Have Baby, Will Exercise : There Is No Magic Bullet For Fitness
Deep down we all know the way to a healthy body is through diet and exercise. But eating well and moving often is tough, which is why Americans spend over 60 billion dollars each year in an effort to lose weight. Just in case you find yourself ready to pick up the phone the next time you’re watching infomercials, I tried and reviewed some popular weight loss quick fixes. Here are the results.
Waist Trimmer
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The claim: Wrap this cloth covered piece of rubber around your mid-section and you’ll lose stomach fat. Waist trimmers all have similar marketing claims, like this one from Amazon:
Start today and Get Results shedding inches from your waistline with the weight loss belt that burns stubborn belly fat. Strengthen, trim & tone while surrounding sore muscles with natural body generated moist heat; important for muscle recovery!
The process: My mom gave me a waist trimmer shortly after I had my twins, and while I used it successfully in the first couple months postpartum to help give my aching lower back support, I never tried it as a weight loss tool until now. I measured my waist and hips before donning the trimmer, then put it on under my shirt before heading off to a very sweaty hour of cardio dance.
The result: Any trainer worth their certification will tell you that you can’t spot reduce fat, but if you really don’t believe them, try a waist trainer and see for yourself. My waist measurement was exactly the same after class and while my hip measurement did decrease by half and inch, by the following morning it was back to the starting measurement. My weight post class was actually two pounds heavier than it was before class, most likely because I was drinking water and using my muscles. Fail.
Meal Enders
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The claim: Prevent yourself from overeating by sucking on one of these candies when you think you’ve had enough food. From Mealenders.com:
It takes about 20 minutes for the food you’ve just eaten to travel from your stomach to your colon, where peptide yy is released. Only then does your brain receive the signal that it’s time to stop eating. First the delicious Reward Layer treats you to the sweet taste of dessert a signal we typically associate with the end of a meal. Then the Inner Core’s Active-Taste Layer releases a proprietary blend of gentle, cool tingling sensations on the tongue, which engage the trigeminal nerve, distracting your mind from the urge to continue overeating.
The process: I was kindly sent MealEnders to try, in each of their four flavors: citrus, cinnamon, mocha and chocolate mint. The first two are tingly mints covered in white chocolate-like coating, the last two are chocolate based coated mints. For one week, every time I was feeling munchy in the middle of the day I popped a MealEnder. If I finished my plate at meal time but thought about having seconds, I had a MealEnder. If it was late at night I wanted to go down to the kitchen, first I had a MealEnder. I averaged about four of the candies per day.
The result: Meh. While taking time between a first and second plate of food to see if you’re really still hungry is a great idea, you can just as easily accomplish this with a timer or by drinking a glass of water. When it came to my general Tso’s chicken, I had the MealEnder and still went back for seconds. I absolutely overate that night, but the desire for more sweet, spicy chicken won out over the mint. And at $14.95 for a bag of 25 candies, these aren’t for the thrifty. That being said, if you’re the kind of person who’s more likely to stick with something if you feel like you’ve spend a good deal of money on it, or if you’e always wondered what a chocolate coated starlight mint tastes like, then you could benefit from these.
Foam Roller Cellulite Removal
(photo:wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com)
The claim: Roll your cellulite against a foam roller every night and the lumps and bumps will magically disappear from your thighs. Or as founder of the Melt method Sue Hitzmann says, these moves “…help stimulate the cells in your connective tissue to restore its ‘juiciness’.”
The process: I used the MELT method every night for a month. The three moves took about ten minutes to complete and didn’t hurt. Full disclosure: I used my cheapo foam roller from Target and not the official Melt roller because I’m #thrifty.
The result: Here are the before and after photos. Please be kind to my fragile ego in regards to my rear.
What’s that you say? You can’t tell which one is the before photo and which is the after? My point exactly. A month of foam rolling did ziltch for my cellulite. And for those of you who need to know, the pink shirt is the “after” shot.
Weight Watchers
The claim: By assigning you a number of points each day, a list of foods and their points values, you can lose weight eating whatever you want, as long as you stay within your allotted points. From Weight Watchers.com:
Weight Watchers does not tell you what you can or can’t eat. We provide information, knowledge, tools and motivation to help you make the decisions that are right for you about nutrition and exercise. We help you to make healthy eating decisions, and we encourage you to enjoy yourself by becoming more active.
The process: I signed up for Weight Watchers online (using my own hard-earned cash). All foods are assigned a points value and you track what you eat online. You get a daily points amount to eat and a weekly bank of points to have whatever you want above your daily points. Whatever daily points you don’t consume are lost, your weekly bank of points resets each Monday. You can also earn more weekly points through exercise if you wish to eat more. In five weeks of doing the points plus program faithfully I’ve lost eight pounds.
The result: If your goal is solely to lose weight, then Weight Watchers may be what your looking for. The entire program is based on the idea that consuming less calories than what you burn will lead to weight loss, and that’s generally true for most people. However, under Weight Watchers you can theoretically eat McDonalds or have an ice cream sundae every day if you’re willing to eat fruits and vegetables for all your other meals. As a long term healthy diet, it’s not doing you any favors in regards to vitamins and nutrients unless you make the effort to choose foods with high nutritional value.
So the next time you’re flipping through late night TV and thinking of buying a diet or exercise quick-fix gadget, get the cleaning products or hair care stuff instead and save yourself the disappointment. Health and fitness shortcuts don’t exist.
Have Baby,Will Exercise is a column dedicated to fitness and health for moms, by a mom. As a former personal trainer, group fitness instructor and cupcake addict, I hope to encourage and motivate moms who want to make fitness a part of their lives.
(image:Everett Collection/Shutterstock)
