Reblogged from Comfort in the Uncomfortable:

We’ve spent the last two  weeks of medical school in our Endocrinology Block.  Returning from a much-needed and  very restful break for the holidays, I was excited to be learning about a new system and expected the coming days  to be filled with discussion of those elusive glands and hormones I’d heard of, but never really knew exactly what  purpose they served.  While we did spend plenty of time learning about things like T3 and T4, Chromaffin cells,  and the difference between the anterior and …

Julie Foucher TOTALLY Gets it! Read this entry from her and it should be clear to you as well. There is a HUGE gap for all of us.
What does ‘Exercise and Eat Well’ mean to you? Not in general terms either, but in exact terms? If you can’t answer this question you are not alone. The problem isn’t the advice, ‘eat well and exercise’, the problem is knowing what eating well is, and what exercise is, and then having a blueprint to fit them into your life! You would be shocked at how few people actually know what eating well is and what exercise is. If you answer to the latter is ‘gym 3x a week’, you are probably wrong.
I love Crossfit. If you can stick it out, it is the best workout on earth. There is nothing that can match it, but you have to be ready to work hard. I had to start down the road to fitness myself first before I would have ever been ready for Crossfit.
It is remarkable how many diets and fitness regimes give you bizarre prescriptions for food to eat or give you a specific gym workout. These are terrible ways to get fit. Pick up ‘You Are Not A Fit Person’ or get the Couch 2 5K program and get started. Running 5k in 30 minutes is the base standard of fitness. If you are considerably overweight, have had injuries or are older, consider a walking program first. As always check with your doctor before taking up a program, and get his or her advice as to what you fitness level is.

So, for the last 2 days I have been sick as a dog.  I have the actual flu, the respiratory infection kind.  It sucks.  I am exhausted.  When I finally drag my ass out of bed and down the stairs I end up collapsing in front of the TV, where I recently discovered that there is nothing on daytime TV.  Shockingly, nothing!   In any case, while I was looking for something to watch I was fortunate enough to come across an ad for Lipozene….

I say fortunate because I like to stay abreast of the current scams… and this product has all of the hallmarks of a good scam.

For starters, the pitch:  You are fat, but it isn’t your fault, nothing you do seems to work.  There is a way that you can lose this weight and it is easy.  All you need to do is take a simple pill.  There is no risk to you and you can have their risk free 30 day offer if you just call.  There are excellent clinical studies with fat loss to back up these facts, all arranged by the Obesity Research Institute.

Obesity Research Institute

Wow, that sure does sound like an offer too good to refuse.  Lets do some research, starting at the Obesity Research Institute‘s webpage.  Okay, the fact that it is turns out to be a limited liability corporation with the name “the Obesity Research Institute” instead of actually being a research institute shouldn’t worry us, right?  And the pathetic website shouldn’t make us wonder if anyone at the institute has anything past a GED.  After all, it is a blank WordPress website with only the main paragraphs changed, not even the stock photo or the name of the entry, ‘Hello World’.  Still, what do we learn from this site?

Thanks to Lipozene’s manufacturers, consumers have an abundance of information about this product at their fingertips. First, they can learn about the ingredients. The main ingredient is Glucomannan, which is a 100 percent natural fiber made from the Konjac Root. Then they can learn about how it works—Glucomannan, which is a source of dietary fiber, in essence creates a sponge in the stomach that makes users feel fuller and eat less. And since it is 100 percent natural, it’s good to know that there are no known side effects. With all this and a little extra fiber that everyone needs, Lipozene makes a good choice for most dieters.

Okay, I don’t have a lot of confidence in them now that they are calling this an abundance of information, but otherwise, it appears to be true that they claim that their product is made up of this fibre from the Konjac Root.  In fact, Glucomannan is a water soluble fibre that can be found in any one of the many fibre pills on the market (here, here and at vitamin stores).  Of course it doesn’t list the other ingredients that keep this product together and give it its colouring…  Who doesn’t need 6 to 12 pills of stearic acid and FDC Blue #1, as well as ignoring the known side effects (see below).

It is important to understand that weight loss supplement makers such as Obesity Research Institute LLC have developed specific instructions for how their products should be taken, and anyone who takes a weight loss product should follow the instructions to avoid any potential risks. This is why it is so important to learn about the suggested dosage from the source—in this case, it is one or two capsules up to three times daily before meals, totaling no more than six capsules.

I love how it is important to understand that weight loss supplement makers such as Obesity Research Institute LLC have developed specific instructions for how their products should be taken and after all of this, the instructions are take one or two capsules up to three times a day…  Hmm… I am glad they have an institute now.  The funny point is that they may have missed the most important instructions.  According to Wikipedia:

A health advisory was released by Health Canada stating the following: “natural health products containing the ingredient glucomannan in tablet, capsule or powder form, which are currently on the Canadian market, have a potential for harm if taken without at least 8 ounces of water or other fluid. The risk to Canadians includes choking and/or blockage of the throat, esophagus or intestine, according to international adverse reaction case reports. It is also important to note that these products should NOT be taken immediately before going to bed.”^[10]

I assume that this risk doesn’t only pertain to Canadians, but maybe we Canadians have freakishly small esophagi…. So what else do we know from this website?

If the information from the Obesity Research Institute isn’t enough, there are also clinical studies to substantiate these weight loss claims. The more information consumers have, the better weight loss choices they can make.

Do people really believe that if they say something like, ‘If the information isn’t enough’ we will actually think there was any valuable information at all?  In any case, here we see it again, the Clinical Studies!  Excellent.  You know, the Obesity Research Institute is an excellent place to locate your studies, and they do advise us that the more information consumers have the better, so they would share with us… wouldn’t they?   Lets check them out…  Okay, well the studies aren’t here at their one page website.  So, is this all we know about the Obesity Research Institute?

Well not exactly…. but I will get back to that in a minute.  In the meantime, I am going to look a little harder for these studies.  They should be at the main website and that is pretty easy to find, it is on the commercial after all.

Lipozene.com

Hmm… Limited time offers… tons of banners… Images of unattainably thin stomachs… free offers… yep, this site does not let us down at all.  It has all of the trimmings of a scam website.  Oh, and the risk free trial, well that just means that they have a 30 day money back guarantee, which you already knew….

My favorite part of their website though is this page.  It is under their REVIEWS section too!

If you’re doing your homework before deciding which weight loss product to use, you may have come across a number of positive and negative reviews on Lipozene and other weight loss products

Of course they brilliantly hide their glowing review website under the link of weight loss product, and this takes you to Lipozene.org, a totally unbiased set of reviews…  What idiots…  I also love how they hide the negative reviews right after the positive.  Do they think we won’t find the negative reviews?   They don’t even post any positive reviews on their site, instead, they go on to defend themselves:

If you’ve encountered negative Lipozene reviews, it’s important that you take them with a grain of salt and consider the source. Many web sites that claim to be diet product review sites are actually disguised affiliate sites created for the sole purpose of advertising or selling the affiliate’s products. These sites are obviously biased and do not always give you the whole truth.

Most of the negative Lipozene reviews fail to consider all the facts. People have different body types, for starters, and weight loss results will always be different for each individual. Products such as Lipozene and other weight loss products must also be taken as directed over a period of time to see results. No weight loss product, no matter how effective, can provide drastic results overnight.

If you go to their even more defensive page, called ‘complaints’, you get these tidbits:

• What about complaints that are online? Lipozene investigates all complaints, and its customer service’s goal is to keep EVERY customer happy. The truth is, not everything you can find on the Internet is true. Many customer complaints have been investigated online and actually many of them originate from people who never purchased Lipozene products. Often, competitors blog negative comments or people are upset their credit cards were declined.
• Many people who submit complaints to these supposedly unbiased review sites say they were ripped off or that the product didn’t work. The fact is that most of them never received the product because their credit cards were declined, or they never ordered it in the first place. Our customer service department has done the research to prove the facts behind these Lipozene complaints.

I love this.  The numerous complaints online are from people whose credit cards were declined!?!?  Seriously, you are going to try to convince us of that!??!  and. ya, sure they investigate all complaints.  What a waste of time, just do the research to see if your product works.  It isn’t the consumer fraud institute, it is the obesity research institute.  As well,  there are a lot of complaints!  I think it might be easier to find a weightloss pill that actually works than to investigate that many complaints!!   My favorites are from the youtube website that ORI (obesity research institute) clearly set up to sell their product:

I love any review that ends ‘I will see you in hell!!’  Which brings us to…

The Science

To make a long story short, there are no clinical studies on the website.  I went through it in detail.  I had no idea where they get the 78% of each pound lost is PURE BODY FAT or the 3.6 pounds lost in 8 weeks (which isn’t a lot to be honest).  The closest you will find on their site is:

Clinical trials: Clinical trials are organized studies that test the value of various treatments to support health and nutrition in human beings.

