Right! Slimming Pills....!?!

Cheeky_gal

Ok ok you always think negatively when you hear the term "slimming pills"...but honestly, are they really that bad for you? Has anyone on this thing actually tried them and if so, whats your opinion?

I'm 5"8 and I'm 12st...not sure if thats a good or bad thing...I personally think I need to lose weight and I've been exercising and have changed my diet completely about 2 months ago and nothing...still 12st! I've heard of Bio-synergy Body Perfect and Go Cal 1000...and have heard good results but also negative ones...can anyone help me out please I'd be so grateful! I've read some threads here in this forum and there appears to be a few of you that really know your stuff!!

g'em

Cheeky_gal wrote:

I've been exercising...

excellent...

Cheeky_gal wrote:

and have changed my diet completely about 2 months ago

brilliant...

Cheeky_gal wrote:

and nothing...still 12st!

But the burning question is - have you noticed a difference in how your clothes fit you and how you look in the mirror?? Sometimes the number on the scale is the least accurate reflection of how 'in shape' you are!

Slimming tablets sound too good to be true don't they? Unfortunately they usually are e.g.

Green Tea, L-tyrosine and Citrus Aurantium are the primary ingredients of the Bio-Synergy Body Perfect tablets. Green tea you can drink at will, L-tyrosine may or may not impact weight-loss by encouraging thyroid function but it's just an amino acid found in any complete protein source and Citrus Aurantium is bitter orange which is linked with appetite suppression from having synephrine in it.

The *best* you can really hope for these slimming aids to do is help suppress your appetite. BUT all that really happens is that you stop eating as much, lose weight, then put it back on again when you eat normally (which happens surprisingly quickly - your body gets accostomed to those ingredients very fast).

Plus, if you're eating less but still eating sh*te food you may not see any results at all. They certainly shouldn't do you any harm if you want to take tehm just to see what they're like - but I'm pretty confident they'd be a fairly expensive waste of time :rolleyes:

What's your diet like at the moment? Stick up a typical day and there may be some tweaks that we can help with.

Cheeky_gal

wow you really know your stuff....ok heres a typical day...

Breakfast
Cornflakes w/skimmed milk

Lunch
Brown bread sandwich w/smoked salmon

Snack
Apple/pineapple/grapes

Dinner
Boiled rice & red thai curry

And I never drinks soft drinks, I would have about 5 cups of green tea a day and drink loads of water on top of that. I would also have on average a skinny cappuccino daily....that stuff is addictive!!

Exercise consists of an hours walk with the dog every night and walking in town all afternoon...and i try to fit in squats/lunges/tummy exercises daily aswell...so where on earth am I falling down?

Oh and to answer your question, no I'm not seeing any difference in my clothes or in the mirror...in fact I think i've put on weight!

g'em

Cheeky_gal wrote:

Breakfast
Cornflakes w/skimmed milk

This is what a lot of people consider a good 'healthy' breakfast. There's nothing inherently *wrong* with it as such, but it's a long way from optimal.

Are you at all familiar with the GI of foods? You see lots of foods now being advertised as 'Low GI' and Tesco's have started labelling the GI properties of lots of their own-brand products.

If you Google GI you should get loads of info on it but essentially it's a measure of how quickly the food gets broken down when it's in your tummy due to its sugar content (that doesn't necessarily mean table sugar, it can be natural sugars like those in fruit too).

High GI foods (the highest being pure sugar @ a GI of 100) are broken down super-fast. It promotes the release of a hormone called insulin (the one that's linked to diabetes, but is a necessary part of all of our metabolisms), and the higher the GI, the higher the insulin spike. But what comes up, must come down and when you eat high GI foods, your insulin goes rocketing up, then comes crashing down just as fast. This is what we call a 'sugar crash'.

So when you eat cornflakes (high GI) what actually happens is that you end up getting hungry very fast becacuse your insulin levels rise, then fall again really fast.

Oats (porridge) or eggs or wholemeal bread are much lower on the GI scale, and even though they cause your insulin to rise, it's released slower and steadily, so you stay fuller for longer. A bowl of porridge is a *great* way to start the day - it keeps you nice and full and satiated for ages. Scrambled eggs (protein) with low-fat cheese and almond oil (good fats) are a particular breakfast favourite of mine - low GI, the fats keep you nice and full and the protein helps to keep your metabolism ticking over brilliantly after being starved all night.

Lunch
Brown bread sandwich w/smoked salmon

well the salmon is a brilliant option, but the brown bread just needs to be good quality stuff - preferably wholemeal and maybe even with seeds that are also packed with good fats (unfortunately there's still fat-phobia for a lot of people when in fact extremely low-fat diets are one of the worst ways to lose weight, you just need to make your fats come from good sources and eat them in moderation). A salad or some vegetables would be great too.

Snack
Apple/pineapple/grapes

Ideally we actually snack mid-morning AND mid-afternoon. Your metabolism (as old as this analogy may be, it still rings true!!) is like a fire - you need to stoke it often with good fuel to make it burn fast. Fruit is great, but protein is better - a yoghurt (plain and with as little added sugar as possible - the organic varieties are usually good), or a small handful of nuts or even some slicecs of meat could be an option.

Dinner
Boiled rice & red thai curry

White rice is usually very hgihly processed and high GI. Wild rice or borwn rice is much better. And if the curry sauce is from a jar take a look at the ingredients - if sugar is in the top four ingredients it's probably muck I'm afraid! Lots of jars of sauces are full of unecessary ingredients like added salt and sugar to add flavour, and have lots of colourings and additives.

