Hoodia is a plant that grows natively in Africa. 

It is reportedly used by locals when on long walking journeys to reduce hunger.

It has recently become a huge fad for weight loss in America.  The plant is dried, ground up into a powder and packed into a magic pill.

At first, I saw no use for this pill for weight loss.  Eating a lot is important to weight loss.  Low calorie diets simply don’t work.  I know that first hand.  Numerous studies have proven it over and over.

However, with the strategy I was using, there are some weeks where it *might* be useful.  Some weeks are calorie deficient even though my overall eating strategy isn’t at all.

Does hunger become a factor in any of those weeks.  A bit.  It’s actually amazing that it doesn’t at all during fasts.  Somehow the body stops being hungry when you stop eating entirely.  Post-fast easing back into an eating plan also poses no problems with hunger.

Juice fasts do seem to come along with a big of hunger.  So does any low protein eating plan which is a minor part of my mix.

So, I decided to give it a try.  So did my wife.  She was the first to report what I suspected I was feeling.

We were both experiencing raging hunger while taking the Hoodia supplements.  We both broke our intended eating plans on three different occasions with two different brands of Hoodia.

What?

Hoodia definitely does something that has to do with the hunger reflex.  In our case though, it back fired.

Perhaps there is a use for Hoodia for the normal population that is attracted to such a pill.  In that population, they want a magic fix.  They want to take a pill and continue to do everything else they have always done.  Perhaps with the normal fast food American diet, Hoodia does reduce hunger and results in less of those damaging eating patterns.

It didn’t work for us though.  I strongly recommend being very careful with this supplement.

Our two bottles went into the burn barrel this weekend.

-James D. Brausch