Weight Loss

Irene O'Garden spent some 30 years of her life hating her body. She'd overeat and balloon up in weight, then go on a diet, then overeat again. And all the while a voice inside would tell her how stupid and unworthy she was.Finally, Ms. O'Garden accepted herself and, as she writes in her new book, "Fat Girl" (HarperSan Francisco, $12), "I gather up the cookie-bloated child, the aching-hearted teen, the wounded Bitch Within, and thank them all for teaching me. I give them love. I let them go."

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.

WASHINGTON - Six companies that claimed their products enabled consumers to shed pounds and inches without the need for exercise or dieting are being sued by the Federal Trade Commission, the agency announced yesterday. The actions, filed in federal district courts, are part of a FTC legal and educational initiative aimed at the weight-loss industry and called Operation Big Fat Lie. The FTC has won temporary restraining orders against two of the companies - Femina Inc. of Pembroke Pines, Fla., and AVS Marketing Inc. of Thomson, Ill. - barring them from making false claims in ads for any of their weight-loss products.

It's that time of year, when thoughts turn to that perennial subject of dieting. For many, it's an issue that never really goes away, but returns in full force as remorse over holiday eating sets in. So what haven't you tried yet? The Atkins Diet? Weight Watchers? Jenny Craig? You could read more books about dieting. There's "Dieting for Dummies" by Jane Kirby; "Dieting With the Duchess: Secrets and Sensible Advice for a Great Body" by Sarah Ferguson; "The Turbo-Protein Diet: Stop Yo-Yo Dieting Forever" by Dieter Market; "The Skinny: What Every Skinny Woman Knows About Dieting and Won't Tell You" by Patricia Marx; and "When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair" by Geneen Roth, to name just a few. Or you could go online.

All the attention paid to the Atkins diet didn't much faze Bradley T. MacDonald, even though the competing weight-loss program hurt sales at his Owings Mills business last year. He was certain it wouldn't last - in fact, he suspected the attention would do Atkins in. "I saw problems when Atkins started Atkin-izing TGI Fridays" in 2003, he said. "At that point, you knew that there was problems." Yesterday, his hunch proved true. Atkins Nutraceuticals Inc. - founded on the controversial low-carb, full-fat diet pioneered by the late Dr. Robert C. Atkins - filed for bankruptcy protection in New York, unable to survive its strategy of going after a mass market and purporting to be a lifestyle.

Getting food poisoning might have been the best thing to happen to defensive tackle Aubrayo Franklin during his stint in NFL Europe. Franklin dropped around 20 pounds after becoming ill on his second day with the Frankfurt Galaxy. The weight loss apparently helped Franklin dominate in his 10-game stint with the Galaxy, registering three sacks and three knocked-down passes. Franklin's biggest contribution came from disrupting plays, forcing running backs to cut outside and collapsing the pocket on quarterbacks.

To help combat an emerging national epidemic, pediatricians should screen children as young as 6 for obesity and refer them to intensive weight-loss programs that focus on diet, physical activity and behavioral counseling, an influential government advisory panel said today. Too often, when a parent brings an obese child in for a routine checkup, they leave with little more than advice to eat better and exercise. That's not good enough, says the U.S. Preventive Task Force. Previously, the independent panel said there wasn't enough evidence that weight-loss programs could help children shed pounds.

For many people, the start of the new year means the start of a new diet. But most people will ultimately fail in their efforts to lose weight, says Dr. Lawrence J. Cheskin, founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center. A New Year's resolution to lose weight is a good step, according to Cheskin, associate professor of international health (human nutrition) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But it's simply the first step in what must be a life-changing strategy to shed pounds and keep them off. What is the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center?

Diets that focus on weight loss don't work.If you're among the 99 percent of women who are trying to get or stay thin, you already know this. But it's one thing to deduce it from your own bitter experience, quite another to have it confirmed, in unequivocal terms, by an obesity researcher.His name is Michael Lowe. Officially, he's a psychology professor at MCP Hahnemann University in Philadelphia. His specialty: dieting behavior. In other words, he makes his living studying how folks react to victory and defeat in the battle of the bulge.

Older men who are overweight have a greater chance of cutting their risk of heart disease if they lose weight by eating better rather than exercising.The new finding, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, does not diminish the value of exercise, which the study found helps to lower total cholesterol and blood insulin levels.But by changing their diets and losing weight, obese men gain those same benefits and more, including significantly lower blood pressure and increases in the "good" cholesterol.