I've just noticed a new advertising campaign around town. Some product will prevent you from absorbing 25 % of the fat that you eat. Taking the product for the maximum allowed 6 months resulted in a mean of 10 lbs lost in the group of people they studied. Oh, and you have to have a body mass index (bmi) of more than 26 before they'll perscribe it for you; that is, you have to meet one of the definitions for obesity.
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I'm 5 foot 7, and would have to weigh 166 lbs to reach a bmi of 26. At that point, what is the interest of taking a product that will make my feces oily (from all that fat going on through, ew), and that is dangerous enough for them to limit its use to 6 months, when it's only going to help me lose 10 lbs? At less than two pounds a month, the effect is so slow as to be invisible on a week-to-week basis.
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Going further, what is the real health interest in a product that allows people to ignore the consequences of what they eat? Nobody is learning to control their intake here, they're just escaping the cost (partially and temporarily). Certainly nobody is learning to increase their daily exercise with this - it's a magical way of convincing yourself you don't need to. It's so easy to see this as a way to eat 25% more for 'free'! Is that helping? Or is that like saying, 'here, have yet another credit card' to somebody already in debt?
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I hope this stuff is taken off the market quickly. I do sincerely feel for people who continually battle their weight, but this isn't how to win.
7 comments:
NanU, I think this stuff is available WITHOUT prescription in the UK. Which is scary.
I've never been on a diet even though I know I could do with going on one. But I believe exercise is much more beneficial anyway. And besides, I like chocolate too much!
CJ xx
Amen! An ounce of prevention and all that.
I agree. Although I might be close to meeting the criteria...and, of course, if my body did not absorb 25% of the fat, my natural inclination would be, "Oh Boy! I can eat twice as much!"
It sounds ghastly, expensive and like one can looks just as much on their own. Maybe even quicker.
That is scary, Titus! Like Mark says, for most people it'll just be an excuse to eat more. I wonder what the side-effects are. At the least, it must be unpleasant in the bathroom - they took most of those 'fake fats' that people can't digest off the market because of that.
I was reading recently that, after we've lost weight it needs to be kept off for two years before our body accepts the new weight as our normal set point.
During the worst of my illness last summer I lost 50 lbs over a six month period. I have since rebounded to my set point.
sigh.
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