One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is to lose weight or at least eat more healthfully. Several Web sites offer tips and tools for getting there.

A Better Food Pyramid: Harvard nutritionists say their revamped food pyramid is based on the latest science and is “unaffected by businesses and organizations with a stake in its messages.” It starts with exercise and encourages adding more plant-based foods and cutting back on “American staples” like red meat, refined grains, potatoes and sugary drinks.

Dr. Gourmet: New Orleans physician Timothy S. Harlan, also known as Dr. Gourmet, has created free diet software that helps you plan more healthful meals. He calls it the Quality Calorie Diet Plan to reflect his belief that it’s the quality of the calories we eat that counts the most. The site creates meal plans and even offers ways to use leftovers later in the week. It includes food and exercise diaries as well as goal-tracking features, and a place for users to analyze their own recipes.

3FatChicks.com: This Web site began as a personal source of diet support for sisters Suzanne, Jennifer and Amy and has now grown into a community of over 70,000 registered members. It has the typical diet-site resources and tools, but the main appeal is the forum for dieters to share stories and find support.

Cooking Light: A great site for finding healthy and delicious foods that won’t make you feel like you’re on a diet. You’ll find recipes, nutrition information and advice on cooking techniques.

Food Blog Search: It’s not a diet site, but if you’ve resolved to cook at home more, this is a great resource for finding new recipes. This custom-built search engine uses Google technology to search for recipes in more than 2,600 food blogs.

National Body Challenge: Discovery Health’s National Body Challenge is a free fitness and weight loss program. After registering online, participants set their personal goals and create a customized eating and exercise plan. Registration gives users access to customized meal and fitness plans, a community of other Challenge participants, weight and fitness trackers and video and interactive tools as well as a 30-day free health club membership.

Weight Watchers — Although the site is offering a one-week free trial to it’s online plan, you’ll have to pay $65 for a three month subscription if you stick with it. While it’s true that most people who diet end up gaining back their weight, much of what Weight Watchers claims is backed by science. An April 2008 article in the British Journal of Nutrition looked at success rates of lifetime Weight Watchers members. They found that a year after reaching goal weight, 80 percent of participants had maintained at least 5 percent of the weight loss a year later and 27 percent of the dieters had stayed below their goal weight. While that means a lot of people regained their weight, it’s still more evidence for success than offered by most commercial diet plans.

South Beach Diet: This diet gained popularity as an alternative to the strict low-carb regimen of Atkins, with an emphasis on “good carbs” like high-fiber vegetables and whole grains. It also offers a free week trial, followed by a $5 a week membership fee.

So what have I missed? Are there other websites you’d recommend to help people lose weight and live healthier in 2009?

And for more on resolutions, read New Year, New You? Nice Try.

Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows it’s tough to stay motivated. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania wondered if cold, hard cash might do the trick.

I.B.M. employee Jodi Morrison won cash incentives for tracking her exercise at work.

The investigators studied how cash incentives influenced weight loss among 57 people who were obese but otherwise healthy. One group of dieters was given $3 a day plus additional matching funds for meeting weight loss goals, meaning they could earn up to an extra $168 during a four-week period. A second group was eligible to compete in a cash lottery for $10 to $100 a day during the study period if they achieved weight loss goals. A third control group simply attended monthly weigh-in sessions.

At the end of 16 weeks, the dieters in the lottery group had lost an average of 13.1 pounds each, while those in the matching-funds group had lost an average of 14 pounds each, compared to just 3.9 pounds in the control group, according to a report published today the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Five people in the lottery group and seven in the matching-funds group lost more than 20 pounds each during the study period. Only one person in the weigh-in group lost that much weight.

The downside was that some of these dieters gained back much of the weight once the cash prizes dried up. Still, seven months later they remained an average of six to nine pounds lighter. Read more…

A recent study funded by the Atkins Foundation attempts to compare the Atkins low-carbohydrate eating plan against two other diets. Although none of the study participants lost much weight over two years, the research is being trumpeted by some as a victory for Atkins, because the low-carb group lost slightly more weight and posted better cholesterol numbers than the low-fat dieters.

But were the participants really following the Atkins diet? Read more…

As if we needed a reminder that diets mostly fail, The New England Journal of Medicine has published a new report on an intense, tightly controlled experiment involving more than 300 moderately obese people.

After two years of effort the dieters lost, on average, 6 to 10 pounds. The study, funded in part by the Atkins Research Foundation, seemed designed to prove that low-carb diets trump low-fat diets. But in the end, all it really showed is that dieters can put forth tremendous effort and reap very little benefit.

Dr. Dean Ornish, a proponent of low-fat diets, is critical of the study design, particularly the fact that the so-called “low-fat” diet group was really only a moderate-fat diet that included about 30 percent of calories from fat. He writes more about the issue in a Newsweek column here.

