Secrets the Weight Loss Industry Will Never Tell You (Part 1)

SECRET #1
AN INDUSTRY BUILT ON REPEAT BUSINESS

Imagine if you owned a business where there were literally millions of people needing your services and, after they paid you to fix their problem, almost all of them needed you again 12-months later. That would be the formula for a very, very profitable business model in anyone’s book, and that is precisely the position the $60 billion weight loss industry finds itself in.

Surely if we lost weight and kept it off this would be a great thing for the industry – their credibility would rise and people would have more confidence in the majority of programs available today.

Think about the effects if we all learned how our bodies worked and were able to correct the condition of being overweight with only one program. We would no longer need any of these companies and so the market would shrink along with our clothing size which, if you happen to own a large multinational weight loss chain, may not thrill the next board of directors meeting.

The first and bigger secret of the mainstream weight loss industry is that it is actually in the best business interests of most companies to keep us coming back again and again.

SECRET #2
SYNTHETIC FOOD IS NOT THE ANSWER

The weight loss industry is no different from any other business – they realise we want speed, convenience and to hear it will be easy to do. If they convince us of all these things then we will happily spend our dollars with them. Synthetic foods are a major part of the weight loss industry, and they generally show up as, ‘tasty, filling shakes’, ‘nutritionally balanced soups’ or ‘convenient and healthy low-fat bars’.

Now what happens with these ’synthetic’ or ‘replacement’ foods? Do they work? Will you lose weight? Yes, they do work if you follow the directions. So what’s the problem? Even though you can lose weight in the short term, these products can and do have the potential to actually make it harder for you to keep weight off in the long term. In addition some of them can be quite harmful to your health, even in the short term.

Here’s a question: How long do you really think you will want to stay on pre-package shakes, etc. as a permanent way of life? Once you have stopped the shakes you will have to eat something. So what eating habits have you developed over the past few months on synthetic food? You have developed a habit of seeing food as the problem and not the solution. If you simply resume eating three meals a day (plus snacks), as you ate prior to loosing weight, then guess what will happen? Correct – the weight will quickly come back on as the body readjusts itself to where it was before you rudely interrupted it with those pesky shakes.

Your body is designed to eat real food and not synthetics. Your body accepts this change to a degree, but as soon as you stop your program of synthetics it responds by craving lots of real food. So the body craves and you resist, then little by little you begin eating more of the very things your body does not need (because you never really changed long term habits before). The body has also decided it was deprived and that as a defence/survival response it needs to store as much of the food as possible as fat. You and your body are at war.

So the reality is that synthetic foods do not work for long-term weight loss/management. Even worse, they do not work for our good continued health when compared to a traditional real food lifestyle.

SECRET #3
SURGERY IS ALWAYS DANGEROUS

We are watching an explosion in the growth of a type of surgery almost unimaginable to most people until recently. There are two common methods used: bypass and banding, with banding becoming far more popular of late due to its quicker recovery time and seeming simplicity. Bariatric surgery is generally defined as surgery performed on the stomach or intestines for the specific purpose of inducing weight loss. At a recent medical seminar a leading surgeon of bariatric surgery stated that, “bariatric surgery is the fastest growing area of surgical practice today”.

I am totally convinced the vast majority of people choosing to go under the knife to have their stomachs cut open, or plastic devices installed inside them do not need to do this. In fact, they would be far better served by working to change their current lifestyles and becoming healthier by using food as medicine rather than a mechanical intrusion to the body, with all its inherent risks.

“The simple fact about weight loss surgery”, commented U.S consumer health advocate Mike Adams, “is that these patients need nutritional support, counselling and effective behaviour modification. There is no evidence whatsoever that bariatric surgery makes people healthy. There is strong evidence, however, that it makes them suicidal”.

So leave the operations for the people who really do need surgery to save their lives and we will focus on fixing our own problems by some far more effective (and fun) methods.

SECRET #4
NO MORE MIRACLE CURES, PLEASE

Every week we see articles and headlines screaming at us about the latest ‘weight loss miracle’ or about research that will allow us to eat pizza and loose weight – or at least never put on any fat. It is human nature to want a quick-fix solution, that’s why we love microwave ovens and instant coffee, fast food and faster broadband connection. The simple truth is that it is going to take a little time to fix the problem we have created for ourselves.

Some of the pills (especially those prescribed under a doctor’s supervision) will help you loose weight by suppressing your appetite, but they all have side effects. They all create the reverse effect the moment you stop using them. That is, once you stop your body breathes a huge sigh of relief and begins to quickly accumulate fat just in case you ever try and starve it again.

Just as with surgery, pills and potions are a short-term answer to a long term problem. Think about it for a moment: it takes us years and years of overeating and drinking, of neglecting our health everyday to get to the point of obesity. Yet for some totally irrational reason we think a chemical can fix us in a few weeks. Leave the diet pills and the potions for the people who want to be victims, not for those of us who see weight loss and vibrant good health as our next adventure in life.

This is an excerpt from Graham Park’s ‘7 Secrets the weight loss industry will never tell you’, available in stores from February 2nd (2009) and distributed through Gary Allen.
Park collaborated with leading health professionals including prominent Australian cardiologist Dr. Ross Walker, author and psychologist Miranda Banks and Dr Mark Bartlett, PhD John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra.

Part 2 of this excerpt – touching on secrets no. 5, 6 and 7 – can be read HERE.