Fact or fiction: You can’t be overweight and healthy.
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FICTION Health is determined by cardiovascular ability, not weight. If you can’t walk a mile without getting winded, chances are, no matter how heavy or light you are, you’re unhealthy. On the first episode of “Fat March,” the marchers couldn’t take 20 steps without getting winded.

Fact or fiction: Cardio exercising burns more fat than weightlifting.

FICTION Muscle burns more muscle than fat. A heavier person has to exert more effort to move because they’re moving heavier “objects” compared to the average person. If you think of your body as your own personal weight system, a heavier person is going to use a lot more energy to climb up a hill. That translates to faster weight loss.

Fact or fiction: Eating before bedtime makes you gain weight.

FACT Our bodies recharge when we sleep. If you’re giving your body extras, it has to work overtime and that’s not good because it’s concentrating on digesting the foods and not re-fueling you. Our metabolisms aren’t as active when we sleep. It’s crucial for us to get six to eight hours of sleep. We should feel fatigued enough to fall asleep and food doesn’t help that. Food is for energy, not as a sleep aid.

If you just need to crunch on something or want to feel full, try “eat-free foods” instead — pickles, red peppers and celery are great examples.

Fact or Fiction: Fifteen-minute power naps reinvigorate you.

FACT Power naps do re-energize you, but you don’t want to make a habit of it. Then, you will feel groggy if you don’t get it. Not to mention, most of us don’t live a lifestyle that would allow us to escape for a few winks. Instead of relying on that cup of coffee to give you your midday jolt, it’s better to re-energize with food instead. Some great power foods are grapes, for their natural sugars, and granola, for the good carbohydrates.

The Gap brought Isabel Hernandez to tears.

At Memorial City Mall with her mom, she had hoped to find back-to-school clothes. It was mid-August — eighth grade just weeks away.

But The Limited had nothing that fit. At The Gap, the mother and daughter flipped through the racks, looking at sizes.

“Don’t you have anything bigger than a 12?” Angella Mudd eventually asked the store clerk, who shook her head.

No, the woman replied.

“There is a store down the way for heavy kids.”

At that store Isabel refused to look at the clothes — too embarrassing.

“Forget it,” she told Mudd, who started to cry as well. “I don’t want to find something.”

Although that happened a year ago, Mudd still tells the story today.

It helps explain, she says, why she pushed her oldest daughter to try a weight-loss camp this summer and, eventually, why Isabel agreed.

“It was a revelation,” Mudd said. “We had to do something.”

Battling cravings
Once a bright-cheeked beanpole, Isabel started gaining weight in the fourth grade, around the time her parents divorced. Her dad, Efren Hernandez, is a quiet man who likes to cook and to buy his daughter gifts, but says his work schedule often keeps him from seeing her.

It was during trips to see his family in Villa del Carbon, Mexico, that Isabel started putting on weight. The summer before her fifth-grade year she gained 14 pounds. The next summer she took on 13 more. Mudd says her ex-husband’s relatives pushed food, that Isabel hadn’t learned to say no.

But Isabel’s mom acknowledges she also failed at times to make sure her daughter ate healthily. A registered nurse and director of emergency medicine at Christus St. Catherine Hospital in Katy, Mudd understands health. She knows food cravings, too.

The family has a collective weakness for Baskin-Robbins’ Love Potion 31, and up until recently she bought 5-gallon tubs of the sticky raspberry and chocolate sweet. The kids got potato chips with their lunches and, if they pushed for junk food, she’d often acquiesce.

And then there was Isabel’s school. The cafeteria at Morton Ranch Jr. High sold pizza, and a vending machine near the band room offered ice cream sandwiches and chips, Isabel said.

By the end of her eighth-grade year, Isabel reached nearly 180 pounds at 5 feet 1 inches tall, clearly overweight by federal standards. Mudd started ordering her daughter clothes over the Internet — where The Gap and other name brands offer plus-sized clothing.

A tough sell
Still, Isabel flinched at the mention of weight-loss camp.

More than 17 percent of teenagers are overweight in the U.S. — that’s about 12 on every school bus or 128 kids at an average high school. But only one in every 10 of them ever seeks help, researchers say. An estimated seven of those 10 eventually become overweight adults.

