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I get health and fitness e-mail updates from the Washington Post, so I can’t help but be aware of columnist Jennifer LaRue Huget’s “Me Minus 10″ quest to lose 10 pounds. She’s using her column for motivation, which is cool, in a way. Nothing like having a nation-wide audience to help you stay accountable.
As I’m sure y’all know, there are a number of bogus supplement “review” sites on the internet. Of course, they’re really supp ads in disguise. Brands that the site owners get commissions for are “reviewed” positively, natch, while competing products are slammed. In fact, this “bait-and-switch” is so common, I’m not surprised to see various characters assume UltimateFatBurner.com rolls this way.
In other words, we’re presumed ”guilty until proven innocent.”
This was certainly the ‘tude that Darren Beale (Business Development Manager for Soula, Ltd) had on display last week:
“You also clearly try to portray a negative view of Proactol for your own gain (by selling your own set of products to the customer). Despite any pretences of making the review appear ‘fair’, your review is quite obviously designed to sell your own products, or direct them to an EBOOK which then sells them different products.”
This is a calumny, of course, for which Paul has yet to receive an apology. I’m not holding my breath, however (neither is he…).
This ”presumption of guilt” works against us in other ways, too. For example, Paul’s inbox gets littered with various ”promotional opportunities” on a regular basis. Not surprisingly, these are for products that don’t… *ahem*… quite measure up to UFB.com standards.
Like the one he forwarded to me today…
Continue Reading »
Just thought I’d draw attention to the fact that Paul has updated his review on a fat loss supp called “Proactol.”
It’s worth reading in full, if for no other reason than to see how low some supp company reps will go to suppress legitimate critiques of their products. Fortunately, Paul isn’t easily intimidated. 
P.S. Speaking of legal threats, this is as good a time as any to link to The Most Hilarious Response To A Legal Threat I’ve ever read. Enjoy!
I just stumbled over this article, “New Weight Loss Can Burn Caloric Equivalent to 20-Minute Walk” – and had to check it out.
The exact mechanism of how spices work to influence metabolism still remains unclear, but studies suggest that they effectively increase body temperature thus making us burn more calories even without exercising. Now if only scientists could find a way to combine the two methods into an easy to swallow pill.
In fact—they have! It’s called the tri-pepper blend and according to Joel T. Cramer, assistant professor of exercise physiology from the University of Oklahoma, the new weight loss supplement has the potential to burn as many calories as a 20-minute walk. Cramer says General Nutrition Centers contracted with the University to test the benefits of the supplement.
Googling the Tri-Pepper blend, I came up with a number of shorter articles, but similar in tone (one example here). All the ones I looked at repeated – without question or analysis - the same “20-minute walk” claim.
But before we pop the champagne corks in celebration, perhaps we should take a closer look at exactly what that means. Just how many calories does a 20 minute walk actually burn?
Two separate, but similar suits have been filed…
A report from entertainment and celebrity justice website TMZ.Com details that the “Biggest Loser” trainer is facing two lawsuits filed on back-to-back days that are nearly identical, according to the report.
Jillian Michaels Sued – Biggest Loser Trainer Served Twice.The first lawsuit makes this claim: “According to documents filed in L.A. County Superior Court, the Jillian Michaels Maximum Strength Calorie Control dietary supplement is “worthless.”"
…On the second action, “Stephanie Creer claims in her class action lawsuit she has struggled with weight loss her entire life and was “intrigued” into purchasing the product Calorie Control because Michaels was endorsing it,” the report notes.
See more on her claims against the reality TV starlet and trainer here. TMZ writes: “The suit is almost a verbatim copy” of the first suit mentioned above, but they were filed by two different attorneys.
Looking at the product label, I can’t say I’m particularly impressed by it. It’s loaded to the gills with caffeine, but there’s little else that appears to be of value for appetite suppression. For what it’s worth, Paul reviewed Michaels’ “Exreme Maximum Strength Fat Burner,” and wasn’t too impressed by it, either.
Click here to read the court doc filed in the first case. Naturally, Michaels’ insists she’ll prevail. Perhaps she will, although I doubt the publicity will do much to promote sales of her product line.
You don’t spit into the wind,
You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Jim.Jim Croce
In this case, “Jim” = Judge Robert Gettleman. And he’s none too happy with our good buddy, infomercial scam artiste and all-around shyster Kevin Trudeau. Why?
