Heidi Klum And Extreme Dieting

Heidi Klum is one of the worlds leading supermodels. She's got quite an entrepreneurial streak as well and is currently hosting a very popular fashion reality TV show; "Germany's Next Top Model". This show has come under attack for promoting extreme thinness in young women. Apparently one of the candidates on the program was told she was too fat even though she only weighed 52 kilograms. But the network running the program believes the criticism is overblown and stated that "Heidi Klum says several times during the show that models must eat sensibly."

So how much does Heidi Klum herself weigh? According to Wikipedia, she weighs 119 pounds (54 kg) and her height is 5 feet and nine and a half inches (177 cm). I think these stats are from her teenage modeling years. I saw another interview dated 1999 where she said she weighed 127 pounds. Who knows what she weighs now in 2006? She still looks super thin, and I would guess she now weighs somewhere in the 130's range.

How much models weigh 'stats' are provided to the modeling agencies by models, and the agencies in turn provide the stats to their clients, but I'm sure models typically advertise themselves as weighing a few pounds less than they actually do. And the modeling agencies wouldn't object to this and aren't about to do public weigh-ins. As long as the models look really great, they don't check to see if they are underestimating their true weight.

Update June 20th 2006: Heidi Klum is pregnant again. US Weekly reports she is expecting her third child. She has a baby boy only 9 months old and a two year-old daughter.

Janet Jackson Weight Loss Watch

Janet Jackson is in the process of losing weight and getting fit again. She weighed only 118 pounds at the start of her brother's trial last year. But according to Michelle Caruso of the New York Daily News she weighed 160 pounds recently. Since then, she's already dropped some weight and currently weighs about 145 pounds. Her height is five feet four inches.

Janet Jackson will be releasing a new record this spring. And she will probably be thin again in time for the release. She is working again with her longtime personal trainer Tony Martinez and has been spotted jogging and power-walking on Los Angeles beaches.

Update March 17th: There are reports out this week that Janet Jackson is back in fabulous shape. And that Eminem has hired her personal fitness trainer at a rate of $17,000 per month.

Update Late May 2006: Janet Jackson has lost 60 pounds and now weighs 120 pounds. See about how she had prepared meals three times a day during her whole weight loss period.

Update September 23rd: Janet Jackson will be on the Oprah Show this Monday. Here she'll talk about the details of how she lost sixty pounds in four months.

Sweet Eye Candy

Flowers make for the most beautiful eye candy. Just putting one simple flower in a small vase on my computer desk seems to help me snack less and feel better.

Valentine's Day is coming up. If your sweetie is trying to lose weight, forego the Godiva chocolates and choose a simple flower bouquet instead. Better yet, if you are trying to lose weight, consider making your next impulse purchase a floral eye candy rather than a chocolate bar or bag of chips at the checkout counter.

Kilogram to Pound Conversion

I have a fancy bathroom scale that my husband got from his brother in Germany. Problem is it shows my weight in kilograms. Kilo's mean nothing to me, when I'm tracking my weight loss, I always think in pounds.

See the handy kilogram to pound calculator in the sidebar at the bottom of this page. You can enter in what you weigh in kilo's and it will convert it to pounds. Or vice versa, enter your pounds and it will instantly show your weight in kilos.

One kilogram is equal to 2.2045 pounds. To keep it simple when converting, I just remember it's a 1.0 to 2.2 ratio.

Update: There's another really quick way to convert what you weigh in pounds or kilograms with Google Search. If you weigh 200 pounds and want to know what this is in kilograms, just type in "200 pounds in kilograms" in Google search and the answer will pop up at the top of the page. Conversely, if you weigh 90 kilograms and want to know what that is in pounds, just type in "90 kilos to pounds". I found this neat trick at Pasta Queen's wonderful site.

So today I weigh 73.2 kilograms and that's 161 pounds. I don't know about others, but it seems my weight can fluctuate almost two punds on any given day depending on what time of the day I weigh myself. Not sure if this is a good sign. But it's why I always weigh myself first thing in the morning only, and usually only once a week.

If you are looking for a good quality digital bathroom scale, a very highly ranked and popular one right now is the Tanita BC533 Glass Innerscan Body Composition Monitor.

Here is one reader's review at Amazon:

For many years I used a digital scale that gave me a different readout each time I used it. I like to weigh daily but found that stepping up and down on the scale several times to get an average weight was frustrating. I thought that was the norm with scales until I started reading scale reviews and discovered that many people found the Tanita line to be accurate.

If they weighed several times in a row they got a consistent readout. They did not have to take an average as I did with my Health-O-Meter. As a treat to myself, for losing 10 pounds, I decided to purchase a Tanita and after doing some research opted for the Tanita BC533.

