Unsightly Belly Bulge

February 8, 2005 10:49 AM

Why did your last diet fail? If you're over thirty, over-stressed and overweight... take a look in the mirror. You've got excess fat around your waste hips and belly, right? Well diet failure is not your fault!

Surprise surprise... Relacore's representative isn't a real dietician! Who cares about that though... at least she's not as nauseating as Dr. Greg Cynaumon.
posted by catchmurray (54 comments total)

diet failure is not your fault!

No, tis the fault of that fat hand feeding that fat pie hole whilst sitting on thine fat ass dammit!
posted by nofundy at 11:06 AM on February 8, 2005

I smell a lawsuit against this fiendish "cortisol". That fat hand will should watch its back too!
posted by phirleh at 11:09 AM on February 8, 2005

Let's all belly up to the trough of easy moral superiority.
It only makes you fat in the head.
posted by fleacircus at 11:11 AM on February 8, 2005

Does quonsar know about this?

Super size me, baby! Daddy likes a little meat on momma's bones!
posted by nofundy at 11:19 AM on February 8, 2005

Let's all belly up to the trough of easy moral superiority.

I'll have an easier time of that than some of you. (*burp*)
posted by davy at 11:42 AM on February 8, 2005

Walk or bike instead of using your car. What, I lost weight?
posted by adzm at 11:47 AM on February 8, 2005

*having checked the deadbolt and peered warily through the blinds for several minutes, quonsar retreats to the closet and with quaking hands fumbles open another box of Hostess Frosted Donettes*
posted by quonsar at 11:48 AM on February 8, 2005

But you will feel good - "with Relacore™, the breakthrough all-natural anti-anxiety, mood elevating pill".
Wasn't there a scandal a few years ago about giving uppers as diet pills?
posted by Cranberry at 11:52 AM on February 8, 2005

Where does it say that she's a real dietician? The TV ad intoduces her as someone with the company, but as far as her legitimacy goes, I don't see how it matters. It's not as ridiculous as the "labs" in shampoo commercials that are always located in swiss, where hot models in labcoats work day and night to solve that hair shinyness problem that is plaguing the world.
posted by svenni at 11:56 AM on February 8, 2005

Heh - talking of "easy moral superiority", "Dr." Greg Cynaumon apparently uses:

"Heavy marketing on Christian radio stations, the Dr. Laura Schlessinger Show, conservative radio talk shows, and television infomercials"

i.e. he markets to the people who least trust lib'rul "interlectuals" and ungodly scientists.

So, remember folks - evolution may be "only a theory", but Relacore really works - I heard about it on the Dr. Laura show - so buy some now!
posted by kcds at 12:04 PM on February 8, 2005

I love you quonsar, no matter how many Hostess Frosted Donettes you eat.
Got any fish?
posted by nofundy at 12:29 PM on February 8, 2005

..."Dr." Greg Cynaumon apparently uses: "Heavy marketing on Christian radio stations, the Dr. Laura Schlessinger Show, conservative radio talk shows, and television infomercials"

Heavy rotation on AirAmerica, too. Lib'ruls get fat. All that paté, y'know.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:21 PM on February 8, 2005

Couch potatoes say they're fat and happy.
posted by ericb at 1:26 PM on February 8, 2005

"Dr." Greg Cynaumon": If you listen to his commercials, he was a "Doctor's assistant." I wonder if the assistee was a medical doctor. How trustworthy!
posted by ParisParamus at 1:41 PM on February 8, 2005

What's very funny is that WNYC, the public affilliate, is the AM radio station immediately adjacent to Curtis-Rush-Sean-Levin-Ingraham WABC. You'd think WNYC would have, by now, petitioned the FCC for a frequency reassignment!
posted by ParisParamus at 1:46 PM on February 8, 2005

Looking at the ingredients for Relacore I fail to see anything that is a stimulant, even euphemistically, i.e., 'guarana' or 'ma-huang'. It looks like a weak vitamin with some herbal shit thrown in.
posted by docpops at 1:48 PM on February 8, 2005

Consumer Digest compares Relacore to Cortidrene and most folks say the Relacore didn't do much, which makes sense since Cortidrene has Green Tea (caffeine) in large amounts.
posted by docpops at 1:50 PM on February 8, 2005

Excess tummy flab is not your fault: That's the startling conclusion reached by scientists who discovered stress is the likely cause of stubborn belly fat.

