Diet pills can have a variety of active ingredients, but board-certified cosmetic surgeon Dr. Victoria Karlinsky, M.D. of New Look New Life says, the most popular ones tend to have phentremine, which acts almost exactly like cocaine. "Phentremine suppresses your appetite, gives you some elation, and may make you feel more energized," says Karlinsky. "However, when patients abruptly stop [using] it, they may experience the same side effects as someone who is addicted to cocaine, such as low energy levels, depression, nausea and vomiting, generalized body pain, headaches, and lack of motivation."

Karlinsky herself has taken phentremine. "When I was studying for my boards I thought it would be a good idea to take phentremine, thinking it would help me concentrate and stop me from eating all the time -- because when you study, all you do is eat and the weight comes on with every breath you take.

"After taking just one pill, I felt like I could take over the world. I studied for hours, had no desire to eat or drink, I felt very energized and happy -- this lasted all day," she says. Karlinsky took another pill the next day, then on "the third morning, I felt lightheaded, miserable, and sad when I woke up. I was starving and nauseous at the same time and couldn't even look at my books. I realized that my body was craving another pill.

"I realize now that I was very quickly getting addicted to this medication. It took me two days to get back to feeling normal -- and I will never take phentremine again."

The better option: Eat right and exercise
"I recommend a healthy diet [and] exercise to all of my patients," says Karlinsky. When you're feeding your body properly, moving your body, and giving it enough rest, your appetite and energy levels will regulate, experts agree. For tips on eating wisely and learning easy-to-stick-to fitness regimens, check out these health and diet tips.

When you change your hair color from what nature intended to what your latest whim inspired, you must deal with dying your eyebrows. However, opting to dye them on your own is a high-risk situation, says celebrity brow expert Tonya Crooks. "I had a girl who tried to bleach her own brows and they turned out canary yellow -- like a banana," she says. "To make matters worse, her [natural] hair was dark, so it was really apparent she had botched the job. I had to first bleach her brows again to correct the tone, then I darkened them to an appropriate color."

The better option: Go to a professional
"Going to a pro to get your brows dyed is a MUST," says Crooks. There's a different dye for brows than there is for hair, and if you use hair dye, "you can irritate your skin, burn yourself with bleach, or even stain your skin," she says. "It's like trying to tattoo yourself -- the margin of error is so big that having a professional do it is the best, most effective way to go."

There's a widespread misconception that after getting liposuction, you can eat Taco Bell for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and keep the weight off, says Forouzanpour. "But if you�re not watching what you're eating, the fat will come back." Everybody is born with a certain number of fat cells, he explains. And while liposuction removes the fat cells from a certain body part, the fat in the food you eat still has to go somewhere. Where does it go? To the untreated areas of your body first, since there are more fat cells there. That's why you often see unevenness in body fat after lipo, Forouzanpour explains.

The better option: Eat right, exercise, and lipo only if you must
"We won't recommend liposuction if you just want to lose weight," says Forouzanpour. Rather, it's meant to be a "helping device to get you jumpstarted on your process to lose more weight and maintain it," he says. "Liposuction was perfected for people who do all the right stuff, eat the right things, work out, but can't get rid of the stubborn fat in certain areas."

Fillers like Juvederm and Restylane help plump up your lips, get rid of your laugh lines, and fill in your cheekbones. "These are quick fixes," says Forouzanpour. However, you have to make sure that the doctor you're going to is respectable and can guarantee the quality of the injections.

Forouzanpour says that when people try to get fillers on the cheap, there's a good chance of things going wrong. He points to one case where doctors in Florida were injecting animal products from China because they were cheaper, and injected too much -- so much that the client ended up in the hospital. He notes another horror story, where a woman who went to Mexico to get Juvederm fillers "got injected with who knows what and she ended up with scars, lumps, and bumps," he says. "And you can't correct something like that, because we don't know what the injection was."

The better option: Exilis
Forouzanpour recommends a nonsurgical procedure like Exilis, an FDA-approved radio frequency treatment that helps tighten the skin through heat. The collagen in the skin becomes tighter, thereby reducing fine lines and wrinkles. "It's nothing like surgery," he says. "While it doesn't give you the same result, it does give a nice, refreshing look to the skin. And there aren't side effects."