Samuel Osei-Tutu- a pharmacist and weight-loss enthusiast as well as country manager, McKinnon Nigeria Limited- claims his company has the African rights to distribute the most effective weight loss supplement ever made. Lipstick tackles him on this claim.

By Morenike Taire

Why is it important for women to lose weight?

A young lady wants to be any size she wants but when you grow up there are a lot of conditions which are associated with gaining weight. There are people who have issues with their joints and bones because of their heavy weight. Your bones are going to be constant for the rest of your life so if you have too much weight it will really affect it. There are other conditions.

Are you saying these conditions will just disappear if they lose weight?

Yes. Again people begin to lose more of their muscle from 30 years and above and begin to gain fat so if you want to wait till after you have all the kids, by the time you get there it will be very difficult for you.

But why not exercise?

Exercise is one of the natural ways. I have been working on this weight loss thing for about four years. If you exercise you do good but the reality is that you have a lot of people who because of their lifestyle one way or the other are not able to do plenty of it. Case in point; I have this lady who decided she wanted to lose weight by exercising then a week or two into the whole thing she has a knee injury.

How does such a person run on a mill? There are a lot of people whose schedules are just brutal. You really want to exercise but you can’t. “Mind you there is an adequate amount of exercise to lose weight. There are exercises that will work with your heart but will not necessarily cause you to lose weight. The exercise to lose weight is not the kind that you do for 30 minutes. You need to spend like 2 hours and it has to be a continuous process.

What about genetics. Don’t you think some people are just naturally big?

There are lots of schools of thoughts when it comes to this. There is another one, that weight gain is actually not genetic and if it runs in the family it’s because they eat similar things.

Similar lifestyle…

Yes. There is a recent research finding that says weight loss is actually not genetic but even with that it doesn’t mean that if you do something about it, you won’t get there. There is an ideal weight for everybody. If you have a particular height you are expected by nature to have a certain ideal weight.

So, how does your product change anything?

There are three ways by which people lose weight. Either you sleep well, you eat healthy or exercise; or a combination. People want to eat healthy but they do not have the opportunity, exercise but they do not have the time. The ideal hours to sleep is 7-9 hours. You can experiment yourself. Check your weight before you go to bed and in the morning before you go to the washroom, check your weight again. It’s the best time your body loses weight. Your body repairs itself. It works with a certain hormone called the human growth hormone (HGH).

It is that hormone that causes you to grow tall. Repair worn-out tissues, feel strong when you wake up. It helps the HGH to get to the appropriate part of the body to use your body fat as energy to repair your tissues. When people grow old you see that they become very bony because almost all their muscles are gone because gaining muscle when you are ageing is very tough. Because of the lean muscle you get as a result of this you burn more fat.