I took some time today to start getting caught up on work. After answering a bunch of emails, I start searching the ‘net for fat burners.
Yep, I was looking at weight loss supplements.
One of the things I like to do is to make sure I keep up on the weight loss supplement industry.
I don’t work in the weight loss supplement industry any more, but I find that it is beneficial for me to keep up to date on the latest products and their advertising.
From my experience, the supplement industry is always on the cutting edge for what is new and “in”. If certain catch phrases are in a supplement ad, then you can bet they will be mainstream in another couple months. In fact, I think some of these companies are innovative enough that their marketing can actually create media trends.
As I was going through the ads and the products out there I realized two things – There isn’t much new going on in the supplement industry, and the supplement industry has actually managed to put a price on weight loss.
That’s right. With a quick little experiment we can actually figure out how much the supplement industry is charging you per pound of weight lost.
Assuming their weight loss claims are correct, and that if (and this is a big if) you were to take their products you would actually lose the amount of weight they say you will, then you can actually put a price on weight loss.
For instance, the very best claim that I have seen on a supplement is that you will lose about 15 pounds in 8 weeks. So, hypothetically if you took this product (we’ll call it product X) for 8 weeks you would lose 15 pounds.
Now, with product X you had to take 4 pills per day and the bottle contained 80 pills.
Therefore, to take the product for the full 8 weeks you would need to buy 2.8 bottles, and since you can’t buy .8 of a bottle, you’d have to buy 3 bottles.
You can buy fat burning supplements for a wide range of prices, but the average is around 29.99. However sometimes you can find the 29.99 ones on sale for as low as 25.99, so lets just say product X costs 25 dollars per bottle.
What do we get from all this math? Simple, according to the supplement industry losing 15 pounds should costs you 75 dollars (3 bottles in 8 weeks, at 25 dollars per bottle).
Or about 5 dollars per pound (And remember, this is assuming their products actually work!).
No wonder they are a multi billion dollar industry!!
Truthfully, weight loss shouldn’t cost you this much. In my opinion there are only three things you need to lose weight, and once you have them, you can lose weight and maintain that weight loss for as long as you want without ever having to pay any more money.
Those three keys?
A proper diet that you can stick to long term, an exercise program that you find challenging, and supportive friends and family is all you need to lose weight.
BP
PS- speaking of exercises, here are two cool videos from Craig Ballantyne of turbulencetraining.com
