Come for the results, stay for the pictures of Mr. Sato in his underwear!
Loyal RocketNews24 readers no doubt know the identity of this slender young man.
That’s our crack Japanese-language reporter Mr. Sato, but you might be thinking that he looks particularly youthful in that photo. That’s because the picture was taken several years ago, shortly after Mr. Sato joined the RocketNews24 team and when he was a svelte specimen who weighed less than 55 kilograms (121 pounds).
▼ This was also the era when he occasionally had cornrows.
However, the subsequent years spent toiling in the cheese-and-curry-filled RocketTrenches have had an impact on Mr. Sato’s physique.
In his time with us, he’s gained some 20 kilograms (44 pounds), but he’s now come to the decision that it’s time to put the brakes on this train to Chubsville. So, what’s the plan? A new, more intense exercise regimen than his current once-a-week trip to the gym? A switch to a low-calorie diet with more modest portions?
Nope. Instead, Mr. Sato’s ploy to slim down was to spend a solid month guzzling Healthya, the Japanese bottled tea that’s marketed as a beverage that will burn off body fat.
Most ads allude to drinking a 350-milliliter (11.8-ounce) bottle of Healthya a day to aid in your weight loss efforts, but Mr. Sato decided to leap into the ocean of diet-oriented tea with both feet, and instead purchased a crate of enough one-liter bottles to keep a supply at home and in the office, making it his go-to beverage for an entire month.
Seeing as how partial nudity isn’t really an uncommon occurrence at RocketNews24 headquarters, Mr. Sato agreed to strip down to his underwear and be photographed every morning of the 30-day experiment, so that we could observe the effects and effectiveness of his new beverage of choice.
▼ Day 10
After about a week, Mr. Sato reported that, while he hadn’t weighed himself or measured his waist, he felt slimmer. “My stomach feels a little less lumpy, and a little smoother and tighter,” he reported.
Again, he made no other lifestyle changes during the experiment. He stuck to his regular eating habits of a piece of bread for breakfast, a hearty lunch, and occasional after-work drinking. He also kept up his normal pace of hitting the gym once a week, no more and no less.
▼ Day 20
But as the month wore on, Mr. Sato began to mentally feel less of a transformation taking place than he’d initially sensed. Still, he stayed the course, and on Day 30, we took one last photo.
▼ Day 30
Hmm…is it just our imagination, or does he look sort of the same? Let’s compare the photo we took one day before the start of Mr. Sato’s Healthya experiment, and the one from the end.
▼ Day 0 (left) vs. Day 30 (right)
Nope, we’re not imagining things. The only visible change after a month is that his hair has gotten longer.
But hey, Healthya never claimed it would make you visibly smaller, just that it would burn body fat. As luck would have it, Mr. Sato’s gym has a body fat measuring machine. Before beginning the experiment, it gave his body fat percentage as 24.6. So how about after 30 days of chugging down Healthya?
▼ Pre-experiment body fat percentage circled in blue, post-experiment percentage circled in red
Wait, his body fat percentage increased by 1.6 percent over the month?!?
We’ve got to admit, even those of us who were skeptical about Healhtya’s claims didn’t see that coming. “Maybe I unconsciously started letting myself eat more, or take it too easy at the gym, because I thought the tea was working?” offered Mr. Sato.
While these are only Mr. Sato’s personal results, we think one thing we can conclude is that if the only lifestyle change you make is drinking a lot of Healthya, you probably aren’t going to suddenly become slim and trim. Oh, and we can also say, without a shadow of a doubt, that Mr. Sato really, really like black boxer briefs.
Follow Casey on Twitter, where his underwear preferences remain a closely guarded secret.
Images ©RocketNews24
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