The_MoUsY_spell_checker's Advice Column

my friend just bought this program thing from the internet called "Weight Loss Breeze" apparently its a bunch of breathing excersizes that like train the way you breathe every day. it somehow increases your metabolism. has anybody purchased this? does it work? she said shed let me do them with her and i didnt know if it would be a waiste of time or not. im just wondering if this really works and has helped anybody lose weight?

Quoted from the Weight Loss Breeze website itself:
"I realized that the exercises that helped my clients lose weight did so by bringing more oxygen into the body."

This sounds dubious. Assuming that you don't have lung problems, normal breathing should provide the body with as much oxygen as the blood can carry anyway.

Extra oxygen will not speed up your metabolism. Your metabolism only speeds up when it needs to. (For example, when you're exercising.) When your metabolism is speeding up, you do need more oxygen, but you'll naturally breathe faster at those times.

There is of course a limit to how hard your lungs (and your heart) can work, but if you exercise a lot, your heart and your lungs will become stronger. (This is why a couch potato can get out of breath walking up a short flight of stairs but an athlete can do a lot more exercise than that and still be fine.)

Based on that, I highly doubt that the Weight Loss Breeze program will work. If your friend has already bought it, let her try it. It probably won't cause any harm, but if it actually works, I'll be surprised.

Do keep in mind that someone who is actually trying to lose weight will probably also be doing other things that help weight loss, so unless your friend started the program without changing her diet or physical activity level, you can't really know for sure that it actually made a difference.
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