Editor, Daily Nexus:

Lose 10 pounds in a week! Lose weight while you sleep! Eat all the fat you want and don’t gain a pound when you take these pills!

The advertisers behind diet products definitely know how to target their audience. People want the quick, easy way out, and this is definitely the case when it comes to losing weight.

Unfortunately, the consumers sucked into these schemes are being ripped off. All of the infomercial-like diet plans are only in the business for money. They promise that you’ll lose weight fast if you spend $59.99 on their bottle of who knows what (the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t even check most of these products). What they don’t tell you is that if you do lose “weight” as quickly as they say, all you’re losing is water weight. They don’t tell you that it is biologically impossible to lose more than two pounds of “real weight” – weight from fat – per week. They don’t tell you that you’ll have healthier long-term results if you change your lifestyle by eating healthy and exercising regularly. They don’t tell you that dieting can affect biological processes such as your metabolism and bowel movement.

There’s a simple explanation as to why they don’t tell the consumer all of this vital information. They simply don’t care. As long as they get their $59.99 from you, and the next person, they will keep selling their bottles of garbage and their “diet plans” that won’t work.

The bottom line is diets don’t work. Ninety to 98 percent of people who diet regain the weight they have lost. The small percentage who do lose weight more than likely have lost weight due to a change in their mentality of food and exercise rather than on a bottle of pills that has promised them the world.

Keep this in mind next time you feel tempted to dial that 800 number you see at 2 in the morning at the bottom of your screen. That diet in a bottle is not a miracle worker.

May 6 is No Diet Day, so stop dieting and start living.

LYNNAE PEDROTTI