Here's something I'd heard of, but never actually thought about. A question was brought up, how do you deal with level adjustments that are only +1 or +2? And the answers were rather interesting.
The standard answer was of course go through the Savage Species book, and separate them like they do on the WotC site with the tiefling, vampire, aasimar, lycanthropes, lich, and others.
But here are the original answers.
One was if it's just that kind of number, have them take a NPC level or two. However, they never actually mention if taking a UA NPC level counted or not. I'd assume not.
Another answer was add racial hit die to them. Now admittedly I had heard of this one before, and it was for the half-ogre. In one of my games that's exactly what we did. We took the savage progression LA that we found online, and took the HD version that someone had made (the skills were based on what you got for being a regular ogre).
That last one is great and all, but there's one major issue with that. Take the catfolk for instance. They're a +1 LA, and a monstrous humanoid. Okay, so they get 1d8 HD, +2 Ref and Will, and 2+INT for skills. Here's the part that I'm confused. WHAT ARE THEIR SKILLS? Seriously. Same goes for the tiefling, the aasimar, and all the others. Half-ogre's easy. Just take what the ogre says. But what about all the others? Are we supposed to assume that the monstrous humanoid, which has d10 HD and full BAB like a fighter, has fighter skills? What does that mean for the dragon then who goes up like a fighter with barbarian HD and ranger/bard skill points, or the outsider that's got cleric HD, and fighter BAB, but has rogue skill points?
Honestly, I'd love to know. I seriously would because I kind of like that idea. Kind of makes you feel less guilty when a player wants to take LAs on purpose.