It seems that almost with each passing day a new diet plan or product is introduced to the public that promises to be the final solution for people who are looking to shed some pounds. Some new marketing angle or concept that is touted to have finally unlocked the secret that everyone has been looking for. The secret formula or product that will finally do the trick.
Why Not Give It a Try?
What’s the real deal? Wasn’t the last one supposed to be the ultimate diet plan or product? Then you see the testimonials, the before and after pictures and the gears in your head start to turn. “Hey what have I got to lose but excess weight”? “Maybe I can try it for a week or two and if I lose some pounds, what the heck”!!? So you shell out your money and give it a try.
They All Want You to Buy
The truth is that if you are not happy with the way you look or how much you weigh, you are dead center in the cross hairs of some of the slickest, most unscrupulous marketers on the planet. By the way, they are most likely also the same guys that sold you the last diet plan or product that you tried that didn’t work. They know that you are vulnerable and yearning to look and feel your personal best.
Hey Look It’s FDA Approved!!
They went back, got a new name for their company and they will do it all over again next year with a new face on their latest business hustle. As long as they are not marketing a drug, making medical claims and are careful with their wording and promises, getting FDA approval is as easy for them as it is for the people selling apples at your local fruit stand, so don’t be fooled by that moniker.
The Truth About Boosting Your Metabolism
No diet food or product can permanently boost your metabolism. Boosting your metabolism is one very common claim of many diet products or plans. It’s a great hook, because every dieter knows that the higher a persons metabolism, the more calories they will naturally burn. However; you “are” genetically predisposed to have a certain metabolic rate.
How to Lower Your Metabolic Rate
Certain conditions and processes and products such as pills, illness or exercise can “temporarily” raise or lower it but basically your ancestors are the ones that left you with your metabolism, because you inherited it from them. The real irony, is that the best way to lower your metabolism is to go on a fad diet, because your body will automatically slow it down, just like it did centuries back when your distant ancestors ran short on food.
Grape Fruit, Vinegar or High Acid Diets
There is nothing that you can consume that will “burn off” fat. Every now and then another “grapefruit” style diet appears over the horizon with it’s promise that if you consume one food product or another, it will somehow “burn off” fat. Unfortunately, your digestive and biological system are just not that simple. There is no “little furnace” in your tummy that can be “stoked” to burn off fat.
Dangerous and Extremely Unhealthy
However; if you consume only certain foods for instance and nothing else, your body can be tricked into temporarily shedding weight. The Atkins diet is a prime example of this but along with the “temporary” weight loss comes malnutrition, possible permanent internal organ damage and extreme food cravings that make these types of diets almost impossible to stick to.
Eat Cookies and Chocolate Shakes to Lose Weight !?
“Goody” or cookie diets have always been around and the diet shakes were the first. What a wonderful concept for a person with eating issues that need resolving! The diet shakes and other “goody” makers replace the sugar with an artificial sweetener and the thick cream with cellulose, which is the same thing that paper is made from. These diet products and plans are designed and marketed by only the most cynical of diet scam artists.
Indigestible Edible Oils
Indigestible, edible oils actually made the headlines when they were first introduced. Scientists and food manufactures had been working to discover this holy grail of dieting for decades and they were rewarded with international publicity when they finally found it. Then their next task was to find a way to sweep the people that began to use them under the rug, because what they had to say wasn’t good.
You Don’t Want These Side Effects !
If you don’t mind being doubled over with extreme stomach pain and a never ending bout of extreme, uncontrollable diarrhea then dig in, because these oils always come in junk food products like potato chips and brownies. Also, the amount of oil that they can replace is minimal at best, lest the people who eat them mind spending their days sitting on a toilet bent over in pain or walking back and forth from their bedroom changing their underwear.
Drink Up and Lose Weight
Liquid diets also have come and gone over the years. The reason that they work, is that any liquid tends to contain a minimal amount of calories. That is unless it contains alcohol, sugar or oil. So they replace the sugar with artificial sweetener, the oil with cellulose and of course leave out the alcohol and presto you have a liquid diet product.
The Joke Is On You
The real joke, is that you can get the most effective liquid diet product for free right out of your tap. it’s called water, because that is mostly what you are buying when you purchase a liquid diet product. By the way, once you buy the liquid diet product, it will also come with a food restriction plan, because that is what is really responsible for any weight loss.
