"weight watchers" news and stories

I always hate the word "diet," because even though it's also a medical term, it's usually used by people looking for a quick fix. We all know that losing weight and getting in shape is a life long change in lifestyle. I'm especially reminded of that since I just got back from my yearly physical and...well...I don't want to tell you what my weight is.

Having said that, I think all diets have at least something that we can take away from them and use, and Yahoo's Buzz log has the top 20 diets being searched on Yahoo right now. They include old standbys like Atkins, The Zone, and Weight Watchers, and a few newcomers, such as the Master Cleanse Diet and The Hallelujah Diet, which is "biblically based." I have no idea what that means, but it probably means walking in a desert for a really long time.

I was surfing around the new and improved AOL Food today, and I came across this A to Z Guide To Diets. It doesn't have every single diet, of course (how could they when there's a new diet book out every week?), but it has the one that you're probably on or are thinking of trying, including The 3 Hour Diet, The Abs Diet, Atkins, Blood Type Diet, Bob Greene, Cabbage Soup, Dr. Phil's Diet, Fat Flush, Fat Smash, Grapefruit Diet, L.A. Weight Loss Diet, NutriSystem, Sonoma, Ultimate New York Diet, Ultrametabolism, Weight Watchers, and The Zone.

The only plan I've tried is The Abs Diet, because it's not only sensible and realistic, it promotes a lot of exercise and not starving yourself or cutting out a ton of foods you like to eat. But I cringe at the word "diet." It just screams "temporary fix," and keeping the weight off and your body healthy is a life-long plan.

I've done an extensive survey of all of the information about weight loss that you can find on the shelves of Border's and Barnes & Noble, and here are the results.

It seems as if the best way to lose weight and get in shape is a combo of the following: eating a lot of carbs, eating a lot of fat, cutting carbs out completely, drinking a lot of water, not eating any "white" foods at night like bread, rice, and pasta, eating just grapefruit, eating your meals in a mixed-up fashion (lunch for dinner, breakfast for lunch, etc), not eating after 8pm, eating a lot of soups, cutting out all candy, cakes, and processed foods, avoiding diet drinks, eating a Subway sub a couple of times a week, eating foods according to your blood type, eating foods according to color, eating a lot of fiber, training your brain to think like a thin person, eating like they do in France, eating like they do in China, not counting calories, making sure you count calories, taking vitamins and supplements, become a vegan, eating more meat, eat a lot of apples, eating only raw foods, and joining one of the weight loss organizations such as Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig.

If you follow the above rules, you should get in shape very quickly. You're welcome.

The number of Americans dieting is at a 16 year low. Many Baby Boomers have decided the heck with all the fad diets and instead they are just trying to eat healthy. In 2006 this was the #1 diet, followed by a doctors medical advice, and then with the Weight Watchers program in third place.

This doesn't mean that Americans don't feel they need to lose weight. A great many adults, around 60%, say they would like to drop around 20 pounds. (I wonder if this is includes the 36% of adults who are overweight and the 24% who are obese? Somehow I doubt the figures correlate fully.)

Sadly, the actual numbers of those who obese and overweight in America has continued to climb, with a recent survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying that about 24% of U.S. adults are obese, up from 16% in 1995 and 20% in 2000.

At least many of the fad diets seem to be on their way out, and the regimen of juggling a healthy diet is in. Now if only the whole country can join in juggling and get healthy.

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I don't know about you, but even though I love every sunny, poolside moment of summer, I secretly rejoice when the days start to get shorter and the air a little chillier. The end of summer means the beginning of fall, and that means I get to drop kick my bathing suit and body-baring shorts and tanktops. I don't have to be so conscious of what I'm eating. And not eating.

But "dieting" isn't a seasonal activity. People watch what they eat year-round. According to Forbes, "Americans spent an estimated $46 billion on diet products and self-help books in 2004." If that's the case, why is obesity such a problem in the US? Because, as a government review has found, two-thirds of dieters on "diet regimes" will regain all the weight that they lost within a year. Give them five years, and almost everyone will gain it back.

People gain the weight back for a number of reasons, but one of them is that the popular diet programs are very expensive, especially since many health and nutrition experts believe that they are ineffective to begin with. Forbes examined the weekly menus of the ten most popular diets to find out just how expensive they really are. The results are listed below. The first dollar amount is how much the program costs per week for any associated book, membership fees, and food costs, and the second percentage is how much more that is than the average $55.44 a normal person spends on food.

• Jenny Craig - $137.65, 152.8%
• NutriSytem - $113.52, 108.5%
• Atkins - $100.52, 84.6%
• Weight Watchers - $96.64, 77.5%
• Zone Diet - $92.84, 70.5%
• Ornish - $78.75, 44.6%
• South Beach - $78.76, 44.4%
• SlimFast - $77.73, 42.8%
• Sugar Busters - $69.62, 27.9%
• Subway - $68.80, 26%

Whatever happened to good old fashioned "eat less, exercise more?" I think that's free.

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