“How would you like to go to summer camp?” Mudd tried one day last December, after scouring the Internet about childhood obesity. A franchise of youth weight-loss camps was opening its first facility in Texas that summer, and she’d sent away for the information packet.

Ordinarily, Isabel would have quickly agreed. The teenager loved camp, and always came back with a list of new friends and stories about her adventures. But this time she hesitated.

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“What kind of camp?”

When Mudd mentioned weight loss, Isabel clamped down.

“No way.”

Weeks later a camp representative e-mailed Isabel, encouraging her to reconsider. She responded in 36-point, red letters: Stop Sending My Mom This Crap.

“I just didn’t want to go,” Isabel explained later. “I was just tired of everyone talking about my weight and stuff and I was like ‘OK, shut up. I have heard you enough.’ ”

But principles can shift easily in the teenager world.

One day last April, returning from a visit to her grandmother, Isabel told her mom:

“Nanna offered to pay me $100 if I lost 20 pounds.”

“Well, if I gave you $1,000 for new school clothes, would you go to camp?” Mudd asked.

Last supper with friends
A man crooned in Spanish on the speakers at Los Cucos restaurant, where at a table four teenage girls took turns dipping chips in salsa. It was two nights before Isabel left for camp — her last supper with friends.

“Is my mom looking at me?” she asked the girls after they ordered.

Just three tables away, Angella sat with Ed, Isabel’s stepdad, their new baby and Isabel’s younger brother and sister. Later, Isabel would cajole Ed into giving up $20 to watch the penguin movie Surf’s Up at Katy Mills mall. But right then, she tried to ignore them, pretending for that moment that she was on her own, older than her 14 years.

A layer of foundation coated her cheeks, pink from an afternoon swimming at the pool. Mascara and blue eye shadow accented her eyes. Stars dangled from her ears.

“I hope my hair grows over the summer,” Isabel told her friends. “Everyone has long hair now and I am the only one with short hair.”

She stirred her straw around in her Sprite while she talked. Her three friends, shy girls she mostly knew through band, had traditional summer plans. They had family vacations or hoped to laze away long days on the Internet. They talked about summer reading and the teachers they would miss.

Isabel said she hoped to get her braces off soon. Her bigger hopes she didn’t mention. She wanted the summer before freshman year to make her a different person, she said the next day as she packed for camp.

“I really want to start a new life in high school,” she said.

‘They don’t understand’
Walking through the mall toward the movie theater that evening, the girls passed clothing stores where Isabel no longer shopped.

At the theater, she watched skinnier friends order extra butter on their popcorn. Isabel shared Jolly Ranchers with her best friend.

Just barely out of their childhood years, most of Isabel’s friends are still gangly and coltish, fitting into size zero pants despite what they eat. With them, Isabel had always been cautious talking about her weight.

“They don’t understand,” she explained later. “People who are skinny or are thin or average will talk about their weight and say, ‘Oh, I weigh 90 pounds,’ and then they ask you how much you weigh and you get to an uncomfortable position because you don’t want to say.”

But in the weeks leading up to camp, news of Isabel’s summer itinerary began to spread. She told her best friend, a boy she knew and a friend she had just met. Pretty soon her neighbors and her siblings’ friends had heard.

One girl was surprised, “I never knew that Isabel had a problem with her weight,” she said. But most got excited. They asked how she would change.

Heading to bed that night after the movie, she passed her collection of snow globes, glittery glass balls that lined the dresser in the room she shares with her sister.

Just days earlier, her friend Brea Myers had asked:

The other side of the coin, according to the article, is that social networks can also influence us to become, or remain, slender. People “close to someone who lost weight were more likely to get thinner,” according to the article.

That made sense to me as I reflected on my own life. I have never been terribly overweight. My wife is an ideal weight, as are our two children. For years I have been spending a couple of hours, seven days per week, at the gym. Most of the men and women I see and interact with there are not overweight. In my post-employment volunteer work I encounter many staff and other volunteers who have shapes similar to mine — a similar network.

However, two years ago, at age 75, things started to change. In November (ah, Thanksgiving) I added a couple of pounds to the stable weight I had carried for 20 years. My first reaction was to pay no attention to it.

