Diets In Review asked:


The South Beach Diet is a revolutionary way of looking at weight loss. It isn’t low carb or low fat—it’s all about balance and learning to choose good fats and good carbs instead of foods that don’t help your body. This diet was developed by Miami cardiologist Arthur Agaston as a way for heart patients to lose weight in a healthy way and keep it off, but it was so successful that soon everyone wanted to try it. During the first two weeks on the South Beach Diet you’ll begin the process of learning to eat in a new way. You’ll eat three balanced meals a day with normal size portions of meat, seafood, vegetables, eggs, cheese, and nuts. You won’t be hungry and you’ll learn how to ignore cravings and avoid wanting to overeat. You get to have snacks twice a day, drink diet soda, and eat out, but there are a few things you can’t eat in the first two weeks. You can’t have bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, baked goods, candy, ice cream, sugar, or fruit. You also can’t have beer or alcohol. But it’s only for two weeks. After that, you get to add these foods back into your diet in a healthy way. After the first two weeks, the next phase of the South Beach Diet begins. You’ll still eat plenty of lean protein, vegetables, eggs, cheeses, and nuts, but you also get to add in some of your favorite carbohydrates and sugars. You’ll learn the difference between good carbs and bad carbs and learn to balance foods so that you stay full and have plenty of energy! You stick to this phase of the diet until you reach your target weight. Then you can add in even more carbs and sugars while still maintaining your new weight. Once you know how to balance healthy options with not-as-healthy favorites, it’s easy to eat what you love and still keep the weight off.The South Beach Diet is less of a diet and more of a way of life. It teaches you how to eat so that it isn’t such a struggle to be healthy. The foods emphasized are universally considered to be healthy choices rich in vitamins, minerals, omega-3 oils, and good fats. There are even prepackaged South Beach meal options that can be purchased online or in grocery stores, which makes it even easier to stay on track. More diet tips and diet reviews at www.dietsinreview.com and the diet forum

Mike Geary asked:


Let me ask you… If Hoodia weight loss diet pills were really the miracle cure to weight loss that the marketers would have you believe, and since millions are using these pills regularly, why are millions not losing weight? If you were to believe all of the hype, you would think that hoodia gordonii diet pills are the miracle cure to obesity and weight loss that will save the world. Ahh, if it were only that easy to lose weight!

Let’s look at this further… Does Hoodia really work for lasting weight loss, or even have any effects whatsoever for losing body fat? Let’s search a little deeper beyond all of the marketing hype and see if hoodia gordonii actually has any legitimate basis for losing weight.

The fact is that you cannot search the internet or listen to the radio without being bombarded by Hoodia Gordonii advertisements promising all sorts of miraculous claims. The reason I wanted to bring up the subject of Hoodia and it’s legitimacy is that I don’t want any of my readers to waste their money and fall for this scam.

Now let me preface this by saying that not all companies selling hoodia gordonii are scammers. Some are legitimate and honest and actually selling real Hoodia. However, with the lack of federal regulation on supplements, it is quite easy for shady smaller companies to get away with selling diet pills that don’t even have any hoodia gordonii at all in them. Also, we are not even saying anything regarding whether Hoodia Gordonii (if it were the real stuff) actually does work or not for losing weight in the long run.

Sure, the Hoodia ads sound amazing… no exercise necessary, just sit on your couch, pop a couple hoodia weight loss diet pills, and you’ll start melting body fat off your bones like a furnace… Please, give me a frickin break! Let us get clear this up… Quick fixes NEVER work, and they NEVER will work in the future. Even if a miracle weight loss diet pill is developed in the future, there will always be an adverse side effect… it’s simply against the laws of nature, and the homeostasis that your body wants to stay in.

I can’t even tell you how many people I get writing me and they’re totally sold on this Hoodia Gordonii stuff by the slick marketing and hype. They buy it and they get no weight loss results whatsoever. Well, there was a good $50 or $100 down the drain! I can’t blame them for being suckered… I mean these scammers are pretty good marketers.

You’ll see in a minute that a large percentage of what is labeled and sold as hoodia gordonii may not even contain ANY Hoodia at all. A lot of it is completely counterfeit.