In a way… From GlaxoSmithKline’s site for Alli:
break a bad pattern of eating
alli helps you change your approach to food by teaching you to recognize emotional eating and dismantle your external hunger triggers. With the alli plan, you’ll learn how to control your cravings and still enjoy the foods you love. You’ll establish a healthier approach to food.
As Douglas Farrago, MD of the Placebo Journal put it:
The new slogan for the Alli diet plan goes like:
It’s called mindless eating. See how you can control it with Alli.For those that don’t know how the drug works (fat absorption), if you are not mindful and overdo the fat in your diet you will, well, smudge yourself. So I guess this truly is a truth in advertising. Be mindful of what you eat or the next time you reach for the pork chops across the table it may look like you sat on a brownie when you change your draws later on. Okay, I think Larry the Cable Guy came up with that joke first.
Yeah, I guess the threat of “anal leakage*” will teach you to “dismantle your external hunger triggers” and “control your cravings” pretty quickly. But – at least in my mind – this isn’t exactly an ideal approach to the problem.
(h/t Placebo Journal Blog)
*GlaxoSmithKline delicately refers to this as a “treatment effect” on their consumer site.
You know the rest of the saying, of course.
What amazes me, however, is the number of people who apparently DON’T know it. ‘Take this recent FTC case, against the marketers of “Chinese Green Diet Tea” and the “Bio-Slim Patch,” for example.
Taylor LeBaron is one smart kid.
Taylor LeBaron is half the teen he used to be — and that’s a very good thing for both his health and self-esteem. An always-big boy who grew into a severely obese teen, the Georgia native dealt with schoolroom taunts and his own shrinking self-image even as he continued put on the pounds.
Finally, LeBaron took control of his life by turning to the thing that helped make him fat in the first place: video games. Based on the games he loved to play while he sat sedentary and stuffed himself, LeBaron created the “Ultimate Fitness Game” — not an actual video game but one that employs the same principles and strategy used to become a top gamesman.
…The fruits of LeBaron’s weight-loss labor are chronicled in his new book, “Cutting Myself in Half: 150 Pounds Lost One Byte at a Time,” in which he outlines the mechanics of his Ultimate Fitness Game while relating the story of how he went from a nearly 300-pound 14-year-old to the slim and trim 145-pounder he is today.
His is an awesome success story that hits all the right notes. No fad diets, detox or starvation… just good nutrition, exercise and lots of patience.
So sayeth a new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. According to this synopsis in TIME Magazine:
According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, prepared foods may contain an average of 8% more calories than their package labels own up to and restaurant meals may contain a whopping 18% more.
…The findings are the result of work conducted by Susan Roberts, professor of nutrition at Tufts University, and Jean Mayer, of Tufts’ USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. It was Roberts who initiated the study, and it was her own struggles with weight that got her started. Author of the book The Instant Diet, she was working on new recipes for the paperback version (retitled The “i” Diet) and, as was her practice, used herself as a guinea pig. As a rule, she lost weight on the menu plans she recommended to readers, but when she redeveloped some of the meals using what were supposed to be calorically equivalent supermarket or restaurant foods, the pounds stopped dropping off. Just as suspiciously, she always felt full.
“I went into the lab and said, ‘I don’t believe these calorie numbers,’ ” she says. “So we went out and started collecting foods and sampling their contents.”
For what it’s worth, though, I’ve always felt that calorie counting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be… which may have been Dr. Roberts’ problem in the first place. Rather than seeking out “calorically equivalent supermarket or restaurant foods,” I’ve always found it better to simply take my food values along with me when I shop or eat out. In the end, that means NOT buying much in the way of prepared/packaged entrees in the store; and eating items like grilled fish, chicken, veggies and fruits in restaurants – while passing on most of the starchy/sauced/fatty stuff (not to mention cocktails and/or desserts). Life is so much simpler that way.
And I don’t mean the pink mystery-meat made famous by Hormel, either. It’s the e-mail kind… for weight loss products, in particular. According to this report on Psych Central:
Have you ever wondered who actually buys anything advertised via spam emails?
It turns out that when it comes to weight loss spam, the answer is simple — young adults.
New research has found that 41 percent of college students with weight problems opened and read spam e-mail advertising weight loss products.
The researchers found that those with weight problems were three times more likely to open/read and also three times more likely to purchase weight loss products from this spam e-mail, compared to those without weight problem. The study also found that increased psychological stress was associated with an increase in purchases of these weight loss products advertised in spam e-mail.
