D-Day. The day of reckoning for your weighty sins!

 

Time to acknowledge that there were consequences for those cheeseburgers and chocolate chip cookies that were just too hard to pass up and as a matter of course those extra calories ended up on your hips like glue. If you were brave and stepped on the scale and were disappointed with what it revealed you more than likely put getting healthier on your to-do list for 2010.

There isn’t a Hallmark card to signal the beginning of diet season just the changing the calendar year. But make no mistake, diet season it is and its time for everyone to weigh in on what is going on in the multi-billion dollar diet industry. It is hard to separate the facts from the fiction about what plan to follow. We all want to believe it is as easy as the popping the newest diet pill but deep down we know or should know that it all a matter of math, calories in and calories out.

This diet season, NBC has launched its ninth season of the “Biggest Loser” marked by the heaviest contestant to date weighing in at 526 pounds. The show is an inspiration to me and I must admit I follow the contestants wishing that I to could spend three months on the ranch with all the tools that are made available to them. Great trainers and endless time to spend in a well-equipped gym that doesn’t resemble rush hour for jocks would be a real joy. Just once I would love to see a double-digit weight loss for a week but in the real world that doesn’t happen. But what the program does show us is that season after season the age-old theory of calories in and calories out does work.

I was disappointed to see that Jillian Michaels, the relentless trainer on the show, has joined the diet pill pushers with a new line of her own. I thought she was one of the good guys that believed that hard work and calorie counting was the way to go to lose weight but that isn’t the way to make money in the diet business. Her ads for her weight-loss website appear on my site from time to time but that is guided by what ads Google sends my way.

Along with all the newest gadgets and plans that surface are the all the reports that join in on the diet season frenzy. Here are just two that caught me eye:

•  A published study in the January issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association revealed that food at popular chain restaurants and in the frozen food aisles have as much as 20% more calories than advertised. The report was featured in a “Today Show” segment and their experts revealed that this skewed calorie count could lead to a 30 to 40 pound weight gain if you took the advertised calorie count into consideration.
•  At the University of Southern California lab, scientists are developing wearable wireless sensors to monitor overweight people workout and eating habits. The Associated Press reported that the experimental devices are designed to keep track of how many minutes they work out, how much food they consume and even whether they are at a fast-food joint when they should be at the gym. The goal is to cut down on self-reported answers that often cover up what’s really happening.

I know I should tune out the bull but the truth is, knowledge is power. The fact that diet meals aren’t really diet meals is a good thing to know. The knowledge that they are developing a GPS tracking system for fat people is a bit disconcerting but yet interesting. I just wish that researchers and trained professionals would put the time and energy into more sensible ways of teaching people that you are what you eat and getting regular exercise is the way to a longer and healthier life. Too simple, I guess for a headline during diet season but yet the truth.

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