Spontaneous Reduction

Losing weight has never really been very much fun. Even the most considerate diet imposes unseemly demands on the will, and running in place can be downright tiring. Surely, fatties have long maintained, there must be easier ways to slim down. Now there are --scads of them. The current easy-exercise-equipment market is doing a $100 million-a-year business in belts and wheels, inflatable suits, stretch straps, electronic and battery-operated devices, all designed to knock off pounds and inches with a minimum of effort on the part of the individual. For those who cannot raise even the minimum, there is the "wrapping" method, which asks nothing of the customer but time and money.

A slanted cushion called the Trim Twist Exercise Jogger ($9.95) forces runners' knees up, and supposedly provides the equivalent of one mile of jogging in only six minutes of use. The Indoor Jogger ($134) keeps the old legs going on alternately rising and falling platforms, while the Treadmill ($235), a rubber mat on rollers with sidebar support, actually records the footage covered, if not inches lost. Gyrogym's Smartbel ($59.50), a 2-lb. dumbbell "with a mind of its own," generates surprisingly strong gyroscopic forces that cause the user to exert himself just as much as he would with a 110-lb. weight. The Skinny Dipper ($50), a V-shaped chaise, flattens out under the weight of the user, then bounces him back for more.

Plastic Pants. The hottest item of the season--and not only hot but sweating--are Trim-Jeans. Variously known as Slim Shorts and Air Shorts, and priced anywhere from $6 to $14, the plastic pants are put on, inflated with the accompanying air pump, and worn for half an hour or so. Like last year's popular Sauna Belt, the shorts work by trapping body heat between vinyl and skin; the heat, it is claimed, "breaks down fatty tissue." Some doctors think, however, that the weight that melts away is actually just water that is lost through perspiration. Shorts fans do not seem to pay much attention to such comments. Manhattan's Abercrombie & Fitch has sold more than 1,000 pairs of Slim Shorts in the past two weeks.

The most passive reduction plan yet developed occurs in the 112 Trim-A-Way figure-controlling salons across the U.S. The ingredients: strips of cloth and a secret chemical formula. The method: wrapping. The results: a guaranteed loss of two inches the first session, five by the fifth. The naked customer is marked and measured by a white-smocked technician, who then takes rolls of wet linen and firmly wraps her in oversize bandaging from the ankles up, pressing the fat upward. "It really is tight," reported an impressed client last week. "You wonder if gangrene won't set in before they finish." Wrapping stops at the breasts, but encases bulging upper arms.

Hanging Skin. Circulation cut by a quarter, the client totters to a plastic-covered lounge and gets soaked with the mysterious liquid, then is zipped into a plastic suit. There the customers lie in moist and mummy-like discomfort for 90 minutes. Then they are unzipped and measured to discover how many inches they have lost.

That loss often seems considerable, but any drop in weight is due to fright or imagination. Like pressed ducks, the clients weigh as much as ever; the difference is that they look neater. The tight tapes, explain the Trim-A-Way experts, squeeze superfluous fluid from pockets of fat in the body, forcing it into the system. The highly secret, wildly expensive ($12 per quart) solution is a mixture of salts that shrink the skin. "After all," explains Manhattan Trim-A-Way Salon Manager Eric Bernard, "we can't shrink the body and leave the skin hanging there. We have to tighten the flesh too."

The effects supposedly last as long as the fatty tissues can be kept lean --and that can amount to as much as a year with sensible dieting. But doctors put little stock in the system. Manhattan Internist Morton Glenn dismisses it as "wishful thinking to expect to lose inches by squeezing the water in the fat tissues into the system."

The only real danger is for clients with varicose veins, phlebitis or other circulatory problems, which might be severely aggravated by the rigid wrapping pressures. Certainly the cost is higher ($25 for one treatment, $200 for ten, $300 for 20) and the effects said to be more dramatic than anything Trim-Jeans can provide.

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