It is common knowledge diet and exercise can help you lose weight. Glance at any pharmacy shelf and you will see there are innumerable products available that claim they can get you to your weight-loss goals faster. How do they plan to do this? By being extreme, of course. Extreme weight-loss products often promise more of everything and fast -- more fat and calories burned, more food not eaten. The problem is these claims often come with cause for more caution as well.
Appetite Suppressants
Appetite suppressants that limit your caloric intake are sold over the counter and by prescription. These drugs affect your appetite by actively working on the parts of your brain that control it. Two well-known appetite suppressants are sibutramine, which is available by prescription to obese patients as Meridia, and hoodi gordonii, a spiny desert plant that is an ingredient found in many diet pills sold over the counter. The National Institutes of Health has attached a warning to sibutramine because it has been known to cause cardiac events in otherwise healthy people.
Fat Burners
Fat burners have been a diet and exercise staple since the supplement boom of the 1980s. The term refers to the notion that fat can be melted with the aid of supplements that have a thermogenic effect on muscles. Thermogenic ingredients are those that increase heart rate and metabolic speed. Common fat-burning aids usually contain anhydrous, or "dry" caffeine, green tea, black tea, black pepper, grapefruit juice, bitter orange, L-carnitine, guarana and ma huang. These ingredients increase your heart rate with the intention of boosting your metabolism. However, you should use caution with products that claim to burn large amounts of fat, as these claims have not been supported by the Food and Drug Administration and could cause serious heart problems and organ damage.
Liquid Fasts
The Master Cleanse and Cabbage Soup Diet are just two of the variety of liquid fasts that purport to help you lose weight quickly and effectively. Liquid fasts are an extreme way to lose weight because they often offer a low amount of calories and few vitamins. When you expend more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. However, prolonging a liquid fast can have an impact on your metabolism. A starving body is more likely to have less lean muscle and a slow metabolism. These two factors can cause you to regain the weight you lost and more.
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