Fact of the Day .CA

Muscle Milk is one of the best-selling products at the gym I work at.  It sells like crazy, and I believe that most of the motivation to purchase it is based on misinformation.

Muscle Milk is a protein supplement which has been carefully patterned after a mother’s breast milk, and is said to include the same healthy anabolic properties. Yes – you heard that right, a mother’s breast milk. The idea being, a growing bodybuilder can also benefit from the same anabolic properties of breast milk.  “You know, babies grow really fast, so if I, a grown adult, drink it, then I will grow really fast.  Actually collecting breast milk would probably get me arrested, so I’ll just buy Muscle Milk.” 

One thing I will give Muscle Milk: It tastes AMAZING!!!  But, as is often the case, it owes itsrich, creamy taste to the fact that it has lots of fat.  More fat in fact, than a double-dipped waffle cone at Ben and Jerry’s, which probably tastes a lot better.  Needless to say, anyone looking for muscle definition should steer clear

There’s also the issue of how much protein it has.  32 grams in the average serving.  Do you know how much protein your body actually needs?  About .12-.18% of your body weight.  For someone who’s 200 pounds like me, it maxes out at 80 grams.  Because you don’t need much protein, your body isn’t equipped to process much at any given time, any amount over about 25 grams just goes right through your system exactly as it came in.

What it is good for is people (like me) trying to gain both muscle and body fat, and if its advertisers were honest about that instead of marketing it to people with goals for just musclebuilding, I would have no problem with it.  But it’s marketing makes promises that the product doesn’t live up to, and the company has propelled itself into the area of fitness myth propogation just to make more money.  It’s sad, because Cytosport have a good product, just not good for everyone, in fact not good for 90% of the people who buy it.

The Grapefruit Diet falls into the same category as the shake-weight.  It baffles me that people think it would work.  At first, I thought it was just created by an excellent spin doctor.  Know who claims ownership of the plan?  NOBODY!!  Ok, so that’s not a good sign, but surely there must be something behind this diet. I mean, it’s been around for decades.  Surely something that stupid wouldn’t stand the test of scrutiny?  Of course it wouldn’t, but the trick is getting overweight and desperate people to scrutinize it.  Whcih they generally don’t.  What this diet DOES have going for it is it’s the first entry on this site that Weird Al wrote a song about.  So that’s something, I guess.

The premise of the Grapefruit Diet is based on a magical ingredient (seriously) in grapefruits, that, when eaten with protein, triggers fat burning.  The diet is designed to promote fast weight loss.  And because grapefruits are MAGICAL, you can eat pretty much whatever you want.  Bacon, french fries, and UNLIMITED MEAT(!!) are actually recommended in some of their meal plans.  And as long as you eat half a grapefruit after every meal, you’ll lose 10 pounds in 12 days.

A few problems with a diet:

1)  Grapefruits are disgusting.  They taste like rancid oranges. 

2) Grapefruits are also not magic.

3)The diet is so dumb that nobody has even tried to take credit for it.  Which, if you consider the dumb diets that people do take credit for, is pretty mind-boggling.

4)You’ll gain back all the weight as soon as you stop, and the plan only allows for 12 days of the diet.  It’s that bad for you. 

So, in short, this diet is 12 days of gorging on a limited variety of foods, getting bored and overcaffeinated, and having all your friends hate you because you smell like a rotten orange mixed with bacon grease.