Yep, the definition of a clinical trial.  Well done.  Glad we could go to your website to find the actual definition of a clinical trial…  The thing is, trials have been done on glucomannan, so why not just link to some of those?  I did a quick search and I found all of the studies.  They are summarized in this meta-research here.  There are some studies that have found that glucomannan promotes small but significant weight loss when researchers were testing for weight loss (although some studies found that there was no difference between the glucomannan groups and the control groups), but even this tenuous result can be called into question when one realizes that when testing was done with glucomannan and weightloss was a secondary result (ie they were looking for other results first like improved cholesterol), they had no positive weight-loss results.

As you know, I absolutely feel that if a person promotes their product based upon clinical evidence and does not post that exact evidence to their website, then they are scamming you.  You need to be able to review the study for yourself before you make any decisions.  That is what makes clinical trials valuable.  The methods and results are listed so you know exactly what happened.  In the study that they are referring to in their add, the sample size was only 20 people!  That means in a double blind test only 10 were in each group.  The actual study can be found here.

The science in this case is still out.  There is no way that you could determine if glucomannan would be a good long term weight loss tool from the evidence above, it seems unlikely as hell, but maybe slightly possible.  The weight loss is small, the number of subjects in all studies is ridiculously small and there are hazards associated with this product.  The reality is that for someone to call this the answer to your weightloss woes is bad.  Very bad.  Bordering on criminal, which brings us back to the Obesity Research Institute.

Obesity Research Institute and the FTC

The first thing I like to check out with these corporations that have deceivingly therapeutic names is if they have run afoul of the FTC.  It seems that they always do and the Obesity Research Institute once again does not let us down.

On June 20, 2005, the Obesity Research Institute LLC, without admitting any wrong doing, entered into a stipulated final agreement with the FTC to the tune of $1.5 million.

The most interesting part of the injunction is this:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendants, directly or through any corporation, partnership, subsidiary, division, trade name, or other device, and their officers, agents, servants, representatives, employees, and all persons or entities in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of this Order, by personal service or otherwise, in connection with the manufacturing, labeling, advertising, promotion, offering for sale, sale, or distribution of FiberThin, MetaboUp, Propolene, Excelerene, or any substantially similar product, are hereby permanently restrained and enjoined from making any representation, in any manner, expressly or by implication, including through the use of a trade name or endorsement, that any such product:

A. Causes rapid or substantial weight loss without the need to reduce caloric intake or increase physical activity;

B. Enables users to lose as much as 8 pounds or more per month without the need to reduce caloric intake or increase exercise;

C. Works for all users; or

D. Causes substantial weight loss through blocking the absorption of fat or calories.

You might think that the biggest question is whether Lipozene is a substantially similar product, but that was answered in the definitions section:

“Substantially similar product” shall mean any product that contains one or more of the following active ingredients: glucomannan, propol, konjac, konjac root, chromium, green tea, guarana seed, oolong tea, kola nut, bitter orange, cayenne, platycodon grandiflorum, or any extracts of these ingredients.

Well, yes, it appear that not only did the Obesity Research Institute get into trouble with the FTC, but if I am reading the injunction correctly, it appears that they are in trouble again.  You can read the ads and see the website from the first time they trotted out this product here.    You can see they went a little further in their claims back then, with bizarre statements that the product sponges up up to 400 calories of fat a day.  They also supplied the names of pretty much every study ever done on gluccomannan and konjac root.

Not only did they get in trouble with the FTC, but they recently (October of 2010) settled a class action lawsuit on the very product that they are currently advertising, Lypozene, as well as another product they agreed to stop manufacturing, Zylotrim!  The class action case can be found here.  On top of the money that they agreed to pay, they had to alter their advertising to eliminate the use of the following statements:

• Lipozene® should be considered before “liposuction”
• “Lipozene® is backed by 12 clinical studies”
• “amazing weight loss”
• “dramatic weight loss”
• any claim that single order use of Lipozene® leads to long-term weight loss or that weight loss will be maintained after discontinuing use of Lipozene®
• “begin to uncover lean muscle”
• “begin to reveal a flat tummy, ripped abs, tight buns, and firm thighs”
• the phrase “Fit & Lean with Lipozene®” shall be used solely in connection with the current Club program and not in any other context nor in any television advertising.

So, who are the people behind the Obesity Research Institute?  Although you can’t find who owns the company by seeing who owns the website, as they hide their names under the domainsbyproxy service offered by GoDaddy, which I consider remarkably scammy to start with.  The class action lawsuit names Bryan Corlett as well as the FTC judgement.  The FTC judgement also names Henny Den Uijl, James Ayres and Dr. Jonathan M. Kelley.  According to the FTC:

The FTC’s complaint named FiberThin, LLC and Obesity Research Institute, LLC; their owners, Henny Den Uijl and Bryan Corlett; and the “expert endorsers,” James Ayres and Jonathan M. Kelley, M.D., as defendants.

Henny Den UiJl & Bryan Corlett

This could be the worst of the worst list of supplement scams!  I was trying to figure out the names of these products (>why Cyvita? this is what I found.  It is an herbal erectile disfunction pill.  What are the names of the 2 most popular erectile disfunction drugs?  Why Cialis and Livitra…  They are running the exact same scam with Cyvita as Lipozene and it gets worse.

Try Relactia….

This is again, the same EXACT scam, same price, same 3o day risk free, same act now and get 2 packs and yes, even same CLINICALLY PROVEN with no clinical proof offered, and that is just the beginning of where this one has gone wrong.  Notice the doctor, Dr. Craig Uhl.  Well, he is actually the actor, Craig Michaels, a man who apparently plays Dr. Craig Uhl in numerous television appearances.   Apparently only Cyvita and Excelerene are currently on the market, so they haven’t yet committed a crime with their Relactia video.  That said, they are setting up a Relactia test website for sales and it was through this website that I found that they also own Appetrol LLC.

Appetrol LLC  markets Appetrol (fittingly enough), another weightloss supplement (I recommend that you don’t go to the website for this one because it has a bunch of pop ups that prevent you from leaving, but if you do risk it, you will see the same claims of clinical research-same definition of clinical study at the bottom of the page, same pricing and same risk free offer.  They even offer the same free bottle of MetaboUp).

I wish I was done with who Henny Den Uijl and Bryan Corlett are, or more correctly what they are up to, but the list just goes on.  They apparently co-own a company called Market Financing LLC and for the life of me,
I cannot find out what that company does.   Another company they own together is Beau Cheveux, which sells a product called Beau Cheveux’s Nutra Renew, which is an hair treatment product.

The same cookie cutter website, same deal and same price, just $29.95 (which does seem quite cheap when they throw in a hair straightener).  According to the website, ‘The scientists at Beau Cheveux discovered rare natural ingredients that penetrate deep into the hair fiber.’  The thing is, Henny and Bryan aren’t scientists and although I am not going to call them liars, I think I would be less surprised to see the Easter Bunny at Beau Cheveux than I would be to see a scientist (especially because I don’t think Beau Cheveux even occupies a physical place in the exclusive sense, rather than the legal entity sense-2032 CORTE DEL MOGAL STE 110).  I love how it is Beau Cheveux BEVERLY HILLS as well.  They are located in Carlsbad California, a beautiful place to be sure, but not Beverly Hills.

Continuing down this dark rabbit hole, we find that Brian Corlett owns Pounds Lost LLC (this one may not be in partnership with Henny), yet ANOTHER weight loss dietary supplement!  This one though suggests that you could lose 19  pounds and up to 3 and 1/2 inches off your waist!  That is a real no-no by the way for the FTC.  It is wording like that that will get you charged.  Also statements like, ‘Just take pounds lost each day and start losing weight’ really get the FTC upset.  I am not going to go into the MASSIVE problems with the pounds lost system, but there is one major difference between it and the others.  It offers you one free week, plus free shipping if you buy the first week for only $1.95.  Sounds good, but once you go to place the order you get the small print:

You’ll receive a full 2 week supply of Pounds Lost with our Buy 1 week supply for only $1.95 and get an additional week FREE. POUNDS LOST normally SELLS for $4 dollars PER DAILY SUPPLY but if you love your initial results with your 2 WEEK supply– and you’ll want to continue losing weight –you are scheduled to receive a two month supply of Pounds Lost 12 days after your two week supply ships – it will be billed in one monthly payment of $89.99 plus a $9.95 shipping fee billed the day your order is shipped. That’s 60% percent off the retail price. It’s our commitment to helping you reach your weight loss goals.

As you will begin to see shortly with these guys, for some reason $89.99 is a magic billing number.

In addition to pounds lost, there also appears to have been a pounds off nutrition bar (although I get an account suspended message whenever I try to log on now).  As well, there does appear to be some legitimate business in Bryan Corlett’s past as well, although this was ill fated.

James Ayres and Dr. Jonathan M. Kelley

As for the ‘expert endorsers’, there is some interesting stuff there as well.  James Ayres may very well be the Jim Ayres of the Xyngular MLM scheme.  I could write for days about this one.  They sell a Core 4 system.   Ironically, the pitch he gives for one of the 4 products, Cheat, is the same pitch that the FTC found so offensive (25% of calories that you eat can be trapped and absorbed).  I am sure I will have a chance to explore and write about Xyngular at some future time, but I have already covered so much ground in researching this one silly little product it is surprising, even to me.  The biggest surprise will be that I probably haven’t touched on half of the products that they sell!

