BY AMANDA NGUDLE

Blame it on Dr Nowzaradan’s sassy attitude towards his obese patients or not but slimming shortcuts are back in business in the form of fat freezes and injections. As someone who has struggled with weight issues over and above other things like prominent cheekbones, I can readily attest that I would have jumped at the opportunity to lose without trying, rather than face the likes of Dr Now. Especially after he asked a patient: Do you have a medical degree I don’t know about?” This after the patient who had put back more weight since the beginning of his programme, suggested that what he needed was the excess skin surgery following his massive weight loss.

There are various reasons why people want shortcuts towards weight loss because almost nothing looks good on a fat person. I remember with shame how from the emergence of petite popstars like Whitney Houston and Madonna in the 80s, we almost killed ourselves so we could fit into impossible outfits like leather and lace, don’t even ask how we could even afford such luxurious garments. I suppose for every impossible original out there is a more affordable faux, sometimes even nicer. After reading it in a magazine, my friends and I vigorously banged our bums against walls because the era in my teenage years was completely against the big butt even if you were of average weight. They were items non-grata because it was the time of slender bodies with skinny and flat butts, accompanied by flat tummies and skinny dainty hands holding Tabs and Diet Coke cans. It was the era of the wafer-thin Joan Collins, Naomi Campbell and Iman. Without representation, bigger girls like me left our bodies fighting for their own lives.

Experts casually dished out advice for us to practice self-acceptance but how do you accept that you are a 16-year-old who will forever dress like your mom because of a body that was born to be big? The problem back in the day was that fashion played a big role in entertaining us because the 80s were fresh from the squalor of rural living. We still faced a lot of political uprisings so with the bright fashion of the 80s, spirits were uplifted for a while. Except, you had to be a size zero to participate in fashion. Even high-waist jeans were made for two small mangoes and the rest of us had to wear matrimonial dresses and miss all the fun and the street cred.

 As a result, we became diet junkies. We participated in dangerous regimens, starved ourselves and resorted to slimming pills, a suicide gateway if you ask me. This was echoed by a colleague who started off by alerting me she might come across as a bit psycho as she packed her stuff and rearranged her desk next to mine a few years ago. Asked why I was to take sporadic cover in an office set-up, she explained that she had been on diet pills since high school after her entire family appointed her as the family’s own Miss South Africa representative in the making. “And now after so many years of those drugs, I still feel like I’m still being weaned off them. And still suffer withdrawal symptoms.”

Because slimming pills were such a black-market product, we only learnt of the side effects from the grapevine and ourselves. They consisted of insomnia which led to depression over time, increased blood pressure, fast heart rate, severe cellulite, restlessness, substance dependence, heartburn and dizziness.

In the end, the government of South Africa intervened and wiped off the poisonous stuff from the store and pharmaceutical shelves because there was more than cellulite and dry mouths to consider. Teenagers were getting depressed and scoring lowly in their academics, marriages unravelled and work production slowed down where there were users involved.

And in came surgeries such as liposuction and tummy tucks, which are said to be excruciating. “That is the understatement of the year, a tummy tuck is almost deadly,” says the former wife of a Simba character in the Lion King production, Esmeralda Nxumalo.  She had just had her third child when she decided the mommy wardrobe was getting the boot. “Imagine being in so much pain and not even being able to cry because you are not allowed to heave and stretch the stomach surgery.” She adds. And it seems she was not the only one and that pain is not the worst that can happen because celebrities like Argentine actress Silvina Luna, US Kim Kardashian lookalike Christina Ashten Gourkani and Indian actress Arti Agarwal all died from surgery complications leading to cardiac arrests.

The latest trends are fat freeze and slimming injections. The fat freeze method known as CoolSculpting recently made waves as the solution to the lifelong search for an effortless weight loss method because it is said to fat freeze a targeted area with stubborn fat and allows the body to metabolically get rid of 20-25 percent frozen fat in that targeted area. The medically approved method is derived from the body process that was discovered by scientists that body fat freezes better than skin when exposed to certain freezing temperatures over a certain period of time. Most swear by it and if the results are anything to go by, the processes may be expensive, maybe exorbitant but without side effects perhaps it’s worth breaking the bank.

Enter the latest trend of fat injections. The proof is in the pudding.  Gym enemy celebrities are losing weight overnight because as much as the bum, the big lips and natural hair are finally accepted, the one thing the world is not going to embrace, seemingly, is the weight. And let’s be honest, obesity looks obscene. But let’s look at the way in which these slimming shots work. The method involves injecting phosphatidylcholine (PPC), a natural substance directly into the targeted area. The body produces the same substance in the same chemical composition. Meaning that this therapy can help get rid of fat deposits that have defied exercise and diet. The injection lipolysis therapy is designed to break down stubborn fat and make you slim to your heart’s desire.

But a hidden flipside can be disastrous according to AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soirot. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is best known for its COVID-19 vaccines widely distributed during the pandemic years (between 2019-2022). He says that Injections, such as Wegovy and Saxenda, could shrink patients’ muscles. Apparently, other doctors have previously warned that this effect could leave users metabolically ‘fatter’, because they then have a higher fat-to-muscle percentage, and raise the risk of them piling the pounds back on once stopping to take the medication. “Today you lose weight but you lose fat and you lose muscle,” Soriot said. Weight loss jabs, such as market leader Wegovy, make patients lose muscle as well as fat and also bemoaned the environmental cost of the single-use injections ‘Most people as soon as they stop taking the medicines, they regain fat, but not so much the muscle that they have lost unless, of course, they go to the gym.’

So as you can see, there is no shortcut to success. The only way that is still endorsed by experts and doctors like the sometimes horrible, Dr Now, is a gym and a good diet lifestyle because as you get older you realise some repercussions cannot be reversed. Like the bums we hit against the wall, most have followed the shape of the walls never to regain their roundness. Also, what may not be fashionable today, may make a comeback tomorrow as the most coveted body feature.  “But I cannot stress enough how being overweight is just as dangerous as juggling the crazy diets and slimming methods,” says General Practitioner Dr Lebo Sewela. “Carrying extra weight, particularly being obese, negatively impacts nearly every facet of well-being, ranging from reproductive and respiratory performance to cognitive function and emotional state, “she warns.  “Obesity heightens the likelihood of various serious and life-threatening illnesses, such as diabetes, cardiovascular issues, and certain forms of cancer.”