So why is it that all commercials show people who are overweight as being miserable human beings. The worst is the weight watchers one that shows a gorgeous plus size model in a kick ass dress, and announcing that she feels like the ugliest person in the room.

And lets not forget the one with Zora from Joe Millionaire announcing how she went froma size 10 to a size 2 in only a few months. Yeah, like that's healthy.

Then there's the one with all the women talking about how they feel now, after the weight loss, one womans says her husband can't keep his hands off of her, another (in a bikini) says she didn't want to look good after 3 children, she wanted to look great. But the last one is the one that annoys me - she says something about she's heard that she looks "hot" & has the most annoying, self centered, self satisfied laugh when she says it. I want to smack her every single time.

There's a commercial here (Canada) that's been playing forever, although I'm still not sure what it's for. The tag line is "What would you do with a few pounds less?" You're supposed to go online and look up "Julie's Story" which I have so far refused to do. They show Julie, who is, seriously, a perfect weight and very attractive, standing on a scale looking really depressed. Also, sitting in a chair looking really depressed. I'd guess, given it's on TV, that she weighs about 120 or less. At the end, it says to talk to your doctor about Julie's story, so I assume it's for a pill. I hate this commercial!!

Don't forget her exceedingly poor grammar. She's all, "This is the goodest diet, ever!"

Okay, it wasn't that bad, but she definitely says "good" when she means to say "well."

I love the title of the thread, BTW.

The atrocity you're trying to remember is this:

Dumbass Size Four: It works SOOOOO good.

What gets me, is they always say they weighed, 160 lbs, or 180 or were a size 12 and now a size 4 when you look at the photos, there's no way they were a size 12! 22 maybe...over 200 lbs more like it...unless they were under 5 feet.

I refuse to buy any products that so obviously lie... So I'm stuck with eating right and exercise. Bummer.

I recall seeing one -- I can't remember which plan it was, but one of the "Hollywood" diets -- in which the featured person was all aghast that she had ballooned up to a "Size Six."

Sigh.

I hated most of the stuff on The Man Show, but one great bit was a diet commercial spoof featuring a revolutionary dieting method called "stop eating so much."

I have looked up the Julie's story one, and couldn't find any info other than don't do it. I all been able to figure out is that it is a pill that will cause "leakage". Perhaps I am looking in the wrong spot.

Well, you just can't get enough of that, can you? What's a little leakage in exchange for losing 2 pounds?

Speaking of weight in commercials, I won't go into this in detail, because we discussed it extensively in the "Real Americans Drink Sprite" thread, but it drives me crazy how commercials endlessly push the idea that the answer to all weight problems is a particular food, some particular offenders being yogurt and Special K, with a recent offender being low-cal cranberry juice. Despite what the commercials imply, there's no magic food that will "make" a person thin.

That's probably how you lose the weight to begin with. ;)

Especially the way they tell you to use it. A bowl of Special K for breakfast and lunch every day for a week or something. I don't think so. It's just like Slim Fast in the '80s. "A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner." No thank you.

And what the HELL is low-cal cranberry juice? It only has about 15 calories to begin with! It's like fat-free yogurt. Regular yogurt, at least here in the States, is already 98% (or more) fat free. I swear, arbitrary advertising tactics make my head explode.

According to this blog entry, the drug is Xenical and the gory side effects are listed.

Ew!

But it looks like I was right; the leakage is how you lose the weight. Nasty.

Though, I'd think that after being on Xenical, "Julie" would be afraid to strip for her husband for fear of what would be going on in her new sexier undies.

That was just so wrong. LMAO.

Man I hate those special K - flavoured with Vanilla.

A blonde girl has a bad day and at night she sits down with a box of special K, calling it comfort food. The other friend says, "Um, sorry to say, but Special K is low in calories."

In the 2nd commercial the blonde girl is getting together with her friends and doing an intervention with their crying friend who is sad because her boyfriend dumped her. They thoughtfully shove a box of Special K in her face.

Healthy eating is NOT about eating a BOX of Special K. If you're upset, have some tea, but don't eat because you're sad. Once that pattern starts, it's pretty hard to break.

If I ate just a bowl of Special K (carbs) for breakfast and lunch, my blood sugar would bottom out by 3 p.m. I can't imagine how they can recommend such an unbalanced diet with a straight (corporate) face.

Hee! So true. Honestly, when I saw that commercial, I wondered if Julie was being shown before or after her 'diet'. She looks like she's at a perfect weight already.

When you eat Special K, you're hungry an hour later. How is that supposed to help you lose weight?

That's true. You need a big meal to get you through the day. I'd be starving by 9:00 am.



True, all that. Crazy commercial.

Actually, Cranberry Juice is usually pretty high in calories, because they usually pour tons of sugar in it so it's not so tart. I love Cranberry Juice (um, good with vodka)...and I spent about 15 minutes in Bi-Lo one day comparing the calories and sugar content of the juice bottles. It took me forever to find the lowest one.

