While America is facing the very real problem of childhood obesity, across the pond the British are dealing with another problem. Apparently half of the country’s six-year-old girls want to be thinner.

When I was six I was more concerned with Barbie than my weight, but a recent study conducted at Cambridge University has revealed that the nation’s young girls are scarily preoccupied with their weight, and actually think they’re overweight when they’re not. The experiment will be aired on Tuesday 2 March on the Channel 4 program Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance, and reveals that most of the girls involved in the study think they will be too fat by the time they turn 12.

In the study, the girls were presented with digitally altered photographs of themselves and asked to choose their ideal shape. Half of them chose the image that was three sizes smaller than their current size, which happened to be the skinniest they could pick. Even more surprising is that these girls think being skinnier will make them more popular.

The Sun tabloid interviewed two of the girls’ mothers who blame the fashion media and its Photoshopping craze.

“[My daughter] Saffron looks through my magazines and says her legs are fat. There is a worrying culture of girls thinking they’re overweight from a very young age,” says one mother. The other mother told the daily newspaper: “These girls idolize models and get depressed.”

Source

Exercising by taking your dog out for a walk is not only fun, it is also 600% more effective than going to the gym. But a new invention could change all that, making Americans lazy in the process. The Dog Powered Scooter is a gadget into which your dog is harnessed and then pulls the scooter or bike which you steer.

It sounds like a great idea, but if you’re just going along for the ride while your poor pooch does all the work, where’s the fat-burning fun in that?! Sure you still get some fresh air, but you won’t be using the muscles half as much as you would even if you went for a slow walk with your pet, let alone playing catch with him or her.

This form of dog mushing is said on its website to be perfectly safe for your dog, but your animal must be healthy and want to pull the scooter or bike. This seems all pretty pointless to me, but maybe some dog owners would welcome this invention.

Source

If you’re having difficulty shifting your baby weight after trying diet after diet and workout trend after trend, why not become a Wii Mommy. Many mothers have joined an online community where they swop stories about how the Nintendo Wii Fit has helped them drop their post-baby weight.

Essentially a video game, the Wii Fit helps individuals lose weight with a series of fun exercises based on games. Julie Maloney lost 60 pounds over the course of a year using her Wii Fit Plus
.

“Workout tapes, gym memberships; I tried everything and all I was doing was dumping my money and I was getting nowhere except upset,” Julie told Better TV. “I did the balance and aerobics. [With just] 10 minutes of hula hoop my weight shrank. I was just playing games and I was enjoying myself. There was no work involved. The next thing I know, I’m in a size 8.”

Beyoncé is on the cover of the Vogue ‘Shape’ issue this month.  The mega-star talked about everything from romance, the music biz, her acting career and even weight.  When Beyoncé starred in Cadillac Records she revealed she had to put on 20 pounds, and for the movie Dreamgirls she had to loose loads of weight.  Some critics criticized her work on Dreamgirls claiming that she wasn’t very convincing but in Cadillac Records she stole the show.  She said,

“Darnell (the director) brought something out in me, and I think it was because she’s a woman, and once again, kind of like with my band, we just had a connection, and we understood each other. She knew how to talk to me, and I knew what she meant.”

Darnell Martin commented on Beyoncé’s commitment to the role.

“She was willing to do the work,” she says, “to put on the weight and not be glamorous, to go to a very ugly place and play someone she’s never been: a drug addict, abused, abandoned by her parents. She was very excited to tear her image apart. When she first saw herself on film strung out, half-naked, overweight in the bathtub…she was so happy. I love how she embraced the process.”

Martin asked Beyoncé to gain 20 pounds, a body transformation that she was already familiar with when she filmed Dreamgirls.  To play the role as Deena Jones she went on a lemonade fast for 13 days and was on a strict diet and exercise regimen during filming.  Beyoncé said that gaining the weight for Cadiallac Records was fun,    

“I ate a lot of butter-pecan ice cream,” she admits. “But it’s easy for me to gain weight. I’m not a naturally stick-thin girl. I’m not heavy, but I’m not skinny, either.” 

Celeb Diet Doc…
Beyonce’s use of the lemonade or master cleanser will lead to yo-yo dieting and I would not recommend it under any circumstance.  More whole unprocessed foods are the key to healthy and sustainable weight l0ss

Source

Backstreet Boys heartthrob, Nick Carter, has done a 180-degree turn when it comes to lifestyle choices. During the Backstreet Boys European tour last year, Nick started to feel the physical pains of an unhealthy lifestyle and overweight body and began to suffer from chest discomfort. He went to a cardiologist to discover he suffers from cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart. Being only 28 at the time, he knew he had to act fast and leave behind the booze and drugs and drop a considerable amount of weight. He did not want to end up like two other stars that died from cardiomyopathy, singer Andy Gibb at 30 years of age, and actor Chris Penn at 40.

