The Food and Drug Administration has approved the sale of alli for weight loss. This product is orlistat. It is like the prescription drug Xenical, only at half the dose.

Orlistat (alli) works along with a low-calorie and low fat diet. Exercise is also necessary. Orlistat (alli) works in the digestive tract by partially blocking the absorption of fat. This causes the fat, up to 25%,  to pass thru the body. This 25% will not be digested. As will all products, there are the bad effects along with the good.

Vitamins A,E,and K are fat soluble and are not absorbed by the body. It then becomes necessary to replace these vitamins with daily multivitamins. It is recommended that the vitamins be taken at bedtime, or two hours before or 2 hours after you take the orlistat.
These products, alli and Xenical are not for everyone trying to lose weight. If you have trouble absorbing food, you are pregnant or nursing, or diabetic, make sure you consult your doctor. This drug would probably not be for you.

Some medications are affected by this drug. It interferes with absorption. (For example Coumadin and cyclosporine.) If your weight problem is more than 30 pounds, this drug is not for you.

During clinical trials, about 50% of the participants taking 3 pills a day, one at each meal, lost an average of 5.7 pounds. But, after stopping the drug, the weight returned.

The side effects are another story: extra bowel movements, gas, oily discharge, oily stools, oily spotting, inability to control your bowel movements. 50% of the people in the trials had side effects, and 7% of the people lost control of their bowel movements. Some people can get an allergic reaction. Signs of allergy are itching, hives, swelling, chest pain, and breathing problems.

Is taking this medicine worth it?  You decide!

by Jennifer Cole 

 

How many times have you heard in your lifetime that you need to exercise? Probably too many to count, right? Have you ever wondered why exactly it is so vital to your health?

The most obvious reason we exercise would be to help manage our weight. Simply put, if you exercise you burn calories! If you can burn more calories than you consume, than you see yourself losing weight. Some of you may be at a weight that your happy with and may think that you don’t need to exercise. I’m here to show you some other reasons to get off that couch - even if you’re that perfect size and can eat anything you want! I’ll try not to be too jealous of you!

First off it strengthens your cardiovascular system as well as your respiratory system. When you exercise, your making sure that ‘bad’ cholesterol doesn’t build up in your blood AND it helps to lower your blood pressure. I know a lot of us should exercise on that reason alone, present company included! When we exercise, we’re actually training our body to take in oxygen a bit better so that we can breathe easier.

 

Yet another way is trying to prevent osteoporosis, which harms our bones. When you lift weights or work out with any kind of resistance, your than reducing the risk of the disease. Running and walking helps as well because it teaches your body to hold its own weight as well as get stronger.

 

I know that I myself have heard that exercising can help elevate my mood, but honestly I never understood why. Apparently when we exercise it activates the chemicals called neurotransmitters. They help nerve cells communicate and can help avoid depression. Exercising balances these chemicals out and releases endorphins, which also provide natural pain relief. It also reduces your anxiety level and helps you manage stress.

 

If you break it down like this, it may make even more sense to you. Some short term benefits of exercising:

1. Your heart will be healthier – physical activity makes your heart work harder, therefore makes it stronger and able to function that much better
2. Your muscles, bones and joints are healthier – you increase bone density when you do resistance training (lifting weights, etc)
3. Burn more calories – when you can exercise regularly you burn more calories during times when your active and when your resting (who can argue with burning calories when your resting?!)
4. Able to cope with stress much better because it is a proven fact that those of us who are fit have less anxiety, depression and stress than people who aren’t
5. Your able to fall asleep and stay asleep
6. Your able to think faster and clearer
7. Increase in your energy

    If your more of a ‘long term’ kind of person, here are some benefits including reduced risk of:

1. Dying early
2. Developing coronary artery disease (did you know that men who aren’t active have about TWICE the risk of developing heart disease?)
3. Having a second heart attack. As well as lowering your risk of dying from a heart attack.
4. Developing high blood pressure
5. Developing diabetes – type 2
6. Developing colon cancer as well as other types of cancer
7. Becoming obese

If you were to pick up any health or fitness magazine it’ll usually boast about having great new ways to zap your body into shape. Most of the time they’ll even have a snazzy pull out page of tummy crunches and leg raises that they expect to get tacked up on your wall.

Here are some ‘typical’ activities that you may find yourself doing and you might be surprised on the calories your burning all ready!