Flushing Away Excess Pounds
Laxatives will have you losing weight in the time that it takes you to go to the bathroom and it doesn’t get much faster then that. However; it won’t be fat that you will be losing but water and the more you take them the worse the case of dehydration you will have. They do help to flatten your stomach though, because they completely vacate your lower intestinal tract which helps to perpetrate the illusion of weight loss.
They Just Don’t Work
The people who use laxatives for dieting assume that the faster the food they eat is eliminated, the fewer calories their digestive system can absorb. However; the problem is that calories are absorbed from food in the stomach and the small intestines, so by time food is where a laxative can have an effect on it, (the lower intestine), it has been fully digested. Besides, laxatives are addictive and once you begin using then your digestive system loses it’s ability to function naturally.
Replacing One Problem with Another
Prescription diet pills do work fantastic if you don’t mind being strung out on drugs. They function by causing you to run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, while at the same time completely eliminating your appetite. Besides, a doctor that really has your best interest in mind won’t prescribe them, because he or she knows that they are temporary fix that can leave you a totally addicted basket case.
Another Temporary Fix
Non prescription diet pills also work but nowhere near as good as their prescription cousins. They use caffeine and or ephedrine, both of which are mild stimulants and appetite suppressants. They both also cause stomach and headaches and you fast develop a tolerance to them, meaning that you will have to gulp them by the handful in as little time as a few short weeks.
Not At All Worth the Risk
Ephedrine has also been directly linked to sudden heart attack and permanent heart muscle damage. The real scary thing is that you will most likely get no prior warning of impending problems if you develop any. What this means is that if ephedrine is causing problems for a persons heart, their first symptom is all too often sudden death. Bear in mind that even perfectly fit professional athletes have dropped dead from taking ephedrine.
Not a A Diet a Cardiologist Would Recommend
The Atkins Pyramid
High protein diets such as the Atkins or liquid protein diets work by tricking your system into shutting down it’s system for storing fat on your body. This is why you can eat all the meat and eggs you want on these diets and still shed the pounds. However; these diets have been linked to organ damage and take a week or so to begin to work. Also these ultra high cholesterol diets are a possible one way ticket to the cardiac ward at your local hospital.
People Actually Do Buy Them !
Topical creams, lotions or sprays that are touted by their marketers to effect a persons weight can be described in one word and that word is “scam”. Fortunately, the people who market them are generally decent enough not to insult your intelligence with any phony explanations of how their products supposedly work. The “only” thing that you can apply to the surface of your body that “will” effect your weight is a piece of tape over your mouth.
Just Another Diet Product Scam
Then there are the diet products that supposedly absorb and hold fats in your digestive system after you consume them. Unfortunately for their makers your stomach uses hydrochloric acid, (which will dissolve steel) to digest your food. What this means is that the only thing that can survive passing through your digestive system without being dissolved is glass. So once again, only one word is needed to describe them and that word is “scam”.
Riding Up and Down On the Diet Roller Coaster
Fasting works great. Eat nothing and your body is forced to live off it’s stored fat. In fact, if you can stick to a total fast you can literally lose pounds in a day! Unfortunately your body reacts to a fast by going into “starvation mode”. Your metabolic rate will plummet and won’t come back up until the pounds you lost are packed back on. This is why fasting and sudden weight loss is always followed by sudden weight gain.
The Most Delicious Diet Plans
Mediterranean or other “regional food” diet plans are the latest angle that diet plan marketers have pulled out of their hat. Most all of them do in fact work, as long as you stick to them. Authentic Greek, Chinese and Japanese food is delicious and generally low in fats, processed starches and sugar, so there is absolutely nothing wrong there.
Why Pay When You Can Get Them for Free ?
They also tend to be high in fiber and contain lots of healthy fruits and vegetables. However; if you are foolish enough to pay for one of these plans, a good percentage of the fat on your body is between your ears. that’s because you can easily find loads of great delicious low cal recipes from all four corners of the planet right on the Internet free of charge.
Not a Magic Bullet
So start browsing and start munching but save your money for the new clothes you will need once you shed some weight. However; be aware that just because a recipe is Greek or Chinese, doesn’t mean that it will magically work. So skip the baklava and and twice fried sweet and sour pork and you will be OK.
A Boost For Regional Eateries!
Or better yet, start scouting out local regional eateries and let them do the cooking. Ask the waiter or waitress what their low cal dishes are and they will be glad to help you out. No doubt Greek, Japanese and Chinese restaurateurs have also heard of this latest diet fad, are surly tickled pink and have a list of all their low cal favorites all ready for you to brows through.
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