The New England Journal report also affirmed something many women have believed all along — that low-carb diets work better for men than women. Male low-carb dieters lost about 11 pounds, compared to about 9 pounds on a Mediterranean diet. Women low-carb dieters lost only about 5 pounds, compared to about 14 on the Mediterranean diet. To read more about the new research, click here.

I first met Austin opera singer Cindy Sadler through her blog, “The Next Hundred Pounds.” After a lifetime of being overweight, Ms. Sadler last September set out on a journey to gain control of her health. Nine months later, on June 12, she reached an important milestone, losing 100 pounds.

“Diets do fail,” Ms. Sadler wrote me recently. “I have never liked the term diet, and I don’t consider myself to be on a diet. (I have many alternate names for it … “fat relocation project” is one of my faves.) I consider myself to be in the process of making a lifestyle change, and to a large degree I have made that change, though there is a lot of work still to be done and there will never be a time when I don’t have to work at it. Some days I simply have to work harder than others.”

To stay motivated, Ms. Sadler regularly refers to a book she has filled with reminders and sayings that keep her on track.

“I have a lot of tools to help me keep motivated, but the main thing is to get what my friend Karen calls the mental game in place,” she said. “The mental game has to be tight. That is what I have been able to do this time that I never was able to do before…. I’ve been able to counter every roadblock (eventually — some are harder than others!) and learn to demand honesty from myself. The main motivation, though, is probably that I like how I look and feel now, and I like eating and exercising the way I do now, better than I liked the way I looked, felt and ate before.”

To learn more about Ms. Sadler’s weight loss journey, watch the video below.

Is it possible to legislate against thinness?

Thin and beautiful? (Remy de la Mauviniere/Associated Press)

That’s what lawmakers in France are attempting to do. The French parliament’s lower house has approved a bill that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite extreme thinness, The Associated Press reports.

The bill is the latest effort to address concerns surrounding the fashion industry’s use of ultra-thin models. In November 2006, 21-year-old Ana Carolina Reston, a top Brazilian model, died as a result of anorexia. At the time of her death she weighed only 88 pounds.

French politicians and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter last week on promoting healthier body images. And last year Spain banned ultra-thin models from catwalks.

But Conservative politician Valery Boyer, who introduced the proposed law, argued that efforts to promote “extreme thinness” should be punishable in court. One target is Web sites that promote anorexic behavior with such advice as eating little more than an apple a day.

Although it’s not clear how the fashion industry would be affected by the rule, Ms. Boyer says she believes the legislation would force changes in how fashion houses depict women. The law would give judges the power to imprison and fine offenders up to about $50,000 if found guilty of “inciting others to deprive themselves of food” to an “excessive” degree.

The legislation goes to the Senate in the coming weeks. To read today’s full Times story on the topic, click here.

Dieters are more likely to lose weight and keep it off if they have contact with a weight-loss counselor, a new study shows.

The report, led by researchers at Duke University Medical Center and published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, shows just how difficult it is for dieters to maintain their weight loss. The study began with 1,685 overweight or obese adults who weighed on average 213 pounds. The group was successful at losing weight, with an average weight loss after six months of 18.7 pounds.

About 1,000 people who lost 9 pounds or more took part in the second phase of the study. Some used an Internet-based weight counseling tool, while others had regular personal contact with a weight-loss counselor. A third group received basic instruction on maintaining weight loss, and those dieters attempted to keep the weight off on their own.

Monthly personal contact meant the participants had telephone contact with a counselor for 5 to 15 minutes each month, except for every fourth month, when they had a 45- to 60-minute individual face-to-face session. The Web-based program gave participants unlimited access to a Web site designed to support weight loss maintenance, with interactive features allowing participants to set personal goals and action plans for the next week and to graph personal data over time.

More than two years later, most everyone had gained back some of their weight. The people who tried to maintain their weight on their own fared the worst, gaining back an average of 12.1 pounds. People who used the Web-based tool gained back 11.5 pounds. However, those people who took part in the personal contact group gained back the least — regaining 8.8 pounds.

Although personal contact only resulted in a 3.3 pound additional benefit, the study authors noted that even small losses can improve health. Every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of weight loss is associated with an average decrease in systolic blood pressure of 1.0 to 2.4 mm Hg and a 16 percent reduction in diabetes risk, the authors said. At the end of the study, more than 45 percent of those who had received counseling were still maintaining at least 9 pounds of weight loss, an amount with clear clinical benefits, they noted.

Fearing the scale? (PictureNet/Corbis)

For many people, the worst part of the doctor visit is getting on the scale.

