Losing weight can be difficult enough without the added expense of diet aids, but cheap diet pills aren’t always the best answer. Many  diet supplements, like many fad diets, offer miracles and incredible advertising claims. It’s important to read all the ingredients and side effects carefully to ensure it’s right for you before using any diet aid.

Cheap Diet Pills: Losing Weight or Losing Water?

Cheap diet pills touting themselves as allowing you to lose weight quickly, in a matter of days or even hours, may be nothing more than diuretics. Diuretics force the excess water out of your body, but they do little to work against long-term goals of keeping weight off.

When you are trying to lose weight, diuretics can, in fact be harmful. Your body needs adequate amounts of water to function properly, and becoming dehydrated and feeling fatigued can certainly impede you on the road to a healthy weight.

Watching Out for Stimulants

Caffeine

Another aspect to consider in cheap diet pills is when they are advertised as giving you energy. Some diet pills may be little more than caffeine tablets. Sure, caffeine gives you momentary energy, but if you’re truly looking for a successful diet plan, popping coated caffeine tablets isn’t necessarily the answer.

Other Stimulants

Other chemical stimulants are also found frequently in cheap diet pills. The chemical phenylpropanolamine which acts similarly to an amphetamine has been associated with severe side effects such as bleeding of the brain. Other side effects of stimulants in diet drugs include:

• High Blood Pressure
• Possibility of dependence
• Insomnia
• Heart Palpitations or other heart problems

Even so-called natural herbal stimulant compounds, such as banned ephedra diet pills, can cause severe and even life-threatening side effects.

Ineffectiveness

If one side of the cheap diet pill coin is to watch out for dangerous drugs, the flip side is that many contain ingredients that are simply ineffective, or at least not proven to have shown any direct effect on weight loss. Many herbal blends, such as the popular Hoodia diet pills, have little or no evidence that show their effectiveness regarding weight loss. So even if you may not be downing dangerous diet pills, you may be simply wasting your money.

Safe Alternatives

Basic Balance

If you are looking for safe alternatives to diet pills, it’s best to do plenty of research and consult with a physician, nutritionist, or weight loss expert before beginning any diet aid. Taking a daily multi-vitamin may be the best diet “pill” you can take. Consuming plenty of water and eatinghealthy balanced meals are your next steps of defense. As with any weight loss attempt, physical exercise is essential to obtaining your desired weight.

CLA

Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a naturally occurring fatty acid that has been shown to assist with weight loss. This can be purchased at health and vitamin stores in capsule form for a fairly inexpensive price.

Italian scientists are testing a new diet pill that turns into a clear, gelatinous blob the size of a tennis ball that may help shrink waistlines by giving dieters a sense of satiety.

The pill, currently undergoing clinical trials at Rome’s Policlinico Gemelli hospital, would be downed with two glasses of water at the first sign of a stomach rumble.

The unnamed pill is made from a cellulose compound of hydrogel, a material that’s powdery when dry but plumps up to a cousin of Jell-O when wet. The gel can soak up to 1,000 times its weight. A gram in capsule form quickly balloons from the size of a spit wad to a ball that holds nearly a liter of liquid.

Its a sympathomimetic amine, which is similar to an amphetamine. It is also known as an “anorectic” or “anorexigenic” drug.

Adipex stimulates the central nervous system (nerves and brain), which increases your heart rate and blood pressure and decreases your appetite. Adipex is used as a short-term supplement to diet and exercise in the treatment of obesity.

Side Effects may also include:-

Skin abnormalities, insomnia, irritability, hyperactivity, personality changes, and psychosis, difficulty breathing; closing of your throat; swelling of your lips, tongue, or face; or hives.

Symptoms of a Adipex overdose include restlessness, tremor, rapid breathing, confusion, hallucinations, panic, aggressiveness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, an irregular heartbeat, and seizures.

A dose taken too late in the day can cause insomnia.

You can not take Adipex, if you have heart disease or high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, glaucoma or you have taken a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) such as isocarboxazid (Marplan), tranylcypromine (Parnate), or phenelzine (Nardil) in the last 14 days and also If you have history of drug or alcohol abuse.Consult with your doctor if you think you are pregnant or before breast-feeding.

Take phentermine exactly as directed by your doctor. If you do not understand these directions, ask your pharmacist, nurse, or doctor to explain them to you.
Take each dose with a full glass of water.

Do not take phentermine in the evening because it may cause insomnia.
Do not crush, chew or open any “once-daily” phentermine tablets or capsules. Swallow them whole.

Adderall is an amphetamine used to treat ADD/ADHD. Like many pharmaceutical medications, some of the side effects include loss of appetite and weight loss (particularly in adolescents).

A CNN story has highlighted the ethical concerns surrounding a doctors decision to prescribe the drug for the purpose of weight loss.

Herballife total control a herbal supplement that claims to boost metabolism, give you energy and increase weight loss. Its all-herbal, low-intensity formula is supposed to give you benefits of a fat burning diet pill, without the nervousness and restlessness that some other supplements can give you.Herbalife was involved in the scandal over Ephedra, a supplement that was found to have caused heart problems in some dieters. However, Herbalife adopted a new Ephedra-free formulation in 2004, after the FDA banned the use of Ephedra.