The Ab Circle Pro sounded too perfect. Just three minutes a day to achieve the abs of your dreams! Websites promised it. TV commercials promised it. The Home Shopping Network promised it, for a very short time offering the Ab Circle Pro for the exact same price as everybody else.
But their testimonials backed up the promises. On the Natural Super Foods Blog "Taylor" declares that a friend of his brother-in-law "used this machine and lost over 60 pounds in 8 weeks. . . . He said he just did it for 3 mins. a day."
Coincidentally, a woman on the Ab Circle Pro TV commercial gave the exact same quote: sixty pounds, eight weeks, three minutes a day. It sounds unbelievable, so let's stop and do the math:
Losing one pound means burning 3,500 calories, so losing sixty pounds means burning 210,000 calories. Over eight weeks, that means 3,750 calories a day. Three minutes a day means the Ab Circle Pro burns 1,250 calories a minute.
Now, that's pretty impressive. I mean, according to Good Housekeeping, step aerobics only burns 20 calories. Playing tennis, roller-skating, and swimming only burns 8 calories.
Lifting weights while you're playing racquetball doesn't come close. Chopping wood while you're jumping rope only burns 40 calories. Which, you know, comes up slightly short of 1,250.
Looking back at "Taylor"'s testimonial, I see his brother-in-law's friend was also "watching his food intake as well." Assuming three minutes on the Ab Circle Pro burns five times more calories than parasailing with a microwave oven strapped to each arm, that's still only 200 calories a day. This means he must have reduced his diet by 3,550 calories a day.
Which is more than most people eat.
Fuzzy math also characterizes Jennifer Nicole Lee's testimony, though maybe massive weight loss makes your brain go weird. According to the Ab Circle Pro website and the Home Shopping Network, she lost over 80 pounds! Well, or over 70 pounds, according to another website and her biography, but maybe it's hard to remember stuff when you don't eat. She talks about her weight loss on the Ab Circle Pro website, and in TV commercials. She sold it on HSN. Her before-and-after pictures are everywhere!
Jennifer totally turned her life around, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. Why, since losing that weight, she's become one of America's favorite fitness experts, even appearing on Oprah and on the covers of over 26 magazines!
I saved her story for last because it's most inspiring. See, her weight loss occurred before 2005, when she was named Miss Bikini America, and the Ab Circle Pro wasn't even trademarked until this year.
Jennifer lost her weight before she started using the Ab Circle Pro! Now that's the kind of results I need.
3 comments:
Whoever stretched the first photo to make the second went a little overboard. Foreheads and eyes don't shrink by half when you lose a little weight.
What a wonderful idea! Maybe I can get better gas mileage by driving a car that hasn't been invented yet. Or be Eternally Youthful by using some sort of face goop that Clinique will develop maybe ten years up the road. And here I always thought we had to wait for these things; oh, to think of all the time I've wasted.
Their strategy is clear in a description of Ms. Lee on the Ab Circle Pro website:
"Lost over 80 lbs & uses the Ab Circle Pro!"
See -- you might assume the first and second halves of that statement are related, but they're not. They could just have easily said "Uses the Ab Circle Pro and got pregnant!" because the Ab Circle Pro is just as responsible for her kids as it is for her weight loss.
Heck, I'll give them a quote: I used the Ab Circle Pro and now I've got the clap!
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