As for Dr. Jonathan Kelly, no wonder they went after him.  Apparently he is an anesthesiologist from that same part of California.  It seems likely that his is our man as both of them of them were educated at Harvard.  I am not sure why in the world an anesthesiologist would be supplying expert advice on diet pills, but that is certainly not in his area of expertise.

Conclusion

First, there is very little evidence that glucomannan will help you lose weight.  It isn’t a miracle pill and it does have negative side effects.  I wouldn’t take it.  If I did take it though, I would go to a health food store and buy it for a fraction of the price that these guys charge you.  I personally would never knowingly order from any business run by these guys.  The biggest problem with Lipozene is the myriad of complaints of overbilling! From www.complaintsboard.com:

• doesn’t work/won’t refund what was not ordered  I ordered the TRIAL of Lipozene for $29. 95 w/free S&H for my daughter. Then they sent two more 60 count bottles & charged me a total of $101. 85. I called to get a refund, as I had NOT ordered any other products. They told me I was out of luck!! This company is running a scam. Nowhere on there website did they state they would send out, ahead of time, any other products…
• Den Lipozene - just a plain lost!
  I have been disputing with Den Lipozene for months now. I hung the phone up on the initial conversation because the initial representative wouldn’t take no for an answer. After she continued to place my order, I was charged $31. 30 and shipped a mess box full of things. I sent the package return to sender through the post office…
• Unauthorized billing
  I have tried to cancel my Lipozene billing, the company said it would be done. They LIE. I am still getting charges on my Charge card. I have to dispute them every month. Do not order this product. It doesn’t work and you can’t get out like they say you can. MPW…
• They won’t stop taking money!
  I have called them a total of 4 times already and each time I am assured that they will cease and desist! However, each month I am charged an additional $19.95 and I’m at my wits end! How do i make these #@$%heads stop??!!
• Unauthorized billing  Lipozene ads say… 100% money back guarantee! They LIE. I tried their product and didn’t like it. I called with in the 30 day trial period and was told to package up the bottles, put a return number on the outside of the package, name and address and other information in the box and ship it Reno Navada using US Postal Service.
  Well, I did just that, but I didn’t have the opportunity to get to the post office when it was open, so it took me 2 weeks to get there. Still have plenty of time to ship the product back. I waited for my money for 2 months, nothing was sent to me.
  When I contacted the company about my refund they said I did not send the product back in time. I explained to them I had a receipt of when I shipped the product to them and they said it didn’t matter, they did not receive the product in 30 days from when I called them to return the product.
  They claim that it took over 10 days to receive the package from New York. When I asked the Post office official people, they looked up the time frame and said it shouldn’t have been more than 3-5 days. There were no storm or anything else happening that would have delayed delivery.
  I mailed the product back on May 20th they claim it was not relieved until June 5th so they conveniently say it was more than 30 days. I have called twice, I have written and they still refuse to give me my money back.
  I can’t believe a company who wants people to try their product is giving me such a hard time returning my money. I have never experienced such a disgrace regarding people’s money.

You would have to be an idiot to purchase a product like that when you get those warnings, but wait, it doesn’t stop there.  Try the Pounds Lost product:

• Charged my account  On April 23rd I saw an add on tv offering a product called”pounds lost” it is like an energy drink. The offer is buy one get like 6 free. While I was on the phone the automated system asked me if I wanted to prtake in several different offers and I said NO to everything. A week later I see a charge on my account for 69.64. I never said or agreed to them sending me another shipment. So of course my bank payed it and charged me and over draft of 29 dollars. When I called POUNDS LOST they said I should have looked at the invoice and called to tell them I didnt want this. The automated system didnt say anything about looking at the invoice. They say now that I have to wait till the shipment comes to me and I need to refuse it and when it gets back to them then they can refund the money but they will not cover my overdraft fee. I cannot believe this, this is illegal when you say no for them to charge. I will never order anything else off the telephone!
• Charged my account  I also was sent and charged for more than I ordered. I called the company (Pounds Lost, LLC). They said to return the product at my cost and they would refund. I said it was unacceptable that I should pay shipping and that I would get a chargeback from my credit card company. The rep asked me to hold and came back on the line saying he had just credited my account and I could either keep or send back the product.

Or Nutra Renew:

At the end of the day though, you should do your research.  The Lipozene privacy policy is bad, but check out this portion of the Appetrol privacy policy:

The information collected by our Site is used only for the limited purposes of processing orders, keeping you informed about your order status, for statistical purposes for improving our Site and to notify you of products or special offers that may be of interest to you. We will disclose your Personally Identifiable Information to third parties to charge your credit card, fill your order, deliver your order and deliver promotional emails to you from us. For example, we must release your credit card number to confirm payment; and release your mailing address information to the delivery service to deliver products that you ordered.
We may sell, trade or rent your personal information to others. However you may “opt-out” by following the instructions below. We may also provide Non-Personally Identifiable Information about our customers’ sales, traffic patterns and related Site information to third party advertisers, but these statistics do not include any Personally Identifiable Information. Moreover, we may release account information when we believe that such release is reasonably necessary to enforce or apply our Web Site Terms of Use Agreement or to protect the rights, property and safety of our users, others and ourselves.
We may transfer and otherwise share the information you provide to us available to select partners and third parties. This will allow these third parties to contact you and provide you offers and other information that they think will be valuable to you. However, if you would like us to stop providing your information to these third parties, please send a “do not share” request to mailings@appetrol.com.

In fact, if you thought you had to wait for a month or so to get sold out by ORI, by the way, you don’t.  They have already sold you, and the information that you supply by the time you reach the cash register.  Check out this pdf case study for SmartSell.  The Case Study is for the ORI… Yep, they get about $2 for each time someone clicks on an offer and ends up buying it.  The offer is totally unsolicited, and the person who buys the product has no idea that they have already been sold out to a third party company.  You can see how it works here (click on the demo link).

There is no way to describe how crappy it is that this company does everything it can to wring out every last penny from its potential customers.  You can find no shortage of complaints of this source on the internet as well.  I will close this entry with my favorite:

Lipozene ,Obesity Research Institute lipozene send you magazines you never ordered Pueblo Colorado

I see that I am not the only person who has had issues with FRAUD where LIPOZENE is concerned. I also had the same experience of having all types of magazines foisted upon me when i called to order their product. I declined all of the offers (and yeah, the ywasted ten minutes of my time, too, with this nonsense) and lo and behold a week later, a Gossip rag – US Weekly arrives on my door as they ordered the magazine for me anyway even though I DECLINED all of them. i wonder how many other magazines they ordered for me, as well?

When I called LIPOZENE to compalin, they denied that they were the ones that did it (but I just moved inot this house a month ago and no one had my address – I KNOW it was them) yet had the phone number I needed to cancel the order (if they didn’t order it, then how did they know who to tell me to call?). The phone number they gave me was (I beleive) for a company called “Magazine Direct” – 800-607-9869. I should add that it is impossible to speak to a live person at this number – they make you go through all their voice prompts. AMAZINGLY even after I went through the commands and cancelled the magazine that LIPOZENE ordered for me, they STILL tried to foist even more magazines on me through their automated system. If my intial expeience with LIPOZENE is any indication, I probably have 3 more magazines coming to me over this fiasco.

In closing, I will be returnign this product, UNOPENED as soon as it arrives and I will never ever do business with these snake oil salemen again. I called my credit card company and disputed the fraudulent charges made to my card, as well. BUYER BEWARE – particualry when it comes to Lipozene, fraudulent magazine order and companies that LIE to their customers. These people are scam artists – no other way to describe their actions.

Rippedoffinmo
Wildwood, Missouri
U.S.A.

I thought I could post a chapter from my book that will help you get started, maybe the Low Hanging Fruit Chapter or the How to Exercise Like A Fit Person chapter, and maybe I still will, but I don’t know if you will read a chapter here in this post.  It finally dawned on me what I could do, what I should do to help you get started on getting fit.

I am going to share with you how I started.  Not some boring recollection with instructions (which quite honestly is what my book is and it is good, but I may not be the best sales person I am thinking because I am not really describing it in a way that would make me go out and buy it), but instead, the actual blog entries that I wrote at the time.

A Little Background

You see, part of getting fit for me was finding the website 43things.com.   It is a fantastic site and I recommend that you check it out.  The idea is that you set up some goals for yourself.  You can pick anything, from playing in the world series of poker to climbing a mountain.  You can search through existing goals, or create your own.  You can find people with interesting goals and look through their lists and select some of their goals as your own.  You can set up to 43 goals, but that takes time.  The idea is that you can have a mix of long term goals, short term goals, fun goals, inspirational goals and reminder goals.  You can blog about each of the goals as you are doing them and people comment and give you support in the form of cheers.

The site has been around a long time.  It predates the slew of Bucket List sites by aways and I think it captures a very important concept that the bucket list sites miss, and that is of the day to day goals.  You don’t have to have any on your list and it could be a bucket list, but the site is great because you can have the day to day goals too.

One of my first goals was to Lose Weight.  I thought that was a good goal and I was wrong.  I explain all of this in the book, but suffice it to say, this was my first entry under Lose Weight:

Jan 26, 2007, 10:11PM PST: WHAT!?!? 127 Days!??!