December rolled around with Christmas goodies and I added a couple more pounds. I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me. My advanced age, I had thought, made me safely immune from laying on extra fat. If not immune at that age, when does immunity begin, I wondered. Returning to my “normal” weight would simply be a matter of setting a New Year’s resolution.

When visiting my dermatologist that spring for my routine annual checkup, I was startled to see that in the one year since my last visit, the doctor had lost significant weight, probably 25 pounds. He said his method was simply to cut down on consumption. Despite the fact that I had made no weight reduction progress to date, the thought of adopting his system flew right over my head. I would do it my way.

Trouble is, I had no progress to boast of even one year later. Also, I didn’t like the looks of my profile when passing a mirror.

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My belt took on a slant I didn’t like; high in back; low in front. The belt buckle itself, instead of facing forward, seemed to be facing the ground. When preparing to sit for a long period, I got in the habit of loosening the top button of my pants to become more comfortable. My sport coats were all a bit snug when buttoned. In fact, I was out of control.

The Body Mass Index uses a formula to calculate the amount of fat we carry. That number correlates to health and longevity. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute assigns a BMI range of 18.5 to 24.9 as normal. Numbers higher and lower are abnormal and carry a warning sign: Do something! The dangers of doing nothing lead to high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, stroke and heart disease. My number was 25, just entering the danger zone. However, my father had dropped dead of a heart attack so I believed I had no room for complacency.

At my next annual skin checkup I noticed that my dermatologist had continued to remain slender. Desperate, I determined to learn more. His advice: Forget about eating three squares per day. Eat only when you feel hunger, and then wait a little longer until you feel good and hungry. Eat small portions, slowly. Quit before you feel really satisfied (it takes 20 minutes for the stomach to signal a full feeling to the brain).

I decided my dermatologist would be my role model for weight loss and maintenance. For encouragement he asked that I call and give him a report after awhile.

Don’t expect help from family and friends. They don’t want to lose their image of you, just the way they have known you. “You’re not overweight,” my wife said. She puts out very healthful food, and lots of it. But I had already set my goal. I would call my doctor in a couple of weeks and give him a report that spelled SUCCESS!

With this accomplishment, I have determined to set the goal of lowering my weight to a point even below that disastrous Thanksgiving splurge. Don’t stop me. I’m on a roll!

But the move has angered some experts who say the drug is still being targeted at body conscious teenagers.

Roche, the maker of Xenical, booked airtime for the drug’s new ad campaign on Channel Nine and Channel Ten - the same night as this year’s penultimate episode of the reality show Big Brother, which attracts young viewers.

The consumer watchdog Choice complained last year that Xenical, known to have serious side-effects such as diarrhoea and incontinence, was being advertised extensively during Australian Idol on Channel Ten. Idol, according to Ten, captures more than 50 per cent of the 16- to 39-year-old audience. It will be screened in the same timeslot as Big Brother from next Sunday.

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Choice had also complained that the advertisement failed to say that the drug was designed only for obese people with a body mass index of 30 or more, or for overweight people with a body mass index over 26 and other risk factors such as high cholesterol.

But Roche says the modified campaign “specifically highlights that Xenical is not suitable for everyone and that the pharmacist must assess consumers and their BMI to see if they qualify”. It says consumers are also told that to qualify for Xenical they must first have tried diet and exercise.

However, Greta Kretchmer from the Eating Disorders Foundation said: “We know from talking to people on our helpline that it is not just people who are overweight who are taking Xenical - it is people of normal weight, many of whom are struggling with eating disorders.”

Roche’s marketing campaign was “disgusting and inappropriate”, said Jenny O’Dea, the associate professor of nutrition at the University of Sydney.

Roche’s general manager, Fred Nadjarian, denied the ads had been booked to run during Big Brother.

The drug was approved as an OTC treatment in the US in February, becoming the first ever weight-loss drug to gain that status.

It was launched in May in the US, where around 65% of the population is obese or overweight.

The drug is approved over-the-counter for overweight adults, to be taken in 60mg capsules, three times a day with meals.

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It helps people lose 50% more weight than if they are just dieting, but the drug has to be taken in conjunction with a low-fat, reduced-calorie diet to avoid the embarrassing side effect of uncontrollable diarrhoea. It also has to be combined with a support programme.

