After having reviewed over 295 diet pills in the last year, I’ve come to realize that the one and only factor that determines how effective a diet pill is likely to be is the ingredient profile. If the ingredients are proven to work and they is enough of the ingredient included, it’s usually a good bet that you will lose some weight. Without those two things, it’s anyone’s guess.
When you start to research the ingredients that are in a given diet pill, you’ll want to be sure that you use credible sources. Unfortunately, many diet pills provide information on the ingredients that sounds more like a sales pitch (because it is) than unbiased statements. A such, you should always verify their cliams by researching the ingredients for yourself. PubMed, Wikipedia, and peer-reviewed medical journals are good sources of unbiased information.
One common trick that diet pills will use is to cite a clinical study of an ingredient, but try to make it appear as though it was a study on their product itself. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great when they cite research on ingredients as long as they disclose that the research is actually on the ingredient in the diet pill. Also, many will ‘quote’ research but will give no reference to verify that the study was legitimate or that it even happened. Essentially if they don’t clearly reference the study in a way that you can find it yourself, you shouldn’t believe anything that they’ve said.
It is very important that you do your own research rather than rely upon the sales copy of the diet pills. There are some ingredients on the market (for example, hoodia gordonii and acai berry) that have become extremely popular lately that have absolutely zero well documented, legitimate scientific studies that support any of their claims to help in weight loss. It’s all a bunch of hype created by the diet pill manufacturers themselves. So don’t believe everything that you hear.
So if I check out all the ingredients in the diet pill and they look as though they’ve been proven to effectively cause weight loss, I can then assume the diet pill will work right? Well, not so fast. You then have to verify the amounts of the ingredients used. Many diet pills will use what they call ‘Proprietary Blends’ in which they don’t have to disclose the amounts of each ingredient in the pill. They only list the ingredient.
For example, if an ingredient was shown to cause weight loss in a study that used 600 mg per dosage, in order for the diet pill to have the same effect it would obviously need to have the same amount of the ingredient. But what many companies do is they put a small amount of the ingredient in the pill so that they can advertise that they have the ingredient and then not disclose how much you’re actually getting by takingit. In short, look for diet pills that allow you to verify their effectiveness by listing the amounts of all their ingredients.
Yet another trick that some diet pills use is including an insanely long list of ingredients. Don’t be impressed by such tactics. In most cases (not all, but most) they can’t fit enough of each ingredient in the pill do any good. They’re just trying to add credibility by making you think there’s a lot in the pill.
Some of what you’ve read may seem like common sense. It is. But it’s so often overlooked by consumers that diet pill companies are making a killing by providing sub-par products. When it comes down it, the ingredients are the only things that make a pill effective. So make sure you do your homework to make the right choices when picking diet pills.
