Losing Weight or Losing It?

Posted by Jayvee at April 8th, 2009

One lazy man’s tumultuous journey to weight loss

Article by Patrick Michael Balo

There are only two periods in a man’s life when weight loss is as important to him as it is to girls of all ages: his high school years (when girls have not yet realized the importance of humor/inner beauty which is why they laugh at the nice, chubby guys and get their hearts broken by the gwapings) and the 6-8 months before he gets married to the girl who settled for humor/ inner beauty because she couldn’t land Diether Ocampo.

As someone who is already in the second of those 2 phases (and yes, cash gifts will be appreciated more), I found myself scouring websites and newspaper ads for ways and means to achieve a svelte, model-like body without busting my extremely large and lardy ass in a gym.

To aid my fellow soon-to-be-wed, plus-sized men, I will rate each activity in two crucial categories: how easy can one lose weight doing it (basically how fast can you lose pounds) and how easy is it to do (the ease of the actual activity).

YOGA-NNA DO THIS OR WHAT? (Bikram Yoga)
I’ve always thought of yoga as the Indian version of tai-chi, a slow, meditative and peaceful form of exercise. This is probably because most movies and TV shows tend to show yoga practitioners sitting down cross-legged and pondering on the sufferings of a ant or an aardvark.

And it is with this peaceful image that I showed up for an introductory session of Bikram Yoga at the 15th floor of the 88 Corporate Center, at the corner of Valero and Sedeno streets, right at the heart of Makati’s busy business district.

At the reception, I was greeted by their ultra-charming manager and an extremely pretty receptionist who helped me prepare for the night’s session (unfortunately, upon reading the previous sentence, my fiancée has banned me from ever visiting Bikram Yoga Manila’s offices ever again.) They also advised me bring water since the room is heated and dehydration is a real issue. I smiled inwardly, cocky as hell, thinking “How hard can sitting down cross-legged in a heating room be?”

As it turns out, it was pretty damn hard. Within 20seconds of entering the room, the first bead of sweat appeared on my forehead. By the fifth minute, rivulets of sweat were streaking down my face.

We started out with some breathing exercises, which I used to think was an oxymoron since I’ve never actually come across a breathing exercise that seemed like an exercise. Well, now I have. Designed to open up your lungs, Bikram Yoga’s breathing exercises had me gasping for steamy air and sweating buckets before we even hit minute 10.

Adding to my rapidly growing embarrassment was the fact that several slender and cute girls in class were actually doing the various exercises without difficulty, executing the various acrobatic poses with ease and confidence. Which made me look even suckier than usual.

Here are some of the highlights of my Bikram Yoga session:

13th minute. Left leg starts shaking uncontrollably in the middle of an exercise. 20th minute. Sits down for the first time, unable to continue with the exercise. Felt like I just ran a marathon while elves pounded at my calves.
25th minute. Stood up to join class in the next exercise.
26th minute. Sat down again as fatigue hits me.
35minute. Joins class in next pose.
37th minute. Suffers a cramp, sits down again.
48th minute. Exercises at ground level (lying down, sitting down, kneeling down) commence. I heave a steamy sigh of relief. The cute and slender girls are still at it, looking as steamy and fresh as they were in minute 1.
55th minute. I actually get to complete some of the exercises, reducing my embarrassment level.
1st hour. Puddles form underneath my body, from approximately 5 gallons of sweat that had recently escaped from the various crevices of my body. I roll over on the puddles, trying to grab my ankles while crossing my arms under my body and keeping my forehead glued to the mat. Got the “forehead to the mat” thing down. That was about it.
1hour 15th minute. Successfully got my head and knees about six inches off the ground at the same time, balancing only on my still considerable tummy.
1hour 30th minute. Yoga class ends. I extend my “meditation” on the floor.
1hour 45th minute. Still “meditating”.
2nd hour. “Meditation” ends. I pick myself off the floor gingerly and walk to the bathroom.

The verdict:
If you want to lose weight fast, Bikram Yoga is a great way to do it. The regular practitioners (aforementioned cute and slender girls) were extremely well-toned, not muscular like girls in the gyms tend to become. I estimate a loss of about 3 pounds in just that one session. But as for the actual ease of Bikram Yoga, well, it’s not for the fainthearted nor the not-so-limber. If you find running on a treadmill or picking up a set of dumbbells hard, then this is definitely not for you.

BURN, BABY, BURN! (THE MARIE FRANCE EXPERIENCE)
My next stop was a place where macho (well, mostly not-so-macho) men sneak in for a furtive hour or so and emerge as Adonises, ready for their close-ups and the spotlight.

No, I’m not talking about a drive-by motel. I’m talking about a place where your privacy as a man is guarded and the things you do inside are between you and your attendant (no, I’m still not talking about a motel. Do I wish I was? Now that is another story).

I am talking about Marie France, a slimming salon that is famous for its unique approach towards weight loss. They are also famous for their star-studded clientele as well as their discretion.

And I was banking on that discretion as I stealthily made my way up the 15th floor of GT Tower at the corner of Ayala and de la Costa. Wearing dark glasses, a hoodie to cover my face and a “Macho Ako” shirt, I unloaded my not-so-stealthily moving carcass to the Marie France reception area.

And here’s how my Marie France experience went.