A bit off-topic:



A good rule of thumb is that if the bottle says "Cranberry juice COCKTAIL", it's straight cranberry juice with some kind of sugar or other sweetener. The juice blends, where it's cranberry juice mixed with some other kind of juice -- cran-orange, cran-apple, cran-grape -- have a greater percentage of juice, because the other kind of juice acts as a sweetener in and of itself (depending on what brand you get, there may be some added sugar still; I've found that Dole brand tends to be very sweet).

Disclaimer: my family is a supplier for Ocean Spray.

But that commercial makes me laugh because of the way Zora (who, BTW, is captioned as a "Reality TV Star", holds up two fingers when she says "size 2" - almost like she's saying "My size is *this* many"



And this one makes me laugh because of the woman's accent: "My husban can't keephishands awffa me"

Sadly - both of the commercials are for NutriSystem.

She is a total idiot. I hate the part where she earnestly declares, "It works that good!"

Both Zora and one of the other women share the exact same spiel of "I love CHAWKLIT. Any diet that lets me eat CHAWKLIT"

Cram your "chawklit", ladies!

Gah, their pronunciation of the enitre sentence is the same! Aside from your "chawklit," there's, "...is the duyit far mah-ee." It's either mah-ee or muh-y, and not in a Southern way, but either way it bugs.

When I saw it with the second lady I was doing Sudoku and thought, "Shove it, Zora." Imagine my surprise when I looked up to find some other weirdo saying the same stupid line the same stupid way.

From the blog posted on page 1:




HUH? Who looks for epistiotomy scars? WTF?

I saw one last night on the Discovery Health channel, which seems to run a lot of diet aid commercials, especially during their plastic surgery shows. The woman on the screen announces that she's a newscaster and has to eat on the run a lot. But with HOODIA (which is some sort of "natural" appetite depressant) she didn't have to eat at all. Now, in addition to the lovely and healthy benefits of starving yourself all day, the "newscaster" woman looked like one of the "before" shots on the plastic surgery shows. She was extremely washed out and haggard looking. Way to sell your product!

I heard that Hoodia is a bean or something that tribesmen in AFrica (or someplace) eat when there isnt any food. It takes away the desire to eat.

Well it aparently does you no favors in the looks department.

Ugh. I hate weight loss commercials because they're the only ones to feature fat people. It's like the only time you'll see fat people in a commercial is when they're unhappy with themselves. I have seen just one commercial that featured a happy fat woman that wasn't involved with a weight-loss product. It was for Big Lots , and the woman was dressed in fun clothes (no muumuu!) and was just a neat, bubbly person.

I loathe the Slim in 6 commercial in which the woman tearfully tells us how fat she was at a size 6. Bite me, bitch!

Crap.

I am sooo happy I am not the only one who noticed this! It drives me insane - I actually have screamed at the TV - "Well! It's 'well', you inarticulate moron!" Ok - so maybe I overreacted a little bit, but I don't think it's too much to ask that women portray themselves as intelligent, even in a weightloss commercial.

I've seen an ad recently for some diet program, LA-something-or-another (sorry, don't know the full name). The refrain is, "Am I L.A.? You bet I am." The women go on about their extensive weight loss, and one woman says, "Now when my husband says I'm beautiful, I believe him." That just strikes me as really sad.

The one that's getting on my last nerve right now is for Hydroxycut or some such. Two obviously very different bodies wearing different sizes of the same Barbie pink bikini. The person doing the talking sounds like a smurf. On helium.

I absolutely HATE these commercials! It's like along with the weight, the women also lost their minds, and found incredibly annoying voices and mind-boggling shallowness.

Or they're selling cleaning products. But, yeah, you're right -- you don't see them in vacation ads or car commercials or, really, in anything that advertises a product or service that's not used in the home. Fat people, in the ad world, never ever leave their homes.

This has been the only commercial for a weight-loss "supplement" where it's been blatantly obvious (to me, a pretty unobservant woman) that the "before" body doesn't belong to the "after" woman. They blatantly copied and pasted the "after" woman's face onto the body of the "before" woman - and they did a terrible job of it. You'd think they'd at least invest into some good photoshopping (or whatever the video editing equivalent is) because they're trying to, you know.. SELL THE PRODUCT. Lol. But her head is a couple sizes too small for the before body, it's 5 shades paler than the before body, and worst yet... it doesn't even move with the before body like it should. Worst. Editing. Ever.

For those interested, they'll be covering Atkins, Bersteins, and all those other dieting fads.

Adkins' diet is what killed him. If he had a bit more padding on him, he wouldn't have cracked his head so hard on that icy sidewalk. I for one am NOT going to put my health at risk by not gorging on junk food every single day of my life!