According to a related report in the NYT, Dr. Fogel was pretty surprised by the results:
“I was shocked by the results,” said Dr. Fogel, whose research focuses on the Internet and consumer behavior. “Even among those with no weight problems, 5.2 percent bought something. It may be that young adults are hypersensitive to weight issues and they think, ‘this can’t hurt.’ ”
I glanced at this blog post on Shakesville today about the XBox 360, and then did a double take… Apparently Microsoft recently filed for a patent app, ”…to introduce a heightened degree of reality into the appearance of gamers’ avatars by utilizing a third-party health-care data repository… or a Wii Vitality Sensor-like device.”
In other words, Microsoft wants to create gamers’ avatars capable of collecting/storing user health info. Why?
Evidently this is (partly) why:
To incentivize people to improve their physical well-being, Microsoft’s filing notes that gamers will be locked out of certain components of a game or a chat room until the proper health parameters are met.
“Physical data that reflects a degree of health of the real person can be linked to rewards of capabilities of a gaming avatar, an amount of time budgeted to play, or a visible indication,” the filing reads. “Thereby, people are encouraged to exercise.”
To the Shakesville blogger and commenter, this is yet another example of “fat hatred.”
But is it really? Does Microsoft really intend to restrict gamers deemed unhealthy or overweight from playing XBox games?
Quite honestly, I don’t have the slightest idea.
Nor do I care… which is why I was a bit flummoxed by this article in the LA Times on estimating the calories burned during exercise. The author goes into considerable detail about the margin of error involved with different devices – and she appears to have done a good job on her research. She correctly points out that the calorie counters on different cardio devices may be off by as much as 25% – 30%, indirect calorimetry is a PITA, and that even high-tech gizmos like the BodyBugg have their limits.
Okay then.
Problem is, she never asks – let alone answers – the question, “is it necessary to count exercise calories at all?” In my experience, it isn’t, and (in my humble opinion) borders on obsessive. Whenever I had to change my weight (up or down), I simply kept track of a) my daily food intake; and b) my weekly weight and body comp. That’s all I ever needed to know to assess my progress, and – if necessary – make adjustments to my program.
Anyone remember Diana Nyad? Once upon a time, she was a world-class athlete, and – in 1979 – swam 102.5 miles from Bimini to Florida. In subsequent years, she also worked as a sportscaster/journalist, author and speaker. She’s an incredibly accomplished woman.
She’s also one of the founders of “Brava Body” a training site offering exercise DVDs and custom workouts. In this capacity, she and her partner, Bonnie Stoll, appeared on “Good Morning America” to promote their “Holiday Remedy” – a program designed to “trim those holiday pounds.”
So what’s the problem?
In the video (click the above link to view it on the GMA site), Nyad talked viewers through the first few exercises in the program (which Bonnie Stoll and the GMA interviewer demonstrated). To be honest, I thought they looked pretty tame, and wouldn’t do much of anything to “rev the metabolism” as she claimed. But even worse, in the process of discussing the merits of the program, she lent credence to one of the oldest, ”zombie lies” about women’s exercise in existence:
“So anyway, the idea again is no heavy muscles, we’re not building gigantic muscles, we’re just gonna rev the metabolism over the holidays…”
Diana Nyad was an elite athlete – she HAS to know how bogus the “big ‘n bulky” myth is. Yet, instead of dismissing it as physiological nonsense, she reinforced it in the process of reassuring her female viewers. WTF???
Yeah, I know it’s GMA, for heaven’s sakes, and Ms. Nyad’s now a businesswoman promoting workout DVDs, but I still found this depressing. She was in a great position to deflate this BS for thousands of women, and she simply blew it.
Methinks most people recall Jared Fogle, whose dramatic weight loss on the “Subway Diet” helped boost the fortunes of the restaurant chain. Apparently Taco Bell is taking a leaf from the Subway book, by highlighting another dramatic weight loss story in ads for its lighter “Fresco” menu items.
Meet Christine, the spokesperson for the “Drive-Thru Diet.”
As you know, the Drive-Thru Diet® menu is not a weight-loss program. It’s about making different choices. For me, I didn’t want to cut out my fast food so I started choosing Fresco items from the Drive-Thru Diet® menu and making other sensible choices. I reduced my daily calorie and fat intake by 500 calories to 1250 calories a day, and, after two years, I ended up losing 54 pounds! These results aren’t typical, but for me they were fantastic!
