Lumen

 “You, too can look like me!  Buy this product!”  

So I am at the gym and on the elliptical machine under the requisite bank of monitors.  The two nearest me are on the Planet Fitness channel and on CNN.  I am on the machine for my usual 30 minute warm up, and during that time, I manage to catch several commercial blocks on CNN that include a product called “Lumen”.  There is no audio (you can stream it through your earphones if you would like).  The commercial shows several vignettes of very attractive, trendy looking twenty-somethings doing trendy looking stuff while puffing periodically into this… thing that reminds me of a kazoo or one of those “Whoopie” whistles.  Followed by high-fives and overall happy jazzy vibes while numbers from 1 to 5 flash on a wheel and they go back to their granola and yogurt parfaits. 

After several weeks of watching this commercial pop up, I decided to investigate.  Lumen is this (gizmo) that you blow into, and the technology analyzes your Co2 to determine if your body is burning fat or carbohydrates.  Coolness.  Okay. 

Searched YouTube for the Lumen product and tens of hundreds of videos popped up for Lumen and like products.  Hmmm… so I started watching. Of the videos I sampled, all were produced by very attractive, trendy looking under-40-ish people, all of whom seem to have about 5% body fat, all hawking Lumen and like products.  All stating that Lumen trained them in “…eating carbohydrates and fats and the importance of tracking and counting calories!”.  Also, the related app wants to know ALLLLLL about your health. 

Okay, so what will Lumen do for me that (Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, MyFitnessPal, my nutritionist, etc.) did not do?  I am left with the impression that it was nothing more than a gizmo that will make some trendy, attractive people feel like they are actually doing something when the Doctor won’t renew their Ozempic prescriptions.   

It really reminded me of the 1980’s fad diet pills (that I heavily bought into) – “Take two of these pills 3 times a day, and exercise at least 60 minutes each day!  You should see results in 60-90 days!”. 

I just shake my head, finish out my warm up and got my workout in.