University of Pennsylvania researchers say they believe some women may be avoiding the doctor just to avoid being weighed in front of other people. They surveyed 482 college-age men and women to determine how sensitive they were to the disclosure of personal information, including their weight.

The study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the medical journal Appetite, showed that women experienced high degrees of discomfort at the prospect of being weighed in the presence of others. Read more…

The diet book called “Skinny Bitch” has been flying off bookstore shelves, buoyed by the modeling pedigree of its authors and a frank “stop eating crap” message that distinguishes it from traditional diet books.

But this week, Salon magazine is taking “Skinny Bitch” to task, claiming it preys on the insecurities of dieters and people with eating disorders. “The only thing this weight-loss book will help you lose is self-esteem,” states the article.

As reported last fall in The Times, “Skinny Bitch” looks like a diet book for the chick-lit generation, but inside is a hardcore vegan message. Readers attracted by the book’s irreverent tone have been surprised to encounter chapters on meat and poultry farming practices.

Salon writer Julie Klausner says that in addition to the hidden vegan agenda, the book’s authors, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, have filled the book with “punitive dieting tactics that prey on women’s insecurities about their bodies.” Ms. Barnouin is a former model, and Ms. Freedman is a former modeling agent. Read more…

Forget the flowers, reception hall and wedding dress. For many brides-to-be, losing weight is the most important part of the wedding plan.

The dress can be altered to fit, but is extreme dieting a healthy strategy? (Stephanie Keith for The New York Times)

More than 70 percent of brides-to-be want to lose weight before their wedding day, according to a new study from Cornell University. To reach the perfect wedding-day weight, more than one-third of them use extreme dieting tactics such as diet pills and fasting. And while most of us buy clothes that fit, about one in seven brides-to-be buys a bridal gown that is one or more dress sizes smaller than she normally wears.

“Most women engaged to be married idealize a wedding weight much lighter than their current weight,” wrote co-author Lori Neighbors, assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She conducted the study while a graduate student at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. Read more…

Four out of five people who make New Year’s resolutions tonight will eventually break them. In fact, a third won’t even make it to the end of January.

Saving more is a common New Year’s resolution. (Credit: The New York Times)

That’s what time management firm FranklinCovey found when it polled more than 15,000 customers about their planned New Year’s resolutions. The top resolutions for 2008 are the old standbys — get out of debt and save more, lose weight and exercise. Getting organized and spending more time with family also top the list.

Nearly 40 percent of those surveyed attribute breaking their resolutions to having too many other things to do, while 33 percent say they simply aren’t committed to the resolutions they set. But experts say the real problem is that people make the wrong resolutions. The typical resolution often reflects a general desire, rather than a specific goal.

“Many clients make broad resolutions, but I advise them to focus the goals so that they are not overwhelmed,” said New York University nutritionist Lisa R. Young. “Small and tangible one-day-at-a-time goals work best.”

Here are some practical resolutions that can help you lose weight, exercise more, get organized, spend more time with family and even save a little money. Read more…

Think before you decide to skip your next meal.

People often miss meals because they get busy or are trying to lose weight. But how you skip meals, and the amount you eat at your next meal, can affect your overall health.

The scientific data on skipping meals has been confusing. In some studies, fasting has resulted in measurable metabolic benefits for obese people, and in animal studies, intermittent feeding and fasting reduces the incidence of diabetes and improves certain indicators of cardiovascular health. Even so, several observational studies and short-term experiments have suggested an association between meal skipping and poor health.

In recent months, two new studies may help explain how skipping meals affects health. Read more…

For years, when Minnesota physician Dr. Chris Balgobin saw patients with diabetes and high blood pressure, he found it difficult to counsel them about losing weight and exercise.

Before slimming down, Dr. Balgobin found it difficult to talk to patients about weight loss.

That’s because Dr. Balgobin was overweight himself — at his heaviest, he carried 304 pounds on his 5-foot-6-inch frame.

“It was hard for me to tell them about losing weight and exercise because I’ve been big all of my life,” said Dr. Balgobin. “I would say, ‘Yes, it’s a struggle.’ But then I would say ‘they’ say to reduce calories and exercise. I could never put it on me as the authority figure.”

But in January, Dr. Balgobin, a family practice doctor for Fairview Health Services in Apple Valley, Minn., says he was inspired by one of his own patients who had lost 60 pounds through diet and exercise. He talked to his wife and together they decided to change their eating habits, exercise more and try to lose weight together. Read more…

What does overweight look like? For a fascinating look, check out the Illustrated BMI Categories Project, which I found highlighted on Jezebel. The collection includes photos of women along with their weights and body mass index numbers. The pictures show normal looking women who are technically overweight, thin women who are normal weight, and supposedly obese women who look like pretty much everyone you know.