Yes, and they also squish and stretch the pictures. Much more noticeable in the bald/hairy headed men before and after shots, but just look at the width and length of their faces in those shots, whether it's the hair or the weight loss.
They also position their heads and chins to maximize the right angles for the worst before and the best after.
And why do they think that putting make up on After Woman does anything but discount any other improvements they may have thought they made? All you see is, there she is with and without make up, not the actual work done.

Not only the make up, but why do so many of them become blonde in the after pics? Not only do you become pounds lighter, but so will your hair color?

Oh no. The Special K commercials are back. Last night I saw the one with the guy from Queer Eye. He promises the women that if they're at their perfect weight, and exercise and eat low fat for a month, along with eating Special K for breakfast every day....they'll stay the same.

It's the Special K Challenge. The challenge appears to be to diet, exercise, and eat their product every day for a month. Now, let's see, what could be in it for them? Oh right, the money. As for the women, it seems to me they could eat pretty much anything normal for breakfast under these conditions, and end the month the same weight. Am I missing something? Does Special K have special powers I'm unaware of?

There's some weight loss surgery commercial that shows the "before" woman who, aside from looking very sad, looks pretty good to me. She's really not big. I'd guess her to be a 12, 14 max. Is weight loss surgery really being recommended for women of "average" size now?

I saw one tonight for a product called "N.V."

I dunno......all these years I've worked in health care, to me those letters stand for....

Nausea & Vomiting!



There is one, I haven't seen it in a while, but in the "before" pic (in which she doesn't look all that heavy), she is holding a baby, looks quite happy, and has a nice, flattering hairstyle (and it does happen to be blonde.)

In the "after" scenes, she has the greasiest, flattest, scummiest-looking femullet I've had the misfortune of seeing on TV lately! She also doesn't look too much thinner than before.

I can't remember what product it's for.

ETA: I saw it again -- it's MediFast.

I finally saw this commercial, and you are so right. The smaller head size, the movement and the PALE, pale face can't be missed. I couldn't believe somebody thought that was fit to air.

I remember an ad for Jenny Craig a few years back that showed a young woman who'd just graduated from college. Her voice-over started with "I was FAT. I was a Size 16!" (Ooookay.) She went on to say essentially that she couldn't get a job because she was so FAT, but then she joined Jenny Craig and lost a zillion pounds. The commercial ended with her saying triumphantly "Now I know I can go out there and get ANY job!"

Right. Because losing weight not only makes you thinner, it makes you more employable.

I actually hate all the commercials for weight loss products you can order over the phone or online [without a prescription] on general principle. Either the products don't work, in which case it's fraud, or, in the rare case that they do work, they're probably powerful drugs or supplements that should be carefully regulated and prescribed by, you know, a doctor.

I don't have this attitude towards 'program' commercials [i.e. Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers] although I mostly hate their commercials, too. I just think the product commercials are horrendously irresponsible.

Hi there,

I was enjoying reading this thread, and I must say I can't stand these diet commercials either--and I'm an overweight woman.

Nutri-system is a pet peeve of mine, mainly because I see that the most. Not just because of some of the comments here, but because they are stupid.

One is where a woman walking in a store, in a bikini and being ogled by that slimey clerk and another is they show a headshot of a bride in her veil, and two women are commenting on how great she looks, blah blah. Camera pans out and the woman is in a white bikini walking down the aisle. And at the end of a couple of commercials, depending on if you see the long or short version, they show women dancing around in their bikini's.

And they need new writers. Every person that has 'testimony' loves chocolate? Sure.

Poor Zora, the hell she must have gone through being a size 10. How could she live with herself?

This one isn't a diet commercial but an ad for, I believe, Ziplock bags. There are two women side by side on a split screen. One woman of average size, probaly 10 or 12 and her baggie isn't closed properly and spills all over the floor when she turns it upside down. (Because that's what you do with a bag of tomato sauce.) The woman on the other side hads a good, solid, closed baggie and is a size 2. It drives me crazy, because the average size woman looks dumpy in comparison, as though using the right brand of baggies is something that svelte women do, or using the baggies makes them teenier. I don't know, but the size difference is jarring to me. There's more than one version (with different races, I think) but the size issue remains the same.

To add to the list, they also have the "before" slouch her shoulders (which will give anyone a stomach roll) while the after stands up ram-rod straight.

And they routinely put the "before's" in clothes that are too tight so they look fatter (when generally they're not that big, just wearing the wrong things).



Hee, this reminds me of when I used to watch the old Hydroxycut commercial, where they're touting that all you have to do is take this one pill and you'll loose weight...and aparently gain washboard abs. Because that has nothing to do dieting or excersise at all. Nope, abs in a bottle. That's what I'm talking about.

Not to mention the fact that Bowflexes apparently rip all the hair off men's chests. Before picture? Tubby and hairy. After picture? Washboard abs and completly hairless. Eeek!

Stupid double post.