“Key all-natural ingredients! Clinically tested (or proven) to increase sexual performance (end hot flashes,  aid in weight loss) mind-bogglingly quickly! A limited number of free samples are available exclusively for this listening area (all three states I drove through yesterday)! But everyone else is already calling so you’d better hurry up and get on the horn!” (Panic in the streets. People rushing for phones.)

I must have heard four or five products make these claims yesterday.  The parts that really killed me were the clinical trial and the “all-natural” claims.  I’m pretty sure that the manufacturer owns that clinic and has some hefty input into the results.  And, I’ve never read the ingredient lists; so, for all I know, their products may be all-natural.  The thing is: that doesn’t mean that they are either effective or good for you.

Crab’s eye, desert rose, bleeding heart, foxglove, belladonna, white snakeroot, oleander, and Jerusalem cherries are all all-natural – and they are all poisonous to humans on some level or another.  Honey is all-natural – and does nothing to replace hormones for either men or women and it certainly does nothing for weight loss.

I can’t speak to any herb’s efficacy for hormone replacement – or any pharmaceutical’s, for that matter – because I’m not a doctor or an herbalist or a patient for that.  Like I’ve told you before, all I’m sharing here are my own experiences, what works for me and what doesn’t.

It is my opinion that the only way to lose weight in the long-term is with a lifestyle change.  Period.

Gastric bypass surgery certainly is an invaluable tool for some in initial weight loss; however, without lifestyle changes, those patients are unable to maintain the loss.  You’ve seen it and so have I.  Pharmaceuticals can also be valuable tools; however, drug sales are a business and that creates something of a conflict of interest to my way of thinking.  As a result, we’ve seen some dangerous drugs make it through – remember Fen-phen?  Most of these mail-order options are nothing more than snake-oil, in my opinion, and make actually be dangerous.

I was able to lose weight with a lifestyle change.  I’m not saying that no other tool is viable or, in some cases, even the best option.  However, I am saying that to maintain weight loss, we must alter how we eat and how we exercise.

We must eat cleaner foods closer to their natural state.  We must watch our calorie, fat and sugar intakes. We must exercise portion control.  We must exercise, period, whether that’s walking, dancing, swimming, or  running.  We can mow the lawn with a push-mower rather than a riding one.  We can park further from the door. We can take the stairs.  We can move more.

When you boil it all down, that stuff that doctors have told us for years – eat right and exercise – works, no matter whose clinic runs the trials.