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Transcript
When I am looking at any treatment, regardless of where it comes from or what it is I ask the same questions – how effective is it, how is it made and manufactured, what are the side effects and risks of it, how much does it cost to get that effect and how else could i spend that money?
For weight loss the studies on supplements are very often low quality, meaning they are small in size, very short in duration, only done once and have lots of confounding factors that may alter the results and almost always funded by the supplement company themselves. The other major concern with supplements is the manufacturing process is not regulated, which means often the supplements don’t have much of the ingredients they say they have and lots of things like heavy metals, pesticides and so on that are not good for us. So we have to be cautious.
Overall – I have reviewed the evidence for >80 weight loss supplements, both natural and synthetic. The conclusion is that the vast majority have no effect. Those that may help the effect is very minor and not worth the expense or the risk as they do have side effects. But I will cover the ones that are borderline separately and in detail.
So my advice does the research before you buy and don’t give into the hype. Focus on what you are eating, moving, thinking, living and so on – all the important foundations to good health. By using the tips I give you in the previous video on how to analyse diets and checking out the course I do on understanding health science you can save yourself a lot of money and potential side effects and instead put your time and money where it will make a difference. Supplements can often cost between $30-50 a month, sometimes a lot more like some I have seen costing $200 a week for almost no benefit in weight loss. I am just talking about weight loss here. So I would recommend spending that on quality food and maybe a health coach to support you.
But let’s cover some of the really popular ones people ask me about.