It's Not Your Weight, It's Your Waist

Jan. 11, 2007 — -- When most people think about weight loss, they think about the numbers on the scale. They think that loading their shopping baskets full of low-fat and nonfat foods and stepping up their exercise plan will help them win the battle of the bulge.

Think again, say best-selling authors Drs. Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen. Their new book, "You: On a Diet," blows a hole in many of the beliefs Americans have held concerning health and weight loss.

In this book, Oz and Roizen set out to educate readers about the science of weight gain -- the "biology of blubber" as they call it -- with the belief that once we understand how our bodies process and store fat, we'll be better able to identify and control our weight-gaining tendencies.

Jodi Hazan knows all about weight-gaining tendencies. By age 32, she had tried more than 20 different diet plans and products, but nothing seemed to work long term. At 5 feet, 2 inches tall, the busy New York salon owner weighed more than 200 pounds and admits she was basically in denial about her excessive weight gain.

"I stopped weighing myself after I got over a certain point," she recalls. "I was wearing size 16 clothes that didn't fit me. They were too small, but I refused to buy the bigger size. I refused to go to size 18."

Another New Yorker, Michelle Bouchard, faced a similar challenge. A 40-something single mother and former model, Bouchard fought her own battle with unsuccessful weight loss. The weight she gained during her last pregnancy had veered out of control, and Bouchard, normally a svelte size 8, found herself wearing size 14 clothing.

"I'd always thought of myself as kind of tall and lanky, and I had completely lost that look," says Bouchard.

In an effort to regain her single-digit size, Bouchard tried everything from the latest fads in meal plans to good old-fashioned juice diets, but each one ended in failure.