Part II - Is Paul McKenna’s "I Can Make You Thin" a Scam?

Last entry I touched on the new TLC program “I Can Make You Thin”, hosted by Paul McKenna.

As I mentioned last time, I always encourage a healthy dose of skepticism when someone makes tantalizing claims of effortless weight-loss.

Mr. McKenna states that this is possible by following his four simple steps. In this series of upcoming posts I will summarize each step, and then give my verdict on as to whether the information is great, okay, flawed, or just plain awful.

Step 1: If you are hungry, EAT!

Paul McKenna’s Reasoning: By starving yourself and restricting calories, you are ultimately lowering your metabolism. Your body thinks that it is going into starvation mode and starts holding on to body fat for dear life and lowers the amount of calories your burn.

Rylan’s Verdict:

Great Advice: This is actually one of the biggest problems I see with my client’s nutritional plans (or lack thereof). Most are simply trying to starve themselves into losing weight, and this never, I repeat - NEVER works! Your metabolism drops, and when you go off the diet, you gain ALL the weight back plus some. Thus you end up in the all-to-common cycle of crash diets followed by weight gain.

By eating when you are hungry, and eating frequently, you keep your body burning calories throughout the day – you don’t give your metabolism the opportunity to slow down.

Rylan’s Recommendation:

This doesn’t mean you now have a cart blanche for pigging out. Keep the meals conservatively sized (portion size is probably the biggest nutritional problem - no pun intended – that I see) and spaced out to every 2-3 hours at most. By feeding yourself frequently, you don’t allow your metabolism to bite the dust, and you don’t let your hunger get out of control either.

Note: The biggest trick to this step is knowing when you are actually hungry, and not just using food to boost your mood. More on that later…