I believe everything this says. Because it's exactly what I want to hear.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 1:58 PM on February 8, 2005

You've got excess fat around your waste hips

My waste hips are the excess fat!
posted by kindall at 2:02 PM on February 8, 2005

As someone who call himself a doctor once in a while, I'm concerned about the efficacy of titular endowments!
posted by dwordle at 2:47 PM on February 8, 2005

Excess tummy flab is not your fault: That's the startling conclusion reached by scientists who discovered stress is the likely cause of stubborn belly fat.

Stress helps people gain weight?! I should be at *least* 250lbs by now instead of a wiry 140.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 4:35 PM on February 8, 2005

Everyone would feel better if they just took the Vitality Challenge
posted by WC_Helmets at 4:48 PM on February 8, 2005

Ah, Dr. Greg Cynaumon, my mortal enemy when I'm laying in bed watching too much TV. That smarmy look, those fake credentials...

I think my favorite Cortislim commercial is the one where he says "What if the headline said: 'Entire population of Green Bay reorders Cortislim'? (blah blah blah) Now of course, the entire population of Green Bay didn't order Cortislim."

WTF?

I also like the ones (this isn't unique to the Cortislim commercials) where it says "if you only want to lose a few pounds, (Cortislim|Relacore|whatever) is NOT for you."
posted by Kosh at 4:56 PM on February 8, 2005

I am 175lbs of rippling ahtletic muscle...

...unfortunately, with a 30lb protective sheath around it.

So I see why some people fall for this hucksterism. Not just people who are lazy.

I work out like a motherf*cker six days a week, running boxing, lifting. I eat right... no processed foods, etc. I have my whole life.

Fitness and health-wise I'm in like the upper 10% of condition for my age.

But I keep that 16%-18% body fat no matter what. I'd have to get liposuction to get one of them Maxium guy sixpacks.

The enemy is Genetics.
posted by tkchrist at 5:41 PM on February 8, 2005

I dunno, my diet hasn't failed, at least not yet. And losing 25 pounds so far (since the first of the year) is good enough incentive for me to stick with my diet.
posted by Doohickie at 6:03 PM on February 8, 2005

Whatever you lose you'll gain it all back and then some.
posted by hojoki at 6:08 PM on February 8, 2005

Doohickie,

Wow, that's pretty good. What do you do?
posted by Sangermaine at 9:01 PM on February 8, 2005

I want this company busted just to get their damn annoying commercials off once per break rotation on Fox Soccer Channel!
posted by billsaysthis at 9:10 PM on February 8, 2005

Whatever you lose you'll gain it all back and then some.

Unless you don't.
posted by kindall at 10:21 PM on February 8, 2005

Me? I use this.
posted by bwg at 11:47 PM on February 8, 2005

What kindall said.
posted by NortonDC at 12:00 AM on February 9, 2005

But I keep that 16%-18% body fat no matter what. I'd have to get liposuction to get one of them Maxium guy sixpacks.

tkchrist, my personal trainer says this is usually a blend of some genetics and that you're just consuming more calories than you burn. If you want to lower your body fat use a food log and see how much you are eating. I have a friend who runs 8 miles a day and is still, consistently, 30 lbs overweight. She ate a lot more than she thought though, so while the exercise was great for her, she had to cut calories to lose additional body fat. Like you, however, she was very healthy and not that overweight, so who cares.

It sounds like you are in GREAT shape, so unless you want to join some bodybuilding competition, I wouldn't worry about it.
posted by wicked sprite at 9:13 AM on February 9, 2005

Whatever you lose you'll gain it all back and then some.

Unless you don't.

Which you will.
posted by hojoki at 9:17 AM on February 9, 2005

Whatever you lose you'll gain it all back and then some.

Maybe, then you can say "I told you so". I'll let you know if that happens, okay?

Wow, that's pretty good. What do you do?

South Beach. YMMV, but I did it because a) I know others who've had similar results, b) it seems like a reasonable approach to me (with my lack of medical experience), and c) upon reading the book, I saw that I exactly fit the profile that the diet was designed to help (middle aged belly fat/high blood pressure/high cholesterol/high triglycerides). I've dropped about 3" off my waist and also dropped both parts of my BP about 10-15 points (when three different combinations of medication were not effective).

I'm officially in Phase II of the diet, but it seems to me I am either in Phase I or Phase III (i.e., I start to eat things that make me stop losing or even gain a little, then go back to strictly following the diet and getting rapid weight loss).

