You may be finding it difficult to live in the “post magic bullet world” that we have today. We do know that those stimulant diet pills were bad for us. Stimulants put too much strain on our hearts, while delivering only short term weight loss, unsustainable once the stimulant was stopped. Nevertheless, we wish that a simple pill would help us clean the house from top to bottom…and eat a small dinner! 

The good news and the bad news is that we have to become realists about our appetites. The better news is that foods can work for you, and supplements can influence the complex biochemistry that influences appetite and weight gain. Natural, unprocessed foods do help in weight loss and in feeling full. And now, supplements are formulated to pick up where your diet leaves off:  balancing blood sugar, slowing the digestion of carbohydrate overall and to helping create satiety, when an individual’s sense of it is murky.

Supplementary fiber, plant extracts and enzyme inhibiting agents are newer supplements that influence whether your food will ultimately be stored or burned. Fibers, taken in advance of meals, provide a gel that traps fats and bile, impedes sugar absorption and start to fill the stomach. Products include sources such as chia seed, acacia gum and propolmannan. Plant extracts such as Irvingia gabonensis, or African mango, and saffron, of saffron rice fame, is known to influence a variety of hormones linked to satiety.  Finally, enzyme inhibitors reduce the amount of new sugars entering the bloodstream after a meal. Recently, progressive companies have developed combinations of these for a greater positive effect on weight loss.

Most of my time in private practice is spent in helping people improve the scope of what they eat that will truly nourish them. In general, these nutrient dense foods include vegetables/beans (legumes), fruits, whole grains not turned into a flour-based product, and lean animal and dairy proteins in a measure amenable to the client’s preferences. When more of these foods are in your daily diet, they will replace your poorer choices per force, so that you feel satisfied with a more normal amount of food. If improving the quality of your diet with seasonal variety and adequate protein seems remote, supplements can fill the gap; however, they will not salvage a diet with few redeeming foods in it.

Just keeping a food diary promotes weight loss and weight maintenance. Of course, there is an app for that, but a small notebook or notepad will do nicely as well. I also recommend that people chew food as if it were gum that they intended to chew until flavorless. Promoting satiety also includes sitting down at a table without any other task than to eat.

Perhaps, the best news regarding diets and weight is that just about all of the pieces of the puzzle are in place and consumers are wary of “get thin quick” schemes, no matter who markets them. The answers are more complex than we were ever led to believe. However, just about everyone agrees that it takes the synergy of a nutrient dense diet along with significant regular exercise to hold the line on weight and its attendant problems as we age. So I encourage you to start improving your health today!