The promise sounds ir­re­sistible be­cause of the thought of los­ing weight quick­ly and curb­ing your ap­petite to achieve the body you’ve been chas­ing for years. Weight loss drugs have def­i­nite­ly gained pop­u­lar­i­ty over the past few years. Mar­ket­ing is high­ly fo­cused on us­ing in­flu­encers and celebri­ties to pro­mote prod­ucts.

These are the truths that are not be­ing pro­mot­ed:

1) Rapid weight loss can come with se­ri­ous phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and fi­nan­cial costs.

2) All sup­ple­ments and med­ica­tions have risks.

3) Weight loss can come about be­cause of ap­petite be­ing sup­pressed.

4) Side ef­fects can in­clude nau­sea, vom­it­ing, con­sti­pa­tion, bloat­ing, headache and more. You might be un­able to en­joy meals and strug­gle with di­ges­tive dis­com­fort.

5) Loss of mus­cle can be a mas­sive side ef­fect, as rapid weight loss doesn’t mean fat loss.

6) Binge eat­ing might be com­mon due to a lack of healthy eat­ing habits and hunger sig­nals in­creas­ing.

7) Long-term com­mit­ment to med­ica­tion can cost hun­dreds and thou­sands of dol­lars.

Un­like med­ica­tion, build­ing stronger eat­ing habits and fo­cus­ing on food over­all to sup­port me­tab­o­lism, bal­ance hor­mones, im­prove di­ges­tion, pre­serve mus­cle and pro­vide nu­tri­ents the body needs to thrive. When you learn how to bal­ance meals, you nat­u­ral­ly feel full with less, eat­ing few­er calo­ries with­out feel­ing de­prived.

Bal­anced eat­ing in­cludes good qual­i­ty pro­tein such as egg, turkey, yo­gurt, to­fu and fi­bre-rich foods such as sweet pota­to, beans, oats, to name a few. We tend to fo­cus too much on one food item that we for­get about the rest. It’s less about la­belling and more about in­clud­ing more whole­some, nat­ur­al, lo­cal­ly grown foods over sup­ple­ments. Healthy fats al­so play a role in weight loss and re­duc­ing crav­ings from av­o­ca­do, wal­nuts, and flaxseed pow­der.

Foods that you can en­joy in high vol­umes with low calo­ries:

1) Wa­ter­mel­on

2) Toma­toes

3) Cu­cum­ber

4) Grape­fruit

5) Can­taloupe

6) Broc­coli

7) Air-popped pop­corn

Small por­tions of healthy fats can help to make meals more sat­is­fy­ing and sus­tain­able. An­oth­er nu­tri­ent that we ne­glect is prop­er hy­dra­tion. Many of us mis­take thirst for hunger. Drink­ing wa­ter be­fore meals may help to re­duce calo­rie in­take and im­prove di­ges­tion. Re­plac­ing sug­ary drinks with wa­ter can elim­i­nate hun­dreds of un­nec­es­sary calo­ries.

Drugs are not a sub­sti­tute for healthy liv­ing. Sus­tain­able weight loss is not pos­si­ble with weight loss drugs. The best trans­for­ma­tion isn’t los­ing weight quick­ly, but gain­ing health, en­er­gy, con­fi­dence and sus­tain­able well­ness rather than look­ing for a short­cut.

Can­di­da Khan, MSc RD al­so known as Di­di, is a Reg­is­tered Di­etit­ian Nu­tri­tion­ist.

She is al­so the CEO of Di­di’s Nu­tri­tion Con­sul­tan­cy (didis­nu­tri­tion­con­sul­tan­cy.com)