By Katrina Rasbold

There isn’t a fat person around who hasn’t wished for a pill that would make them skinny with very little effort or skinnier for all the time they are investing in diet and exercise.  We all want it to happen faster, easier and better than what we can do ourselves.

And why not?  There is a pill for everything from erectile dysfunction to Alzheimer’s Disease.  Why not have one for what is fast becoming the number one health problem in the country?

Try as they might, none have been invented that are considered completely safe AND effective.  PhenFen was extremely effective until its users began dropping dead of heart attacks and strokes (ironically, the exact same killers they threatened us with if we DIDN’T lose weight). 

In my many years of being fat, I have tried them all.  You name it, I took it.  TriMax (LA Weight Loss), Stacker, Metabolife, Green Tea, Hoodia, Estrin-D, Hydroxycut, Dietac (an old one there), Dexatrim, Slim-Quick, Slim Fast, an appetite suppressant from the 60′s and 70′s with the unfortunate moniker of AIDS (they were little caramel/chocolate cubes that you ate with hot tea)… The list goes on and on and on. 

There are many different types of diet supplements on the market.  Most involve appetite suppression, thermogenesis or fat blocking/binding. 

I am still fat.  I am not fat in that, “Oh, she could stand to drop a few pounds.” I am F-A-T.

I am now getting thinner, but none of those supplements were effective in curbing my rabid appetite or burning more fat than what I normally burn.

I am now involved in a weight loss program that has been extremely effective.  I have lost 13 pounds in a month and a half and I feel wonderful.  I have taken supplements during this time, but not the ones a person would imagine one would take on a diet.

More on that in a moment.

The primary way that diet supplements attempt to create weight loss is by decreasing your appetite, speeding up your metabolism or blocking the fat that you take in. 

Decreasing your appetite would seem to be the obvious solution since we are overweight because we overate and did not exercise enough to burn off the calories we took in.  For some of us, if left to our own devices, we could exercise for hours and hours a day and still not burn off all of the calories we want to eat. 

The problem with supplements that decrease appetite is that the presumption is that fat people eat because they are hungry.  More often, fat people eat because they are feeling an emotion they do not wish to feel, whether that is worry, boredom, fear, anger, frustration, anxiety or whatever.  We don’t have to be hungry to eat.  Eating is what soothes us and comforts us.  Everything from the texture of the food, the temperature of the food, the pleasing taste of the food and the feeling of the food as it goes down is reassuring and nurturing to us.  Decreasing appetite does not affect the interest in eating if that eating is providing an ongoing essential comfort through the day.

The next step is to speed up or change your metabolism.  Overweight people are known to have sluggish metabolisms, hindered by newly discovered anomalies such as “Insulin Resistance Disorder.”  Speeding up the metabolism by using thermogenetic drugs supposedly burns off fat faster, but it also is known to increase the blood pressure significantly; a problem that already tends to be a problem for overweight people.  Night restlessness or difficulty falling asleep are also common for those taking thermogenic supplements.  With snoring and sleep apnea are already a common problem for overweight people, adding a stimulant effect to the process can leave sleep quite elusive.  Unfortunately, people who are not well rested do not lose weight as effectively as those who are.

Fat binders are supplements such as chitosin (a shell fish byproduct) that attract fat molecules from the food that is eaten and carry them undigested through the digestive process and out the other end.  Unfortunately, the fat tends to exit in a very insistent fashion, creating the potential for embarrassing moments as unsolicited exits present themselves without permission or warning.  Rectal leaking, oily discharge and uncontrollable diarrhea can be a side effect of these supplements.

All of these types of supplements are intended to ease the transition from eating and exercising poorly to eating and exercising well.

Unfortunately, there is still no way through but through.  With or without supplements, the first few weeks of the diet and exercise process are something of an ordeal.  Motivation and will power can only carry a person so far.  Not only is this a tremendous physical change for your body, it is also a profound emotional change as the crutch and anesthesia we normally use to soothe the aches and pains of the day is no longer available to us.  Trust me, a carrot stick does not satisfy emotional eating as well as chicken Alfredo. 