I thought I had more time than that. Wow, am I ever glad I put the personal challenge on this one. I thought it was a lot more days until June 2nd. I had better come up with a plan here. #1 I will go for the running 5km thing. I will weigh myself (not really important) and get my fitness level done, ie body fat percentage, vo2max and use that to work from.

I received a bunch of comments, and the one that changed my life was this one from someone I didn’t even know, a guy by the name of TobySells:

goals are important

Add a date to the second part and do more than say “I am running a 5k thing” get signed up for one in a few months. You’ve now committed yourself to doing it, and will not want to embarass yourself. I’m going to be doing the same thing. Good luck!

I couldn’t capture all of the Candy that was on super discount with just one photograph, so I made sure I got the deal on Toffifee front and center.  You get 48 of those suckers for $2.25!!  That is less than $0.05 each!!  I am not sure about the math, but I think they are paying me to take them out of their store, and I was more than happy to oblige.

What I am saying is that it still isn’t safe to go back to the Supermarkets…..  They didn’t sell out all their candy.  I hate to have to admit this but, I am sick… very sick…  I cannot resist these temptations.  At least they won’t be around the house much longer at the rate I am eating them, but I will need to work out hard to burn them off.   That is going to be difficult too…

A Little Background

I have big goals for this year.  Huge.  This will be my fittest year yet and I want to start it right.  I intended to be at Crossfit this morning for the 9:15 class.  I love crossfit!  The problem with that plan is that I am actually enjoying snowboarding now as well.  I took it up last year so I could learn along with my kids.  I ski, and I am not bad at it, but I have never snowboarded.  I always wanted to.  I remember I had just heard of it way back when I was in University and I always meant to go, but I never did.  So last year I gave it a shot and you know what?  It SUCKED!!  It was so hard.  Even standing up with both feet on the board is nearly impossible for a 42 year old man.  I was so glad that I lost the weight that I had because if I was overweight it would have been honestly impossible.  Turns out it isn’t just hard for us guys.  I met a couple girls up on the mountain that were learning and I was helping them with some tips and one of the girls, in her twenties or thirties couldn’t get up from sitting either.

Once you can slide down the mountain leaning back on the heel edge of your board, snowboarding isn’t that hard.  You don’t look good and you do take some brutal falls when you catch the toe edge, but sliding down the mountain (I call it grinding) is easier than skiing.  So, I was sliding down on my heel edge and then learned to do my toe edge going back and forth across the mountain, but switching between the two was quite honestly a mystery.  My kids loved it though so I kept at it (secretly skiing with my brother when the kids weren’t around).  Right before Christmas the kids and I went up Grouse and got a private lesson from this awesome teacher Natalie.  She taught us all how to snowboard better and it was the best money that I ever spent.

I cannot recommend private lessons enough.  You don’t need many and almost all of the work is done on your own in practice, but to get corrections in your style and to get techniques that may be beyond you, a private lesson from time to time, in anything you are learning, is priceless.  So, I learned how to do C turns and S turns.

On new Years Day the kids and I hit the slopes again.  Starting the year off right: out and active.  I was getting quite good at the S curves: There are 4 combinations or C turns that make up the S turns: toe right to heel left, to toe right and heel right to toe left to heel right, and I was ‘essing’ down the hill with one of them and when it wasn’t too slippery I was only wiping out from time to time.  Long story short, we ended up going down some runs that were a little too sleep and slippery and I stupidly thought I could S Turn where I shouldn’t have and now I have sprained my ankle (don’t ask me how I too thought that was an unlikely injury for snowboarding).  The spill I took was humiliating as can be and was dramatic enough to deserve an entry all too itself (with descriptions of out of control sliding, snow going where snow should never go and that panicky feeling of speeding up against all possible odds and interventions).  When the witnesses (and oh god there had to be witnesses, didn’t there) asked if I was alright, I said, ‘Of Course, just let me get up’, but of course I was really thinking, ‘Oh Sweet Mother Of God, please let my ankle work until I can get off this mountain without a stretcher and I will burn a goat in sacrifice to your kindness’.  It was brutal.  I have no idea what damage I did snowboarding for the next half an hour to get through the necessary runs to get off the mountain, but I certainly didn’t do it any favors (I did cinch up the binding and boot to excruciating tightness to minimize the movement though).

I am such an idiot.  Why I can’t admit when I am hurt I will never know.  As well, I probably shouldn’t be taking up snowboarding at my age, but to tell you the truth, I think I might have caught some sort of snowboarding bug because right now I can’t wait to get back up there and get better at those S turns until I am flying straight down the hill…  Those jumps and ledges at the terrain park look awesome too…  So it may be a few days until I am back at Crossfit (I hope it won’t be long, but I can’t move my ankle yet and the thing we call walking-not so much hobbling-is a distant hope, so it might be awhile).

Still, a sprained ankle is a small price to pay for how much fun I have been having.

This is the run I have been doing well on by the way, it isn’t the demon run that I hurt myself on….

Back to the Story:

I was in the supermarket in the first place to get some candy for the movies.  I was taking the kids to ‘We Bought A Zoo’ and we were trying to get a reasonable amount of candy for a movie.  We decided not to get popcorn at the movies and instead get a bit of candy before we got there.  Eating and the movies is never easy because in the theatres they sell massive bags of candy and bales of popcorn in portions that are baffling.  There is nothing even approaching small (Ebert thinks this is one of the reasons movies are losing viewers) .  You would need to band together with three or four families just to split one of their family packs, and that is only if you took advanced mathematics in University and figured out if there is some sort of cost savings on the bundle or if you are actually paying more.  We figured we could get some candy at the bulk section of the Supermarket and thus show restraint and still enjoy the movies (and get myself a compression wrap for my ankle as well).

It was a great strategy but I forgot one part.  I sent the kids to get A REASONABLE amount of candy at the bulk candy aisle while I hobbled over to the pharmacy section to get a Tensor bandage (most of you are seeing the problem already but it is amazing what you miss when you are in blinding pain).  When we met up at the cash register I had boxes of Toffifee and Chocolate Oranges and the kids had amassed a lot of bulk candy.  At this point even I had realized my error.  Never send your kids to the bulk candy section without an adult escort.  Obviously what I feel is a reasonable amount of candy and what they feel is a reasonable amount of candy is distinctly different.  Knowing that I had to get across the parking lot to the movie theatre still and drop off the big boxes of candy at the car on the way, I just went with the quantities they bought (after chiding them at length).

So, this entry has 2 warnings, not just the one.

#1.  Stay out of super markets for awhile.  They are still overburdened with the ridiculously tasty candies that you should only eat at Christmas (if even then).

#2.  Don’t let your kids determine for themselves what a reasonable amount of candy is.  They are kids.

In conclusion

In conclusion, supermarkets are bad… very bad places, because aside from that above findings, I also found this:

A new entry for the Crappy Magazine Cover of the Month (Yay, I think!!)  I Would have to go back through last years tallies to see if Us is back on top, but if not, they are close with this entry.  Weren’t they the ones last year with the cover message of, ‘We have found real diets that actually work’, or something to that effect.  I almost like these covers because they admit that they have been scamming us all along.

US Magazine: Okay, okay, you got me… I know I have been selling you false hope and none of these diets work.  True, I love any chance I get to put a beautiful girl in a bikini on the cover of my magazine and I know you will buy it.  But unlike the last 20 or thirty magazines I have sold you, this one is real.  Seriously, the real deal right here.  And you can have the secrets of the stars…  No, I am not lying!  Seriously, we know the stars and they secretly shared with us their… ummm… their secrets… ya…  Secrets to a flat belly fast.

Us: Really?  I don’t know, you have lied to me a lot in the past…

US MAGAZINE: I know… I know… but not this time.  You and I both know that all of the stars have secrets that they only share amongst themselves.  You think J Lo was born with those legs?   Did you think Rihanna got those abs in the gym?  How about Pippa and that but?  There are real secrets and you can have them.

Us: That seems odd.  If there were secrets wouldn’t each of those girls have each others legs, but and abs?  What about your cover model.  Wouldn’t every star use the secrets to have Kim Kardashian’s body?

US MAGAZINE: Well you are just going to have to trust us with this.  After all, we are including the exact meal plans.

Us:  I am pretty sure you don’t get bodies like those with meal plans.  Will my legs get longer?

US Magazine:  Look, if this fails, we also have a whole section on how to dress 10 lbs lighter…

Every year grocery stores buy thousands of boxes of your favourite chocolates, Toblerone, Terry’s Chocolate Orange, Ferrera Roche, Toffifee… you name it. These chocolates are nearly irresistible. For me, they are entirely irresistible. I always get at least one Terry’s chocolate orange for Christmas and a box or two of Toffifee. I can afford to eat these and get back to my daily routine. It isn’t that hard… okay, it isn’t impossible. The problem is, after Christmas these stores still have hundreds of boxes of chocolate left and they need to get rid of it by New Years Day.