Not all sauces are awful though, just read the labels. Look for as many 'whole' or real foods as possible. The more chemicals there are, the worse it is.

Low-fat and ready meals are a big culprit for this - they may be low-fat, but they're usually less tasty than the packaging they come in and are laces with preservatives, salt, sugar and high in water!

And I never drinks soft drinks, I would have about 5 cups of green tea a day and drink loads of water on top of that. I would also have on average a skinny cappuccino daily....that stuff is addictive!!

Aye, skinny lattes are my downfall But the green tea is brilliant and 3-5L of water will go a long way towards keeping you cleansed. It'll also keep you staying full too surprisingly enough.

Oh and to answer your question, no I'm not seeing any difference in my clothes or in the mirror...in fact I think i've put on weight!

I think that having a diet so high in carbohydrates is largely a part of it, and I think you may actually be undereating slightly - by that I mean you need to eat a little more often, not more at every sitting!

There's actually loads of info in the stickies - I know they might seem geared towards athletes but the essentials are the same irrespective of what your goals are. I think increasing your protein and good fat intake and swapping the high GI carbs for wholemeal or brown versions would certainly help.

Trust me though, it's a trial and error process - it can be very frustrating but experimenting with different foods and figuring out which ones keep you ncie and full/ make you feel good/ give you lots of energy is worth the effort!!

Gaz

G'em, can I ask what you do for a living ?

I have this image in my head of a crazed scientist in a lab coat with pockets full of test tubes doing some serious deadlifts.

Again, your knowledge of all things fitness is seriously impressive.
This board would be lost without you !:)

g'em

thank you!

Darth Homer wrote:

G'em, can I ask what you do for a living ?

I have this image in my head of a crazed scientist in a lab coat with pockets full of test tubes doing some serious deadlifts.

Actually you're not far wrong - I am a scientist, and I teach biology to undergrads (I guess having that background gives me the extra interest in all the nutrition stuff?). Haven't worn my lab coat in a good while though, and I usually keep my deadlifting and my experimenting separate - for some reason the technicians aren't too keen on me randomly lifting the lab equipment around, some nonsense about it costing thousands of quid or something...

justsomebloke

Darth Homer wrote:

I have this image in my head of a crazed scientist in a lab coat with pockets full of test tubes doing some serious deadlifts.

having had the privilege to have trained with g'em on a few occasions I can actually confirm that the image you have is actually correct. We kept on suggesting that taking off the lab coat, hell even just take out the test tubes would make deadlifting easier but she just wouldn't listen.

yomchi

Darn you G'em, you just wrote everything i was going to...

A guy comes into the shop the other day and says-

"have you anyting at all to help me lose weight and burn fat"

And i said..

"yeh the very thing... ADVICE!!"

Fat burners, are ok. They are not the be all and end all of a slimming programme. They may help, they may not. All their markting would have you think that they will actually rip you up and turn you into Mr or Ms Super Buffed.
The most important aspect to losing weight is your diet, exercise plan and your mind set. Burners are an add on.
You can buy some stuff in health shops like Soy Lecithen that contain Choline and then there's Carnitine that you can add to your diet to help the fat metabolisation, above all else clean up the diet as G'em has posted in detail and get exercising!
Good luck.

yomchi

And for anyone who hasn't met G'em;

g'em

Jon wrote:

And for anyone who hasn't met G'em...

That's scarily accurate... just substitute the brown hair for blonde and green eyes for brown and that's me!!! Oh but I don't do hot pink nail varnish - perfect French tips ftw!!! (I like having pretty nails when I'm DLing, they nicely offset the massive hard callouses on the other side of my hands )

PeakOutput

g'em wrote:

(I like having pretty nails when I'm DLing, they nicely offset the massive hard callouses on the other side of my hands )

im so hot right now




:eek:

crotalus667

g'em wrote:

White rice is usually very hgihly processed and high GI. Wild rice or borwn rice is much better. QUOTE]


Just a quick question g’em, what about basmati rice ?? (the reason I ask is because I recently was given a 5kg bag for free )

g'em

crotalus667 wrote:

Just a quick question g’em, what about basmati rice ?? (the reason I ask is because I recently was given a 5kg bag for free )

Basmati has one of the lower GI's of the starchy carb group so it's great. Just keep protion size in check, that's usually most people's downfall - the rice or pasta will constitute the main bulk of the meal. But keep the carbs to about a quarter of the total food volume and you should be ok.

crotalus667

g'em wrote:

Basmati has one of the lower GI's of the starchy carb group so it's great. Just keep protion size in check, that's usually most people's downfall - the rice or pasta will constitute the main bulk of the meal. But keep the carbs to about a quarter of the total food volume and you should be ok.

Thanks g'em ,

Cheeky_gal

Jeez G'em...you're an absolute ledge! Thanks a mil for the advice...gonna take it all on board n i'll let u know how I get on!

One quick q tho which I forgot to add in....I'm hooked on take-aways...jst how bad for u are they!? By takeaways I mean chinese n thai (not chipper or pizza) n I always go for a curry n boiled rice....how bad? Cheers!

g'em

Cheeky_gal wrote:

One quick q tho which I forgot to add in....I'm hooked on take-aways...jst how bad for u are they!? By takeaways I mean chinese n thai (not chipper or pizza) n I always go for a curry n boiled rice....how bad? Cheers!

Very bad. Generally loaded with saturated fats, and incredibly high levels of salt and sugar. These will definitely hinder any weight-loss efforts you're making.