Weight Loss Scams Special Report

1. They Claim You Can Lose Weight Without Exercising Or Changing How You Eat

If a weight loss program makes this claim, chances are they will try to sell you a pill designed to "super change your metabolism." Medical science has done some wonderful things, but inventing a pill that allows you to eat anything you want and never exercise but still lose a lot of weight is not one of them. These claims are all garbage.

One such company that made this claim was SlimAmerica, Inc., which used to run full-page magazine ads for their "Super Formula." The "Super Formula" was a cocktail of three pills that allegedly helped you lose weight quickly, and without having to do any exercise or changing the way you eat. One such ad made the dubious claim that it could help you lose 49 pounds in twenty-nine days. Fortunately, they were prosecuted by the FTC for making these claims and ordered to pay $8.3 million dollars back to the people who bought their pills.

2. After Signing Up, They Start Pushing Their Supplements on You

A common technique of scam weight loss programs is to rope you into a really long contract, and then force you to buy their in-house supplements. They have an impossibly low price advertised, but don't hit you with the "real" price, which includes their line of pills, powders, and bars, until after you have signed on the dotted line. It's the classic bait and switch.

A real life example of this technique can be seen in LA Weight Loss Centers, Inc., which was fined $100,000 in 2002 by New York State for making false claims. They advertised that their weight loss program cost just "$7 per week." What they didn't tell you is that you have to pay for the full year up front, plus purchase a bunch of their protein bars called "LA lites." The prosecuting Attorney General stated "This is not a $7 per week 'pay-as-you-go' diet program where individuals can sample its effectiveness without making a significant investment." People who signed up for this program paid so much cash up front that they felt that they had to stick to it or else lose their money, which only resulted in them buying even more supplements and losing even more money.

Always make sure you understand the real cost of any weight loss program before you sign anything. That includes any fees, equipment, or supplements you may be required to purchase as a part of the plan.

3. They Claim There Is One "Secret" That Is Keeping You From Losing Weight

The pitch usually starts like this: "The reason you are overweight is not your fault! It's because you have (too much/ too little) of (Human Growth Hormone, Coritsol, internal parasites, toxins). You can do all the exercising you want, but it still won't change the amount of (Human growth hormone, cortisol, internal parasites, toxins) you have in your body! Fortunately, our program can totally correct that problem with this magic supplement, and make you lose weight like crazy!"

This is, of course, all bunk. Here's the truth: you gain weight when you take in more calories than you expend, and you lose weight when you expend more calories than you take in. That's it. You lose weight when you do the right kind of exercise and eat the right kinds of foods.

4. They Claim They Can Help You Lose Weight From Certain Body Parts

Occasionally you will hear someone make the claim that they have the secret that will "blast the fat from your belly," or "melt the fat form your thighs." Which really, doesn't even make any sense. There is no way to lose weight in just a single area of your body. If you lose fat, you lose it all over.

You usually see this claim when people are trying to sell you ab machines. They claim that somehow doing some machine-assisted variation of the crunch will magically give you a six pack, but never mention anything about diet and cardio. If you want to see your abs, in addition to doing regular ab exercises (which you don't really need any equipment to do), you also need to eat a smart diet and regularly do cardio to gradually lose fat. Your abs will only become visible when your body fat percentage is low enough.

5. They Claim You Can Lose Weight in 30 Days or Less

If you hear some variation on the claim that you "can lose thirty pounds in thirty days," approach with a great deal of skepticism. Usually these are super-restrictive diet plans that have you eliminate carbs form your diet and cut back calories to about 1000 a day, or even less. These programs aren't just bad for you, they also make their customers feel constantly deprived, which means once they get off the program they tend to binge on all kinds of fatty and high carb foods and ALL the weight comes back and then some.

Losing this kind of weight isn't just unlikely; it's also unhealthy, even if you manage to actually do it. Extremely rapid weight loss can cause gallstones, which are painful sediment deposits that form in your gall bladder. Not only do these stones cause severe abdominal pain, they may also require surgery and hospitalization if the stones are dense enough, resulting in a permanent abdominal scar.

With these examples of the FTC prosecuting diet programs for lying to their customers, it is important to remember that such companies are in the minority. The majority of weight loss programs not only make false claims in their advertising, but also often receive no punishment for their lies.