An experimental study of a new weight loss drug known as Tesofesine, has been shown to be twice as effective as other weight loss medications on the market.  Tesofesine, which works as an appetite suppressant, showed that in a study of 161 participants, the average weight loss over a 6 month study was between 3 – 13kg, depending on the dosage of the drug.  

Funded by Danish biopharmaceutical company Neurosearch in the hope of using testofesine as a weight loss drug, studies were carried out at University of Copenhagen.  Researcher and university MD, Arne Astrup said “Normally the drugs now on the market give you at best a weight loss of 5 kilograms (11 pounds) with diet and exercise. In this study we doubled that weight loss."

Tesofensine, which has previously been studied to treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, showed limited efficacy in treatment for these diseases, but significant weight loss in trial participants who were obese.  It works by affecting three different appetite regulatory centres of the brain, in the form of neurotransmitters noradrenaline, dopamine and serotonin.  

The Lemon Detox Diet ordinarily costs around $75 and it hard to understand why, when all the ingredients are so cheap. Included is a list of the ingredients and the recipe on how to make the lemon detox drink yourself.

On the Lemon Detox Diet, dieters are encouraged to have a large glass of water each day with 1 teaspoon of salt, which helps stimulate bowl movements.  This can also be substituted with Senna tea (1 teaspoon) in the evening if the salt water drink can not be stomached.  

In addition, the actual syrup used for the Lemon Detox Diet is enriched with vitamins.  As such if you follow a home recipe it is recommended you have a multi-vitamin or mega multi-vitamin each day.  

To follow the diet you are meant to have between 6-10 glasses of the detox drink each day and nothing else (except for the morning salt drink or herbal tea).  The detox process is meant to be followed for between 3 – 7 days. 

Can a big breakfast help you lose weight? A study has found that eating a big breakfast may help you to lose weight.

The study compared people on a low carbohydrate diet to those on a diet containing more calories, but with half the total days worth of calories consumed at breakfast.

While the low carbohydrate diet showed faster results than the big breakfast diet, over the 8 month period the big breakfast group lost significantly more weight in the long term. The big breakfast diet group had lost on average 18 kg while the low carbohydrate group had lost 12.8kg by four months, but regained 8.2 kg by the eight month mark.

So the saying ‘breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper’ may actually hold true for effective long term weight loss.

WeightWatchers is a weight loss program that provides dietary advice and personal support and motivation. WeightWatchers aims to look at not only food and exercise, but also behaviour and supportive environments.

A calorie counter is very useful for weight loss as it creates certainty in your meal and exercise program. By counting calories you know if you can just stick to your plan, you will lose weight. Find out some of the tools available on this site for counting calories.

  A calorie counter is so important in your weight loss journey as it creates a clear picture of where you are at, and what you need to do to lose weight. For instance, to lose 0.5kg a week you need to burn 500 calories a day more than you eat. However the only way to then make sure of this is to know how many calories you are burning, and how many calories you eat. 

Firstly you need to know how many calories your body burns naturally, known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR).  This is the energy required for your basic body functions and includes beating of the heart, breathing, and the maintenance of body temperature. It is a function of your age, weight, height, gender and exercise habits.  Take our diet profile to work out your BMR.

You can then use our food  to work out the calories in the food you eat.  You simply need to search for the food and enter in the quantity and it will provide the calories and all nutritional information.  A good idea is to start with a standard day and work out how many calories you would normally eat.  The results also show how much exercise you would have to do to burn it off!

It is possible to lose weight fast, however there are things that pull back your weight loss rate and make it harder. Find out the fastest rate of weight loss that is sustainable.

When people want to lose weight they often want to do it fast. This is definitely one of the biggest challenges with weight loss as there is a delay between hard work and achievement. There are a number of reasons that contribute to making fast weight loss difficult. Primarily this is due to the fact that when you have a large calorie deficit (burn more calories than you eat) your body goes into starvation mode. Lack of fluids is another major reason for unsustainable fast weight loss. Our body is made up of 70 - 75% water, so levels of only 2% dehydration would lead to a weight loss of nearly 2kg. This weight is put straight back on when fluids are put back into the body. In addition, hunger becomes a real distraction for fast weight loss as your body is crying out for calories to fulfill even the most basic bodily needs. 

So how fast can you actually lose weight? 

Let's look at Mary, who is 32 years old and weighs 80kg. By looking at a few extremes we can see how quickly weight loss is actually possible. If May ate absolutely nothing for a week, she would have eaten 0 calories against around 14,000 calories burnt. Now it takes around 7,600 calories to burn 1kg of fat so this would equate to weight loss of around 1.8kg. 

There are many different reasons why people find it hard to lose weight, but interestingly most are intertwined. Find out the different obstacles and how you can get around them.

There is no doubt that losing weight and keeping it off can be very challenging, but what is the hardest part?  We put this question to our weight loss community to find out the areas that were most challenging. All the responses were categorised and you can see the results below:

The festive season can be one of the most difficult when it comes to weight loss. Find out some helpful tips to get you through.

In theory, diet pills can offer a comfortable and timely alternative for weight loss without the restrictions of many traditional approaches. But how do they work and what are the side effects?...

Emotional eating is best described as eating to suppress or soften negative emotions. If you are overweight, chances are you are emotionally eating!