Hydroxycut - Good Riddance
Posted on May 11th 2009 1:00PM by Jonny BowdenFiled Under: Jonny's Take, Diet & Weight Loss
Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.
Bye bye, Hydroxycut. Good riddance.
Hydroxycut, one of the most popular and heavily promoted of the "over-the-counter weight loss formulas" has bitten the proverbial dust. Federal drug regulators have warned consumers to stop using it, citing reports of a death due to liver failure and other instances of serious health problems. This comes on the heels of the Star Caps incident -- that idiotic, overpriced supplement designed by a former cable TV host with absolutely no nutritional credentials and marketed as a "Hollywood Secret" -- was found to contain a powerful prescription-only diuretic, causing both Vitamin Shoppe and GNC to immediately stop selling it. Both companies have also stopped selling 13 of the Hydroxycut products as well.
Please don't think I get any satisfaction out of saying this, but "I told you so."
Stay away from over-the-counter "diet aid" pills. Number one: They don't work. None of them. Period. Number two: Some of them are a lot worse than merely useless. They might actually cause some damage. The FDA recently issued a list of 70 brands of weight-loss formulas that contain all sorts of potentially hazardous drugs (including a medication to prevent seizures).
If these over-the-counter pills "work" at all, it's usually due to stimulants like bitter orange or ephedra which are like a mild form of legal speed. Often, as we're seeing, they also contain other ingredients we'd be better off without.
The Hydroxycut incident gives me no personal satisfaction because these kinds of abuses typically result in more calls for "control" over the dietary supplement industry (often by surrogates for Big Pharma masking as "consumer interest" groups). And it casts suspicion on the whole industry, making some folks wary of taking any supplement, even though the vast majority of supplement makers are honest, high-integrity folks who make excellent and remarkably-safe products. (There has never, to my knowledge, been a single death from an "overdose" of vitamin C, or folic acid, or, well, you get the picture.)
Although over-the-counter miracle weight-loss formulas like Hydroxycut and Star Caps are a waste of money, that doesn't mean that some supplements -- added to a wise program of low-carb eating and regular activity -- can't help. Green tea extract, for example, has been shown to slightly boost metabolism, and there are studies by Dr. Harry Preuss on the efficacy of SuperCitriMax and CLA.
These supplements are not magic solutions to the weight-loss dilemma. Weight loss still requires diligent work, careful food choices and regular exercise. If you've got all three of those in place, some supplements can help. But they can't perform magic, they can't do the work for you and they can't make fat disappear without you having to do anything at all. And that's true no matter what celebrity endorses them, and no matter what "amazing" before and after pictures you see on late-night television infomercials.
The old adage still holds: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
