Gain Weight

I have spinal stenosis. My lower spine doesn't hurt, but I have no mobility. I'm 80 years old and in good health otherwise. I do exercises each morning like marching and bending my knees. I would like to know what other exercises I could do. Spinal stenosis -- the narrowing of the spinal canal -- can squeeze the nerve roots in the spine or the spinal cord itself. This pinching can weaken the lower body and cause numbness and / or severe leg pain. While it's good news that you are pain-free, physical therapist Jennifer Kline of Physiotherapy Associates in Lutherville strongly recommends meeting with a trainer or physical therapist to begin a flexibility program.

Q: My 14-year-old daughter is not showing any signs of going into puberty. I think it's because she's tall and thin. Are there certain foods she should eat to help her gain weight?A: You've probably noticed that there is considerable variation in physical development among your daughter's friends. Some enter puberty as early as 9 or 10 while others may just be starting at 13. In general, most experts believe a teen-age girl should display visible signs of puberty by age 14.It may be that your daughter's body shape accounts for her lack of development.

MY COMFORTER is calling me, and I can't resist its siren song. It calls to me as soon as the sun sets, and it whispers to me at dawn. It sings to me, and its lullaby is irresistible. It has deceptive power, this down comforter in its pale blue duvet cover. Though light as a feather, it might as well be chain mail, so helpless am I to escape the weight of it on me. But then I do not struggle very hard. My comforter carries some kind of number that lets you know how warm, warmer, warmest it is. It is called "fill weight" -- no attempt to sugarcoat things here -- and the numbers range from 550 to 650. I think that refers to how many geese are now naked so that I may be warm, but I do not know for sure.

Coaches and managers had long tried to get him to lose weight. His already slim wife went through a rigorous diet clinic with him for moral support. And fans offered their own brand of "encouragement," heckling him from the stands for being "a fat pig."But as any overweight person can tell you, no one can lose the weight for you. Nor can the motivation to lose weight come from the outside, be it well-meaning or mean-spirited or something in between."You get used to it after a while," Orioles pitcher Sid Fernandez says of the weight-baiting that has followed him through much of his life.

I am 16 years old and weigh 130 pounds. Is it safe to lose 15 pounds?Without knowing how tall you are and whether you have finished maturing physically, it is impossible for us to give you specific advice about whether losing 15 pounds is healthy for you.As teen-agers go through puberty (mature physically), they go through a period of rapid growth during which they get taller as well as gain weight. Their bones become more dense, which also contributes to weight gain. If you are still in this period of rapid growth, we would not recommend your losing weight at this time.

It's quite a shock to meet Michael Chiklis.One expects a roly-poly guy in his late 30s. After all, that's what he plays on ABC's "The Commish." Mr. Chiklis stars in the detective series as Tony Scali, a warmhearted New York police commissioner with two kids who is losing his hair and could stand to shed a few pounds.The fact of the matter is, the blue-eyed Massachusetts native is just 29. Mr. Chiklis has lost 40 pounds by working out and eliminating fat from his diet. After the first season of "The Commish," Mr. Chiklis says, he made up his mind to lose the excess poundage.

Two stories that slipped under the radar recently, one hopeful, one not so much, provide yet another window into the soul of where high school athletics are and where they might be headed. A new Iowa State University study of 251 Iowa high school football teams found that 9 percent of the linemen on those squads in the 2005 season had body mass indexes (or BMI) that could qualify as adult-class obesity, which suggests that we're willing to put our kids' health at risk earlier and earlier in the name of supposedly making them better.

The only hints that Jacqueline Pressey suffers from lupus are the elbow-length white satin gloves and broad-brimmed straw hat she wears outdoors.If she didn't wear the protective clothing, a red bumpy rash would develop on her face and her hands would swell so severely that she could not comb her two daughters' hair.But after two years of adhering to a strict diet that stresses vegetables, noncitrus fruits and vitamins, the 33-year-old Elkridge woman no longer relies on medication and has returned teaching aerobics -- an activity she thought she would never do again.

The last Jingle Bells have segued into Auld Lang Syne, but the ghost of this past Christmas may be lingering along jowls and waistlines. Americans traditionally gain weight -- four to seven pounds, by some accounts -- between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Just as traditionally, January has been the month for weight-loss resolutions.But the manic desire for quick-fix diets may be waning: Surveys by the Calorie Control Council, a trade group representing the manufacturers of low-calorie, low-fat foods, indicate a decline in dieters -- from 65 million in 1986 to 48 million at present.

When Mark Turgeon was asked about his frontcourt Monday, Maryland's men's basketball coach inhaled deeply like a swimmer about to take an underwater plunge. Five weeks after replacing the retired Gary Williams, Turgeon knows his young team has issues pronounced enough that he felt compelled to say more than once: "I didn't sign a one-year contract. " Turgeon, who signed an eight-year deal, has only nine scholarship players, four shy of the limit. His only senior, guard Sean Mosley — who struggled with his shot last season — is in a walking boot after seriously spraining his ankle in a pickup game with teammates.