They offer it at cost for the week after Christmas. I bought 2 more Chocolate Oranges 2 huge Toblerones on the 26th and 6 boxes of Toffifee yesterday. I am not exaggerating when I say that at least one meal a day, sometimes 2 are nothing but chocolate….

On New Years Eve the stores start marking down the chocolate, instead of $2 for 3 boxes of Toffifee they start unloading it at $1 and $0.50 for 3 boxes!! You get all hyped up and get in the grabbing, people are standing around frantic and excited, desperate to get the good deals, they start pushing and grabbing and you end up with a bunch of chocolate and a dirty feeling for pushing that old lady out of the way so you could get the last box of Fierra Roches….

Stay away. There is no way to win this battle.

Side Note:

On a side note, I have said before how I get constant emails from promotors and marketers for their products. It has actually paralyzed me a little in the promotion of my book…. okay, maybe a lot. The thing is, there are so many crappy products out there, and behind each one is at least one person, if not a team of people trying to make money off of it. I know that their products are crap and I know that the exact thing that most people need is the information in the book I wrote, the problem is, what I know isn’t really important, nor is it universal. I guess what frustrates me most is that these people have no idea who they are pitching their scams to… Of all the blogs out there, would you target mine for a healthy water? How about a healthy cheese pizza??? Seriously… what are these people thinking. Mind you, I am fully aware that if I want to sell a lot of books, I will need to push it like these people push their crap, and I just don’t think I am likely to do this.

So, I thought I would share with you some products that promotors have asked me to share with you. I get offered hundreds of products from these people as well… Someone should have told them, I don’t accept free products…

Offer #1

Hi Mark,

The New Years Ball is dropping in a few days and the crash diets will commence. Losing weight is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. To keep the pounds off in the New Year, I’d love for you to feature the following healthy food alternatives that would assist in curbing the weight.

• HINT Water (www.drinkhint.com): is a fruit-infused, all natural essence water that contains no sugar, calories, artificial sweeteners or preservatives. For all the people who love sweet drinks, HINT Water is a great healthy alternative as they now can stay hydrated without giving up the great tasting flavor.

• USANA Nutrition Bar (www.usana.com): Available in a variety of flavors such as oatmeal raisin and chocolate fusion, USANA bars are specifically touted as a healthy heart product and offer a low-glycemic score. Therefore, they are a sustainable source for energy compared to high sugar snacks so it’s a perfect choice to munch on before/after you hit the gym.

• Amy’s Cheese Pizza: Love pizza? Try this healthy pizza alternative instead. Amy’s Cheese Pizza boasts organic ingredients and has less calories than the pizza at a fast-food restaurant.

• Triscuit Thin Crisps (http://www.nabiscoworld.com/triscuit/): If you love chips and snacking, opt for thin crisps instead. They are baked, not fried like most snacks and also boasts 24 grams of whole grain.

Let me know if you are interested in posting this product round up. Samples are available upon request. Thanks!

Offer #2

It’s that time of year again, when everyone is setting their health goals for 2012. But, believe it or not, about 65% of people end up breaking their New Years resolution after the first month. Celebrity nutritionist and author of The Beauty Detox Solution, Kimberly Snyder, knows that getting healthy is all about changing what and how you eat. Boasting celebrity clients like Drew Barrymore, Fergie, and Hilary Duff, Kim’s book has become a must have among A-listers in the know.

And to ring in 2012 the right way, Kim is offering one lucky consumer the chance for exclusive access to her expertise. Between January 2^nd and 8^th, anyone who purchases a copy of The Beauty Detox Solution (available through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble stores)and sends a copy of their receipt to contest@kimberlysnyder.net will be entered to win this A-list treatment.

I’m happy to send you a copy of the book to review, and/or an additional copy to give away to your readers. Look forward to hearing what you think!

For more info, people can visit: http://www.kimberlysnyder.net/blog/2011/12/28/free-1-hour-consultation-with-kimberly-snyder/ orhttp://wp.me/p1rrrX-2Qx

Thanks and Happy New Year!

Offer #3

Conclusion

I don’t know which of these offers is more ridiculous… I will spend some time talking about each of every one of the mistakes these people are making, other than sending me their emails, but suffice it to say, making your pizza organic will do nothing for your weight gain, and Vitamin K won’t do anything for your hangover. On a pleasant note, I did get this email:

The movie is about 2 minutes too long, but it is cute.

In any case, Happy New Year to everyone. Set a resolution for yourself this year, but make sure it has nothing to do with weight. If you haven’t yet run a 5k, make this year the year you do it. If walking 5k sounds more doable, then set that goal. Whatever your level of fitness, set a resolution to top it! It is your future and it starts now!

That said, the food choices for Chanukah are like any other holiday, there are good choices and bad.  Latkes taste great, but fried potato pancakes aren’t great for you… and donuts, well they are terrible.  Cheese Blintzes and cheesecakes are no better.  Salads, chicken, and salmon are better choices.

If you want, you can always go with a Latke variation that is lower in carbs… Leek Latkes and Cauliflower Latkes… I normally don’t suggest alternative recipes for holidays because most holidays are one day, but if you are celebrating for 8 nights, maybe some substitutions are a good idea.

Have a happy Chanukah!  Enjoy Adam Sandler singing the Chanukah song…

Part I

Part II

Part III

Okay, this brings us to our list for this year.  I am going to assume that you gave all of the items form last years list and are looking to me for some new items to give your friends who are getting fit.  No problem, I am here to help.

The List:

#1 Tights

If you are shopping for a runner (or outdoor winter athlete), then I would go with tights…  I wouldn’t have said tights normally, but I did.  The thing is, I am not a tight fan, I have never had a tight wearing body and tights are generally disturbing to me, except on totally fit bodies (and then I hate them for showing off their fit bodies).  The thing is, tights are not like they were and almost everyone is wearing them running in winter and fall weather because they are awesome.  They are like a second skin, warmer than the first.  About two thirds of the people who were running the Fall Classic this year were wearing them (it was below zero and before 9 am).  People of all shapes.  They all looked normal (and warmer than me).  If you are worried about what your ass looks like in them, just wear shorts over them.  A lot of people did, more than half.  These are also perfect for snow shoeing and cross country skiing, and I bet they would make a good baselayer for skiing too.

So we have established that these are what you need.  Depending on temperature there are many options.  Check out these below, from SUGOi.  I have had bicycle shorts and tri shorts from them and there products are excellent!

Here is the men’s midzero tight at $75.00.  There is a sizing chart on the page.    In any case, you can get tights from a variety of sources, just pick the right size.  Lululemon has a woman’s tight here.  If you are buying for a woman, you cannot go wrong with Lululemon.  Another absolute go to store is Mountain Equipment Coop.  You can find their tights here.  As well, you can get Under Armour, Nike and Brooks tights at Dick’s Sporting Goods Store.  I have an Under Armour shirt that is fantastic several Nike shirts that have been great.

#2 Pants

I have run for 2 years without giving into the tights (although they are on my current Christmas wish list).  I run in a pair of these running pants.  They are quite comfortable.  I also cross country ski in them and snowshoe.

These are the Espresso Pant from Sugoi.  Lululemon has the Free Pant that looks great, and there is a host of pants, Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, etc  available from Dicks.   Running pants are pretty good go to exercise wear and they look fine in the gym as well.  Especially during the long grey days of winter when your legs are looking a little too pale!

#3 Base Layer

Your friend now has their legs covered and god knows they probably have a bunch of shirts from all of the events they have been doing (I hope they do at least… if not, encourage them to collect a bunch this year).  What you need is a layer to wear under any of those shirts.  Just one simple thermal baselayer top and you are good to go all winter.  This layering thing makes a lot of sense and fitness experts use it.  If you layer properly you can exercise deep into winter with no complaints at all.  Really…  I have a nike baselayer top.   On the left is the Sugoi Carbon L/S.  Here is very nice looking Nike baselayer, and Under Armour has one here.  If you know of a running shop in your town, they could set you up with any of these.

#4. Hat

#5 Activities

#6 Indoor Bike Trainer

If the person you are shopping for has taken up cycling then you cannot beat an indoor bike trainer.  This is assuming that they already have a bike.  If they have a big race planned for next year, such as the Whistler GranFondo or some other bike race, (or a big tri) they will need to be on the bike over the winter and into spring.  I have a CycleOps Fluid Trainer.  There are many excellent products depending on your budget and needs.  These are big tickets items to be sure and should only be considered for the hard core biker or biker want to be.

Conclusion

In any case, I hope you have a great holiday!  Enjoy some great food and time with family and friends.  Get out and get some exercise in, even if you just bundle up and go for a walk.  You should be able to keep as active as you were before the holidays and maybe even more.  Make some time for yourself amid the shopping and family activities to exercise.  Get your kids if you have some and GET THEM OUTSIDE if the weather allows.

I will be back before the end of the year with some thoughts about planning for the year ahead.