At first glance, it might appear that this supposed “magical hoodia herb” has some promise. All of the hype started a couple years ago when a popular night-time network TV show presented Hoodia as a new and potentially exciting weight-loss diet pill. Well, it didn’t take long for the internet and late night advertising scammers to follow suit, fill some capsules with any old crap they could find, and start spamming bazillions of people around the world saying that their diet pills were the magical answer to weight loss and the dream body they’ve been looking for their entire life.

Hoodia Gordonii has been used by the Bushmen of Southern Africa for centuries as an appetite suppressant for their journeys. The fact is that hoodia in its natural state might actually work as a decent appetite suppressant (although that doesn’t necessarily mean it will help with long lasting weight loss). The problem lies in the fact that the supplement industry is not federally regulated in the US, and any scamster can put whatever they want in a capsule and sell it for huge profits.

The fact is that the quantity of Hoodia Gordonii being sold throughout the world in supplement stores and online FAR EXCEEDS the amount that is actually produced. Hoodia Gordonii is only grown in a small area of southern Africa and is a very slow growing plant, and there is a much larger quantity of “supposed hoodia” sold than is produced. Obviously, this means that a large amount of what is sold as hoodia is simply counterfeit.

Basically what they put in the pill doesn’t even have to be Hoodia, because ever since the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, there is no regulation or testing to assure that what their label claims is actually in the bottle. Now even if they did put real Hoodia Gordonii extract in the diet pills, there is also no scientific proof at this point that these small doses that they are using will actually cause any type of permanent weight loss at all in humans.

Even if hoodia were to actually help lessen your appetite, that is not always a good thing, as it may simply deprive your body of the nutrition it needs to function properly and maintain lean muscle mass, all of which regulates your overall metabolism. If you did lose weight, this would not be a good weight loss, as you would lose muscle and end up with a slower metabolic rate, which would lead to excess weight gain in the future.

So you’re left with these major problems:

1. A certain percentage of the Hoodia Gordonii being sold out there might not even be real Hoodia. You simply could be buying any old junk powder that they fill the pills with.

2. Even if certain brands are honest (which a lot of the bigger companies actually ARE honest), and actually put the amount of Hoodia that they claim in the bottle, there is no proof that those quantities are sufficient enough to lessen the appetite (compared to the raw hoodia plant that the bushmen eat), nor is there any evidence that hoodia will result in permanent and healthy weight loss.

So do Hoodia weight loss diet pills really work? The answer is that no one really knows for sure, however with all of the uncertainties that we’ve highlighted here, it is highly unlikely that Hoodia will create lasting weight loss for you, even if you do get lucky enough to get the “real stuff”.

As you’ve probably heard me say a million times before… the bottom line is that there are no “miracle pills in a bottle”. If you want to be truly healthy, lean, and strong for life, it takes some actual real exercise and a nutritious diet full of natural unprocessed healthy foods… a healthy diet that you can live with for life! There are no substitutes, but there are plenty of scams if you want to throw away your money.

If you’re ready to stop searching for the miracle diet pills and find out a true solution to weight loss and a lean **** body for life, you have some legitimate options below.

Diets In Review asked:


Since when was getting a raw deal a good thing? When you decide to try the Raw Food Diet, apparently. Proponents of this natural food diet stick to unprocessed uncooked plant foods, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, sprouts, seeds, nuts, grains, beans, dried fruit, and seaweed.

Most adherents are vegetarian, while some eat raw fish and even fewer eat (gulp!) raw meat. Either way, you may as well say bye-bye to that new stainless steel stove of yours. That’s because raw food proponents believe that heating any food above 116 degrees Fahrenheit destroys important enzymes that help in digestion and absorption of the essential nourishment you get from your meals.

Critics claim that even if enzymes are inactivated when food is heated, the body uses its own enzymes for digestion. They also point out that cooking makes some phytochemicals easier to absorb into your system.

Regardless of which side you stand on, the emphasis on natural, non-processed food sources, is undeniably a good place to start.

So, are you still interested in trying the raw eating lifestyle? Since this is a pretty drastic change in your eating habits, you may experience some withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and nausea when you first give up sugar and caffeine. But don’t fret; it should only last a couple days. You may also risk some nutritional deficiencies such as protein, calcium and iron, so consider consulting your doctor first.

More diet tips and diet reviews at www.dietsinreview.com and the diet forum. Also don’t forget the diet blog