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Just My Opinion

I am an insomniac. I thought I'd put this site together for the purpose of offering people an unbiased opinion of the many infomercials on late night TV. I must confess, I've always been a bit of an "infomercial junky". Having seriously scrutinized just about every infomercial made, I feel I can offer some perspective to those individuals excited about the next new product that guarantees to end all their problems.

I believe I have a knack for spotting baloney. In fact, my college English professor once told me I had the best "crap detector" he'd ever seen. When you read a particular review, I would prefer you think of me as just an average guy that is applying a little common sense.

Contrary to popular belief, not all infomercials are rip offs.....only about 90% of them. To read my thoughts on a particular infomercial simply locate it on the left and click! Currently I have evaluated the following infomercials: Avacor, Scalpmed, Prosvent, Cortislim, Ionic Breeze, Ultimate HGH, Total Gym, Orbitrek, and the Ab Rocket. Before you purchase any of these products I strongly suggest you at least read what I have to say about it!

Article Of The Month


The Truth About Losing Weight

There are so many kinds of weight loss supplements, diet programs and exercise equipment now being sold it's no wonder everyone is confused. I've tried many of them myself. Yet nothing I tried seemed to work. I wasn't the only one having difficulty it seems. Afterall, billions are spent each year on these types of solutions and yet Americans are fatter than ever! How could this be? If these weight loss experts like Richard Simmons are right, why are so many people overweight? I even personally know of a women who lost a lot of weight using the "Richard Simmons diet and exercise program". She actually was so successful at it that she even appeared on one of his TV shows. I saw her just a few months ago and guess what? That's right...she's now fatter than ever! Which led me to one simple question. Is it possible to stay trim and fit without exercising yourself to death and or starving all day long?

The answer to this question is yes! To explain how this is possible I must first get you to forget everything you might have learned about how to lose weight. I must also encourage you to stop listening to the weight loss gurus and start thinking for yourself. In the years previous to being successful at losing weight I struggled and failed like everyone else. I kept reading and listening and trying things all of which failed. It wasn't until I sat down and started thinking for myself that I began to succeed at weight loss. I have since come up with four fundamental priciples that we must understand before we can ever hope to lose weight and keep it off for good. Here are my four principles.

Weight loss principle #1.

We are designed by nature to eat a large amount of food whenever it is abundant.
This is why dieting almost always fails. Let's suppose we could go back in time 10,000 years ago and snatch a newborn baby and bring it into the present. We would then proceed to raise this prehistoric baby the same way we raise modern infants. Do you realize that when this prehistoric baby grew up you would not be able to tell it apart from any other person walking the planet today? It would look like anyone else, talk like anyone else, be as smart or as dumb as anyone else and probably be overweight as well!

In other words, even though our world today is so dramatically different than 10,000 years ago we are essentially the exact same animal. When our species ran in the prehistoric jungle food was scarce and we had to exert a tremendous amount of calories to obtain it. We only put on weight when food was plentiful because inevitably we would need these fat stores to survive when food again became scarce. This isn't the case anymore. Today food is all over the place each and every day. A simple stroll to the fridge is all that's required. We inevitably fail at dieting and start eating and eating and eating simply because we are designed by nature to eat a large amount of food whenever it is abundant. It is as natural to us as taking a breath.
Weight Loss Can Happen!

Weight loss principle #2.

A calorie is a calorie is a calorie.


Weight loss is a relatively simple physiological process. Notice I said "simple" not "easy". All that is necessary is that we burn more calories in a day than we consume. Dieting gurus have succeeded in confusing the issue beyond belief and have made themselves rich in the process. They actually have Americans convinced that eating one type of food as opposed to another will cause you to lose weight. Ridiculous!

The reason people can lose weight on a high protein diet or a high carbohydrate diet or even a high fat diet is simply that they are on a diet period! They are simply consuming less calories in a day then they are burning. What types of foods the calories come from is irrelevant. One could conceivably lose weight on a "cheese cake" diet as well. If you don't believe me here'a a cheese cake diet I gurantee you will lose weight on. "Eat two pieces of cheese cake a day and nothing else"! As long as you're not consuming more calories in a day than you are burning you will lose weight. What people are really doing when they are dieting is walking around all day hungry and craving food. They will inevitably give in and start eating again. In most cases they will put back on all the weight they've lost and then some.