Below is a long diatribe that can be skipped and the article will still make perfect sense:

So, I figure I should get this second part out of the way for a couple of reasons

A) so that I can write more uplifting tales, including talking about the new year about to dawn on us, and

B) today I found out that Canada pulled out of the Kyoto accord and I am now in a terrible mood.  This isn’t just about the planet and all that global warming stuff for me, it actually goes much deeper.  You see, I am a Canadian.  Our national identity consists of Hockey, drinking beer, being polite and taking care of our planet.  Greenpeace started right here in Vancouver when I was just a little kid.  Paul Watson is a Canadian.  Sinking a whaling vessel is just what we do.  Kids in the US got G.I Joes with Kung Fu Grips for Christmas, we got ‘sink the whaler’ action kits, complete with water hoses.   So, to get to my point, I like hockey fine, but I don’t play it.  So far, neither of my kids do although they both compete in ice sports).  I love the world cup, world juniors or the olympics, but to tell you the truth, if we don’t win, I am not going to lose any sleep.  As for beer, well I love beer, but I am almost as likely to pick up a glass of wine these days, and I certainly don’t drink it in the quantities I used to when I was in University, so I have a hard time really identifying with it.  That leaves my national identity being politeness and the environment.  Well… politeness only (and make no mistake, I am quite polite, but I have to apologize for being sad that that is all I have left in my national identity), because of this announcement.  Canada condemned at home and abroad for pulling out of Kyoto treaty.  Stupid Harper.  Apparently Canada is the laughing stock of the world when it comes to environmental action at these international meetings.  I hear they are difficult and unhelpful…  We even earned an award for this:

…although Canada was given the “colossal fossil” award by campaign groups in Durban for its “reckless arrogance”.

I have no idea what the colossal fossil award is, but I am guessing it isn’t a good thing.  We are being chastised by Japan and China…

Canada is within its rights to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol, according to the lawyer Josh Roberts, at the environmental law organisation ClientEarth. He pointed out that article 27 of the protocol allows any country to withdraw three years after the protocol is in force, a deadline that has passed.

Roberts said the get-out clause was fairly standard in international treaties, but was scarcely ever used. “Countries can trigger these release clauses, but it happens very rarely. For example, Japan, Norway and Iceland all left the International Whaling Commission’s treaty, but such moves are rare.”

Oh god… we are now as bad as those whaling nations… maybe even worse… I may have to get out my sink the whaler action kit and take a bath tonight… maybe I should have a beer with that bath rather than a glass of wine.  The Canucks are playing the Columbus Blue Jackets tonight… Go Canucks Go!!

End of Diatribe.

So, back to bad tips from this article: Little Daily Tricks to Wake Up Slimmer.

#7 Be A Crunch Monster

“Fill your plate with crunchy, chewy foods like carrots, apples, and whole grains. They take more time to chew, and their fiber makes your body work harder to digest them—so you’ll burn more calories during your meal. Eating this way can increase your total calorie burn by 5% throughout the day!” —Leslie Bonci, RD, director of sports nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Sports Medicine

Crunchy, chewy foods??!?!  Seriously… what does crunchy and chewy have to do with healthy?  As I state in Chapter 5 of my book, You Are Not A Fit Person, Fibre is good for you.  It is really good, but fibre has NOTHING to do with the crunchiness of the food you are eating.  I would say a cucumber is pretty crunchy, crunchier than a tomato, but a cucumber has a fraction of the fibre of a tomato.  Refried black beans are actually very high in fibre, but they don’t crunch.  They aren’t chewy either.   Do you know what is crunchy though?  Potato chips.  They are super crunchy.  You know what else is crunchy….  Yep, the crunchie chocolate bar.  Man was I ever hooked on those as a kid… that honeycombed miracle of sugar covered in chocolate…  Do you know what is Chewy?  Taffy is chewy…

None of that food is good for you.  None of it will make you healthier.  The whole crunchy thing is just terrible advice.  Much better advice would be snack on fruits and vegetables, or don’t snack on anything that comes in a package…  Either of those would do… crunch monster though….  come on, at least try with your advice!!

#8 Keep it Simple

Could it be?  Could this actually be a good piece of advice?  Well sort of:

“Just focus on cooking wholesome food; you’ll eat well and could even lose 5 pounds in a week. For breakfast, have yogurt and some fruit; for lunch, eat a soup and a winter salad with tuna and walnuts; at dinner, fill your plate with 3 to 4 ounces of fish or chicken, a couple of veggies, and a piece of fruit. And feel free to use a bit of butter or olive oil—you don’t have to deprive yourself.” —Mireille Guiliano, author of The French Women Don’t Get Fat Cookbook

Well, except for the ridiculous ‘you could eat well and could even lose 5 pounds in a week’ thing.  You COULD… You Could lose a hell of a lot more in the long run if you ate like this.  The thing is, the menu planning of this day is great.  If you could eat like that all the time you wouldn’t have a weight problem I would think.  That is seriously healthy eating, but it is anything but ‘drop[ping] weight without dieting.’  It is literally dropping weight BY dieting…  Keeping things simple is a great idea, but that is a pretty harsh beginning to any better eating plan.  Start by just cutting out your starches with dinner.  No rice, bread or potato.  Fill up the empty spots with vegetables.  Break the meat and potatoes cycle or the fish and rice cycle.  Easier than this tip and it will help you in your life!

#9 Beat Booze Bloat

“Downsize your wine glass to cut calories. Wine glasses today are giant goblets, so it’s easy to pour 6 ounces, or one-and-a-half servings, without noticing. That means those two glasses a night might actually be closer to three (almost half a bottle!), adding up to 300 calories. Instead of drinking this way every day, have a regular-size 4-ounce glass a couple of times a week. You could drop more than 20 pounds this year.” —Tim Church, MD, director of preventive medicine research at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Okay, this is good advice (but whoever wrote the title of this one should be banned from using a computer keyboard).  Smaller glasses, smaller plates, smaller spoons, smaller bowls.  It REALLY helps.  It is easy and it works.  If you are watching TV and you have to fill up your wine glass, you probably won’t.  Certainly not every day, but you are definitely going to down whatever is in your glass.  Drinking will also limit your inhibitions which will likely get you eating more food by the end of the night.  Try to stick to a glass of wine and no more on days you are just hanging out.  You could skip the wine and have water too…  I know it doesn’t sound exciting and it isn’t, it totally sucks, but water is good.

As for the drop 20 pounds this year…  please stop throwing around fake numbers.  The fallacy of ‘You Could drop X pounds’ is covered off in this clip from ‘How To Get Ahead In Advertising’.  Understanding how often the COULD is used in media and how pervasive it is in distorting truth is the first lesson in Critical Thinking and the Media.  Learn it well if you aren’t already aware of it:

#10 Play Hard

“Slip exercise into everyday life, and make it fun. Head outside and go ice skating with friends or shape a snowman with your kids. You can even stage a pillow fight in your living room. That burns 82 calories in 20 minutes, plus you’ll laugh the entire time!” —Missy Chase Lapine, author of The Speedy Sneaky Chef

Again… how far wrong can you go with a good premise.  Playing hard is EXACTLY right.  Not light workouts, not small or even long walks (although you can start with these and should, depending on your current fitness level- see You Are Not A Fit Person Page 67 for starting level), but HARD, sweat inducing, near vomit workouts (although, again, you don’t want to start with these).  So, what should I be doing everyday??  Ice skating with friends… okay, that is a great activity but it really isn’t exercise, unless you are training for ice hockey.  Building a snowman is fun.  What else?  A pillow fight in your living room!?!?  Okay, I can’t take it!! That is the stupidest advice I have ever seen.  A pillow fight…  That isn’t exercise!  It isn’t, there is no world in which it meets the requirements.  This is the condescending advice we get from people who honestly think that we DO NOT GET UP DURING THE DAY.  Seriously, they think, ‘Well, hell anything is better than sitting on the couch all day, and that is all those fat and lazy people do.’  The thing is, if your idea of exercise is the odd skating session and pillow fight, you are quite likely going to be overweight, even if you eat reasonably well…  It is hard to be fit in our society, and advice like this doesn’t help.  I think of my trainer Dan at Crossfit.  The guy put on some weight last year… he works out like a madman and he is so fit, but he was a good 20 pounds overweight…  If I had suggested he pillow fight to lose the weight… he would have cleaned and jerked me…  He actually increased his intensity of workouts and went a fair bit more Palio in his diet.

#11 Try Upside-Down

“Season and butter the bottom of foods. For example, butter the bottom of toast, and salt the bottom of potato rounds. This sounds weird, but it really helps with weight loss. When you eat foods this way, the flavor hits your tongue right away, and you actually taste more of it. Ultimately, that means you can cut out at least half the belly-bloating salt or butter.” —Devin Alexander, chef and host of FitTV’s Healthy Decadence and author of The Biggest Loser Quick & Easy Cookbook

I think the best thing I can say about this one is nothing…  Okay, maybe not nothing.  My brother and I read this one… we were trying to guess why upside down toast was a good idea… Jeff suggested that because when he butters toast it is like a butter lake on one side and if he had to tip it over he wouldn’t be able to pile as much butter on…  I thought that made some sense.  Then I read the ‘taste more of it’ part and I thought, ‘What ridiculous advice’.  We have been laughing about this one ever since…  My advice… why are you eating toast?  You really should avoid it.  Avoid potato rounds too…

#12 Dine in slow-mo

“Make sure you’re the last one to start eating and also the last person to finish. I do this, and it helps me slow down and chew my food properly instead of inhaling what’s on my plate—and more. Eat this way and you’ll take in fewer calories at your meals.” —JJ Virgin, PhD, author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy: The 5-Step Plan to Sleek, Strong, and Sculpted Arms

Good advice…  Really, slow down your eating.   It has a huge impact on how much you shovel in.  I know, I am as surprised as you to find a great tip that could work, go figure….  Think of waiting between the time you swallow and the time you take another bite or choose to chew more and savour what you are eating.  You can also cut your food smaller and take smaller bites.  Whatever works for you, this is a great tip.

