The elusive shortuct to losing weight

Fortunes have long been made in the weeks between the making and breaking of New Year's resolutions. But with all the get-thin-quick schemes on the market, experts have always found it almost impossible to get the real, tough-love message across.

In today's Science Times, under the headline, "No Gimmicks: Eat Less and Exercise More," Jane Brody explains:

And really, it doesn’t matter whether you choose a diet based on your genotype or the phases of the moon, or whether you cut down on sugars and starches or fats. If you consume fewer calories than you need to maintain your current weight, you will lose.

In 1931, the city's Health Commissioner offered identical advice: "The only safe and sure way to reduce is to eat less and to exercise more."

July 21, 1931
WARNS OF QUACKERY IN WEIGHT REDUCING

Dr. Wynne says all pills and other preparations that decrease fat are poisonous

Hold diet only method -- Must be combined with exercise and not overdone, he declares on radio

"Fakers, quacks and charlatans" of offer for sale "weight reducing pills, soaps, medicines, gadgets and the like" were denounced as menaces to health yesterday by Health Commissioner Wynne in the weekly Health Department television broadcast over station WGBS on "Reducing Weight Safely."

Every week, he said, letters were received at the Health Department from person who had fallen into the hands of some quack asking how they could regain the good health they lost, together with their fat, by innocent-looking soaps or pills.

"Every once in a while," Dr. Wynne continued, "we read in the newspapers of the death--frequently by suicide--of actresses or other prominent persons who ruined their health trying to keep think by so-called 'easy' methods. How many others there may be in this city who have destroyed their happiness by the same method I have no means of knowing. But I do know this, that there are many of them, perhaps thousands.

"Be warned before taking any pills for weight reduction that are called harmless by the salesman or the advertising. Pills that really reduce your weight cannot be harmless, for they are poisonous. They produce their effect by breaking down the body. They reduce your weight by the same route as a destructive disease might reduce you, and leave you at the end in such a condition that you may never recover. If the pills you hear about are not poisonous, then they cannot produce reduction and are only frauds."