  

You will burn approx. 100 calories (120 to 150-pound healthy person)
Activity	Time in Minutes
Clean/vacuum/mop floor	25-35
Wash dishes/iron clothes	45-50
Mow lawn (self-propelled mower)	25-30
Mow lawn (manual mower)	12-15
Garden (spade/Roto-till)	10-20
Rake leaves	20-25
Wash or wax car	20-25
Wash windows	20-30
Paint (brush not a roller)	35-40
Snow shovel	10-15
Snow blowing	15-20
Stack firewood	15-20
Walk (brisk)	15-25
Tennis	20-25
Golf (walk course)	20-25
Bicycle (5.5 mph rate)	20-30
Bicycle (9.4 mph rate)	15-20
Aerobics (medium)	20-30

25 Fun Ways to get some cardio

1.     Sledding

2.     Walking through a Theme Park

3.     Going to a County Fair

4.     Playing Volleyball, Baseball, Softball, Basketball

5.     Walk on the beach

6.     Jumping on a trampoline with the kids

7.     Roller blading (now’s a great time to learn!)

8.     Riding bikes

9.     Taking a karate class (get cardio and learn self defense!)

10.  Rock climbing (indoor or out)

11.  Bellydance

12.  Horseback riding

13.  Badminton

14.  Swimming

15.  Skip rope (if you can hum a tune for 9 ½ minutes you’ll burn 100 calories)

16.  Play golf (minus the cart of course)

17.  Hockey (on the ice or in the street with the kids)

18.  Shoveling the driveway or the sidewalk

19.  Walk treadmill (you know the one that’s doubling as a closet!) while on the phone with that relative/friend you keep meaning to catch up with

20.  Tennis

21.  Play tag with kids

22.  Walk the mall

23.  Take a nature hike (be sure to bring some water)

24.  Skiing

25.  Act like a tourist and walk around your city and enjoy sights you may have overlooked in your busy day to day life

 Ways your getting cardio without even realizing it

1.       Every time you run to the freezer to grab ice after Jr. falls (for the 3^rd time this morning)

2.       Running to the car from school after you left the car (for a minute at most) in the bus loading zone because you got caught talking to your sons English teacher

3.       Chasing the twins around the backyard because they decided it would be fun for the neighbors to see their sisters Princess Barbie underwear

4.       Running from the top of the stairs to the bottom of the slide to catch your toddler for the 20^th time on the playground

5.       Chasing the dog around the entire house after he decided to use the shoes you just spent an entire paycheck on as his chew toy

 Take a look at some of these crazy products that I had found that try and make you believe you’ll lose those unwanted pounds. Please try and control your laughter! In no way does Dermathol endorse or promote these products. These are solely for the purpose of entertainment.

Wash Yourself Skinny Aoquili Diet Soap is a unique weight loss soap that is made from “the elixirs of undersea plants, including rare seaweed.” The unique qualities are its defeating agents which penetrate to the subcutaneous layer to assist in the elimination of fat layers. Given some time, you will be surprised to find that your body has become slender … It makes your weight control simple, convenient,and relaxed.”      

Caffeine Tights  Palmers “Slim Fit 20” caffeine tights helps “trim inches from thighs, reduces the appearance of cellulite and reduce[s] the dreaded “orange peel” effect.”They say they work because body heat releases caffeine microcapsules  into the leg, thus promoting the metabolism to kick in and start burning the fat.   

Ray of Hope Sunscreen “It’s a two-in-one. A tan and tone. A sun and slim. …This new water-resistant broad spectrum sunscreen actually helps you fight the look of fat while lying on the beach! With exclusive sun-activated spheres that release the visual slimming effect of caffeine molecules when you need them most— while baring the better part of your birthday suit in the sun—in a non-greasy spray formula of hydrating antioxidants and aloe.”   

 Spray Yourself Skinny  The SLIMist weight loss spray program has ‘two distinct components - an intra oral spray and three scent inhalers, called Scentsifiers” to help you get skinny.  “SLIMist spray formulation is a combination of three of the most thoroughly researched weight loss ingredients over the past 30 years.  

Lick Your Lips Skinny   A lip product that is supposed to help you get skinny.  PROMISE is “applied to the lips of people that are snacking and picking at food or tempted to eat large meals. When the urge to snack or have a large meal strikes… Apply liberally to your lips. Use it as often as necessary. It ‘helps’ curb your appetite.

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by Jennifer Cole 

When anyone thinks or sees the word ‘diet’, you either flip the page or groan and roll your eyes. I don’t blame you because I do it to! All these years and thousands of diets later there still has yet to be one universal diet to satisfy all of us. We’re a tough bunch to satisfy, correct? Well I’d like to talk about an actual diet, I hate to even use that word, where you don’t have to follow some regimented eating plan, go to some crazy extreme by only eating foods that are one color, or go exercise 4 hours a day. We like to call it ‘The Dermathol No Nonsense Diet’. 