Over the past year, Nick made drastic changes in his lifestyle and dropped 57 pounds, he now weighs a healthy 167 and looks drop-dead gorgeous! Looking at his picture it is evident that this handsome singer has learned some hard life lessons and now glows because of it. Hopefully we’ll soon learn how he dropped the weight and got back into shape.

Source

Lily Allen has recently slimmed down as she has now learned how to juggle the life of an international music star. It’s only been a couple of years since Lily’s name has hit the international music charts and since we’ve known her she has always been on the chubby side. But here recently she has opened up about her weight loss and explained that as she climbed to reach to the top of the music industry she found herself binge eating in hotel rooms after shows and drinking too much alcohol.

“I was on tour with people I didn’t know and I was all around the world working really hard and was really confused and lonely. I was sitting in hotel rooms ordering chips.”

She was essentially using junk food and alcohol as her crutch to get through stressful and depressing times as she was learning how life works in the showbiz industry. Now, she has become a much stronger woman and claims to be happier in her life and she has dropped the weight. With the right frame of mind and a positive attitude weight loss is easily attainable.

Source

At the Hollywood premiere of, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” the always elegant and healthy Jennifer Connelly looked very frail. Since then, the media has pushed her small frame in to the lime light wondering if is she is in poor health or if she has joined the ranks of the Hollywood ladies who simply don’t eat.

However at the 20^th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, Jennifer’s husband, Paul Bettany decided to address the media and put the rumors to rest once and for all. In a brief interview with OK Magazine he explained that Jennifer has recently lost her father causing her extra stress and obviously less desire to eat. Some of you remember that the same misfortune happened to Angelina Jolie in 2007 when her mother passed away and she too dropped a considerable amount of weight as a result. Hopefully, Jennifer’s heart will soon heal and she can get back to her healthy lifestyle and enjoy time with her husband and their two children.

Source

The new Google Diet? This was served in the Google cafeteria in NYC. apparently to celebrate a googler’s birthday. And I heard so many good things about the free and healthy food at Google… well I guess they have good health insurance at least.

Pop singer, Lily Allen slimmed downed from a size 12 to size eight with the help of $600 dollar hypnosis sessions with hypnotist, Susan Hepburn. Says Lily,

“After the hypnotism, I want to go to the gym every day, otherwise I feel really bad. I just want to get more toned and healthy.”

Lily Allen,22, joins fellow celebs, Geri Halliwell, Sarah Ferguson and Sophie Dahl, who have all been treated by hypnotists in an effort to lose weight.

So is hypnosis effective for weight loss?
Let’s be clear as to what hypnosis can and cannot do. Hypnosis will not be helpful without a proper diet and exercise program.   A diet of Ho Ho’s and Twinkies, even combined with the most effective hypnosis program on the face of the earth will lead to failure. Hypnosis is potentially beneficial if it leads to adopting the proper behaviors for successful weight loss. Behavioral weight management programs, using goal setting and behavior modification, have been successful in this regard. While one study found no additional benefit of hypnosis to a behavioral weight loss program, clinical studies are lacking.

Now that Lily has weight loss licked, it’s time to use the hypnosis to get her to quit smoking…

Source

Have you counted calories, engaged in daily exercise and still could not lose weight? There are overweight individuals who repeatedly fail at losing weight despite reporting a daily caloric intake of 1200 calories a day. There are a number of explanations that could account for this including: low metabolism, under-reporting of calories eaten and over-reporting of calories burned during exercise.

I ran across an interesting study published in NEJM, that searched for an answer. The researchers studied a group of “diet-resitant” obese individuals who perceived a genetic cause for their obesity, used thyroid medication at a high frequency, and described their eating behavior as normal. Several of these individuals had 20 previous attempts at dieting and most had undergone extensive medical evaluations for obesity. This study helps dispell a number of common diet myths….

Diet Myths:

It’s my metabolism
This “diet- resistant” group had a resting metabolic rate within 5% of predicted. Metabolism was directly correlated with the amount of lean body mass and did not differ significantly from the control group.

I burn calories more efficiently
The rate at which the body expends energy to digest food and convert it to fuel was no different between the diet resistant and control group. Similarly the rate at which calories were burned for exercise was no different.

I count calories and eat 1200 calories a day
The diet resistant group under-reported their actual food intake by 47% or 1053 calories a day! This calorie intake analysis was calculated by using tagged water and compared with an individual’s food log.

I exercise
The diet resistant group over reported physical activity by 75% or 251 calories per day. Similarly this calories burned analysis was calculated by using tagged water and compared with an individual’s exercise log.

Diet Myths Busted
The number one reason why many dieters fail at weight loss is under-estimating food intake and over-estimating exercise. This is one of the reasons I believe “losing weight is 90% mental.” As the Discovery Channel’s Myth Busters would say… this myth is busted!