In summer, schedules can be hectic, haphazard, jumbled. This plays havoc with your weight control efforts because you end up eating on run, at odd times during day, or out of sync with any rhythm you have established.

Just as your sleep is affected by its normal cycles, your body also needs predictability when eating. Uneven eating patterns leads to multiple between-meal snacks, and these only provide extra calories.

Dr. Barbara Rolls at Penn State University has shown that, when you eat between-meal snacks, you are not going to eat less at next meal. In fact, they have no bearing at all on how much your body is hungry for later on. So all those calories are just piled onto total.

This really makes September very much like January in many ways. January is “diet month” because people will have eaten poorly at office parties and family reunion grazing fests for 6 straight weeks – and they're finally ready to turn over a new dietary leaf.

In same way, we typically slip-n-slide off our normal eating schedules through summer months, only to return to normalcy and "real life" in September. So September becomes like dietary New Year.

It is estimated that over 80% of world’s population and 60 million Americans use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). However, although many believe CAM compliments their current traditional healthcare, most do not inform their physicians that they are taking these products. And, many providers don’t ask or discuss CAM use with their patients, although one survey of 181 cardiologists found that half of them took antioxidant vitamins, themselves.

What many people don’t realize is that there is no regulatory agency in charge of supplement industry. Herbal products are not tested for purity, effectiveness and safety as drugs are. In 1994, Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) was enacted that requires FDA to prove beyond any doubt that a supplement is unsafe before removing it from market. Other than regulating what can be included on label, they are unable to enforce any other regulation.

There is no incentive for supplement companies to conduct research because they are unable to patent ‘natural’ products. Those marketing herbs and other supplements save millions of dollars not spent on research, or worse, yet, conduct their own “research”, which often does not include rigorous controls. Although there are many excellent and reputable supplement companies on market, typical consumer is unlikely to know who credible ones are. Many independent sales representatives only know what company tells them, and are as unaware as consumer.

Even if supplements are pure and not harmful by themselves, problems arise when combined with drugs. Dietary supplements may compete with drugs, leading to toxicity or treatment failure of that drug. An estimated 4 million people are at risk for herbal-prescription drug interactions. Here is a list of most common interactions between supplements and drugs: * Warfarin (Coumadin) is used to prevent blood clotting for those at risk for deep vein thrombosis, stroke, or heart attack. Supplements that can change bleeding time controlled by this drug include flaxseed oil and fish oil supplements, goldenseal, saw palmetto, feverfew, garlic, ginseng, and willow bark, just to name a few.