BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Weight Loss Bowflex Commercial Lies!!!!!

Also, it was a seriously big flap. the Apron is NOT a pooch or pouch. Ryan on BL was playing with it, flapping it up and down. You could have put a pair of sneakers under there.

OK do you mean Ryan Benson? Here's his comment on that weigh-in -

"wanted to win so bad that the last ten days before the final weigh-in I didn't eat one piece of solid food! If you've heard of "The Master Cleanse" that's what I did. Its basically drinking lemonade made with water, fresh squeezed lemon juice, pure maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. The rules of the show said we couldn't use any weight-loss drugs, well I didn't take any drugs, I just starved myself! Twenty-four hours before the final weigh-in I stopped putting ANYTHING in my body, liquid or solid, then I started using some old high school wrestling tricks. I wore a rubber suit while jogging on the treadmill, and then spent a lot of time in the steam room. In the final 24 hours I probably dropped 10-13 lbs in just pure water weight. By the time of the final weigh-in I was peeing blood."

I think the best solution to this question is for me to simply write him and ask him if he still has that apron, now that he is no longer peeing blood due to system strain

That would be neat and good to know.

That's pretty interesting about wanting to win so badly he didn't eat. I wonder if all the finalists do that. Not very healthy. I understand about the pressure part of it but the unsupervised at-home element really means they can end up nearly killing themselves to win.

Right it was scary to read that. He said his wife was insisting he go to a doctor (but of course he wouldn't). He wanted to win and figured "heck this won't kill me right?" But it really could have caused him serious injury, with what he was doing.

People get way too caviler about their health and think they are invincible.

I imagine a lot of the contestants must do that. They only have a week left and the options are torture yourselves for a week and win $100,000. There's a lot of people who would torture themselves for a week straight for that kind of money ...

What's the solution? Put a webcam on them to ensure they are actually eating and drinking? I would vote that is a requirement, a minimum daily caloric intake ...

the three finalists are actually home for something like 6 weeks. That is a lot of time to hurt your body. I imagine without the supervision they can do whatever they feel will get them to the 250,000. I wonder if you could seriously damage your organs doing that kind of thing.

Right I saw that and you're exactly right - you could cause huge damage in six weeks. And if you are in the final three - *that* close to $250,000 - you are probably quite willing to do it, too.

I can easily imagine destroying your kidneys and liver - and probably even your heart - if you overdosed on some foods or dehydrated for too long ... or didn't get proper nutrition ...

webcams They should have webcams on them 24x7 ...

webcams is a good idea. And I bet people would enjoy watching them too, to glean hints on how to prepare foods, how to workout, how to incorporate that much exersize in to a day...

OK I heard back from Ryan. He says he really wouldn't be a good person to interview because he has really struggled to keep the weight off. He said he hasn't gone all the way back to his initial weight but it sounds like he might be close.

I wrote him back and said even that would be inspiring to people, to let them know this is a normal thing and not to feel too badly if they have the same thing happen to them. I asked if the pouch seemed to be because of his ultra-extreme final-week weight loss blitz. We'll see if he responds again!

Well, I must apologize for having mixed these two gentlemen up.

I did do some checking around before I posted (way back when - 2005 WOW!), but apparently not enough.

As to the plastic surgery thing, I have known several people who have had GBS; some have needed plastic surgery to get rid of the skin, and some have not. I can't say for sure whether their fat loss was complete or not, but the one lady who was so inspirational to me (she lost 150 lbs and had her surgery about 10 yrs ago) did not seem overweight at all at the time she had her tummy tuck.

On the subject of Ryan (and probably others) starving themselves at the end - I bet some of them do get desperate. Not only is this a huge amount of money, but they've gone through A LOT to get there, and almost need that validation even with the amount of weight they've lost. It must be a terrible temptation.

Eating disorders are all very closely related, and it is easy to give up one by obsessing on another one. I went the oppostie route. I was anorexic in high school - and then became a binge eater as an adult. Doing either one is not healthy, physically or mentally.

Oh, and I want to add - that my initial rant wasn't that Bowflex was a bad set of equipment, I know many people that like it.

It was that I thought they were using a person who had had weight loss surgery to promote their item, and saying that the results were purely from the machine.

So apparently I had no leg to stand on.