My Facebook account has been bombarded by many slimming promotions that are both sponsored and by individuals whose FB posts appear on my page when my FB friends 'like' or comment on their posts. Most of these slimming products and services offer one thing and one thing only - a promise that their products/services can help you lose weight in record time. One even claims to help the user lose up to 10kgs in a month with no need for exercise or watch one's diet. Just drink the pre-prepared shake/juice or apply slimming creams and potions, and voila! Problem solved! Hundreds of people have shown interest by 'liking' and 'commenting' on these posts, all asking for the price of this miracle products, which, by the way, is not cheap.
While I do understand the desperation that drive this belief in such promises of quick fixes, I can't help but feel sad that so many people have fallen for these slimming products/services hook, line and sinker.
I find this kind of slimming promotions highly misleading because if there is one thing I know...it is that there is NO shortcuts to losing weight and being healthy. Our body is a sophisticated machine whose sole occupation is to ensure its survival. Losing weight by any means other than exercising and healthy eating could disrupt the body's natural physiological processes and possibly do more harm than good to the body. Any method that promotes losing weight by just drinking pre-prepared shakes/juices alone will make you lose weight fast, but most of the time this is just water weight. What we should strive for is fat-burning, which these products cannot really do. These products work by curbing your appetite so you would eat less, and yes, you will lose the weight, and fast too. However, the body is such that when it senses the reduction of calories, i.e. less food intake, its survival mode will kick in to protect us from what the body perceives to be - thanks to our cavemen ancestors- a ' famine'! When this happens, all the body will do is to minimise the use of calories in order to keep the body's vital organs functioning. The first thing to go will be our muscles, because it takes a lot of calories to maintain our muscles ( that is why famine victims are always skin-and-bones because the body eats away at the muscles). So, we will lose our muscles, which are efficient calorie-burning machines and retain all our fat! Ironic, isn't it? That's why when we get off these 'diets' or stop using these products, the weight will come back...and with a vengeance, because now we don't even have muscles to keep burning the calories for us! All we have is fat.
The key to losing weight healthily depends on how many calories we take in and how many we burn on a daily basis. Everything we eat will eventually be stored as fat, so if we led a sedentary lifestyle, we are definitely going to pile on the weight. That means, the only way we can lose weight is by , yes, you guessed it, exercising and eating healthy. Exercise and healthy diet are also prescribed by medical doctors as a way to prevent illnesses. Got diabetes? Exercise and diet. Got heart problems? Exercise and diet. Stress? Hyper-tension? Yes, the doctors will also ask us to exercise and watch our diet. So, why should it be any different when it comes to losing weight?
We do not put on all the weight in one day. It is a gradual process perpetuated by continuous lack of exercise and poor food choices. If we didn't put it all in one day, then why are we expecting all the weight to go away in one day?
Stop wasting our money on these quick fixes that do not work in the long run, and which could possibly pose serious health problems to us.
We have to understand our body and the mechanics of losing weight. Exercise and diet are the way to go - no buts about it. Be more active. Walk more. Move more. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Pick up a sport. Make time to exercise. Eat more fruits, vegetables and salads. In this age of internet, we have the information at our finger tips. There are so many health and medical articles out there on how to lose weight the healthy way. Pick and choose what might work for us and our lifestyle.
Let's lose weight the healthy way through exercise and diet, and stop paying hundreds of dollars for a miracle in a box that does not offer us a permanent solution. Respect our body. After all, we only have just the one to last us our lifetime.
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