The Shady Side of the Weight Loss Industry: FASTer Way CEO Shares Her Take on “The Deals That Made the World”
FASTer Way to Fat Loss
Equipping and empowering women and men to get well, prevent disease and fulfill their potential with energy.
Amanda Tress, CEO and founder of the nation's premiere digital health and nutrition franchise "FASTer Way to Fat Loss," recently finished the intriguing business-based book “The Deals That Made the World", by Jacques Peretti. The book examines how we may think government runs and controls so much of our lives, but a closer look reveals businessmen making business deals is really what has shaped so much of modern life.
One chapter that really resonated with Tress focused on the diet and weight loss industry. She shared a story from the book about how an obscure statistician created a method for finding BMI, that an employee with a major insurance company then arbitrarily lowered the threshold so that more people would fall into the category of "overweight" and thus, be charged more for their policies. This kicked off our modern obsession with weight and dieting.
In the book, Tress also says a chapter discusses weight loss research that shows severe calorie restriction damages metabolism, and that in a study of men eating 1500 calories, not only did they suffer psychological effects, when they increased calories, they gained weight even faster. But that study was ignored. Instead, companies found it more profitable to promote extreme dieting, and even launched diet drinks, like "SlimFast", and then blamed consumers for “noncompliance” when the diets inevitably failed.
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“The diet industry wants you to think you are to blame if you can’t stick to their unsustainable programs,” Tress said. “They don’t want you knowing the eal science and rese8arch. It’s disheartening to see how profits have been prioritized over science and people’s well-being.”
Stories like these reinforce Tress’s mission with FASTer Way to Fat Loss. “We work hard to arm our clients with education and information, encouraging progress over perfection and providing sustainable, flexible habits,” Tress said. “The companies described in this book rely on tricks, manipulation and lack of integrity. We want to shift the landscape toward transparency and empowerment.”
Tress remains optimistic that the $70 billion diet industry can change. “I hope a company led with integrity can thrive and reach people on a massive scale. There is clearly a desire for something better than the shady deals that made the diet world what it is today.”