Alli is a fat binding diet pill that came out as a non-prescription alternative to its prescription twin Orlistat.  It’s just a slightly milder formula of the same fat binding pill that you take three times a day with meals. It is supposed to help your body pass fat through the body without digesting it.

This in turn helps you to lose weight and to help keep fat off undesirable areas of the body.  It simply passes right through your body, into your stool, which is part of the reason it has such a reputation for having embarrassing side effects.

These side effects include leakage, excessive gas and diarrhea. These symptoms get much worse the more fat you eat, so the company that makes the drug advises against consuming a lot of fat, and keeping it to a limited amount of grams (no more than 15 per meal) in order to avoid these types of problems.

However, some people have said that even though they stuck to that guideline, they still had the issues with the gas and the bloating and leakage and so forth.  There are plenty of horror stories online if you ever care to read any of the more unsavory stories of people’s experiences with Alli.

On the other hand, some people do say that Alli has helped them to lose weight. They say that it has helped them to get in the habit of reducing their dietary fat intake, and has also helped them develop the discipline they need as well as the taste to go away for high fat foods. Why? Simply because they were too embarrassed to endure the possible symptoms of eating fat!

What are some options to fat binding products like these that inevitably end up coming out the “other end”? Well, there have been some very promising studies done on green tea lately that show it may actually have a slight fat binding effect.

The study showed the mice who were fed a diet of vanilla shakes AND a green tea pill with every meal actually excreted more fat out in their stool versus the mice who were simply fed the shakes with nothing else. They also tended to maintain their weight better than the mice who did not get the green tea supplement.

The thought is that the ECGC contained in green tea actually helps to bind the fat and take it from the body better than nothing at all.

Even though gastric bypass and lap band surgery have become phenomenally popular here in the US, where obesity is a dire health problem and pretty much an epidemic, there are many who say that its effects can still be temporary.

The same thing goes for liposuction, which is also an incredibly popular surgery. This one however, is a totally elective cosmetic surgery, whereas the other is considered medically necessary if the patient is having serious health issues that are related to their weight.

Liposuction is a surgery where the excess fat on the areas that tend to hold more fat, such as the thighs, belly, buttocks, and upper arms, is literally sucked out of you with a canula or suction rod. It can be very painful to recover from, as can gastric bypass, but the potential side effects and risks are not as high.

Lap band or gastric bypass surgery is where the patient’s stomach is literally made smaller by surgically making it smaller. It forces weight loss and dietary restriction because the patient cannot eat a lot of food, or a lot of fat for that matter, without getting sick.

Arguments against this popular surgery are that it can be very dangerous. Infections can set in, and sometimes people “eat through” their banded bellies, making it even more dangerous, and of course defeating the purpose of the weight loss surgery in the first place.

There have been some of these cases documented in celebrities who have had the surgery, lost a ton of weight, then gained a lot back after their eating habits returned, despite the ridiculous fullness it caused. This goes to show that eating isn’t simply related to stomach size, but it is also strongly related to emotions, and simply what we are used to.

Liposuction opponents say that the lipo does work in the short term, but you may gain the fat back in strange places that you never had fat before. It doesn’t really reduce cellulite per se, but it can make it look less obvious since there are less fat cells pushing against the bands of collagen that cause the puckered look.

There have been lots of documented cases where lipo patients have had the fat come back in odd places. The body carefully keeps tabs on the fat cells in the body, and if the predetermined amount of fat cells suddenly goes down dramatically, your body may react by either making more or making the ones that are left a lot larger.

Most of us with normal thyroid function tend to think it’s pretty hard to lose weight. Imagine how people with a slow thyroid feel. People with a slow thyroid, or with hypothyroidism, have a really hard time losing weight and often times have a hard time trying to maintain a normal healthy weight because of this problem.

Your thyroid gland is actually a seemingly inconsequential gland that is located in the neck, which helps to regulate your metabolism. It does this by essentially converting oxygen into energy.  When the thyroid is under active, it can slow the metabolism to such a point that the body is just not as efficient of a calorie burning machine.

Weight therefore, gets held on to more easily and people who have a hypothyroidism problem tend to have problems maintaining a good weight.  Many times people with this issue need to see an endocrine (hormone) specialist, since this is essentially considered a glandular function.