This time, it’s the “Health Man” and associates, who were peddling the “7 Day Miracle Cleanse Program.”
The marketers of the 7 Day Miracle Cleanse Program, a purported herbal colon-cleansing program, have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they falsely claimed that their program would cure cancer and other serious diseases. Among other things, the settlements broadly ban them from involvement in future infomercials for any product, service, or program, except for infomercials for informational publications, and from advertising health-related products in the future in any medium.
According to the FTC’s complaint, one of the defendants, Paris DeAguero, appeared as “the Health Man” in nationally televised infomercials, claiming that his program cured him within weeks of skin and breast cancer without the need for surgery or other treatments. Advertising for the program allegedly claimed that it also effectively prevented, treated, and cured many other diseases, including AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and arthritis, and that it safely caused rapid and substantial weight loss. The defendants allegedly also claimed that their product, Parasine 2, was “clinically proven” to eliminate parasites and worms, including tapeworms. The FTC alleged that their claims were false or unsupported by reliable scientific studies, in violation of the FTC Act.
The name of the article says it all: “On the ‘Biggest Loser,’ Health Can Take Back Seat.”
Some contestants have claimed that dangerous weight loss techniques were common among contestants. Kai Hibbard, who lost 118 pounds and finished as the runner-up in Season 3, has written on her MySpace blog and elsewhere that she and other contestants would drink as little water as possible in the 24 hours before a weigh-in. When the cameras were off, she said, contestants would work out in as much clothing as possible.
Ms. Hibbard, who weighed 144 pounds at the show’s finale, wrote that she added 31 pounds in two weeks, most of it simply by drinking water. That experience is not isolated. Including Mr. Benson, the winners of the first four seasons of the show each have added at least 20 percent to their weight at the end of the show.
Why am I not surprised?
As noted before, Chris Woolston’s ”Healthy Skeptic” column in the LA Times is pretty good. Here he is on the subject of diet patches…
Some day, scientists might develop an effective weight-loss patch, says Dr. Howard Eisenson, executive director of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, N.C. But, to his mind, that day is probably still far off. The patches on the market today “are beyond ridiculous,” he says. “The more hyperbolic the claims, the more people can quickly dismiss the product.”
Eisenson says there’s no evidence that bladderwrack, a common ingredient in weight loss patches, can encourage weight loss or suppress appetite. The seaweed hasn’t been thoroughly tested orally, let alone through the skin, he says.
So far, no diet patch has passed muster in a published, peer-reviewed study, says Dr. Michael Steelman, past president of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians.
I thought this was hilarious…
Nonetheless, it’s also pretty deadly – she’s got the “wedding culture” nailed. It’s pervasive: everytime I’m in the grocery store, for example, I silently gag at the sight of those ubiquitous ”Bride” mags lining the checkout aisles. Naturally, there are no “Groom” mags… as the vid illustrates, weddings are pageants focused on the BRIDE. Thus, with all the pressure to be perfect on that One Special Day, it’s no surprise to see brides-to-be lose their perspectives.
I was doing my usual, early a.m. blog surfing today, and ran into this “Dear Abby” column over at Philly.com:
DEAR ABBY: I am slightly overweight and want to lose 5 to 10 pounds. I admittedly have little self-control and always eat whatever is put in front of me.
My problem is, my wife continues to stock cookies, ice cream and other goodies in the house. Even though I have asked her on many occasions to stop, she refuses to honor my requests. She says “the kids” shouldn’t have to suffer because of my lack of self-control. Abby, I’d like our kids to eat better, too. What should I do?
I’d hate to split up over this issue because we have preteens and everything else is going well.
- Frustrated in San Diego
DEAR FRUSTRATED: The print and television media have, for some time, been filled with stories about the importance of children learning healthy eating habits and urging parents to not only stock the fridge and pantry with healthy snacks, but also to set a good example.
Your wife may have missed all of this, or she may have some ulterior motive for making sure you don’t lose the weight. Should this end an otherwise good marriage?
No, but please understand that if you do not draw the line, your children may also wind up paying the price.
Aaarrgh! Is this a pointless response or what? What does she mean by “drawing the line”? What sort of actions does she think he should take? How do they differ from what he’s doing now?
Must be nice to get paid for dispensing perfectly useless “advice”. This isn’t about the kids. It’s about two grown-ups acting like kids.
I think I can do better. Here goes:
