These days you can’t log on to the internet, check your email, watch TV, read the newspaper, or pick up any magazine without seeing some sort of weight loss product. Yet, despite the proliferation of healthy weight loss products and information, increasing numbers of people are becoming obese. Diet plans such as the Atkins diet and the South Beach diet are pitched by persistent advertising and many people join the parade of followers. Some lose weight, but almost all regain the weight they lost. Why is that?

While the ideas of healthy weight loss, getting lean, living healthy, etc. all have natural appeal, the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the weight loss claims are actually misleading statements and, in most cases, borderline on outright fraud

Infomercials, shown on cable TV promise that you can lose all the weight you want while you eat everything you want are false and not to be believed. This is what everyone wants of, course, a quick cure, but there is no easy path. It doesn’t matter what they are trying to sell you – crab shells (chitin), fat absorbers, fat burners, magic mushrooms, wonder bark from Brazil, magic cellulite pills, pyruvate, creatine, garcinia cambogia, green goop, algae, magic genies in a bottle – it’s all a great fantasy that will not come true.

Every year, new weight-loss books appear on the bookstalls, and magazines run repetitious articles on the subject. Millions of people have proven that it is easier to gain weight than to lose it. And, many weight loss companies have become expert at extracting dollars from your wallet as opposed to inches off your waistline.

Dieters have proven that weight-loss attempts by following a “weight-loss diet” may succeed for a short time but ultimately fail. There is no magic diet. None of the weight loss schemes printed in any book over the past 50 years has had any real advantage over common sense.

The medical community, food industry, dietitians’ government health and regulatory agencies, magazine publishers and diet businesses are all watching helplessly as Americans and Canadians consume excessive amounts of food and become increasingly obese. This epidemic of obesity threatens to bankrupt the health care system in both countries in the next 50 years.

Fraudulent weight loss products and programs often rely on unscrupulous but persuasive combinations of message, program, ingredients, mystique, and delivery system. A weight loss product or program may be fraudulent if it does one or more of the following.

1. You can eat whatever you like

2. You don’t have to exercise.

3. Fat stores “burn” off spontaneously.

4. Cellulite disappears

5. Carbohydrates are bad, fats and proteins are good

6. Relies heavily on undocumented case histories, before and after photos, and testimonials by “satisfied customers” (who are often paid for the testimony as written by the promoter). Weight loss claims should be typical of all clients, or include a disclaimer.

7. Professes to be a treatment for a wide range of ailments and nutritional deficiencies as well as for weight loss.

8. Misuses medical or technical terms, refers to studies without giving complete references, claims government approval.

Overweight people need to remember that the only way to lose weight in a safe and healthy way is to live a healthy overall lifestyle. So work towards that rather than looking for fast get aways and getting conned in the process.

To give you a deeper understanding of the types of fraudulent materials currently on the market, I’ve written an ebook that summarizes the U.S. Government’s tough stand on weight loss fraud.