Stop worrying about the kinds of calories you consume. I realize all the dieting gurus are running around advising everyone to eat a diet low in saturated fats and high in fruits and vegetables. This is good advice for overall health but totally unrealistic. If you follow this advice you're destined to walk around all day craving fats and being hungry which brings us back to principle #1...."we are designed by nature to eat large amounts of food whenever it is abundant". But let's not forget principle #2. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie!


Weight loss principle #3.

Exercise is not a natural act.


Exercise is not a natural act. We are designed by nature to conserve our energy. Our bodies have feedback mechanisms designed to make exercise miserable. This prevents us from overexerting ourselves and helps us conserve energy. We do not like to be out of breath. We do not like to feel the burning fatigue in our muscles. We do not like to get hot, and sweaty. We feel great when it's over, I'm not denying it, but we dread having to do it.

Americans spend billions on exercise equipment each year. They purchase their new "Stair Master" or "Butt Blaster" or "Soloflex" or "Nordiflex" or "The Total Gym". Or they buy the latest exercise videos such as "Tae Bo" or the latest version of videos by Richard Simmons. They enthusiastically start their exercise program and confide to everyone how much better they feel....for about a week or two. Then they discover that exercising even with their brand new exercise machine or video tape is a hard, miserable experience. So they stop. They stop until they see their next machine or video that promises a fun and easy way to fitness. Then the cycle starts again. How many pieces of exercise equipment have you bought? How many videos? How many memberships to the local health clubs? You see we are designed by nature to avoid misery and conserve energy. Running from a lion that is trying to eat us is a natural act, but exercising for the sake of exercising is not. We still must do it if we want to lose weight but we need to exercise as "smart" as we possibly can. We need to gain the maximum benefit from the most minimal effort. But please, let's stop being in denial about it. Exercise is not a natural act!


Weight loss principle #4.

We must dramatically raise our metabolic rate.


Anyone who succeeded in losing weight and keeping it off did so by raising their metabolic rate. Metabolic rate is the rate at which we burn calories in a given day. People with high metabolic rates tend to be slender. People with low metabolic rates tend to be fat. Metabolic rate can be increased over time with regular exercise unfortunately most people are doing the wrong type of exercise. Most people who exercise do aerobic exercise. Things like bicycling, jogging, walking, workout videos. This I feel is a mistake. It's not that you can't lose some weight this way but it is not very effective. In other words you need to do a lot of it and you still need to walk around all day starving. It's great for your overall health and stamina but for many people this exercise is time consuming and either boring or extremely miserable. Remember, exercise is not a natural act! That's why most people give up with these types of routines especially when they lose little or no weight for all their efforts. Prior to being successful at losing weight I was a devoted jogger. Though I hated it I jogged an average of 4-5 days a week for almost four years. After four years of jogging I actually weighed 20 pounds more than when I started. I went from a size 34 waist to a size 40! Aerobic exercise is a big reason why Americans are more obese than ever before. For us to ever succeed at losing weight and keeping it off we must dramatically increase our metabolic rate. More about this later.


Let's quickly review these four principles.


We are designed by nature to eat a large amount of food whenever it is abundant.


A calorie is a calorie is a calorie.


Exercise is not a natural act.


We must dramatically raise our metabolic rate.


Now to summarize. Dieting won't work in the long run because we are designed by nature to eat a large amount of food whenever it is abundant. Eating one food as opposed to another won't work because a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Aerobic exercise is minimally effective but we probably won't keep doing it because exercise is not a natural act. This leaves us with only one realistic choice.

We need to significantly increase our metabolic rate, or the rate at which we burn calories in a given day.

