-
Source: ONE News -
Watch Video
-
Related
"Why don't fat people just go to the bloody gym?" Well there's
more than one answer to that question. One of the most eloquent
from a Guardian writer whose name I forget: "Why would I want to go
there when everyone is desperately intent on not looking like
me."
So good, I lifted it for my story about a bizarre weight loss
scheme on Fair Go this week.
"Obese people are lazy as well as fat" which is of course why they
don't go to gyms - or not. To pay to go to a place where you'll be
sneered at by yummy mummies and giggled at by pumped up middle
managers, well that's paying twice.
I don't know what it's like to be really overweight. Fat people are
supposed to be jolly and fun loving. But I can't imagine it's much
fun.
I've had a back injury for the last four months, haven't been able to exercise and for the first time started worrying about my weight. If only worrying about your weight was slimming enough to work.
My Fair Go weight loss story involves a similar form of wishful thinking. The claim from a weight loss outfit called the Keto Clinic that lying on a bed having electrodes attached to your body and being wired up to the mains is a real alternative to exercise. Forty five minutes on the bed they said was equivalent to six hours in the gym. Oh and by the way it'll cost you $2,500 up front for 100 sessions.
Don't have any money? Don't worry we'll set you up with finance. Who on earth would fall for that one? Well hundreds of overweight Aucklanders - accounts managers, small business owners, IT professionals. Not dumb people. Desperate people.
"We are vulnerable to any of these schemes," says Louisa an IT professional. When you inhabit a subculture where people judge you before you open your mouth and that judgement says "hey fatty, why don't you leave some food for somebody else, you're a drain on the health system, and the ecosystem," then you'd be pretty keen to do give anything ago.
Especially if you can do it discreetly in a private room behind curtains.
The technology this clinic used is called
Electrical Muscle Stimulation,
EMS. It's used regularly by physios to treat atrophied muscles and
by elite athletes to tune what they call fast twitch muscles; the
ones that give you explosive power for events like sprinting. Check
out the pictures in part two of my story of hurdler James Mortimer
with one of these attached to his thigh.
It's freaky. But no more bizarre that the thought of overweight
people on a bed hooked up to the national grid, being told by
ladies in white coats with soft voices that they're raising their
metabolic rate by just lying there.
Grace Parkes, the owner and founder of the Keto Clinic, which is now in liquidation, claims she has evidence from her clients that the EMS plus her high protein, low carb diet gets phenomenal results. She couldn't provide any proof though what role lying on a bed being mildly electrified played in that.
An expert from the NZ academy of sport says it's laughable.
In the United States the Food and Drug Administration says EMS machines shouldn't be used for weight loss. It quotes reports of burns blisters and heart attacks from misuse. I haven't seen any documented evidence of that, but the North Americans aren't taking any chances. The Professor of Physiotherapy at Otago University David Baxter told us there are health risks when the machines are used by non- professionals.
We discovered Grace Parkes got her machines through the internet from South Africa. She says they were designed for draining lymph glands. Grace read the manual and adapted them for her weightloss programme. Yikes. There are still companies in NZ using these machines and selling them to private homes. Prof Baxter calls it quackery.
The Ministry of Health tells me they don't have a quackery department. They're not going to do anything about regulating or registering them. Just park that ambo at the bottom of the cliff mate.
Safety concerns aside one of the biggest travesties of quick fix weight loss programmes like this is that once people have spent big money and it hasn't worked they're unlikely to get back on the horse again. So far from helping the obesity epidemic these cowboys are actually making it worse.
For Phil's story be watching Fair Go, TV ONE Wednesday
7:30pm.
Share your thoughts about Phils' comments on the message
board below.
Add a Comment:
Post new commentsaroncarson said on 2009-09-01 @ 15:55 NZDT:
lol……bosses are control freak. Just think once, they have their money in the business, and a little lack of control can lead to massive loss to the business. But why don’t the Victorian entrepreneurs would have their employees on a 70 hour week and not paid any money? That’s a crime. Steps should be taken to solve the problem. We should take lessons from history. Portal Development
benrebo said on 2009-04-09 @ 08:33 NZDT:
Hi Phil, I saw this show and fair enough - it is quackery, but do a mind experiment and everywhere you talk about unfounded, unproven, no evidence etc etc substitute in the appropriate religious epithet. There is a lot of "quackery" in real life and I wonder if on balance you would have been willing to direct the same/similar charges at, say, the pope or to call people of religious rather than weightloss faith "Not dumb people. Desperate people".
Connections said on 2009-04-08 @ 07:33 NZDT:
Hi Phil I was having problems paying my Visa card with Kiwi Bank, so I asked them to cancel it so that I wouldn't get charged all the late fees. I told them of our problems and they said they would agree to me paying $80 per month until I could pay more. I have just received a debt collection agency letter who have added $1898 on top as fees with no option but to pay the full amount + fees otherwisie I go to court. How helpful is that?
tbl said on 2009-03-26 @ 09:31 NZDT:
Re: The sick bag test. There is definately a problem with sick bags leaking. I sat next to a man on a flight into Christchurch and he used a couple of sick bags. After holding a full bag for about 10 minutes, the contents started seeping out the bottom. He had to double-bag it to stop it spilling everywhere. There wasn't enough sick bags supplied and we had to "borrow" from other passengers for the poor man, so that they could be double-bagged.
catrat07 said on 2009-03-25 @ 19:59 NZDT:
Haha brilliant, I like the poster you can get on the second website of barf bags from around the world, endless Christmas present ideas!