In an image-obsessed culture, where companies market diet products aggressively to exploit people’s dissatisfaction with their looks, common sense sometimes loses out. Even though, intellectually, many people know the products won’t work, their desire to lose weight—to find a short cut so that they can be accepted, admired and successful – is so strong that it’s worth £29.99 just to buy into the fantasy.
Stop deluding yourself. You can’t have it all. You can try. You have tried. It doesn’t work.
Creaming off the Profits
Talking of cost, hands up who has paid a large amount of dosh for a cream that you rub in your thighs and bottom to get rid of cellulite? Oh, come on, you haven’t! And did it work? Did it get rid of the fat? Where did the fat go—to your stomach, your ankles, the bloodstream? If you had a bath in the cream, would you emerge slimmer all over?
A marketing friend told me about a campaign that was initiated to create massive demand for a cream that would reduce fat on the thighs. The plan was to create a huge buzz about the product before it was launched—and it worked magnificently. It was so simple: just a little whisper in a few susceptible ears: ‘It’s only available in France at the moment!’, ‘They’re queuing round the block to get it’, ‘It’s selling out over there’, ‘Coming here soon!’, ‘Really expensive!’, ‘Limited stocks when it does arrive’, ‘Quick—before they sell out!’.
And the inevitable result? ‘How do I get it?’, ‘Where can I get it?’ Rather ordinary smoothing cream becomes the must-have new product before it is even packaged in the expensively designed pot, because no-one wants to be the only person left in town with fat thighs.
Don’t worry. You didn’t miss anything. As one doctor said, ‘If this cream has any effect on physiological function, then legally it should be sold as a drug. If it doesn’t have any effect, why should anyone buy it?’
For the sake of your body and your bank balance, understand this: you cannot break down fat from the outside. The only way fat gets on your body is when you eat more food than you expend in energy, and the excess gets stored in your cells. Therefore the only way to get rid of it is to make sure it gets used up as energy—and you know exactly how that works. A cream that could dissolve fat would have to dissolve the skin first—think about it!
There is a discrepancy between the manufacturers’ and the public’s perception of what constitutes a ‘cure’ for cellulite, or cauliflower bottom syndrome (CBS). The manufacturers assume it is to make the skin smoother and less lumpy-looking; the user wants to end up two inches slimmer.
Beware Beauty Salon Treatments
Save your money. Any treatment undertaken in a beauty salon which claims to make you slimmer by applying ointment, clay, slimy gunge, or attacking your thighs with nasty-looking instruments, tight bandages (to squish the fat into submission?), electrical impulse treatment, or whatever, is a complete waste of time. Little electrical impulses to stimulate your muscles will have no impact on the surrounding fat. Similarly, there is no such thing as a ‘non-invasive’ face-lift.
You should also be wary of suggestions made by the attractive, slim beauty therapist attending to your vulnerable thighs while you lie prone in your cubicle. A white nylon coat and a name tag do not confer instant qualifications upon the wearer. The letters after her name are probably her postcode.
Aspiring beauty therapists are indoctrinated with three key phrases: ‘Breaks down the fat’, ‘Increases the circulation’ and ‘Gets rid of toxins’ (sound familiar?). Therapists are instructed to repeat these phrases at intervals during each consultation with a client, in the firm belief that said client will not dispute this. Asking for a more detailed analysis, ‘What do you mean it breaks down the fat?’ will elicit the response, ‘You know, it breaks down the fat so that it can be carried away by your increased circulation’. Don’t bother to ask ‘How?’ or ‘Where does it get carried to?’—she doesn’t know and you will only confuse her.
You will certainly be lighter when you leave the beauty salon—by at least 50 or 60 pounds – but only in your wallet. And news travels fast, so if by the remotest chance any of these anti-fat treatments worked then nobody would have any fat. Surely this should tell you something. However, there’s no telling some people – and with time on your hands, fat on your thighs and money in your pocket, the choice is yours.
You could even join Cherie Blair on her Detox Slimming Machine. Appearing svelte and slim(ish) at the Labour Party Conference in October 2003, the prime minister’s wife was reportedly very enthusiastic about her three-times-a-week slimming treatments to get rid of ‘toxic waste’ and reverse years of ‘digestive abuse’. The treatment consists of lying on a couch and being attached to 32 electrodes that emit electrical currents to tap away at the ‘intestinal plaque’ lining the colon and intestines. A course of 12 sessions costs £695. A laxative would have the same effect at a fraction of the price as would taking a natural product like psysllium or ispaghula husk, marketed in the UK as Fybogel. You are also advised to go on a strict detoxification diet—eating only fruit, vegetable soup and salad with a small meal of chicken and rice for dinner. Oh really? No sausage, bacon and chips then?
Let’s talk toxins for a moment. A toxin is a poison usually produced in the body by bacteria. Health Encyclopaedia, the medical guide used by the Royal Society of Medicine, suggests that bacterial toxins are extremely dangerous, and if they enter the blood in more than minute quantities, the effects are always serious. If you suffered the build-up of toxins suggested by these so-called ‘health experts’ you would probably be dead, and the idea that you can be ‘cured’ of toxins by electrical stimulation, colonic irrigation or a detox diet is ludicrous. Not one toxin, as the term is understood by the Royal Society of Medicine, can be removed by any detox programme.
As Amanda Wynne, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association tactfully put it: ‘I can’t really comment on this so-called detoxifying process but the diet doesn’t sound hugely nutritious to me. You can lose between one and two pounds a week quite easily just by eating healthily and exercising—and save yourself £695.’
If you have that much money to spare, why not go for surgery? Plastic surgeons have developed a technique to get rid of the ‘orange peel’ effect of cellulite by snipping the ligaments just under the skin to produce a smoother look (Tucks R Us?). Unfortunately, this doesn’t eliminate the fat; you just look smooth and fat instead of lumpy and fat. Fatso intacto.
The only plastic surgery that will effectively protect you from all of the above is to cut up your credit cards.
Fad Diets
Even if you don’t succumb to slimming treatments, nothing it seems will deter you from going on your next diet. Over the years the professional dieter must have lost at least 40 stone. Each new diet promises you more food than you can eat, instant results and strangers on the bus coming up and asking you to dance.
Let’s face it: authors write diet books to make money. If they can think up some weird food permutation—the quirkier the better—that captures the public imagination, they are laughing. Even better, if loads of people try it and lose weight—as you do—word of mouth is the best publicity. What doesn’t concern these writers, however, is the effects their methods could have on someone’s health if they stay on the diet for a long period.
If you keep repeating the same action, you will keep getting the same results.
High-protein, Low-carb Regimes
In the same week it was announced that the Atkins diet book—which advocates foods high in protein and fat and low in carbohydrates—was rivalling Harry Potter in sales, a report was published in the Lancet medical journal linking