Qnexa – Only the First Step in the Two Step Weight Loss Dance

The Really Hard Part Is Keeping it off

FAR HILLS, NJ – February 23, 2012 – Yesterday, an FDA advisory panel recommended approval of the diet drug Qnexa, saying that the drug’s benefits outweighed the risks of its known side effects such as increased pulse rate, memory lapses, and birth defects.  Studies show that the average person will lose approximately 10% of their body weight using the drug.

Qnexa is a combination of two existing drugs — the stimulant phentermine and the epilepsy and migraine drug topiramate, both of which are available in an expensive generic formulations.  Since physicians are able to prescribe existing drugs “off label” (i.e. for uses not approved by the FDA), patients have been able to obtain the equivalent of Qnexa by having their physicians prescribe its two components separately.

Unfortunately, losing weight is only the first step in the two-step weight-loss dance.  The second, and ultimately more difficult step, is keeping the weight off.

For example, the New York Times recently reported that a retired teacher named Lynn Adam had lost about 80 pounds taking the drug combination, but that she had gained almost half of it back once she stopped taking the drugs.

Similarly, the Times reported that Kat Lauterback, a county worker, had lost about 30 pounds but that the weight came back quickly after she stopped taking the drugs.

How can people who lose weight with Qnexa, or any other weight loss process, keep the weight off?  The research is absolutely conclusive that the only way to keep weight off after a diet is to burn an extra 2,000 calories a week.   The conclusion of a study titled “Three-year follow-up of participants in a commercial weight-loss program. Can you keep it off?” is “The frequency of exercise after the diet program was the strongest predictor of weight loss maintenance.”  (http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/156/12/1302)

In fact, this has been known for over twenty years.  A good example is Pavlou KN, Krey S, “Exercise as an adjunct to weight loss and maintenance in moderately obese subjects.” Am J Clin Nutr 1989 49: 5 1115S-1123S (http://www.ajcn.org/content/49/5/1115.full.pdf).

The key graphic in this study is Figure 6, which can be found on page 1122. This graphic is a bit convoluted, but if you follow each of the lines on the graph, it is easy to see what happened to those who maintained a fitness regimen after the diet phase and those who did not.

The problem is that most people don’t like exercise and won’t do it.  So what’s the answer?  The answer is to walk.

Fortunately, walking is just as effective as exercise for fitness.  It is a myth that walking is a poor second cousin to aerobic activities.  Two massive studies demonstrated conclusively that walking is just as good as exercise for health and fitness.  (Manson, J. et al. “A prospective study of walking as compared with vigorous exercise in the prevention of coronary heart disease in women.” N Engl J Med 1999; 341:650-658 [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199908263410904] and  Manson, J. et al. “Walking Compared with Vigorous Exercise for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Events in Women.” N Engl J Med 2002; 347:716-725 [http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa021067])

And the nice thing about walking is that every step counts.  Walking around the office, shopping at the supermarket, walking across the parking lot, and walking around the house all count.

In order to burn the extra 2,000 calories needed to prevent weight regain, one needs to walk about 10,000 steps a day.  It can be done little bit of the time or by going for a longer walk.  It doesn’t matter.

People new to walking should buy a pedometer (about $20) and keep track of their steps.  They should measure a baseline week first and then slowly add 500 steps a day until they get up to 10,000.

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Corporate Health Plans That Impose a Penalty for Obesity Must Have a Fitness Exception

Heavy People Who Are Fit Will Have Half the Claims Experience of Sedentary People Who Are Thin

FAR HILLS, NJ – December 10, 2011  – Recent news reports have highlighted a growing trend among large and mid-size corporations to penalize all healthcare plan participants who are deemed to be “obese.” [1-2]

But according to Mike Schatzki, author of the The Great Fat Fraud, companies that focus on obesity are looking in the wrong place to cut back on spiraling health care claims costs.  “It’s not about how much you weigh.  It’s all about how fit you are.  The idea that your health status automatically deteriorates as your weight increases is a myth that has been perpetrated by a lot of very poorly designed research studies,” says Schatzki.

He points out that almost all of those studies only looked at death rates and weight, and completely ignored fitness. When studies have taken fitness into account, a very different picture emerges.

When researchers split their study groups into those who are fit and those who are not fit, what they find is that people who are fit, regardless of their weight, have one half the death rate of people who are thin and sedentary. It is only for people who are sedentary that death rates climb as weight increases.

Schatzki points to a significant study of 25,000 people who were followed for 24 years that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (“Relationship between low cardiorespiratory fitness and mortality in normal-weight, overweight, and obese men”). [3] “That study showed conclusively that people who are fit are much healthier than thin people who are sedentary,” says Schatzki.

