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As a nation, we are getting fatter and fatter.
It is now estimated that approximately 60% of the Australian adult population are overweight or obese; a figure which has more than doubled over the past two decades.[1]
Given the health complications associated with carrying excess body fat, these figures may sound bad from a public health perspective, but not so from a business point of view, as many overweight people are willing to fork over a considerable amount of money to anyone able to offer them a solution.
In fact, the average Australian woman spends around $250 annually on weight loss – many doing so even if not overweight! [2]
Given that the population is certainly not getting any thinner, it would seem apparent that whatever it is that people are buying isn't working.
One may therefore start suspecting that the key to successful weight loss must be some kind of well hidden secret, and consequently set out to find this secret, spending a lot of money in the process.
Fortunately for me, I happen to be among the few privileged people lucky enough to be aware of what this multi billion dollar industry secret is.
Fortunately for you, I have decided to share it with you, but only if you promise not to tell anyone!
(When I use this introduction in the seminars I often give, the entire room suddenly falls silent except for the sound of a few desperate people scrambling to get to their pens out in order to write down what the secret is.)
Are you ready for it?
Adipose tissue (fat) is essentially our body's way of storing excess, unused chemical energy. Other than by surgical means, in order to get rid of it, we must force our body to break it down to use as a fuel source, by consuming less energy (kilojoules / Calories) than what we expend through physical activity.
In other words, body fat regulation is a matter of energy in vs energy out.
In layman's terms, if you want to lose weight you need to eat less and exercise more.
That's about all you need to know to lose weight, though doing so healthfully and doing so in a way in which it is likely to be habit forming (and therefore last long-term) is going to be advantageous.
Most fad weight loss schemes and diets work of course, because ultimately, despite the very different claims they all make, they are all essentially low energy diets.
To give an example, a clinical trial published in the January 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association studied four of the most popular diets in the United States , by randomly assigning people to follow either the Atkins Diet, the Zone diet, the Weight Watchers diet and the Ornish diet. [3]
After one year, all four groups resulted in approximately similar amounts of weight loss and improvements in their cholesterol, insulin and C-reactive protein levels.
As it turns out, regardless of the fact that all four diet made very different claims about why they made you lose weight, ultimately they were all energy restricted diets.
Whether or not they are good for you and whether they are realistically sustainable in the long run however, are the key aspects that a good weight loss program should provide.
In regards to long term health, the best kind of generic dietary recommendation is set out by the NHMRC's ‘Dietary Guidelines' and illustrated by Nutrition Australia's ‘Healthy Eating Pyramid'.
Whilst these recommendations are intended to maintain a healthy body weight, they are also designed to minimize the risk of other diet related diseases, including (but not limited to) cardiovascular disease and certain cancers.
When it comes to long-term sustainability, I think it's reasonable to suggest that restrictive dietary regimes significantly different to what existing habits are like, will not last very long. Making subtle improvements to ones own usual diet, identifying cues preceding poor food choices, and learning how to plan ahead to overcome them, would be far more effective for long term success.
Unfortunately however this doesn't seem to be what the market wants, or at least not what they are willing to open their wallets for.
I think it's reasonable to suggest that telling people to eat less and exercise more is not going to be enough to convince them to part with their money.
In order to do that, you need to come up with a weight loss method that possesses three essential criteria:
1) it has to be new,
2) it has to promise rapid results and most of all,
3) it has to be as effortless as possible.
Something new
If you're going to sell a way in which people can lose weight, you will need to understand that the typical customer will more than likely be someone who has tried many other weight loss schemes before they arrived at yours, and will more than likely go and try the next new thing after that as well.
This can be quite a conundrum, as other than perhaps a better understanding of how the glycemic index can influence appetite regulation, scientists haven't really leant much about weight loss in the past few decades they didn't already know.
You can't let this get in your way if you are to make it in the weight loss industry however - you need to provide the market with something they haven't already tried, which inevitably means bending the truth a bit or capitalizing upon latest fads, depending upon what seems to be popular at the time (low carb, ketogenic diets are perhaps the biggest selling point at the moment, so including these principles somewhere means an almost guaranteed following).
Rapid results
People are impatient creatures.
Despite it taking months if not years to pile on the pounds, most people will inevitably want to lose it as soon as humanly possible.
After speaking to many hundreds of weight loss patients over the last few years, it has become overwhelmingly apparent that most people consider anything less than a kilo a week to be not worthwhile, and usually give up if a few weeks go by without any results.
Nutrition Australia recommends that around 1 kg a month is a healthy rate to be losing weight, but to many people, this is simply not fast enough to be worth spending money on.
Something effortless
I have found that the less thought process that needs to go into a person's weight loss effort; the more likely they will give it a go.
The most basic examples include weight loss pills, by far the most effortless way most people would consider losing weight.
After all, why diet and exercise when you can simply take a pill?
Whilst some weight loss pills actually work to some extent (usually requiring a prescription) they are usually unnecessary, are not without side effects and do nothing to teach the patient long term healthy food choosing habits.
Most weight loss pills unfortunately (such as those sold as listed therapeutic goods) simply do little if anything at all. (Read More....)
This is not very comforting given that most of them can be found on the shelves in most pharmacies, with many customers assuming that someone as reliable as a pharmacist simply wouldn't sell a medication unless it really worked. (Read More.... )
Many fad diet schemes dictate what to eat, how much of it to eat and when to eat it (taking the effort out of food choosing) though some popular diet schemes go a step further and actually provide the meals for you, even taking the effort of shopping out of the equation.
Some do claim to teach clients healthy food choosing skills, though usually sell them unnecessary products in the process (such as pre packaged meals, meal replacements, supplements or gimmicky methods of counting Calories).
People will almost always chose the no-brainer option if given the opportunity however, usually because healthy food selection, Calorie counting and basic food choosing skills appear to be complex and time consuming.
In reality however, it would take no more than about 5 seconds to pick up a food item, turn it over and look at how many Calories it contains (perhaps up to 20 seconds if you looked it up in a $10 calorie counting book).
As for being complex – I'm fairly sure than even a year 3 primary school student would possess the necessary mathematical skills to add several numbers together.
Whilst most popular weight loss schemes ‘work' as such (by providing short term weight loss), they do so simply because they result in lower energy consumption.
The reason that they fail (long term) however if because they usually aim to provide the market with that which they want (something new, quick and easy) rather than something that they need (learning how to make healthier food choices).
Once the person loses the motivation to follow the prescription (and they will) it's like taking the floaties off a person who never learnt to swim.
References
[1] Cameron AJ, Welborn TA, Zimmet PZ, Dunstan DW, Owen N, Salmon J, Dalton M, Jolley D,
Shaw JE. Overweight and obesity in Australia: the 1999-2000 Australian Diabetes, Obesity and
Lifestyle Study (AusDiab).Med J Aust. 2003 May 5;178(9):427-32. Erratum in: Med J Aust.
2004 Apr 19;180(8):418.
[2] Ball, k., Andajani-Sutjahjo, S., and Crawford, D. The costs of weight control: what do young
women pay? MJA 2003; 179 (11/12): 586
[3] Johnston CS, Tjonn SL, Swan PD, White A, Hutchins H, Sears B. Ketogenic low-carbohydrate
diets have no metabolic advantage over nonketogenic low-carbohydrate diets. Am J Clin Nutr.
2006 May;83(5):1055-61.
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