GSK plans to file for OTC approval in Europe and international markets before the end of the year, with the aim of launching Alli towards the end of 2008.

The procedure was performed on July 18 on five patients who underwent laparoscopic gastric bypass in 2003 and had been gaining back some weight because of gradual expansion of their gastric pouches. All had their pouches successfully reduced using the new StomaphyX procedure.

“This is an important new option for the 15 to 20 percent of patients who gain weight a few years after undergoing bariatric surgery,” explained Dr. Garber, who heads the New York Bariatric Group. “Because it involves neither abdominal nor internal incisions, this technique is the least invasive, has the lowest risk, and allows patients to recover more quickly and return to their normal activities.”

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Dr. Garber and his colleague, Spencer Holover, MD, have performed more than 2,000 weight loss surgeries with the specially-trained team at Mercy, which has been designated as a Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence by the American Society For Bariatric Surgery.

“This dramatic advance is the future of bariatric surgery,” said Dr. Garber. “The endoluminal technique introduces the instrument that reduces the size of the stomach through the mouth, reducing the risk of infection from surgical incisions, preserving future treatment options, nearly eliminating pain for the patient, and requiring less recovery time than open or even minimally-invasive laparoscopic procedures.”

“I wrote an article because I really wanted to go as in-depth as possible about the way I’ve changed physically over the last 10 years on the air,” Reynolds, 45, said recently while promoting her new Court TV (soon to be truTV) talk show. “And I thought that that would be the most effective way to answer everybody’s questions.”

Her article, “Getting Over Myself,” will be featured in the September issue, on newsstands Aug. 7, a representative for Glamour said Monday.

While promoting her book, “Shine,” which talks about her dramatic weight loss, Reynolds requested journalists not ask questions about how she dropped the pounds. During one January 2006 interview, on Atlanta’s Star 94 morning show, Jones hung up after she was asked if her surgery was done in that city.

In July of that year, she told Larry King that she had a “medical intervention” to help her lose weight.

A Quote
“I wrote an article because I really wanted to go as in-depth as possible about the way I’ve changed physically over the last 10 years on the air.”
Star Jones Reynolds
Reynolds, who has said she lost more than 100 pounds through diet and exercise, said she has no qualms about viewing photos of when she was very heavy.

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“I actually like seeing the old pictures because what it says to me is, ‘You never allow yourself to get there again,’” she told reporters, according to AP Radio News. “It was dangerous to me. Very dangerous. I was killing myself.”

Reynolds, who married banker Al Reynolds in 2004, decided to use her maiden name as the title of her afternoon talk show, which premieres Aug. 20.

“Star Jones Reynolds makes dinner for her husband every night. She’s the wife. I’m the working woman,” she said.

Photos: The Hate List

Court TV has said Reynolds’ show will be about criminal justice issues that intersect with the pop culture world. It’s a return to her roots for Reynolds, a lawyer who began her TV career as a legal commentator on Court TV in 1991. She was an original co-host on ABC’s “The View,” starting in 1997, where she became acquainted with the glitz and glamour of show biz. She left the daytime talk show last year.

Reynolds says she would like to talk with Rosie O’Donnell, another former “View” co-host, who has criticized her for avoiding questions about gastric bypass surgery.

“I don’t have any reason to not want to sit down and chat with her,” Reynolds said. “She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s in your face — that’s the kind of guest you want on the show.”

The suit says LA Weight Loss misled customers about the program’s costs, fees, products and benefits.

For example, the company advertised that the weight-loss program cost $9 a week but later required consumers to pay hundreds of dollars for the entire program at the time of enrollment, the suit said.

LA Weight Loss centers are located throughout Oregon.

A spokeswoman said the company had changed its practices.

“We are disappointed that the attorney general has chosen to pursue old issues that were addressed long ago and unfairly penalize a company that has taken steps above and beyond requirements to implement improvements in good faith,” said Diane Gilmore, director of training and customer service. “We feel that this suit is unjustified, and we intend to vigorously fight these allegations.”

LA Weight Loss Franchise Co. is based in Horsham, Pa. NWM of Lake Oswego is the Oregon franchise holder.