#13 Dress the Part

“Make a few changes to your party outfit, and you’ll beat the temptation to overindulge. At a cocktail party, carry a clutch instead of a purse. With a cocktail in one hand and your handbag in the other, you won’t be able to reach for too many hors d’oeuvres. And wear a form-fitting dress—it’ll be your biggest reminder to not revisit the food table for seconds.” —Keri Gans, RD, author of The Small Change Diet: 10 Steps to a Thinner, Healthier You

You know, this one may work too.  I know that when I went out to parties and my belly was showing I ate less and drank less.  I also know that I felt miserable and was full of self loathing, so if you are going to a party and want to feel so bad about yourself and the evening that you are too depressed to eat and drink, wear something tight that makes you look fat!!  Tight clothes will remind you that you are an overweight pig and don’t deserve happiness….  As for the clutch…  again, if you want to be uncomfortable, go for it.  Me, I kind of like going to parties and having fun.  I think my party tip would be to avoid the truly egregious foods.  Deep fried egg roles and taquitos are bad.  Nachos and crab and artichoke dip are bad.  Chips are bad.  Look for skewers of meat, or chicken.  Eat a bunch of these before you eat any snacks.  As well, if there is a vegetable plate, make yourself a deal that you will eat a couple of carrots before any bite of a less healthy food.

#14 Go by the Numbers

“Stop eating when you’re at a 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is famished and 10 is Thanksgiving full). When you stop at 5 or 6, chances are 20 minutes later, you’ll feel like a 7 or 8. This tactic is great for parties and vacations—and could save you lots of calories per meal.” —Ellie Krieger, RD, host of Cooking Channel’s Healthy Appetite and author of Comfort Food Fix

This piece of advice bothers me the most.  It isn’t that this isn’t good advice.  It is.  you should never eat until you are full.  That full feeling means you have gone too far.  Way too far.  The problem with this advice is the scale.  I talk about this with respect to exercise in You Are Not A Fit Person.  The same advice is given for running…  run to a 7 or 8 in intensity or pain.  These people think I have 10 levels of running…  I am not an olympic athlete!  When I started running I had 2 levels.  Running (which was painful) and not running.  There was no 10 levels.  There is some system with 14 levels too.  I have been exercising hard for 5 years and I maybe have 5 levels now.  Still not 10.  So, when I read this advice I was dumbfounded by how stupid that is.  Do you have 10 levels of hungry to full???  I don’t.  I have starving, hungry, not currently thinking about food and too full.  I have been eating hard for over 40 years and I still only have 4 levels.  There is no level 7 or 8.  That is the problem with all of us.  We don’t have that point where we can say, perfect, I have reached it, now I will stop eating.  THAT IS THE CRUX OF THE PROBLEM!  It is true, if you stop eating before you are full you will not be hungry in about 10 to 15 minutes (that is why eating slow works).  It will take a long time to learn to stop eating before you are full, but you can do that.  You need to consciously remember to stop.  You need to insist on not going back for seconds.  You need to fill your plate with much less food and accept that you are done when your plate is empty.  Whatever you do, do not wait for a feeling of 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10…

Conclusion

Again, remember, don’t blame the authors (of the books) for the tips.  You have no idea what the context was.  I know some of these people and they are excellent writers and great helpers.  I would be shocked to see most of the authors give out this advice as being really helpful.

So, thankfully that is it for  the condescending, ridiculous and downright insulting tips (and one good one).  I was tempted to make this a three part series because I was getting so exasperated pointing out why bad advice is bad.  One last thought though.  The photos on these tips bothered me as much as the tips.  They had that slapped in place quality that reeks of not caring.  The almost mechanical content generation feeling.  A quick search on my favorite stock photo site and yep…  That is exactly what is going on… I was wondering how long it was going to take for computers to replace humans as magazine editors and internet content generators… maybe they already have….

Tip number 5, Nix Night Time Eating and below that, found under ‘Young woman looking in refrigerator, night, side view’ we have

This year I am thankful for many things, but as the Author of ‘You Are Not A Fit Person’, I am especially thankful for all of the fit people out there, especially the condescending ones…  I know that sounds odd, but I can’t help it.  You see, sometimes I wonder if my message is clear enough… and it seems that right when I am asking this question, one of the most influential news sites on earth decides to run a story like this: Little Daily Tricks to Wake Up Slimmer

Now, if the name doesn’t tip you off to just how offensive this article is, let me help guide you through it.  By the way, I don’t have any issue with the authors who gave these tips because they may have been given off the cuff as just simple little tips that may help and then were whipped into this article about simple weight loss that will help you lose 20 pounds by the editor.

So, back to the issues.  First, many of us in North America struggle with weight gain.  I have spent the last 5 years keeping my weight down to a manageable 5 to 10 pounds over ideal, and even I am stunned by how much work this has taken.  Every day we hear a new story about the rates of obesity in the US, and this story is usually brought to us by someone with a simple plan to turn this around.  Still the actual statistics are disturbing:

During the past 20 years, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States and rates remain high. In 2010, no state had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. Thirty-six states had a prevalence of 25% or more; 12 of these states (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia) had a prevalence of 30% or more. (CDC, click link for breakdown by state and a nifty animated map)

Now, I work hard to keep my weight down and I worked hard even when trying to get my weight down didn’t quite work.  It was never a case of not working hard.  After being through all of this and discovering just how damn hard it was for me to keep my weight down as I got older, I look at the percentage of overweight Americans and think, wow… these people need some help finding strategies that work for them.  I bet a lot of them are discouraged at how hard they have been working and still failing.   I bet a huge proportion of them are disappointed that, as far as I can tell, there is LITERALLY no one that they can trust with realistic weight loss advice.

So, when I see a headline like ‘Little Daily Tricks to Wake Up Slimmer’, I am sure of 2 things.  1)  The person who wrote or published the article does not have a clue what it is like to be overweight, and 2) these tricks are a pile of crap.  You see, it would be bad enough if they were just saying here are some techniques to lose weight, as if a handful of techniques are going to help, but it is actually the wording of ‘Little Daily Tricks’ that tips me off to what the article authors are thinking.  They are thinking that we are all a bunch of lazy, dumb fat people who are wondering whether we should watch Maury or Dr. Phil before we have our mid morning hungry man feast and wash it down with our first Super Big Gulp of the day.  We won’t do anything that requires any work at all to lose weight, but if you package it up as a ‘Little Trick’, well, maybe I will give it a shot when I get out of my lazy boy recliner to empty my catheter bag.  The title reeks of the hubris of the fit person.  It is dripping with patronizing ignorance.  Most of the fitness experts work their ass off in a gym or on a track or trail.  Imagine if I offered them some simple tips to run faster without having to do any work?

So what is this article about?  It reads:

  We get it: You want to lose the jiggle but don’t want to blacklist your favorite eats, count every single calorie, or overdose on gym hours. The great news is, you can drop weight without dieting: Experts say making small change-ups to your day is one of the best ways to lose. We grilled health and fitness pros for the tweaks that will help your shape the most. Road test a few, and you could shed 5 (this week!), 10, or even 20-plus pounds without a whole lot of effort.

Do the people who publish this crap not understand just how offensive this is.  5 pounds this week?!!?  With just some simple tips?!!?  20 pounds???  What are these wonder tips??  Let’s take a look at these:

#1 Power up PB

“Buy natural varieties of peanut butter and pour off the oil sitting on top. Each serving will have 20 fewer calories and 2 to 3 fewer grams of fat. It’s a small difference that’ll add up to a couple of pounds per year.” —Amelia Winslow, personal chef in Los Angeles and founder of the healthy food blog Eating Made Easy

I personally do buy natural peanut butter because I am trying to eliminate added sugars in my diet and the only way to do that is to stop eating any foods that are overly sweet (and have added sugars).  The thing is, I was just going to check about the 20 fewer calories claim so I went to the Skippy website and checked their natural peanut butter and WTF??!?!  The ingredients include ‘Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Palm Oil and Salt…  I guess they are all natural, but I don’t think that is the point of the whole Natural Variety thing.  Jif has the same thing going on in their natural peanut butter.  90% peanuts?!?!  What about the other 10%???