The book says you can expect to lose about 10 lb. the first two weeks, and people I know who have done it said thereafter you lose about 2-3 lb./week. I lost 20 lb. the first two weeks, and about 3 lb./week since then. I totally fell off the diet last weekend with the Super Bowl and all, then hit it Monday morning again and lost the pound I gained over the weekend plus a little more.

And now I am off for my lunch-time walk. Ta!
posted by Doohickie at 9:18 AM on February 9, 2005

Whatever you lose you'll gain it all back and then some.

Unless you don't.

Which you will.

It says: "By four or five years out, almost all dieters have regained all or most of their weight, and most will weigh more than they did at the start of their diets."

My advice is don't be one of the "almost all" and certainly don't be one of the "most."
posted by kindall at 9:38 AM on February 9, 2005

Yes, that's a good strategy. I don't know why the "most" haven't been able to figure that out.
posted by hojoki at 9:59 AM on February 9, 2005

I sincerely hope my current South Beach Diet becomes a habitual way of life and not just a bump on the way to a diabetic future. I might be like "most" people and gain it all back, but I can't admit that. I see this not so much as a diet as it is a chance to take back control of my health. So far, so good. How it will work out in the long run, though, is anyone's guess. Stay tuned.
posted by Doohickie at 10:46 AM on February 9, 2005

Stay healthy - no matter what.
posted by hojoki at 11:04 AM on February 9, 2005

hojoki, the article you linked to is full of shit, and poorly written, too.

Clearly, as anyone struggling with their weight will tell you, "Diets don't work."

Diets work.

This month marks four years since I completed losing about 140 pounds. In that time I have stayed within ten pounds of my finishing number, and today have a BMI of 22.5. If it was measured like cancer treatment used to be, in one more year I'd be able to say that I'd cured my obesity.

I did it by dieting, and the diet worked. I did also excercise, but it was inconsistent. The diet was consistent, as was the inexorable progress it produced.

I'm not advocating my diet for others; I just can't let that blatant lies in that article go unanswered here.
posted by NortonDC at 11:26 AM on February 9, 2005

You might be one of the 1 - 3 percent who keeps it off "longer" than the other 97 to 99 percent. BTW, which parts of the article do you consider, "full of shit" or "lies" and are you willing to provide evidence? I'd be interested to read it.
posted by hojoki at 11:39 AM on February 9, 2005

How can a diet not work? If energy expended > energy intake, the result must be loss of weight. There's simply no way around it.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:01 PM on February 9, 2005

Start with the part I cited and proved wrong.

And now that I think back more carefully on the timing, it has been five full years.
posted by NortonDC at 12:09 PM on February 9, 2005

"How can a diet not work? If energy expended > energy intake, the result must be loss of weight. There's simply no way around it."


If you measure a diet's efficacy by the first stage (weight loss) and ignore the second (maintenance*) then, absolutely, diets work.

*lifetime
posted by hojoki at 12:14 PM on February 9, 2005

"If it was measured like cancer treatment used to be, in one more year I'd be able to say that I'd cured my obesity."

If a cancer treatment was only successful on 1 - 3 percent of patients, would it be considered the normal course of treatment? Probably not. Other, more effective treatments, would be and have been sought and are used today. Which is why the logic of diets as a normal course of "treatment" for obesity puzzles me, since the vast majority of them are failures and even lead to more weight gain.
posted by hojoki at 12:22 PM on February 9, 2005

"It is only the rate of weight regain, not the fact of weight gain, that appears open to debate," Garner and Wooley noted.

Well, no, not unless 0 pounds per year is one of the "rates" we're debating, since my own experience is effectively 0 pounds regained out of 140 lost after five years.

That explains why the heavier a person is the more likely he or she is to have dieted.

Or some other crazy explanation, like people that have always been skinny don't feel a need to diet and lose weight.

If diets did what they promised -- and increasingly more of us want to believe they can -- those who've dieted would be joining the ranks of those at lower BMIs as living proof that diets worked.

HEY! YOOHOO! OVER HERE! That person you're saying doesn't exist is me!
posted by NortonDC at 1:36 PM on February 9, 2005

You wrote;

"In that time I have stayed within ten pounds of my finishing number,..."

And then;

"my own experience is effectively 0 pounds regained out of 140 lost after five years."

That does not compute.
posted by hojoki at 1:57 PM on February 9, 2005

Sure it does.