Emotions tend to be raw and it is no uncommon for the dieter to feel anything from mild irritation to irrational rage as they go through the first few weeks of dieting.  They may become extremely invested in protecting what they “deserve” to have as a deflected reaction from the sacrifice of giving up food.  Issues of “rights” and how the dieter is treated by others become of great importance as the deprivation of their comfort means becomes deferred onto other issues. 

Real problems that are easy to ignore when food is there to anesthetize us from the painful results of those problems now become major issues.  Without the veil of food to hide our true feelings, we react more to the challenges that we would normally face with grace or indifference.

This is the critical point when the majority of dieters will call it quits and swan dive back into comfort eating.  The stress of dieting is extreme and, like with childbirth, the feeling becomes, “If it’s going to be like this, I can’t do it.”

What is important for the dieter to understand is that it won’t always be like this.  If a person has a hundred pounds or more to lose, the process can seem endless and honestly, if the experience WAS always going to be like the first few weeks, I don’t think ANYone could endure it.

Fortunately and blessedly, it only takes a few weeks of good eating for the body to adjust and the constant cravings to stop.  Eventually, you wake up one morning and you feel OK, almost normal.  Then you have another frustrating day, then you have two OK days in a row.  Pretty soon, you are having more good days than bad and not long after that, you find that you really are doing OK the majority of the time.

The conscious mind is so fickle that after not being lulled by food for a period of time, it sort of “forgets” that it needs the food to feel placated.  The irritation and rages ease off considerably and the tensions ease.   Good eating simply becomes who you are and how you are in the world.  Then, your diet goes on cruise control until you hit a plateau and have to dial it down a bit further.

That time, it’s not nearly as hard as the initial calorie reduction.

The magic number seems to be 40 days.  The average dieter seems to find their peace and comfort zone approximately 40 days after beginning their new way of eating provided they have been honest about their food intake and not cheated on their diet.  After 40 days, the dieter feels comfortable with the new amount and type of food and the weight continues to be lost comfortably.

So what supplements actually do help?

Most dieters are used to a pattern of sugar highs and lows that carry them through the day, practically from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to sleep.  This produces a series of bursts of energy and tremendous fatigue.  This cycle is broken after the dieter limits sugar for even a couple of weeks. 

Two things helped me during this time of readjustment to the point that I continued on with them after it was over.  One was to eat a banana every morning.  Not only did this give me a potassium boost, but it also gave me an easily digestible food to eat before exercise if I felt a little hungry.

The next is Emergen-C.  Emergen-C is a high Vitamin C quantity supplement that comes in powder form in small packets.  The packet is mixed in with 4 oz of water, where it becomes effervescent.  You drink it down and it gives you a very nice, stable energy boost for the rest of the day.  It also helps strengthen your immune system which can become vulnerable during times of diet alteration.  You can learn about Emergen-C here:  http://www.emergenc.com/.  My favorite flavor is the tangerine.  (The strawberry leaves a lot to be desired, trust me)  It has vitamins, minerals and those all important B vitamins for mood control and stabilization. 

When I found that I was getting truly bitchy and emotional, I began taking a very, very low dosage of Ativan, which is a prescription anti-anxiety medication.  The dose I took was .50 mg, which is tiny.  It took the edge off of my feelings of anxiety and tension without any perceivable side effects. 

I also took a very basic Acai berry supplement to help cleanse out my system.  I did not find that it was effective as a weight loss tool, but it did give me a nice sense of well being.

If the dieter is used to having high levels of sugar and is feeling depleted from the sudden reduction, not only will the Emergen-C help, but a supplement of 500 mcg of chromium pollinate will help more quickly stabilize the blood sugar levels and correct the highs and lows that cause fatigue through the day. 

Both chromium (be sure and get the picolinated kind) and Emergen-C are available in department stores like K-mart and Wal*Mart. 

Beyond that, it truly is just a matter of white knuckling it through until the healthy eating takes hold and becomes your way of comfortable life.  It happens sooner than you expect and then your diet experience becomes much more easily managed. 

The most important thing is don’t quit and don’t cheat!