The secret behind weight reduction oils

I have always wondered why consumers take the bait when products do ‘interesting’ and over-the-top advertising. I have found out why.

Recently, I came across an advertisement on the front page of a national newspaper about an Ayurvedic oil. It proclaimed that the oil, if used to massage the fatty areas of one’s body, will reduce body weight. Having carried some excess baggage for the better part of my life, I was tempted to resort to what seemed a pretty easy way out. Massage and chill for a while and you end up losing weight — irresistibly appealing, right? I bought a bottle of this miracle oil and even as I was leaving the shop, felt a bit lighter, not giving a thought to that leaner wallet of mine.

There was a brochure, folded about 24 times very tightly and tucked inside the box, along with bottle of oil. I was going to chuck it into the wastepaper basket, the standard treatment meted out to such pieces of literature by most of us, when something made me unfold the paper. That took about 10 minutes (I would suggest everyone to do this in future because this exercise probably made me lose more weight than the oil would have, in a month) and I finally had the sheet spread on the table. Looking down, I was perplexed a bit since I could not decipher the contents. The font size was one of the smallest and was so truly unreadable that I had difficulty in even realising that I had spread the sheet upside down. When I solved that puzzle and straightened it, I needed a magnifying glass to get going. I probably lost another kilo, rummaging through various storage locations in the house to retrieve the required accessories.

The brochure started dwelling upon the massaging method to be used for optimal results. Fair enough. First, one had to rub the oil on fatty areas and massage for minimum of 30 minutes. Now, it is common knowledge that if fat men had 30 minutes to spare, they usually veer towards having another calorie-laden meal.

You must realise that the weight-loss potential is based completely on the assumption that you will massage yourself vigorously for 30 minutes daily for six months, nothing less. The brochure does not allow any leeway in this. The idea is to make you lose weight through the effort involved in massaging yourself — there is probably nothing to the oil, except a pleasant fragrance, to lend to the ambience and deflect your thoughts from the hard labour you would never have consciously subjected yourself to.

Other important pieces of information given in that brochure are: You have to be at it for six months without a break, use at least four bottles a month (quantity required is directly proportional to the accumulated fat in your body), and you need to give warm-water fomentation to the massaged part for another 20 minutes post-massage (more physical labour to make you lose weight).

Now that I am wiser, I suggest a good alternative — take some warm water and do the massaging, you will still get results and what more, you save the money spent on the oil. In summer, though, this oil might be cheaper option in most parts of India.

The problem was that I read the brochure that came with the fifth bottle of oil, wondering why I was not losing much weight. Clearly, I am not as good and honest a masseur as the product brochure demands me to be; so I concluded that I will never lose weight this way, unless there is an oil which permits massages by another party and requires only minimal physical exertion after the massage as in retiring for a good nap.
 
By: P Varadarajan