The opposit of hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, is where the gland actually speeds the metabolism up too much, and causes a person to have trouble holding on to body weight and body fat.  Sounds like a problem we’d all dream of having, but it’s not such a cakewalk for these people either as it often comes with other unsavory health issues.

If you have an under active thyroid gland, then you will most likely have to cut calories and exercise more than a person with an average performing thyroid, simply to make up for the gap that exists between the two.

There may be some medications that can help as well, but often times it depends on the patient’s discipline and drive to do it.  Medications may help, but often times it takes a lot of lifestyle changes to make it happen as well.

It’s a well known fact that drinking a lot of purified water is excellent for your health in many ways. We know that drinking water replenishes our electrolytes, hydrates and nourishes our digestive systems, and pretty much keeps us alive. 

Heck, we know that we can’t go for more than a day without water without dying of dehydration, much less time than it would take us to starve to death, showing how much more important water is to our bodies than food for sustenance.

Water used to be talked about a lot as a weight loss aid. Then of course, the naysayers came out and talked about how they believed that too much water can actually sabotage weight loss goals. 

While it’s true that there is such a thing as water toxicity, where the body is so overwhelmed with water that it essentially shuts down, that is relaly only for extreme circumstances where someone has been drinking excessive water and not going to the bathroom to rid the body of it.

New research is proving that drinking lots of water helps you lose weight more quickly. In addition, the habit helps you keep the weight off for longer as well. 

The research shows specifically that those who drink at least two glasses of water before each meal tend to eat much less and also happen to lose weight at a much more rapid rate. They further keep it off longer if they keep that habit of drinking water before each meal as well.

Water does help to create a sense of fullness when it is taken in either right before a meal or along with a meal, so that’s one benefit. What could some of the other benefits of drinking water be when it comes to weight loss?

People who drank water before their meals actually ate an average of about 75 calories less per meal than those who did not drink the two glasses of water, actually. Those calories may not sound huge, but over time they certainly do add up and make your weight loss more dramatic and much quicker. 

What’s even more interesting is that apparently even a little bit of dehydration causes a significant drop in your metabolism. Therefore, it would logically follow that staying totally hydrated would help keep your metabolism functioning at peak levels. 

So, staying hydrated by drinking water really does help you to lose weight and to keep it off. Not only does water help you physically feel fuller in a manual way by taking up space in your stomach, but it also helps you to maintain a speedy metbolism to stay thin and trim.

My husband and I are sick and tired of not being able to fit properly in our summer clothes. We gained a little weight after a few weekends of family and friends and barbecues and such, and we really want to take off a little bit of weight.  I want to lose about 7 pounds – not too bad, I just want to be able to fit in my clothes again. It’s amazing what  huge different 7-8 pounds can make on me, I’m a woman with a small 5’4″ frame, and even 5 pounds can make a one size difference in my pants!

My husband wants to lose a little bit more weight than me. Perhaps about 15-20 pounds. He currently weighs about 200 pounds and stands at 6’3″ tall. Like me, he’s not necessarily ridiculously overweight, he’s just not in his comfort range and would like to feel better and fit in his clothes better.

It’s amazing the older you get, the less losing weight is about vanity and the more it is about things you can actually feel and that make your life a higher quality, like energy levels and better sleep.

Here is how we are going about this weight loss challenge. We’re making it fun. I have set up a pad of paper with a pencil in our master bathroom.  Every morning, we’ve agreed to write down our weight.  This will help us keep track of progress and see that weight in writing every morning as an extra boost of will power for eating and exercising throughout the day.

I have a few little “extras” that I will be practicing to help me in my first week or two so that I can shrink my stomach and get used to eating smaller portions, as well as control my cravings. I’m taking a weight loss quality hoodia natural appetite suppressant to help get me through.

This will give me power over my appetite and cravings without giving me any of the nervousness, heart palpitations or jitters that caffeinated and stimulant laced weight loss aids may cause.

I’m also going to be listening to my treasured weight loss hypnosis CD’s which will really help give me that subliminial, subconscious sort of boost to keep going on the right path toward weight loss and my goals of exercising more and doing the things I need to do in order to get back to my ideal weight.

Of course, a little friendly competition never hurts. We are competing in a way, but it’s more of a rah-rah we’re both cheering for eachother sort of thing, not a knock down drag out kind of competition.  We are both really on board with this endeavor, and it’s great to have a partner to go through a weight loss regimen with.