So, first and foremost, you want to cut sugar out of your diet, that isn’t a small thing but it is necessary, so instead of buying the big brand name peanut butters, pick up Adams Natural Peanut butter.  I like mine with salt, but if you are trying to reduce salt in your diet they do have a no salt added one.  Ingredients: Peanuts, contains 1% of salt or less.  Sounds pretty basic.  As for pouring off the oil?  I don’t.  I stir it in and put it in the fridge.  Natural peanut butter in the fridge is pretty solid.  It is just peanuts, and it isn’t the easiest stuff on earth to spread.  It is extraordinarily calorie dense.  200 calories for 2 tablespoons, so don’t eat it often.  It has a very high fat to protein ratio and the odds of you not eating it on bread are slim to none.  To give you an idea of how calorie dense it is, the straight peanut version is higher in calories than the Skippy version with Palm oil and sugar!!

So, this isn’t the most offensive tip, but even on its own it is pretty bad.  If all you do is pour the oil off of your peanut butter before eating, you aren’t going to lose any weight.  Not 5 pounds in a week, a month or a year, unless all you eat is peanut butter and you eat tons of it!!  What is offensive is that the person writing this claims that this will add up to pounds a year…  Why would someone suggest this?

The answer is that there is a nearly childlike belief that weight loss and weight gain is a simple math problem.  If I eat 20 fewer calories a day for a year, that will be  5300 calories.  There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat, so to compensate for that lower calorie consumption, my body will have to burn 1 and 1/2 pounds of fat a year…  The thing is, that isn’t how fat loss works.  Not at all, not even close.  This measurement idea has been heralded by the king of weight loss foolishness, David Zinczenko in his Eat This, Not That series.  It doesn’t make sense though.  Think about it.  Lets say I continued this weight loss technique (peanut butter scheme)  for 2 years, I would lose 3 pounds.  How about 10 years or 20 years, hey, I am down 30 pounds.  What if I only had 25 pounds to lose?  Am I now starving to death?  Is my body eating its own muscles for survival, all because I pour the oil off of my peanut butter?  Your body doesn’t work like that (Gary Taubes has an incredible lecture on this issue).  It is a complex machine that brings itself into states of equilibrium based upon what you eat, how much you exercise, the time of year, the hours of daylight, the amount of sleep you get and your age, among thousands of other factors.  Most of all though, this technique itself depends on how much peanut butter I eat.  If I lived on peanut butter, this might have a significant effect (that is the basis of optimization theory), but it is likely that you don’t.

#2 Pop To It

“Skimping on fiber will make you gain weight. Forget the pretzels and go for a bag of low-fat popcorn. It has five times the fiber and only 90 calories for six cups, so it’s filling and satisfying. A recent study found that when women doubled their daily fiber intake from 12 to 24 grams, their bodies absorbed 90 calories less per day. You could lose almost 10 pounds in a year!” —Tanya Zuckerbrot, RD, author of The F-Factor Diet: Discover the Secret to Permanent Weight Loss

Forget the pretzels and go for a bag of low-fat popcorn?!?!  Why would you recommend a bag of popcorn?  You shouldn’t be eating popcorn, it is a butter drizzled carb (Even low fat has a fair amount of fat).  Apparently you would recommend this because pop corn has more fibre than pretzels, in fact 5 times the fiber.  The thing is, in your 90 calories of popcorn you get a pathetic 3 grams of fibre to just less than 1 in pretzels.  Popcorn is better than pretzels, but so is a bran muffin, peanuts and froot loops.  Why would someone recommend a food that is marginal in fibre, especially as a fibre added snack.  An apple or an orange would be better.  Much better would be something like strawberries, refried black beans, green peppers, celery or All Bran Buds.  There is a table of high fibre foods in You Are Not A Fit Person.

Fibre is good, very good.  You should eat a lot of fibre in your diet, as much as you can.  Popcorn isn’t good.  Don’t eat it.

#3 Dance your butt off

“Kick up your heels and go dancing with your girlfriends—or have a solo dance session at home. Fast-tempo dances are not only a blast to do, but in an hour you’ll torch 400 to 500 calories. That’s equivalent to light jogging on the treadmill, but it’s way more fun!” —Christine Avanti, author of Skinny Chicks Eat Real Food: Lose the Fake Food and Kickstart Your Weight Loss

I have been reticent to share that here because there is a lot of story to it and I should share that as well, but more importantly, because I was actually afraid that I might have been becoming a fit person.  I know I am not, but still how am I to judge myself?  Would I even know? Judging by the fact that I was probably the only person in the race who consumed more calories DURING the race than they burned and that was just a fraction of the overall eating I did in Austin Texas (mmmm… steak….), I am quite confident after that experience, that I can still say, ‘I am not a fit person’.

The half iron man was grueling, to say the least.  It consisted of a 1.9 km swim, 90 km bike ride, all followed by a half marathon :21 km.  I had run a number of half marathons over the last few years, including one 2 weeks before the race, and I have swam 2 km + on at least 3 or 4 occasions, so I wasn’t worried abut either of those.  The bike was my concern.  I have never ridden 80 km, so 90 km with a half marathon afterwards, and all of this in 90+ degree weather had me quite worried.   I will tell you how it went in an upcoming post, but in the meantime, I will remove all of the suspense to tell you, I didn’t die during the event…

While I was training for the Triathlon, and since, I have been quietly watching the unrepentant scheming of of charlatans, trying to push absurd products that claim they will make us healthier.  I was silently looking on, busy running and swimming and getting ready for my event while product after product passed through my consciousness, entering from product boxes, ads, magazine covers, television commercials, internet sites.   I have no idea if anyone really needs to hear that products with absurd claims are ridiculous.  Is it possible to believe that ‘superfoods’ exist or that some exercises ‘explode’ fat cells…  I don’t know.  Judging from magazines, it is clear that people want to believe that these things exist (they don’t, just in case you were wondering).

If you take nothing else away from reading this blog, then take this:

There is no such thing as a super food, in the exact same way that there is no such thing as a super hero.  The super foods you read about are exactly as super as these people (you can see a news report here), when compared to imagined super heroes like superman or spider man.  I am not saying that these aren’t super people, but if you were falling off of a building you would very much rather have superman there than say, RazorHawk.  When you see any ad for a super food, remember, they are claiming to be selling you the superman of foods, when in reality, at best it is RazorHawk (worst case you get Knight Warrior).  Super foods may be good and healthy foods, but they don’t have any of the super powers that people would want you to believe that they have.  They don’t burn fat or fight cancer, they don’t detoxify your body or heal disease, they are just better balanced in their micronutrients to macronutrients.

To quote the real life super heroes, superfoods are like super heroes, ‘they just don’t have any special powers, obviously’.

So, this brings us to the first of several, ‘What were they thinking?!?!!?’ entries.  Starting with the new ‘Offensive Magazine of the Week’ cover.  It comes to us courtesy of First for Women, or for women First.  This may be a shortening of the real title of this magazines:  First for screwing with Women‘s body image.  This magazine not only offers ‘Energy Unleashed’, a story about a little known B vitamin that kills yeast to ____ tiredness, power up immunity and release fat.  That would be remarkable.  That would be absolutely astounding to think that all any of us would need to do to be healthy, have tons of energy and lose weight is just take our vitamins…  Wow… who knew.  But if that weren’t easy enough for you, they have Snacks that nix stress and Juice cures for pesky health problems… Yep.  Juice cures!  Don’t drink juice.  It does nothing good for you and almost always carries with it added, unnecessary sugar calories with no fibre to balance it.  They have the audacity to suggest that there are cures for health problems in juice mixes…  I cannot believe that they can print this crap.  I think that is an FDA violation.

Of course none of that caught my attention until I saw the photo afterwards.  What caught my eye was the Lose 43 pounds by Christmas offer.  43 pounds!!  There are only 7 weeks until Christmas (5 if you go by the date on the magazine) so to lose 43 pounds in that timeline you would need to lose over 6 pounds a week!  That means you would have to keep a 21,000 calorie deficit every week until Christmas.  If my math is anything close to correct, we are looking at a 3000 calorie deficit every day.  A 150 pound runner burns 2600 calories running a marathon… think about that…

According to Running & Marathons:

Elite Marathon Training

Elite marathoners typically run 100 to 150 miles per week. At 100 calories per mile, that’s about 10,000 to 15,000 calories or 3 to 4 pounds of fat per week. These runners of course, don’t lose 3 to 4 pounds a week because they, of necessity, have rather large appetites. It is however difficult to eat enough to gain weight while burning this many calories. Elite marathoners are usually quite slender.

Ordinary Runners Training for Marathons

An ordinary non-elite runner just wanting to finish a marathon or to beat last year’s time, does not run as much. A basic level for these runners might be 50 miles per week.

A 150 pound runner will burn an extra 5000 calories per week (700 per day) running this far. That’s just under a pound and a half of fat per week.

A sedentary person who suddenly starts running 50 miles per week without increasing his/her caloric intake would lose about 1.5 pounds per week.

Of course that won’t happen. A previously sedentary person should not start running at this level. If you are sedentary and want to start running to lose weight, start slowly. Start walking, gradually add running, and build by no more than 10% per week.

Read more at Suite101: Marathoning and Weight Loss: Caloric Requirements of Marathon Training and Running | Suite101.comhttp://paul-a-heckert.suite101.com/marathoning-and-weight-loss-a28897#ixzz1dpIksxOt