A generally excepted rule is that 3500 calories equals one pound of fat. Now suppose our bodies burn 2,000 calories a day and we eat 2,500 calories a day. In otherwords we would consume 500 calories a day more than we are burning. Guess what happens. We will gain approximately one pound of fat every week. (500 calories per day x 7 days = 3500 calories or one pound). If we continue at this rate we will gain 52 pounds in one year! But let's say that instead of our body burning 2,000 calories per day we could raise our metabolic rate to 3,000 calories a day. As long as we continue to eat 2,500 calories a day we would begin to lose one pound per week or 52 pounds in one year!

To significantly raise our metabolic rate we are going to have to exercise. Now since exercise is not a natural act we must do as little of it as possible so that we don't give up at it. Instead of exercising the "dumb way". We are going to exercise the "smart way".

Exercising the "smart way" requires only 12 minutes twice a week!


First we must understand that to raise metabolic rate significantly we need to build more muscle mass in our bodies. You see muscle cells are wonderful "calorie burning" cells. Conversely, fat cells are terrible at burning calories. Therefore when we increase our muscle mass we can dramatically increase our metabolic rate or the amount of calories a day that we burn. Muscle cells burn calories 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Even when we are sleeping and not using them they still require a lot of calories. Once we raise our metabolic rate above the amount of calories that we are eating in a day the pounds of fat begin to effortlessly melt away. This is exactly why aerobic exercise usually fails to help meet our weight loss goals. It simply is not a very effective way to build muscle mass. It is also the reason why I believe that dieting without doing exercise the "smart way" is actually damaging to your health! Let me explain.


Never diet unless you are going to exercise the "smart way".



When you diet you are essentially starving your body of the nutrients it needs. To make up for these lost calories your body supposedly will begin breaking down your fat cells and using them for fuel. In reality this is not what really happens. If you diet without exercising the "smart way" your body does not choose it's fat stores for fuel it actually chooses your muscle cells! That's right, it starts destroying muscle cells for fuel. As time goes on your muscle mass decreases. This of course further reduces your metabolic rate. Now when you stop dieting and begin eating again you put all the weight back on and then some because you have reduced your metabolic rate by destroying your muscle mass! Yo Yo syndrome! This is the very reason why so many people lose weight and then put it all back on and more when they go off their diet. Does this sound familiar?

Now if you are doing aerobic exercise while dieting the results are not quite as bad. At least you are working the most important MUSCLE in your body. Therefore at least this muscle will not deteriorate. Any idea what the most important muscle in your body is? You got it...your HEART. Now follow this logic. When you diet without exercising at all you are actually damaging your heart muscle! After all it's a muscle too.

If you find all this hard to believe lets go back to principle #1. "We are designed by nature to eat a large amount of food whenever it is abundant." When our species was in the jungle 10,000 years ago and they were starving they were out there working hard to find food. Men were hunting for game. They were sharpening spears and making axes. They were climbing up hills and mountains. Women were digging up roots and gathering plants for food all day long while carrying their children on their hip! Their bodies chose to burn up their fat stores instead of their muscle mass because their bodies needed this muscle mass to find or hunt for food.

Conversely when you diet without exercising in the modern world your body senses that it is starving but this time it realizes that it does not need all this muscle mass. Therefore it chooses to digest muscle rather than fat so that it can lower metabolic rate. By lowering metabolic rate the body can adjust to the reduction in calories and ward off starvation. It lowers metabolic rate by reducing the calorie burning cells in our bodies....our muscles. 10,000 years ago people were not watching TV and waiting until they lost 10 pounds so they could eat again! They were out in the world working their muscles in an effort to find food.


How to exercise the "smart way" instead of the "dumb way".



We need to maximize the benefits of exercise while reducing the misery. In other words we need to do as little of it as possible because as you've probably heard EXERCISE IS NOT A NATURAL ACT. First we must do exercises that are designed to build muscle rather than cardiovascular conditioning.

To make a long story short we need to do weight training exercises. As we build more and more muscle we burn more and more calories each and every day. Over time this causes us to begin losing fat. There has been a discovery in the last few years that now enable us to weight train less (avoiding misery), while at the same time maximizing the benefits (increasing muscle mass).


