Fat Follies

Fat Follies
Dr Michael Colgan 8 April 2013
“But rice cakes are mostly air. How can you fail to lose weight on rice cakes?”
Fran, one of our serial dieters, is always searching for the ideal snack to satisfy her cravings. I try to keep a straight face.
“Does that mean if you eat enough of them you’ll float away?”
(Rice cakes are absorbed faster than table sugar and converted straight into glucose in the blood.)

Her belief is one of many common diet myths we hear at the clinic from people who have failed to lose fat. With 70% of the US population overweight, 33% at any one time trying to lose it, and only 3% successful, weight loss is an inexhaustible goldmine for deceitful profiteers. Here are a few common scams and errors and our responses that may help you avoid them.

“I did the whole 30-day, but then the fat came back. I think it was there all the time, just hiding.”
“Where did it hide? In your shoes?” For most people a lot of initial weight loss is water as the liver and kidneys start to operate better, and inflammation (which holds a lot of water) declines. After that, fat loss is much slower but steady. Persistence is the key. There’s no shortcut. After about one year of the right nutrition and exercise, at a steady lower fat level, blood sugar stabilizes, cravings decline, old fat cells die off, new cells grow, and fat stabilizes at a lower level. Being lean is a lifestyle, not a diet.”

“My girlfriend told me to eat a brown rice pudding at midnight. That way you are not hungry on cleanse day.”
“You may be onto something. Keep it up for a month and call me.”

“Russell Crowe says that you can be either skinny or strong but not both”.
“Unfortunately, you can easily be neither. Most people are.”

“My astrologer told me it was not a good time, and she’s really slim”.
“So are more than half the people in Africa, and they don’t have the benefits of astrology.”

“Is it true you can swallow a tapeworm to eat your excess food?”
“Taenia saginata, the beef tapeworm is the most used. It grows to about 30 feet long, up to 15 pounds in weight, and lives about 25 years. It attaches to your intestine with a mouth like something out of Alien, causes enormous bloat and flatulence, and if its eggs invade your brain, you will not be worried about weight loss ever again.”

“I’ve been eating these negative calorie foods.”
Wow! Someone has discovered matter that doesn’t obey the first law of thermodynamics. Physicists are going to be very excited.”

“I know there are no controlled studies, but all my friends are getting HCG injections”.
“As my friend Dr Paul Anderson says, “Using a fertility drug to lose weight: are you out of your mind?”

“I got this white powder on TV. You sprinkle it on your food and you can eat anything you like.”
“I think it used to be called talcum and put on babies’ bottoms. Some scams add a bit of the carbohydrate maltodextrin, and a nudge of caffeine. It might get you a bit of social attention at the local watering hole, but you will not lose any fat.”

“I tried those weight loss patches, even four at a time, but they don’t seem to work for me.”
“They work really well if you stick them over your mouth.”

“I’ve been using GCA (green coffee bean extract) but it’s expensive.”
“I think the coffee traders thought that one up in 2008 when the profit boom after Starbucks and imitators had been slowing down. The chlorogenic acid in coffee mildly inhibits sugar metabolism and mildly improves lipid metabolism. But the GCA does not reduce bodyfat more than having the pleasure of good arabica coffee daily, and certainly not as much as the combined caffeine and EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) in top class green tea. (1-5)

Weight Loss Drugs
In conclusion, we get many enquiries about anti-obesity drugs. Here’s the short skinny. Rampant side effects cause up to half the patients to withdraw from treatment. They sell very expensively under a wide variety of trade names, but are almost all one of these three drugs. Orlistat, the fat blocker causes extreme flatulence, diarrhea, and intestinal cramps. Sibutramine, thought to reduce appetite, causes rapid heart rate and heart disorders, and most brands are now withdrawn. Rimonabant, an appetite suppressant causes depression and suicidal ideation and is now also withdrawn from FDA approval.
A meta-analysis of 30 double-blind long-term controlled trials of 1–4 years’ duration, covered 16 trials of orlistat on 10,631 patients, 10 trials of sibutramine on 2,623 patients, and 4 trials of rimonabant on 6,365 patients. Withdrawal from treatment averaged 30%–40%. Compared with placebo, orlistat reduced weight by 2.9 kg,(6.4 lbs) sibutramine by 4.2 kg,(9.2 lbs) and rimonabant by 4.7 kg (10.3 lbs). Considering the length of these trials, results are pathetic.(6)
With optimum nutrition and daily exercise, about 99 out of every 100 people can be slim and healthy, and rejoice in their bodies. It’s the greatest lifestyle there is. But market forces work ceaselessly to make us all obese. 24 hours a day we are conditioned by deceit and manipulation of the food supply to become fat and carb devouring machines to raise food market profits. Don’t let them get you. All you really have in life is your body and your word. Keep both intact lifelong.

4. Thavanesan N. The putative effects of green tea on body fat: an evaluation of the evidence and a review of the potential mechanisms. Br. J. Nutr,2011;106:1297–1309. [PubMed]
5. Rains T.M., Agarwal S., Maki K.C. Antiobesity effects of green tea catechins: a mechanistic review. J. Nutr. Biochem, 2011;22:1–7. [PubMed]
6. Rucker D, Padwal R, Li SK, Curioni C, Lau DC. Long term pharmacotherapy for obesity and overweight: updated meta-analysis. BMJ. 2007;335:1194–1199. [PMC free article][PubMed]