“It would be massively unfair to penalize someone who is fit but heavy when that person is likely to have half the healthcare claims experience of someone who is thin but sedentary” says Schatzki.  “Corporations who impose or are planning to impose obesity penalties must have a fitness exception.  People who are heavy must be given an opportunity to prove that they are fit with a simple treadmill test, and those who are fit must not be penalized.”

“In fact,” says Schatzki “if corporations really want to focus on what is driving health care costs, they should be rewarding those who are fit regardless of their weight.  And exercise is not the only route to fitness.  Fitness can also be achieved with a 10,000 steps per day walking program.”

1 –  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/health/policy/smokers-penalized-with-health-insurance-premiums.html?pagewanted=all

2 – http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2011/10/31/222111.htm

3 – http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/282/16/1547.full.pdf+html

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Is Chris Christie Too Fat to Be President?
Nonsense, Says the Author of The Great Fat Fraud.

FAR HILLS, NJ – October 1, 2011 – “It’s not about how fat you are.  It’s about how fit you are,” says Mike Schatzki author of the The Great Fat Fraud.  “The public certainly has a right to know about the health status of presidential candidates, but the idea that your health status deteriorates as your weight increases is a myth that has been perpetrated by a lot of very poorly designed research studies,” says Schatzki.

He points out that almost all of these studies only looked at death rates and weight, and completely ignored fitness.  The few studies that have taken fitness into account show a very different picture.

When researchers split their study group into those who are fit and those who are not fit, what they find is that people who are fit, regardless of their weight, have only one half the death rate of people who are thin and sedentary.  It is only when one is sedentary that death rates climb as weight increases.

Schatzki points to a massive study of 25,000 people who were followed for 24 years that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1999 (“Relationship between low cardiorespiratory fitness and mortality in normal-weight, overweight, and obese men.”) “That studies showed conclusively that people who are fit are way healthier than even thin people who are sedentary,” says Schatzki.

“So the question that people should be asking is not how fat Chris Christie is, but rather how fit he is?  If he is fit, he’s as healthy as he can be.  If he is fit, whether he loses weight or not won’t make a bit of difference in his health status,” says Schatzki.

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Weight-Loss Industry Creates Myth of “The Obesity Epidemic,” Author Mike Schatzki Writes in New Book “The Great Fat Fraud”

FAR HILLS, NJ – September 13, 2011 – “The Obesity Epidemic” is a myth perpetrated by the weight-loss industry, says Mike Schatzki, author of the newly published book, The Great Fat Fraud: Why the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Isn’t, How to Be Totally Healthy without Losing Weight and If You Should Lose Some Pounds, How to Keep Them from Finding You Again (Lamington Press, 2011)

“Fad diets, weight loss surgical procedures, diet pills and The Biggest Losers are all part of daily life. This is our “Overweight States of America,” he says. “Try to escape the weight loss industry for just one day, you’ll find it nearly impossible. Around every corner, on every channel, Facebook page, and Twitter feed you’ll find an ad promoting weight loss pills, ‘smart liposuction,’ gastric bypass surgery, and the newest in amazing plans to lose weight. We’ve gone from ‘America the Free’ to ‘America the Fat.’ ”

But just how much truth is there behind all the weight loss management statistics that are being thrown about?  “Who decided what is obesity anyway? Is stick-starving skinny really the only healthy option?” he asks.

These are just some of the questions that came to Mike Schatzki as he was researching a speech he calls “The No Sweat Couch Potato Recovery Program.” As a professional speaker for over twenty years, Schatzki has learned that one must really know their stuff before approaching the podium, but as he studied the research on weight loss, obesity and health, he was astounded and mesmerized by what he discovered:

*          There is no obesity epidemic.
*          Fat is not a disease.
*          Most health problems attributed to weight are actually caused by something else.
*          Definitions of “overweight” and “obese” were actually created by the weight loss industry.

“Perhaps Mark Twain said it best, ‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so,’ ” he says.” And when it comes to obesity, what everybody ‘knows for sure’ just ain’t so.”

To combat this, Schatzki has struck out on a one-man quest to tell the world what is so, what’s been proven by scientific studies for years, and what we can do to be totally healthy regardless of our weight.

His new book, “The Great Fat Fraud: Why the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Isn’t, How to Be Totally Healthy without Losing Weight and If You Should Lose Some Pounds, How to Keep Them from Finding You Again” (Lamington Press, 2011), outlines all of his findings in a conversational tone that makes digesting the research easy for those who don’t like minutia, but features detailed footnotes for those who do.

Schatzki has even gone so far as to post links to ALL of the reference materials on his website www.GreatFatFraud.com so readers can see for themselves exactly what each study said.  “This transparent approach is sure to attract interest and hopefully a following to help spread the news and the actual truth about the obesity epidemic, or lack thereof,” he says.

A sample chapter can be seen at http://www.greatfatfraud.com/book-excerpt/.

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