The discovery is the fact that we only need to do one set of 8-12 repetitions per muscle group.



It was once believed that the more sets one did the more muscle one would build. This is the very reason why people who are serious about losing weight often spend hours and hours per week in the gym. This theory has now been proven totally wrong. As a matter of fact weight training too much can actually have a detrimental effect on muscle growth. If you weight train too much you can actually lose muscle mass! Now since we want to put as much muscle mass on us as possible we need to work all the major muscle groups in the body. By working the major muscles we can maximize the muscle mass we can build in the shortest period of time. Here is my weight loss workout that I do twice per week.


Bench Press 8-12 reps one set. (Works chest and arms)
Standing Military press 8-12 reps one set. (Works shoulders)
Barbell bent over rows 8-12 reps one set. (Works back muscles)
Lat pull downs one set 8-12 reps. (Works Lat muscles)
Leg Squats 8-12 reps one set.(Works legs)
Sit-ups till exhaustion one set. (Works abdominal muscles)



Now this is an exercise program I can live with. This workout requires no more than twelve minutes of effort twice per week! And when I say 12 minutes I mean 12 minutes. When I'm in a hurry I can actually do this workout in less than 8-10 minutes! I vary the order of exercises often to keep it from getting too boring. The specific exercises I personally do is not important. What is important is that you understand the concept. If you don't particularly like this work out you can easily design your own workout by purchasing a "weight training" book at your local book store. Just remember to try to work as many of the major muscle groups as possible. You must also get familiar with how much weight or resistance to use with each exercise. YOU WANT TO UTILIZE ENOUGH WEIGHT OR RESISTANCE SO THAT YOU CAN DO AT LEAST 8 REPETITIONS BUT NOT MORE THAN 12 REPETITIONS. Within a very few weeks you will know you're building muscle mass because you will need to add more and more weight or resistance to keep your reps between 8-12.

Overtime, I guarantee you will lose more weight than starving all day long and exercising yourself half to death doing an aerobic routine. This simple 12 minute plan is an extremely powerful and effective weight loss program. This work out is effective for both men and women.

You will need to purchase some equipment to do this workout if you don't already have it. Typically one can do all the exercises listed by purchasing a weight bench set that enables you to do lat pulls as well. You do not necessarily need to purchase free weights like I use. Any piece of equipment that allows you to work most or all of the major muscle groups will do nicely. More than likely you either own this equipment already or know of someone who has it and is not using it. Exercise is not a natural act so most people don't do it. Therefore there is a lot of equipment around that nobody is using. Often, you can also purchase this type of equipment at a garage sale or by scanning the classifieds under "articles for sale" in your local newspaper. To be quite frank if you don't have the equipment you need or access to it you should be able to buy it in used condition for under $50.


Start slowly and proceed using your common sense.



Proceed with this type of routine using your common sense. Ideally one should start out slowly. Just lifting the minimum amount of weight even if you can do a lot more that 8-12 reps. This will enable you to learn to do the exercises properly without "cheating". Gradually you can increase the weight until you get down to 8-12 reps. You must also be careful using "free weights". For many free weights can be dangerous because you could easily drop the weights and injure yourself. Another draw back with free weights is that you should always have a "spotter". Someone that is standing by in case you can't "eak out" that last rep so you don't get pinned down by the barbell. For many a resistance type machine makes more sense. You should always of course consult your physcian before starting any exercise program. Also get into the habit of warming up first. My warm up consists of doing some mild stretching and a few "push ups".

You don't have to do all these exercises in one work out. You can break the routine up. For example: Day 1 Bench press and military press, day 2 Barbell bent rows and lat pulls, day 3 Leg squats and sit-ups. It doesn't make any difference how you group these exercises as long as you are doing them twice a week with 2-3 days rest between each muscle group.

As long as you continue with this type of exercise program on a consistent basis, and eat around the same calories that you are eating now, I guarantee you will gradually trim down. Best of luck to you.