The $40 billion search for weight-loss bliss 

 Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.   

My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

  -Janis Joplin

  I don’t want the Lord to buy me a Mercedes Benz.  I had one that always broke down.

 I want a magic potion to make me thin.

  According to Somerset, Ky. psychologist Dr. Tammy Hatfield, I am not alone.  Americans spend over $40 billion per year on diets and diet products. 

  Where I come from, $40 BILLION is a lot of money. Most of it is wasted. 95% of dieters gain the weight back.

The crash system has not worked.

I’ve lost significant weight since I started Don’s Get-Fit Club (formally Don’s Fat Guy Club) as a support group in Richmond. We focus on better eating habits and exercise. 

It’s slow and painful, but it works.  Nothing else does.

I intellectually know that fads are a waste of money. Even after having watched friends die from taking prescription weight-loss medicines, I am still a sucker for a quick fix.

I want something that will take my weight off quickly. I’ve never really focused on why.

Dr. Hatfield, who has lectured extensively and written about eating disorders, said that Americans waste money in an effort to realize a difficult and often unattainable goal.  

They want to look like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.

I know George Clooney’s parents. They are great-looking and gave him their genetic code. My parents gave me mine. It is not the same code.

No one will ever mistake me for George. They may mistake him for me, but I don’t hear about it.

There are health-related reasons to lose weight, and it is therefore not surprising that the real solutions point back to a healthier lifestyle  Eating less and exercising more will create both a healthy and attractive body—and it will provide lifelong benefits.”

Think about it. Doing a crash diet to become healthy is insane.  The short-term weight loss can cause long-term problems.

I’d feel better if dieters were truly motivated by health.  I don’t think they are.  Many are motivated by media images and the corporations making $40 billion a year off our failed efforts.

Wait until January.  Weight-loss commercials will run nonstop, and millions will rush to try the newest fad. By February, the diets will be over, the money wasted, and the weight loss turned into a gain.  

There is a point at which some people get off the cycle--when the attempt to lose weight kills them.

Some of my friends have died after taking “miracle” diet medicines like Redux or Fen-Phen. They were not obese; they were trying to lose a few extra pounds. 

The “miracle” diet drugs that The Food and Drug Administration approved caused people to die a horrible death. After many fatalities, the FDA banned the medications that they never should have approved.

Now, there is a new “miracle” diet drug being used in other countries. Despite the previous diet-drug deaths, it will be in America soon. The drug companies can make billions, and the FDA is a toothless lapdog. No one is going to stop it.

I hope fewer people die this time.

The obsessions with weight can be deadly without medicines involved. Dr. Hatfield directed me to www.nationaleatingdisorders.org, a website for the National Eating Disorder Association. It profiles different eating disorders.

I was a big fan of Karen Carpenter. I never dreamed that she had any kind of problems, especially involving her weight.

She did.  She became the most famous victim of anorexia. The pressures to stay thin killed her. 

Weight loss was not about her  health. It was about personal and public perception. 

As it is for many people.  

I really don’t want the Lord to send me a Mercedes Benz.  A Mercedes seems wonderful, but owning one never worked for me. 

A magic weight-loss potion also seems wonderful, but I suspect it won’t work for me either. 

Don McNay is the author of The Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher, a book about a doctor who takes a 500-foot limo ride to work. You can write to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or read other things that he has written at www.donmcnay.com  His award-winning column is syndicated on the CNHI News Service.