It started off with a quick but highly informative session with Drs. Ariel Torres and Caesar Eli Palaruan, two charming and highly competent Marie France doctors. What stuck most to my mind was their explanation on weight loss and inch loss. I’ve always thought they were one and the same but, as explained Dr. Torres, a man with a round belly may not exactly be overweight. He may just have an excess of fat reserves, which means he needs a fat reduction program that aims to eliminate his roundness, not bring his weight down.

Of course, upon reaching the office of Janet Vergara, the oh-so-pretty weight management consultant, it became obvious that I was both rotund and overweight. Ah, well…

What sets Marie France apart from other establishments of its ilk is that they DO NOT HAVE exercise machines or workout sessions. They also DO NOT EMPLOY pills, injections, medications or surgical procedures.

What they do have are state-of-the-art equipment and breakthrough techniques that are guaranteed to melt away your fat reserves without you lifting a single finger (you might have to shift from side-to-side though). Their weight loss philosophy is hinged on the idea of comfort and non-invasiveness, a philosophy I can certainly get behind with.

And then, I was off to my Fat Mobilization System (FMS) session. FMS, which was developed in Switzerland, is a fat burning technique where they use an extremely cold body wrap to accelerate the body’s bio-chemical processes. The treatment generates efficient and faster burning of calories to be converted into heat and energy and each session burns as much as 1,000 – 2,000 calories for a 25minute session.

Think of it as your own personal Baguio from neck to leg. Your body gets the cold treatment, forcing it to burn up fat reserves in an effort to keep warm. So you burn off fat simply because it is cold.

And 2,000 calories in 25minutes is truly phenomenal. That’s almost equivalent to the amount of calories an average person consumes in a day! And since, you’ve consumed your day’s calorie intake in those 25minutes, your body gets to work on your fat reserves for the rest of your day’s energy needs.

Twenty-five cold minutes later, I was dressed, refreshed and feeling lighter than when I first came in.

And yes, I discarded the dark glasses and hoodie on my way out. After all, I was in pretty good company.

The verdict:
If you want to lose way fast, yes, Marie France is a very viable option. It’s effective and boasts of processes and technologies that can target your specific problem areas. Is it easy to do? Hell, yes, all you have to do is lie down, right? But on another level, like all things state-of-the-art, it isn’t as consumer-friendly as one would hope it to be. They do personalize programs for budget constraints but the fact is, it will still cost you a pretty penny. There’s a reason they have a select and star-studded clientele and not everyone can just walk in and plunk down 3 month’s salary to be 20 pounds lighter. But if you have fat, and cash, to burn, then Marie France may be your kind of thing.

PILL ME UP (ZHEN DE SHOU)
And then, there’s the pill. There are more diet pills out there than there are letters in the entire Cyrillic alphabet (around 75) so it was pretty hard to choose which one I should bet my life (and fats) on.

So I decided to eliminate some of the products using a set of criteria that would best serve my social experiment. I didn’t want pills that were the obvious choices (hence, all those pills that had TV, print and store ads were eliminated). I needed the pills to be available right here, right now (eliminating all available-through-the-internet/overseas-only products). I also wanted the pills to be consumer friendly (which eliminated the specialty store diet pills) and to have some sort of safety/efficacy guarantee involved (eliminating totally unknown solutions).

The winner? Zhen de Shou, a Chinese diet pill that guarantees a loss of 2-8pounds in 10days.

Zhen de Shou is a kind of botanical slimming medicine. It has extracts of a plant called crataegus pinnatifida, also popularly called Shenxianye or fairyleaves, the consumption of which leads to weight loss of 2-8pounds in a week.

How does it claim to do this? The pill acts as an appetite suppressant (less appetite, less eating, less fat) and as a metabolism kick-starter. This means you consume less food and burn more fat reserves. However, the increase in your metabolism leads to you being thirsty all the time and a distinct possibility of dehydration.

But easy weight loss is virtually guaranteed by the box as well as other side benefits like skin whitening and the absence of palpitations, diarrhea and headaches caused by other products.

Armed with such encouraging information, I bought two boxes from a Chinese stall in a popular mall.

The highlights of my Zhen de Shou experiment is as follows:

Day 1. Weighed myself. Took the first pill. Walked for 5 minutes to the nearby convenience store and began sweating. Stopped sweating only when the office air conditioning unit nearly froze me to death. Was thirsty the entire day. Drank water again…and again…and again…and again…and again…
Day 3. Lost 1 pound. Took the third pill. A dry mouth leads to bad breath so I bought a pack of gum. Have adjusted to mouth dryness by carrying a water bottle everywhere I go.
Day 6. Lost 2 pounds. Have completely adjusted to side effects but realized that my appetite seems unaffected (meaning I still eat the same amount of food).
Day 10. Lost 4pounds. Still eating the same amount but weight loss seems to be picking up. It’s actually working!
Day 12. Lost 5 pounds. Weight loss is significant enough for officemates to remark on it. Gum factories note increase in sales. Polished up this article.

The verdict:
Well, this seems to be working out for me. Taking the pill 30minutes before breakfast for the past 12days has lead to a total weight loss of 5 pounds. Although I must confess that that I was in the gym for 3 of those days, plus a badminton session in between gym sessions 3 and 4, I was very impressed with the weight loss. Better yet, a box of Zhen de Shou (about 10 pills) is about the same price as a tall macchiato so, yes, affordability is not an issue.

LESS IS ALWAYS MORE
In the course of these experiments, I must have lost around 6-10pounds of fat. And while I won’t go as far as endorsing any of these techniques (I’m still waiting for my endorsement contracts), I do say that the gym is no longer the be-all and end-all of slimming techniques for me.