Crazy Weight Loss Methods

Olympic Athletes, like some dieters at large, try crazy, dangerous weight loss schemes, such as those outlined in this article.

These are not new wacko methods, either. I had a boyfriend in high school who was on the wrestling team, and he did the rubber-suit thing and the spitting up and the water pills before weigh-ins. (He was also on the softball team, but didn't do crazy stuff for that, that I can recall.)

Some THE BIGGEST LOSER finalists use nutty methods to get low, low, low for the final weigh-in--including eating lots of asparagus and taking water pills. They can gain as much as 32 pounds in the days after that last weigh-in, because it was water loss, not fat.

It's lucky none of them collapsed from heart failure.

A distressing number of us dieters have at some time come to rely on pills (water or "speed" or laxatives), saran wrap (my boyfriend in high school's sister would sit around all day before a big date wrapped in plastic wrap to fit into her dress better!), eating only X meal bar, drinking only X protein shake, etc.

Anything that is dehydrating is causing you to lose water, not fat. We don't need to lose water, generally. (Some folks have a medical condition that causes excessive fluid retention, and they DO need to lose water.) Even when we eat Chinese or high-sodium, what we need to lose is SODIUM, excess sodium, not water. Water just happens to wash it out, so ironically, we need to drink MORE water to lose excess water weight.

One of the things that causes some of us to overeat is THIRST--ie, not recognizing the mouth-hunger we feel is for water, fluid, not solids, food.

So, getting dehydrated will backfire for dieters. You lose the water, you'll feel thirsty, you end up maybe EATING MORE than you would have, and the water comes back, along with some pounds.

Anything that is very-low-calorie is setting you up for a binge, a fall, a lower metabolism. Anything that is not real food in life-long sustainable meal plans is not gonna cut it except for short term.

And even when something seems safe, cause your doctor gives it to you, is NO GUARANTEE. Remember Fen-Phen? It killed the wife of a former mayor of my city some years ago.

Rely on anything other than good food in smaller portions and near-daily to daily exercise (calories in, calories out), and you may be stepping into the long and wide danger zone of side-effects.

I can understand why these athletes and dieters get crazy. Don't we all wish we could find the magic bullet? Sigh.

But I think some things should not be faciliated. In athletics, for instance, weigh-ins should be minutes before an event, to make sure athletes are discouraged from doing these things. Trust me, no athlete is going to be ABLE to compete dehydrated. They'll pass out. They'll learn to calibrate those scales and stay well enough under that even a scale change gets them in their class.


In real life, I think doctors should be discouraged from offering pills until after a patient has had a round with 1. dietitians 2. behavioral therapists 3. a personal trainer or someone who can confirm they are exercising. In other words, I think taking pills should have the same sort of tough accountability as, say, getting bariatric surgery (where you have to have psych assessments, go on a diet first, etc).

Pills shouldn't be easy. Pills like this should NOT be over the counter, either. That's asking for folks to abuse them. Like Sudafed is now (cause of Meth issues), water and other diet pills should have to go through a pharmacist.

Sounds tough, but I'd rather not have dieters (and athletes) ruin their kidneys and hearts for something bound to fail.

No diet pill has been shown to lead to successful long-term weight loss. And many have side effects that mean folks can't stay on them long. You probably know (or have been) someone who tried some and gained back the weight.

Diets fail regularly, too, we know; but at least being on a sound weight-loss plan means you're focusing on good nutrition--veggies, fruits, lean dairy and proteins, clean water--and not just popping some chemical that'll make you buzzed-hyper (cause it's either got enough caffeine for 12 cups of coffee or has ephedra or has some other "speed" drug) or make you poop your pants.

If you wouldn't let your kid take an iffy drug, why would you let yourself take it?

It's hard to learn to do it right, to put up with gradual losses rather than "superfast weight loss", to tolerate 1 to 2 pounds a week (or less), to plateau. But that's how you do it SAFELY.

And as a bonus, that's one way to maybe avoid the maximum amount of sag. If you lose very slowly, you have a better chance to being able to tone up and minimize the hanging skin (though for folks like me, who got to morbid obese status, there's about a ZERO chance of our evading the hanging, loose, wrinkled skin that losing weight leaves behind. One good reason never to get heavy to start. I wish I had known before about that. Honest to God, I didn't until a few years ago. It's horrifying to me! It might have kept me under 200, those pics!)

Getting to 299 was the big awakening I needed to stop the upward creep and start the slow downward trek. (Very slow, as it turns out.) I did not want to see 300 on my home scale. I didn't. (Though I did with clothes on at the doc's office: 303!)

People have died from using diet pills and water pills. People (including athletes) have died from extreme weight loss measures. People even die on the surgical table for legitimate and medically-okayed bariatric surgery (a small %, but it's a risk, always, to go under the knife.)

Let's find a way to do it safely--all of us. Let's think long-term, not "this week!" Let's not die in our quest to be healthy. Let's be sane.

And when you're tempted to speed things up with an iffy method, remember Karen Carpenter, remember Steve Bechler, remember Patricia Mishcon.

Leave extreme dieting to reckless thrill-seekers...and dumb-ass Olympians.

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