No one's weight is static. We eat, drink, shit, piss and sweat. We have holiday indulgences and sensible corrections. I recognized that before I finished my sustained period of weight loss, and, like I said, since then "I have stayed within ten pounds of my finishing number, and today have a BMI of 22.5." A BMI of 22.5 was my ending target, and it's where I am today, this very day.

Hence no change from five years ago.

Got it?
posted by NortonDC at 3:02 PM on February 9, 2005

Are you serious, hojoki, or are you looking for an excuse to give up on permanent lifestyle changes?

Diets work. Period. It is a fundamental physical law. Your body is not going to create energy stores when it doesn't have any excess energy to store.

Everything else is merely technical finesse. It may be necessary to increase one's activity level, so that one's energy output is high enough to allow a reasonable amount of energy input, aka food. It may be necessary to take supplemental essential vitamins, minerals, and various amino acids to make up for a distinct lack of same in an extreme diet. And almost certainly one is going to have to give up eating anything and everything, and start focusing on eating whole, natural foods instead of the purified, processed, gloopy, sweet and fat shit that most North Americans shovel in their faces.

But the bottom line must be that if you take in less energy than you expend, you will lose weight as the body taps its stored energy reserves.

And subsequent to the weight loss, one must continue to eat in such a fashion that energy in is equal to energy out in order to strictly maintain one's new weight. If you go back to a Twinkee diet, of course you'll put the weight back on. D-oh!

No one ever said it would be easy.
posted by five fresh fish at 3:04 PM on February 9, 2005

Billsaysthis...

I totally agree. Fox Soccer Channel is otherwise my favourite channel on US TV (at least in the Bay Area). One of the reasons that I posted this is because I have heard it so much that I know the commercial word for word. I need some kind of release!

Don't get me started on the '50-year-old' and her Bowflex, or that twat who makes spinach milkshakes with a Magic Bullet.
posted by catchmurray at 3:45 PM on February 9, 2005

wicked sprite; You are right. I eat a great deal because I am active and need to maintain muscle mass. And with that often comes fat. I do eat very healthy. No junk. All organic. Low saturated fat. High protien.

If I lay-off lifting and concentrate aerobic output my weight will fluctuate by about 10-15 LBS VERY quickly. The % of body fat doesn't really change that much - though I have never tested it during those times.

I actually like to keep the extra muscle and wieght to be able to take the younger guys at the boxing gym ;-) At least it's good padding for when they kick my ass.

Still. At 42 I am in pretty good shape - much better thann my peers. But's it's never good enough - I'm one of those competitive types. Most people would put me in my early thirties (that IS mostly genetics). So I have nothing to really complain about.

It would be nice, though, just once to have ripped abs. Er... you know, for the wife to brag on.
posted by tkchrist at 6:33 PM on February 9, 2005

NortonDC- Congrats on the weight loss. People I know with stories like yours are the reason I decided to try this diet thing. And despite all the statistics that say most people on diets fail, I don't have to worry about most people. I only have to worry about me. (They say most marriages end in divorce, but that didn't stop me from getting and staying married.)

I've started a bit of an exercise program, but it's really just a bit: I work in a second-story office. At lunchtime, I walk two miles, then grab a 5-gallon (40-pound) jug of water for the water cooler and carry it up the stairs to my office. This week, I started taking the stairs two at a time. The whole thing- the walk and getting the water- takes 20-30 minutes. I try to do it every work day and don't worry about weekends.
posted by Doohickie at 7:06 PM on February 9, 2005

If a cancer treatment was only successful on 1 - 3 percent of patients, would it be considered the normal course of treatment?

Well there are some forms of cancer where the survival rate is very low (pancreatic is a bad one) and they do have standard forms of treatment for those cancers, so yes.
posted by biffa at 6:50 AM on February 11, 2005

What I should have said was if a cancer treatment was only successful with 1- 3 percent of patients yet worsened the disease in 97 - 99 of the others, would it be considered the normal course of treatment? Odd that doctors and others still recommend diets even though research shows it makes people fatter. America's relationship with food is fucked up and I think diets (especially fads like Atkins, etc) succeed in perpetuating this.

BTW, a 25 pound weight loss in six weeks is dangerous and the dieter already knows that the weight will return probably before the year is out. Weight cycling can't be healthy either.
posted by hojoki at 9:12 PM on February 13, 2005

There was an article in the Times today about a similar huckster being sued by the FDA. Unfortunately, I can't find a linky. Yes, very fucked-up.
posted by ParisParamus at 9:39 PM on February 13, 2005