Video: Appesat weight loss through appetite control

In this video Dr Chris Steele discusses Appesat with Sian Welby. Appesat is a natural appetite modifier derived from seaweed.

Taken with water before each meal, Appesat will expand in the stomach to make you feel fuller sooner, thereby helping to reduce the amount of food eaten at each meal.

Background

The UK is facing an obesity crisis- half of us are over weight and a quarter of us are obese – we are the fattest people in Europe.

Obesity causes over 9,000 deaths every year in England alone. Being obese can take as much as 9 years off your life, and is linked to many major health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, infertility and depression.

Put simply, our weight is the difference between what goes into our bodies as food and the amount of that food we burn up as energy. If more goes in that goes out, we gain weight.

And in the developed world there are two big trends – we are less active than we used to be, and we are eating much more of the wrong types of food, so it is no surprise that we are gaining weight.

Indeed more than 70% of UK doctors believe that we have developed a culture of overeating, with bigger portions available, lots of food being of no great nutritional value and so on. In fact many doctors now consider overeating to be a form of addiction, with 90% of them being of the opinion that a change in eating habits is needed to tackle obesity.

What can we do to lose weight effectively

Two basic things : burn up more energy by exercising regularly, and reduce the amount of fatty foods that you eat.

What Appesat does

People who eat too much over time find that their appetite and their body can get used to the amount of food that they eat, which is why they find it so hard to cut back without feeling hungry.

Appetite modifiers work by making people feel full even though they have eaten less than they are used to.

In this case the ingredients in the capsule expand in the stomach, and move around. This stimulates "receptors" in the stomach wall. These receptors send messages to the brain telling it that the stomach is "full up" – that’s when we feel we’ve had enough and stop eating.

So by stimulating this feeling these products can help reduce the amount of food that is eaten. If we can get used to the reduced amount then we can change our eating behaviour and hopefully lose weight in a sustained and healthy way if we combine this with healthy eating choices and regular exercise.

Who can benefit from Appetite Modifiers

Generally people who are having trouble reducing the amount of food that they are eating. This can be a key factor in so-called yo-yo dieting, where people lose weight and put it back on again repeatedly. This can be as dangerous to your health as being obese, but is a common problem. One reason for this yo-yo dieting is that people reduce the amount that they eat and feel permanently hungry because their body is used to eating larger amounts at each sitting.

Using an appetite modifier could help your body to be trained to feel full on less food, contributing to sustained weight loss.

Maintaining the benefits

Appetite modifiers such as Appesat should not be seen as "quick fixes". You should be looking to change your eating habits so that after a number of weeks you no longer need to take them.

Safe use

If you are pregnant or breast feeding you should not use these products. Also if you are normal weight or below normal weight you should not take appetite modifiers – being underweight is not healthy. As a general rule if your BMI is below 18.5 you should not take an appetite modifier.

If you are on any medication or suffering from any other medical condition you should consult your GP before considering any programme of weight loss.

Further information

Appesat is available from your pharmacist (as are other appetite suppressant products), or directly from their website at www.appesat.co.uk.

Acknowledgements

Goldshield Healthcare, the manufacturer of Appesat, contributed to the cost of the production of this video.

This article was published on Mon 15 June 2009