The Tanita BC533 is a state of the art scale that measures your weight (to two-tenths of a pound), body fat, visceral fat, bone mass, metabolic age and muscle mass. It is very simple to operate. You input your height, weight, average physical activity level and age. The Tanita will remember this information for up to four people so you only have to do it once, unless your information changes. (There is also a guest mode if a visitor wants to try it.) Once you have programmed the scale you toe tap your number, step on the platform and you will see your weight and body fat measurement. (Note - If you wear socks the body fat measurement will not work.) Then you can toe tap other buttons of your choice. A little figure gives you a visual cue as to what the buttons are. For example for muscle mass the figure is holding weights. For bone mass there is a tiny skeleton inside the figure. You decide which body composition features you wish to check.

You may for example want to check your bone mass once a month, or then again you may want to check it weekly. It's up to you. It's as simple as pressing the corresponding button, and takes only seconds.

Tanita includes a guide with the scale that explains exactly how the scale works. The scale is a bioimpedence device. A low level current (which you don't feel) passes through your body and the impedance or resistance level is used to calculate body composition. The booklet explains healthy ranges of body fat and also explains what body water percentage, visceral fat, etc. mean.

Some Crazy Fad Diets: The Great Masticator

There's been quite a few fad diets proposed over the years. One of the stranger ones was devised by Horace Fletcher. Fletcher was denied health insurance because he was overweight back in 1898. He weighed 205 pounds and went on to lose 45 pounds with his method of chewing each bite 32 times and then spitting out what remained.

He claimed the nutrients would be absorbed by the body and you would still get to enjoy the flavor of the food and lose weight.

There is actually some truth to this assertion. Many people don't chew their food properly and this can lead to digestion problems as well as overeating.

Fletcher was a well known art dealer in San Francisco at the time, but he also became a famous author as a result of this fad diet he had devised. He had quite a few notable followers for a time including Henry James and John D. Rockerfeller.

Even John Harvey Kellogg (the founder of the cornflake) was a devout follower of Fletcher's diet. He wrote a 'chew chew' song to inspire people to keep chewing.

(It's interesting that Kellogg sales did not start growing exponentially until John Harvey's brother added sugar to the ingredients.)

Well, that's one crazy diet fad story for your enjoyment on this beautiful Sunday.

See more examples of fad diets in previous generations at an article written by Buck Wolf for ABC News.

Buying Fat-Blocking Diet Pills Gets Easier

It looks like the FDA is about to approve a new over-the-counter diet pill. "Alli" is likely to appear on your drugstore shelves within a few months. This pill contains orlistat, and blocks about a quarter of the fat that you eat on any given day.

This diet pill will probably cost about $12 to $15 a week. It contains half the orlistat of Xenical.

According to Dr. John Abramson of Harvard Medical School this drug decreases fat absorption meaning that if you eat too much fat, it will end up in your stool and will likely make your stools oily and possibly give you diarrhea. The drug has been shown to help with an average weight loss of six pounds over six months. But once people stop taking it, unless they've changed their diet or exercise patterns, they will likely put the weight back on.

Right now people need a doctor's prescription to buy Xenical; the leading fat-blocking diet pill. If Alli can be bought without a prescription over the counter, the drug company GlaxoKlineSmith is expected to make huge profits. We can probably expect to see some massive new advertising for this pill over the next few months.

Weight Loss according to the Stars

Is there an ideal time to start a diet for quick weight loss? What does astrology have to say about weight-loss timing?

Here's a partial summary of what astrologers have to say:

Jupiter is associated with weight gain or 'enlargement' and abundance. Whatever it touches in your chart, expect that to be 'fattened up' in some respect. This is why people who have Jupiter on their Ascendant, or people who have Sagittarius rising are expected to have more problems with weight-loss than the average person.

Saturn on the other hand, is the planet that can bring 'reduction' or 'lack' in some aspect of your life. If it is conjunct someone's Ascendant, they are more likely to be naturally thin and wiry rather than portly. These people will rarely need to lose weight.

So when would be the best time to try to lose weight? When Jupiter is in your first house this would be the least successful time in general to try to diet. When Saturn is there on the other hand, you may find yourself losing weight without even trying.

Starting a weight-loss program in the last three days before the New Moon is also a recipe for failure. In fact most projects that are started in the last two or three days of the moon cycle will be facing an uphill battle.

Some planets seem to speed up people's metabolisms (not to mention their life events). Uranus in particular, can really rev up your body chemistry. If it begins a transit to your key planets you can expect to be vibrating around more than usual. This can be conducive to weight loss :-)