I know we’ve all heard the saying ‘Everything in moderation’. Well when your craving an ENTIRE strawberry covered cheesecake, common sense tells you that eating the whole thing probably isn’t the brightest idea you’ve had. Now eating a slice of that cheesecake? That’s a much better idea! You’re not only giving your body what your craving but you also just saved yourself all those extra calories. Not to mention all the bloating and guilt!  Common sense will tell you that going to your local fried chicken restaurant or hamburger franchise is just wrong. If you want to truly succeed at a healthy lifestyle than you need to just accept that those types of establishments are complete sabotage on your body. Even when your grocery shopping, try your hardest to stay on the outside of the store. The healthy foods like fresh produce, unprocessed meats and the dairy are usually around the perimeter of the store. All of the processed, junk food and treats loaded with sugar are more than likely in the middle aisles. Have you ever noticed just the sodium content alone on a can of vegetables? Around 960 mg. That’s insane. When the veggies are thrown in a can, all those nutrients that are so beneficial to your body are sucked out and replaced with long words that no one can pronounce.  

Now a days you will see the words ‘No Trans Fat’ on a lot of labels. While this is terrific, you still need to be aware of the other types of fat and which of them are good and which aren’t. Yes, I did say good. On a 1600-calorie diet, you should have about 50 grams of fat in your diet a day. Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats are the ones you can breathe a sigh of relief over when you see them on your labels. Just remember, Poly and Mono! Those are the good guys! They are both considered Essential Fatty Acids and are essential to your overall health. Just the benefits to your heart, metabolism and immune system alone are reasons to make sure your diet includes some of these fats. Not to mention they increase your metabolic rate and increase fat burn off (see, they help you lose fat!!) which means, weight loss.

We’re always faced with fried foods, whether we’re out to eat or at the grocery store. Did you know that they now market ‘deep fried Oreos’? What will they think of next? To me, fried foods equal high cholesterol. How many of us have that on our million and one things to worry about list?  Some of us don’t really know what cholesterol is. Simply put, cholesterol is like wax. Too much cholesterol in your blood can obviously lead to trouble. Deposits of cholesterol, called plaque, will narrow your arteries and soon enough will slow or totally block the blood flow. In other words, when your sitting down at a restaurant looking at the menu under ‘side dishes’ and your eyes are glazing over at the words ‘French fries’, you need to take control and use that common sense we’re all born with. When you’re trying to get your weight under control and working on changing your lifestyle, you need to make smart choices. Bottom line.

This is the message we are trying to get across. We don’t want you to starve yourself or miss out on enjoying all the great food in life. If you use your head, you can completely change your way of thinking about food and in the process you’ll notice that those pants are actually starting to feel a bit big on you! We’re not telling you to go out and run 5 miles twice a day or to join some pricey workout club. There are so many activities that you can participate in during the coarse of a typical day. Say you have children, small or big it doesn’t matter. You show me a kid or an adult for that matter that won’t start dancing around when they hear a favorite tune blasting on the radio. Move the couch over to the wall (there’s some exercise right there!) and turn the radio all the way up, grab your kids, your spouse, heck grab your dog and dance away! Were you aware that any type of cardio that gets your heart pumping could mean your body will treat calories differently for the rest of the day?

Yes, I’m going to bring up the water issue. I’m always hearing about drinking 8 glasses of water a day. Personally, I thought drinking so much water would make me swell up like a balloon. Fluid retention anyone? Little did I know I was completely off base with that assumption. Water actually helps your body metabolize stored fat and is a NATURAL appetite suppressant. Who knew?! When your body is given less water than it needs, it takes the shortage as a threat to survival and will start to retain EVERY last drop. This water shows itself in swollen hands, feet, or legs. Turns out that water is the best treatment for fluid retention. When you give your body plenty of water than it knows to release the water its been storing. 

If you can have a healthier lifestyle without having the feeling of giving up your favorite foods or exercising day and night, wouldn’t you want to have it? Following our Dermathol No Nonsense Diet will give you that. Plain and simple. No difficult menus with expensive, never heard of before foods. No regimented aerobics exercises. Nobody telling you to walk away from the dessert table. In fact, we’re telling you to eat! Just make good choices. Plenty of fruit and veggies – there’s so many to choose from, your bound to find something you like. Be sure to drink lots of water – now a days they even have flavored water for those of us that don’t like the taste of plain ‘ol water. Go ahead and take that parking spot that is at the other end of the lot. Play a game of hopscotch with your kids or grandkids – or even join the neighborhood kids!!

 By eating lots of fruits and vegetables, staying away from junk food, increasing your water intake, making wise choices in your meals and simply taking the stairs instead of the elevator – all of that adds up to one healthy body. Not to mention happy too!  So in conclusion, when you don’t overeat or consume large quantities of unhealthy foods, you have more energy. That’s just a given. Now, what could YOU do with all that extra energy?  

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