So I was strolling through the bookstore with my wife and I decided to peruse the diet and weight loss books to see what they were offering. It didn’t take long to get hit in the face with a ubiquitous pattern. Most of these books or diet plans advocate using diet to remove ‘toxins’ from your body. These ‘toxins’ are claimed to be the source of just about every problem you have.
The interesting thing is that I can rarely find anything that correctly explains how any of these ‘toxins’ are linked to any bad health outcome. The books don’t list credible evidence that clearly supports these toxic claims.
The sales pitch of these and many other diet plans follows a very clear pattern. They use phraseology that sounds scientific and revolutionary at first glance but, after the briefest of thought, it becomes clear that the claims are empty.
Their main method is to juxtapose words that bring on a strong emotionally negative response with words that bring on a strong emotionally positive response. For example they will couple toxins with cleansing or chemical with natural or polluting with purifying. What these salesmen and women are doing is manipulating your emotions to get you to buy their product.
I’ll give you some hypothetical examples:
1. The “so and so” diet will help you cleanse your body of deadly toxins by changing how you approach eating.
2. The “insert organ here” (e.g. liver, kidney, colon, spleen, etc.) diet will purify the body of all the pollution that is poisoning your blood.
3. The anti-“insert nutrient here” (eg carbohydrate, trans fat, flour, etc) diet will remove the buildup of toxins and chemicals from your organs and cleanse you from the inside out.
Now if I rewrite these examples and change just a few words, you’ll see something interesting:
1. The “so and so” diet will help you exorcise your body of evil demons by changing how you approach eating.
2. The “insert organ here” (e.g. liver, kidney, colon, spleen, etc.) diet will purify the body of all the evil humors that are poisoning the blood.
3. The anti”insert nutrient here” (eg carbohydrate, trans fat, flour, etc) diet will remove the buildup of black bile and satanic spirits from your organs and cleanse you from the inside out.
While a bit dramatic, I hope this example gets the message across. The methods that these diet plans are using have been used by soothsayers and snake oil salesmen for thousands of years. They expertly manipulate your emotions to create a fear of something terrible that can only be remedied by whatever they are selling. Be aware that I know of no credible scientific study that shows any connection between any of these so-called toxins and any specific health problem.
Their next trick is to bring anecdotal personal testimonies of people who had ‘miraculous’ results (and you can too for only 3 payments of $99.99 if you act now!). How hard do you think it would be to round up some actors and do some fancy photoshop work to make something appear to be ‘miraculous’? Not hard at all.
I want you to have great respect for how powerful these marketing methods are. They are so effective that people will actually spend money to have someone stick a hose up their rear end and pump in a few gallons of water to “detoxify” (aka get a ‘colonic’). This is how far we’ve fallen. Nobody is going to stick a hose (or anything else for that matter) up my backside without some serious evidence that this will very dramatically impact my life for the better – and even then I’m not so sure I would go for it.
As ridiculous as these schemes sound when you think about them, you have to be on guard. You will absolutely fall for them too. The only weapon you have to defend yourself from this barrage of subconscious manipulation and brain washing is to educate yourselves. You have to understand how your body works with respect to weight loss or you will fall prey to the pseudoscientists, snake-oil salesmen, and con artists. The only weight you’ll lose will be the weight of the money in your wallet.
Don’t let the fact that you want so badly for the claims to be true let you be duped into believing that they actually are.
The Weight Loss Counter Revolution exists to help you stand up against the insanity. The book is designed to give you the education you need to make the correct diet and lifestyle choices. In the book I explain to you the mechanisms clearly. I won’t ask you to trust me alone. The mechanisms are actually explained completely. I show you the research and list you hundreds of references. I’m bringing you the other side of the story.
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I think everyone wishes they were magical. That's why Madison Avenue spends so much time and money manipulating our subconcsious into believing the fantasy!
I know you are right but part of me totally wishes they were magical.
I totally agree! It is so tempting to the try these diets or believe what all those books/people say because I want it to be easy but the facts are the facts and no fancy fad is going to work better than that. Thanks for your efforts in getting the truth out there!