an inflatable balloon inside of it. Once swallowed, this pill travels down to your stomach where it inflates.
Your doctor uses the tube to inflate the balloon while it’s in your stomach. The balloon stays in your stomach and after three (3) months, your doctor deflates the balloon and pulls it out through your mouth.
You will feel full, however, the balloon can lodge in your stomach, causing vomiting or death. There’s also a high risk of the balloon stretching your stomach and esophagus. This elasticity can cause inflammation, resulting in stomach ulcers, internal bleeding, and infection.
The Obalon balloon claims to aid in weight loss by allowing you to feel full sooner, helping you to eat less. Drinking eight (8) 8 oz. glasses of water may just achieve the same result.
It may be better if this product stays out of the country!
"Using products that don't work can feed feelings of failure and helplessness ... Something doesn't add up." —Eat This
4. Small Bite
An orthodontist fits an intra-oral device called Small Bite into your mouth. The device prevents you from opening your mouth any more than a half of inch. Removed after a year, the device claims to change your eating behaviors without frustration or hunger.
Regardless of eating speed or caloric intake, you can reach satiety in 20 minutes. Forcing you to take tiny bites at a slower rate, your body will reach satiety with less food. The idea? Fewer calories and healthy portion sizes = weight loss.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies Small Bite as a ‘non-significant-risk device.’ But, any device that limits your ability to open your mouth to eat, speak, or yawn might not be your ideal weight loss solution.
5. NutriDrip
Celebrities like Simon Cowell, Cindy Crawford, and Madonna made Intravenous (IV) nutrient therapy famous.
NutriDrip has many different kinds of therapy programs to choose from. Some therapies claim to increase mobility and joint strength, while other therapies claim to boost metabolism and assist in weight loss.
NutriDrip cleansing claims to be ‘more powerful than a five-day juice cleanse and faster than a spin class’, but considerable weight loss results are questionable. Megadoses of vitamins can cause toxicity, including nausea and vomiting.
You usually don’t become overweight from a vitamin deficiency. Therefore, it may be irrational to believe that extraordinary vitamin supplementation will lead to weight loss.
6. Modern “Training” Corsets
The latest waist trainers are similar to a sixteenth-century corset. The Kardashian clan has made this product a popular hit to dieters and body image seekers looking for a curvy figure.
The corset compresses your waist into an hourglass shape and claims to help you lose up to seven (7) inches in your waist. Furthermore, Waist Trainer manufacturers assert that their product can compress the core, metabolize fat, release toxins, and reduce food intake.
Unfortunately, no matter how compressed your waist is, spot reducing is not possible. You may eat less and lose weight because of the restriction, but that doesn't mean you'll lose fat in your waist and belly. However, after dieters take off their constricting belt, chances are—if they had poor eating habits to begin with, they’ll return to their poor habits and gain the weight back.
7. 'Butter Is Back' Diet Craze
For years, the public opted for fat-free or processed foods that contain high amounts of sugar or refined carbohydrates in replace of fat. Instead of losing weight—accompanied with increased energy, these low-carb approaches caused obesity and fatigue.
When all these fad diets proved ineffective, people turned to even newer trends. They jumped on the bandwagon to extreme low-carb methods such as Ketogenic Diets or reverted back to caveman concepts with a Paleolithic Diet.
Trans fats found in packaged foods are disappearing, but that doesn’t mean that natural trans fats are going away entirely.
Fat—particularly polyunsaturated fat—is needed for positive body function.
Fat plays essential roles in the body—including hormone production, organ protection, and core temperature. Fat is vital for satiety, helping to lose weight. When fat enters your intestines, it signals the release of peptides (YY and CCK), two (2) hormones that work to reduce appetite.
"People eat food, not isolated fatty acids." —Matthew Kadey, MS, RD, IDEA Fitness Journal
Eating fat again doesn’t open the floodgates to eat whatever you want. Fat diets seem to have given dieters permission to bring lard back into their kitchens at alarming rates. And that’s not good.
Eating healthy fat doesn’t give you free reign to eat all you want. Extra calories are extra calories, no matter the source. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates. Fat has nine (9) calories per gram and carbohydrates have four (4) calories per gram.
"It’s time to stop obsessing about macronutrient numbers and instead look at the actual foods we are eating...lack of harm <fat> is not the same thing as being good for you." —David Katz, MD, MPH, Yale University Prevention Research Center, Founder of True Health Initiative
Dieters are having a field day, thinking all fat is the same.
Saturated fat is different. Stearic acid in chocolate and lauric acid in coconut oil might be more harmful than fat types found in beef or dairy. However, beef or dairy saturated fats aren’t as beneficial as saturated fats in nuts, seeds, avocado, or olive oil.
There are more cardiovascular benefits in some fats than others. Walnuts, flax, and fatty fish protect your heart because they contain polyunsaturated fats. Mediterranean Diets demonstrate this healthy heart approach.
In fact, the sensible Mediterranean lifestyle diet plan has shown to help people live longer and lose weight. If you look at overall wellness as a lifestyle, instead of a four letter word, you will find that this plan is one of the few that actually work.
Therefore, it might just be more important to eat well balanced meals and to exercise in moderation. Yes?
Many hopeful weight loss methods are unsafe weight loss solutions. But, people still fall for them—all in meek efforts to lose weight—fast. We want a quick fix to shed pounds, but it comes in at the expense of our health.
Be patient about your weight loss goals. Start by thinking about lifestyle—moderate food intake, a regular exercise regimen, and overall wellness.
Combined with a sensible meal plan, there are better ways to lose weight. Proven, innovative approaches in detox and infrared sauna therapy just may offer the best lifestyle solution for you.
A facility with proper wellness professionals that are dedicated to educating safe, weight loss practices—in a clean environment—is much more valuable than looking for a quick fix to lose inches.
Ready to try a weight loss method that works? Contact SaunaBar at (310) 652-5522 for an appointment!
