Diet-Proof. Weight Loss Pills.

Whoever it was that said that the economic recession has been uniformly bad news across the board for the country, hasn't been paying attention to what life is like at the companies that live on the fringe of the medical industry - the ones that make vitamin nutrition supplement products - those expensive and extravagantly advertised little bottles of pills that we get over the counter in the hope that they'll somehow sprinkle pixie dust on our lives. Ever since the recession started and people begin to lose their jobs and the health cover that came with the jobs, these unproven products have begun to seem especially attractive as a way to stave off the possibility of any illness that could financially wipe them out.

Millions fall for the charms of the colorful claims on all the advertising that the makers of supplements put out on TV, on magazines, and of course on spam. They promise herbs for the heart, minerals for the memory, vitamins and supplements for cancer and everything in between, to help oil the joints, make people stronger, and perhaps help people lose weight while they veg out in front of the TV. Not that there's anything really wrong with the very idea; we all want to find something that will help make the aging process less painful. But the makers of vitamin nutrition supplement products look forward to building an entire industry on these exaggerated hopes.

In developed countries around the world, more than half of all children born now can expect to live to be a hundred. That hope can rightfully fill us with great anticipation and gladness for what it has done to make our dreams of immotality that much closer to being reality. But there is no real virtue in just living a long time if you are crippled with arthritis and are covered in skin breakouts because you don't get enough of some important vitamin. The next goal for medicine should be to make all those years it has gained us as pleasurable to live and as productive, as any of our younger years. Modern medicine certainly has made a lot of progress in this direction; we do know a lot more about what goes into bringing better health to our later years. But most Americans would rather rely on quack over-the-counter vitamin nutrition supplement products than take advantage of the real science and medicine that exists for this. Colorful bottles on drug store shelves, fish oils, minerals, herbs and antioxidant punches surely seem somewhat more promising than expensive medical investigations into making your old age a better experience.

Perhaps all of this is the fault of science to begin with. As recently as 20 years ago, scientists believed that vitamin nutrition supplement products could help with everything from cancer to arthritis. The advice that they drummed in back then may simply have sunk in today, and it could take just as long to help people become familiar with all the new scientific understanding that has come about since then. The chemistry of the human body is apparently more complicated than anyone ever thought before. Scientists are discovering now that the best way to keep out high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and whatnot is far more accessible with a simple change of the diet than it is with cartloads of supplements. Diet control, is the new scientific mantra.

The diet that scientists now advocate is not vegetarian or anything drastic. It's just a lot closer to where the food chain starts - closer to the bottom that the top. When the supplement makers claim all those benefits for their products, it isn't as if they've actually tested those pills for those effects. They just test natural foods that have those vitamins and nutrients. When a supplement maker tells you that three pills a day are going to do you world of good, what they actually mean is this: that they know that taking enough natural food that could contain as much natural vitamin as those three pills each day would do you world of good. For instance, there are lots of fruits that contain natural antioxidants that have blood purifying properties. Time and time again, it's been proven that picking supplements with those same antioxidants does no good. Similar findings exist for vitamin supplements too. No matter which way you look at it, the vitamin nutrition supplement is a questionable product to trust your luck to.

Someone asked me the other day where he could find the motivation to lose weight. I told him that there were a number of things in life that he could use as motivation, and he just had to keep his eyes open and be aware of why he wanted to lose weight in the first place.

A few years ago, I was significantly overweight. I, too, had a difficult time finding the motivation to lose weight, because I had everything that I wanted in life — a wife, children, a home and a pretty comfortable lifestyle. Then I realized that my motivation was right in front of my eyes.

My wife is not overweight and neither are my children. I was the only one who really needed to lose weight. I sitting at the dining room table one night and started thinking about an article that I had read about a man who had a heart attack that was not much older than I was at the time. He had a wife and two kids, and it all kind of hit home for me then. My family was my motivation to lose weight.

My best friend used to be overweight as well, and found out that it was getting in the way of doing his job. His employer basically told him that he needed to lose weight or he would run the risk of failing one of the physical tests that his job required. That was all the motivation he needed to lose weight, and within a year he had lost 100 pounds.

Another great motivation to lose weight is a class or family reunion. Any time that you are going to see people that once knew you as being thin, or, on the flip side, have always known you as being heavy, that is a great movitavor to drop some weight before the big day.

Being able to go shopping for clothes and knowing that you will look better can be great motivation for losing weight. Knowing that you will feeel better, period, and be much healthier, can also be a great motivation to drop a few pounds.

My aunt was having trouble climbing a long flight of stairs at work, and that was motivation enough for her to lose weight, and now she says she can run up that same flight.

The thing to remember is that losing weight is not easy, but it does not have to be hard, either. Having a motivation to lose weight always makes it much easier to do so. Generally, if you think back to when you became aware of your weight being a hinderance to you, you can use whatever that moment was as a motivator and have success getting the weight off.