More Facts About Weight Loss

Lately we have been overwelmed with some of the most weard and fantastic diet caucoctions, liquid meals, fiber bars, cellulose cakes, super light cerials, all pumping as much air as they can into a few calories as possible.

"There should be some serious reservations about cutting calories so dramatically, particularly for anyone under the age of 30. Any such diet need to be very balanced to avoid malnutrition and it would be a long time commitment," said Catherine Collins, spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association.

Calorie restriction DOES NOT have to be a "Compromise of the enjoyment of food for the uncertain promise of a longer life. "Eat Stop Eat" is a form of Calorie restriction. "It's true. Flexible Intermittend Fasting is an easy and effective way to reduce your overall calorie intake, while still enjoying the foods you eat.", according to Brad Pilon, the founder of "Eat Stop Eat".

The weight loss industry continues to push these low -calorie confections for two reasons. First, they know that low-calorie diets cause rapid loss of both muscle and fat. These days people like to see fast results, so quick effects are essential to keep selling.

The average consumer doesn't know ( or presumably care) that they are losing muscle along with the fat. All they want is weight off now. The second reason, well known to everyone in the business, is that rapid fatloss means guaranteed fat regain, setting the customer up for that essential repeat business. The physiology behind it has been known for fifty years. Rapid fat loss alerts your body's potent defences of its energy reserve.

It immediately increases the quantity and activity of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, its main mechanism for collecting digested fat from your bloodstream and stuffing it into fat cells. So lipoprotein lipase starts grabbing every molecule of fat, even stopping your body using it for energy. You have to burn up even more muscle to make up the deficit. As muscle is your basic structure, it is harder and dirtier for the body to burn than fat. As a result your metabolism slows down, immediately reducing your ability to burn fat.

You also get a build up of toxic wastes from burning proteins, making you sick and cranky. This actually does nothing to slow down your appetite, so you also grow progressively more ravenous. It get's worse. When you can't stand the disconfort any longer and succumb to real food, lipoprotein lipase has become so efficient, that you can regain six weeks of painful fat loss in almost 6 days. The only problem is, you don't regain any of the lost muscle.

So the result of the diet is no change in bodyfat but a big loss of muscle. This loss of part of your engine reduces your ability to burn the fat you have and sets you up for more fat gain.If overweight people are on a low-calorie diet repeatedly,which cause a lot of muscle loss, they set their bodies up for permanent obesity. They have so little muscle left to burn fuel that they have to eke out existance on 1000 calories a day all the time. We all know these sad, tired and overweight folks who eat little but never lose weight. Except for a few unfortunates with genetic obesity, they are victums of the Great Amrican Weight Loss Fraud. Don't become one of them!

Be careful not to get caught by the slimming aids scam either. A million miracle weight loss products are trying to trick the desperate dieter. The well-known company names and Madison Avenue gibberish on the labels all scream legitmacy and promise slim Nirvana. Almost all of them are bogus.

How can I be so sure? When you ignore the labels and marketing hype and examine the evidence, they simply don't work.

Anti-cellulite creams for example, are sold by most top cosmetics houses. Dr. Peter Fodor, president of the Lipoplasty Society explains the simple physiology: "You can't remove a molecule of fat under the skin with creams or lotions applied on top of the skin, unless they contain a drug that penetrates the dermis to reach the fat underneath.

All skin-penetrating drugs of any efficacy are controlled prescription substances. So they can't be used in over-the-counter cosmetics. So all the cellulite creams together cannot shift a single fatty ounce.

What about those fat-busting creams, containing the asthma drug aminophyline or simular drugs that claim to reduce fat on the thighs? These bogus products arose from equally bogus tabloid reports of a paper given at a 1993 meeting of the American Association for the Study of Obesity. Preliminary experiments showed that women lost an inch circumference after five weeks of vigorously rubbing in the cream every day. You can get similar effects by vigorously rubbing cream cheese on your thighs, because message temporarily reduces thigh water content.

Even Dr. Bruce Frome who holds the license for the aminophyline cream used in the study, admits that "within 3 - 7 days of non-use, the results disappear". Sounds like water, not fat doesn't it. Don't waste your money!

Similarly ineffective are the fiber pills, because the amount of fiber per pill is negligible. Grapefruit pills don't work either, because the amount of active sustance, naringenin, is negligible. Herbal teas are mainly diuretic and cause only temporary water loss.

Cellulose (wood fiber) used in weight-loss snacks gives you terrible intestinal problems. Fals fats only encourage you to eat fat. Intestinal peptides are destroyed by digestion.

The list goes on ad nauseum down to rubber sweat suits, seaweed wraps and electronic muscle stimulators. Don't believe any of them, because you are likely to end up fatter than Miss Piggy.

Even commercial diets are ineffective. You might expect that the best low-calorie diets would be the expensive, medically supervised programs, such as Optifast and Medifast, that include professional behavior therapy and extended counselling and are run through hospital and medical facilities. They don't work.

In 1988 San Diego State University studied over 200 people who had lost an average of 84% of their excess weight on such medically supervised diets. Within three years sujects had regained 60-80% of the pudge.

Results of this and similar studies finally stirred the slumbering National Institudes of Health and FDA. In 1992 they mounted a nationwide investigation by a panel of thirteen of the country's top experts on overweight, headed by Dr. Susanne Fletcher, editor of the respected Annals of Internal Medicine.

All the big diet programs and weight-loss centers submitted their records for analysis. The panel's report concluded that their is no evidence that ANY popular weight-loss program has much change for long-term success.

They further concluded that the public is being presented with reports of the few individual successes and not being told that most people who took the programs, either drop out before completing them or regain most or all of the weight lost.

The Federal Trade Commission instructed weight-loss companies, including the medically supervised programs, to stop making overblown claims. This slap on the wrist has changed the language of the ads into meaningless jingles, but the flim-flam continues. If you want to get fatter, join up today!