Can Acai Berries Help You Lose Weight?

The need to lose weight is something many of us have had to deal with over the course of our lives. The ideal body type hyped on TV and magazines is thin, thin, thin. Perhaps unrealistically thin. Not a few of us have resorted to all sorts of diets and exercise plans in order to lose weight as quickly as possible. There always seems to be some critical reason why we need to shed 10 or 15 pounds: swimsuit season is approaching, your niece's wedding is just around the corner, or perhaps it's a college reunion. Can acai berries help you lose weight?

Every once in a while, a new product hits the limelight and becomes the solution to the critical problem of losing weight. Remember the cabbage soup diet? Eat a grapefruit with every meal program? Or how about the latest; have 2 bananas and a glass of room temperature water for breakfast diet. Acai berries is one of the most recent fad food trends. So what is the truth about the effectiveness of these berries? How much of their reputation is myth or hype and how much is fact?

Acai berries are what specialists call a super food. This means their attributes in terms of nutrition are both extraordinary and varied. This doesn't necessarily mean eating acai berries will help you lose weight, but it does mean that by adding these berries to your diet, you will benefit from a host of necessary substances your body will thrive on. The main components, and the most beneficial of the acai berries, are the natural antioxidants. Antioxidants destroy free radicals in your body and are said to help prevent cancers and heart disease. When you look at this way why not have acai berries as a part of your diet, especially during a time of stress. Dieting puts stress on us mentally and any major lifestyle change, even a positive one, stresses the body, until it acclimates to the change.

In case you're wondering acai berries come from acai palms naturally grown and now commercially grown in South America. They've been part of the South America diet for years. The problem is that the berries are very perishable and don't survive shipping well. Most acai berries are available in foreign countries as juices, powders, or supplements.

The reputation of acai berries says that they can favor weight loss, but while no scientific proof exists on the matter, what is beyond doubt is the fact that acai berries do have extraordinary antioxidant properties, and as antioxidants are often used in weight loss diets, there's no reason for them not to be used as such in your effort to lose weight.