Maximum Fit Magazine

A perfect body equals the perfect you ? it?s what every woman hears from the time she is five years old. Awards given during Healthy Weight Week, Jan. 21-27, aim to change that message by encouraging advertisers and television producers to portray healthy, active women of all shapes and sizes.   Winner of the top advertisement of the past year is Just My Size for depicting large women as valued people: ?I am the size of the times ? a force to be reckoned with. I am the power and strength of 49 million. I am the voice of the American Woman.? The best television show, Boy Meets World, positively shows adolescents of all sizes. The Terry Bicycle Company, best catalog, encourages all women to become physically active, regardless of size. At the other end of the spectrum are the 12th annual Slim Chance Awards, for the year?s ?worst? diet products and advertisements. These are given on ?Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day,? Tuesday, Jan. 23. Topping this list is the Hollywood 48 Hour Diet that advertises you can lose a dress size over the week-end. Worst claim is made by the Super-Crash Diet, which supposedly ?turns ugly fat into harmless water which flows right out of your body by the hour!? and can shrink you ?a full size smaller? in 24 hours. Slenderstrip is a repeat winner of the worst gadget award ? a snakeoil-on-a-bandaid type of magical cure falsely claiming you can lose weight by attaching the strip to your body. Rounding out the list of loser items is Blast Away Fat, the most outrageous, which uses apple pectin to ?seek and destroy enemy fat? and leads people to believe they can lose as much as 60 pounds in 90 days. Healthy Weight Week offers an antidote to the restrictive dieting and bingeing surrounding the new year. It is a time when health organizations and hospitals join to promote healthy life_style_ habits that last a lifetime and help to prevent weight and eating problems. ?We want to change the focus from restrictive dieting to being healthy at the weight you are,? says Frances M. Berg, a licensed nutritionist and editor of Healthy Weight Journal, who chairs the event. ?There?s much evidence that keeping a stable weight through adult life is healthier than losing and gaining weight, even for large persons.? Goals of the Healthy Weight Week awards are to promote healthy, normal eating, physical activity, and positive body image for people of all ages. Judges are nutritionists and dietitians appointed by Healthy Weight Network, sponsor of the awards. Berg points to research that shows the current obsession with being thin is taking its toll on the well-being of young people. A national survey by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta finds 62 percent of teenage girls are dieting to lose weight, many using dangerous methods such as vomiting, fasting, taking laxatives and diet pills. In a study of collegiate women gymnasts, 67 percent said they were told by their coaches they were too heavy, and 75 percent had used hazardous methods to reduce. About one-fourth of teenage girls are seriously undernourished, and eating disorders have reached epidemic proportions, affecting an estimated 10 percent of high school and college age youth. Follow-up surveys show death rates as high as 18 to 20 percent for anorexia and bulimia nervosa, Berg says. She is the author of the award-winning books, Children and Teens Afraid to Eat: Helping Youth in Today?s Weight-Obsessed World and Women Afraid to Eat: Breaking Free in Today?s Weight-Obsessed World, which document these and related problems.   The awards are supported nationwide by health and nutrition groups, including WIN Wyoming ? Wellness IN Wyoming ? whose statewide mission is to educate people to respect body-size diversity and to enjoy the benefits of active living, pleasurable and healthful eating, and positive self-image (http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/winwyoming). Healthy Weight Network: http://www.healthyweight.net/index.htm

A perfect body equals the perfect you ? it?s what every woman hears from the time she is five years old. Awards given during Healthy Weight Week, Jan. 21-27, aim to change that message by encouraging advertisers and television producers to portray healthy, active women of all shapes and sizes.   Winner of the top advertisement of the past year is Just My Size for depicting large women as valued people: ?I am the size of the times ? a force to be reckoned with. I am the power and strength of 49 million. I am the voice of the American Woman.? The best television show, Boy Meets World, positively shows adolescents of all sizes. The Terry Bicycle Company, best catalog, encourages all women to become physically active, regardless of size. At the other end of the spectrum are the 12th annual Slim Chance Awards, for the year?s ?worst? diet products and advertisements. These are given on ?Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day,? Tuesday, Jan. 23. Topping this list is the Hollywood 48 Hour Diet that advertises you can lose a dress size over the week-end. Worst claim is made by the Super-Crash Diet, which supposedly ?turns ugly fat into harmless water which flows right out of your body by the hour!? and can shrink you ?a full size smaller? in 24 hours. Slenderstrip is a repeat winner of the worst gadget award ? a snakeoil-on-a-bandaid type of magical cure falsely claiming you can lose weight by attaching the strip to your body. Rounding out the list of loser items is Blast Away Fat, the most outrageous, which uses apple pectin to ?seek and destroy enemy fat? and leads people to believe they can lose as much as 60 pounds in 90 days. Healthy Weight Week offers an antidote to the restrictive dieting and bingeing surrounding the new year. It is a time when health organizations and hospitals join to promote healthy life_style_ habits that last a lifetime and help to prevent weight and eating problems. ?We want to change the focus from restrictive dieting to being healthy at the weight you are,? says Frances M. Berg, a licensed nutritionist and editor of Healthy Weight Journal, who chairs the event. ?There?s much evidence that keeping a stable weight through adult life is healthier than losing and gaining weight, even for large persons.? Goals of the Healthy Weight Week awards are to promote healthy, normal eating, physical activity, and positive body image for people of all ages. Judges are nutritionists and dietitians appointed by Healthy Weight Network, sponsor of the awards. Berg points to research that shows the current obsession with being thin is taking its toll on the well-being of young people. A national survey by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta finds 62 percent of teenage girls are dieting to lose weight, many using dangerous methods such as vomiting, fasting, taking laxatives and diet pills. In a study of collegiate women gymnasts, 67 percent said they were told by their coaches they were too heavy, and 75 percent had used hazardous methods to reduce. About one-fourth of teenage girls are seriously undernourished, and eating disorders have reached epidemic proportions, affecting an estimated 10 percent of high school and college age youth. Follow-up surveys show death rates as high as 18 to 20 percent for anorexia and bulimia nervosa, Berg says. She is the author of the award-winning books, Children and Teens Afraid to Eat: Helping Youth in Today?s Weight-Obsessed World and Women Afraid to Eat: Breaking Free in Today?s Weight-Obsessed World, which document these and related problems.   The awards are supported nationwide by health and nutrition groups, including WIN Wyoming ? Wellness IN Wyoming ? whose statewide mission is to educate people to respect body-size diversity and to enjoy the benefits of active living, pleasurable and healthful eating, and positive self-image (http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/winwyoming). Healthy Weight Network: http://www.healthyweight.net/index.htm Hey Jean would it be kosher to copy this post word for word and put it in an article? Or do you have it on one of your web pages so I can _link_ right to it?