Slimming Pills - Do They Work?
Finding reliable information about Slimming Pills or finding a trustworthy place to buy them can be a bit of a nightmare.
If you type ‘Slimming Pills’ into a search engine such as Google you will receive a baffling range of results. Or type in ‘Hoodia Gordonii’, the name of one of the most popular natural slimming pills recently to become available and you will find an endless list of people waiting to rip you off.
That’s why Just Slimmers have decided to team up with Healthy Direct who are the UK’s leading online supplier of vitamins, herbal remedies and food supplements.
But do they actually work? After reading the evidence, Just Slimmers chose 3 of the most credible and popular natural Slimming Pills available and gave each one to two people to test over 1 month.
The Appetite Suppressant
Hoodia Gordonii - Appetite suppressants claim to take away food cravings so that your desire to eat large amounts or snack between meals is reduced. This would obviously help you if you were struggling to follow a calorie controlled diet or any diet that leaves you feeling a bit peckish.
Hoodia Gordonii has only recently become available and has a lot to live up to after receiving rave reviews from such respected sources as the BBC and CBS in the USA. In May 2003, the BBC reported on scientifically controlled clinical trials in which obese volunteers where given either Hoodia Gordonii or a Placebo.
The group who had been taking the taking the placebo had not significantly changed their calorie intake while the Hoodia Gordonii group had managed to reduce their calorie intake by 1000 per day! The BBC reporter investigating Hoodia commented on his experiences:
The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I have to say, we felt good. But more significantly, we did not even think about food. Our brains really were telling us we were full. It was a magnificent deception.
So what did our testers think?
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| Kate I’d never used anything like this before and was a bit skeptical. The closest I’d come to using an appetite suppressant was the Atkins Diet. What surprised me was how effective the pills seemed to be from soon after taking them. I started off by taking 2 in the morning before my breakfast, this is one of the recommended ways of taking the pills, although other people take them an hour or so before meals. I ate my breakfast normally and then went to work. What I noticed was that where I normally would have been aching for a bag of crisps, a chocolate wafer or a can of pop between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and 5 pm when I go home, I didn’t have any urge at all to resort to my normal snacks, I almost had to remind myself to eat my lunch! |
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Emma I did notice a moderate positive effect from the Hoodia Gordonii pills although it took me a few days to be sure that it was really happening. I found that the urge to snack wasn’t as strong as normal and It also helped me to make better choices as far as eating healthy food was concerned. I think that this might have been because my appetite was not so in control and I was free to choose healthier options. |
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Although these pills have no known negative side effects, its not a good idea to rely on a slimming pill in the long term, so did these pills have any positive effects which lasted after our testers stopped taking them.
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Kate I did find that my appetite returned after stopping taking the pills but I think because it had become less of a habit, I still haven’t found myself snacking as much. |
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Emma Certainly, I think it helped me overcome some bad habits in the short term. I wouldn’t personally feel right about relying on a slimming pill for more than a few months even though the fact that its a completely natural product does make me feel much more comfortable about it. |
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The Carb-Blocker
Phaseolamin - Carb Blockers claim to stop carbohydrates that we eat from being turned into fat. Phaseolamin, a 100% natural chemical extracted from white kidney beans is claimed to block digestion of carbohydrates in your intestines.
It may be particularly effective at blocking the digestion of starchy carbs like potato, pasta, bread and rice.
The idea is similar to the GI diet in that you are making it hard for your body to digest the carbs that you eat, slowing down the process in which they are converted into sugar and then into fat.
Scientific studies have proven conclusively that Phaseolamin does block digestion of starchy carbohydrates by up to 95% and also reduces the amount of insulin that your body releases after eating, so phaseolamin should help curb food cravings too in a similar way to the GI diet.
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Vicky Since I love pasta, rice and bread (yum yum yum), I thought that this is the one for me! I am currently trying to loose about a stone in weight and haven’t been having a huge amount of success, but after a month of taking Phaseolamin I couldn’t be more happy, I have lost nearly half a stone! I don’t know whether this is because I haven’t been eating as much or because the carbs I eat aren’t getting converted into fat. I certainly haven’t made a big effort to change my eating habits in the last month (I already have a very healthy balance diet) so I’d have to put my success down to the phaseolamin. |
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Dawn Wow, i’m impressed and I don’t often say that! I lost nearly half a stone over the month without changing my eating habits or exercising more. I already eat a very good diet (though I love my pasta and sandwiches), as well as exercise regularly, phaseolamin has just given me a bit of a extra benefit I think. Since its pretty cheap and is a natural extract from ordinary kidney beans I may well consider carrying on taking it for a few more months. |
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The Fat Blocker
CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid) - A carb blocker is intended to help reduce the amount of fat that is stored by your body. Some people may be more liable to convert carbohydrates in the diet into fat and some claim that Carb Blockers can help to restore the balance.
CLA, found naturally in red meat and cheese, is reported to have a number of benefits and a lot of scientific evidence to back up its claims.
Because it helps direct glucose or blood sugar into the muscles and prevents it from being converted into fat it is known to result into a better muscle to fat ratio. CLA is especially effective in reducing fat around the stomach and abdominal areas. If that were not enough CLA has other know health benefits including a strong anti-cancer effect. Studies have shown that CLA was especially effective at inhibiting growth of breast and prostate tumors.
Although CLA is found naturally in meat and cheese, levels in these foods have reduced significantly over the last 20 years due, many believe, to farming methods. Some nutritionalists have even blamed the high obesity rate in western countries on reduced CLA in the typical diet.
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Donna - I’m a real gym person so this supplement appealed to me as I imagine it would to anyone struggling away trying to get a flat stomach. After using CLA for a month I do think that it has had a positive effect. Overall I have seen an improvement in my muscle tone, and yes I do think that my stomach is flatter! I haven’t lost any weight but then they do say that muscle weighs more than fat don’t they? |
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Claire - Not being much of a gym person (my idea of exercise is a brisk walk to the Coke machine at work), I questioned whether this would help me at all. I would so like to tell you that I now have a body like Kate Moss but alas its still closer to Jo Brand. On a more serious note I did loose some weight but I’m still skeptical about these kind of things. I’m going to join the gym and might carry on taking these as they are fairly cheap and Donna makes me sick. |
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