The authors analyzed 46 trials that included 6,386 people who were participating in dietary counseling-based weight loss programs and 5,467 people not involved in formal weight loss programs. Programs with more frequent meetings and greater calorie restrictions tended to produce greater weight losses over time.

Approximately half the weight loss remained at three years, but almost none of the weight loss remained at five years. Obesity-related problems are among the most serious health problems facing U.S. adults. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight (BMI over 25), and approximately half of overweight adults are obese (BMI over 30). Overweight and obesity are known risk factors for diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, hypertension, degenerative joint disease of the knees and hips, and some forms of cancer, among other conditions.

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Dietary and lifestyle modifications are the primary methods for treating and preventing obesity but the net effect of dietary counseling for weight loss had not been published until now.

“We did not know how much weight people lost on average through weight loss programs or how long it took them to gain it back,” said Michael L. Dansinger, MD, MS, one of the study authors and a physician at Tufts-New England Medical Center’s Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. “This study shows that lifestyle changes need to be for the long-term.

“Moderate weight loss — 10 to 20 pounds — has a dramatic effect on most of the medical problems caused by obesity. Diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure, and stroke risk all appear to be nicely reduced by a moderate amount of weight loss. People don’t have to lose 100 pounds to make a big difference in their health.”

It’s far from clear if cutting the vagus nerve really helps _ initial pilot studies in a few dozen patients have just begun. Skeptics abound, and even proponents say it wouldn’t lead to nearly as much weight loss as more traumatic operations that shrink the stomach and reroute intestines.

Garth Michaels demonstrates his workout regimen on a recumbent stationary bike at home in Walnut Creek, Calif., Wednesday, June 27, 2007. Michaels recently undergoned a laparoscopic vagotomy to help him with weight loss. He has lost 76 pounds since undergoing the procedure which involves a tiny abdominal incision to snip a hunger related nerve that runs from the stomach to the brain. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Garth Michaels demonstrates his workout regimen on a recumbent stationary bike at home in Walnut Creek, Calif., Wednesday, June 27, 2007. Michaels recently undergoned a laparoscopic vagotomy to help him with weight loss. He has lost 76 pounds since undergoing the procedure which involves a tiny abdominal incision to snip a hunger related nerve that runs from the stomach to the brain. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) (Marcio Jose Sanchez - AP)
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It’s part of a hunt for middle-ground options for people scared of today’s surgery, or those not quite fat enough to qualify for it.

“By no means do I think this is a panacea,” cautions Dr. Robert Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco, who is studying the method along with University of Rochester surgeons.

“But I think this will be a rational alternative for a cadre of patients that are sort of in the middle there. With as much obesity as we have in this country, that’s a big middle.”

More than 177,000 people underwent obesity surgery last year, according to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. The most popular method is gastric bypass, stapling the stomach to create a tiny pouch. Options include placing an adjustable band around the stomach, or cutting off the stomach’s side and rerouting the intestines.

Surgery can produce life-altering weight loss, if recipients adhere to diet and exercise advice, but each method comes with varying degrees of pain and risk, including a rare chance of death. So doctors are searching for alternatives.

Enter the vagus nerve, which snakes from the brain to the abdomen, with fibers reaching into multiple organs with different effects. Among them: The nerve spurs gastric acid production, and in the 1970s, surgery to cut where it attaches to the front and back of the stomach brought ulcer sufferers great relief _ after they recovered from open-abdominal surgery. Once better acid-reducing medications came along, this arduous operation was abandoned.

Yet surgeons at the time noticed, and subsequent animal studies confirmed, that these vagotomies could trigger weight loss. In addition to a less acidic stomach’s slower digestion, the vagus helps control appetite-stimulating brain hormones and signals our bodies to store more fat, Lustig explains.

Since doctors today can snip the nerve far less invasively, through just five pencil-sized cuts in the abdomen, it was time to test in the obese.

Thirty patients had a vagus snip at UCSF or the University of Rochester. The study isn’t complete. But of the 11 who are a year past surgery, all but one are shedding pounds, losing an average of 18 percent of excess weight so far, Lustig and Rochester’s Dr. Thad Boss reported at last month’s bariatric society meeting.

They suffered no serious side effects, and went home hours later with little pain.