What is Healthy Weight Week?
Jan 18-24, 2009
H ealthy Weight Week is a time to celebrate healthy living habits that last a lifetime and prevent eating and weight problems, rather than intensifying them, as diets do .

Traditionally Americans begin a diet the first week in January and "blow" it the second. Healthy Weight Week is a time to stop dieting for good and help people normalize their lives. It’s a welcome change from the dieting and bingeing that typically begin the New Year!

Healthy Weight Week promotes a healthy nondiet lifestyle for children and adults of every size. It helps them move ahead to healthy habits they can live with long term – sound, reasonable habits that let them get on with their lives. Eat well, live actively, and feel good about yourself and others.

Healthy Weight Week features two sets of awards: the Annual Slim Chance Awards, for the "worst" weight loss products and promotions of the past year; and Women’s Healthy Weight Awards for businesses and organizations that honor size diversity in women. Nominations may be sent by Dec. 1, to Healthy Weight Network. The week, including the two special days are listed in Chase's Calendar of Events Annual.

News release, awards, consumer handouts and materials for posters are available on the website for educational purposes. Contact Francie M. Berg, Healthy Weight Network, 402 S 14 th St, Hettinger, ND 58639, or email by clicking here.

Click here to email to Francie using the subject line: Berg – interview
website www.healthyweight.net

Rid the World of Fad Diets & Gimmicks Day, Jan 20, 2009
Rid the World of Fad Diets & Gimmicks Day is on Tuesday of Healthy Weight Week (the third full week in January). The 20 th annual Slim Chance Awards for the “worst” weight loss products of the year are announced. Diet quackery defrauds, disables and kills. News release, awards diet quackery information and consumer handouts available on website.

Slim Chance Awards, announced Jan 20, 2009
The 20th Annual Slim Chance Awards are announced on Rid the World of Fad Diets & Gimmicks Day, on Tuesday of Healthy Weight Week (the third full week in January). They expose the widespread fraud and quackery in the weight loss field, and are aimed at helping consumers move on from chronic dieting to improving their lives in more positive and lasting ways.

Please send nominations to Healthy Weight Network, 402 South 14th Street - Hettinger, ND 58639, along with advertisements, catalog, or other supporting material, or email by clicking here to email to Francie using the subject line: Berg – interview
website www.healthyweight.net

Women’s Healthy Weight Day and Awards,
Jan 22, 2009
The 16 th annual Women’s Healthy Weight Day, on Thursday of Healthy Weight Week (the third full week in January), is a day to honor size diversity in women. It confirms that beauty, health and strength come in all sizes, and that talent, love and compassion cannot be weighed. Winners of the Women’s Healthy Weight Day awards will be announced. The awards honor businesses that portray size diversity and reject the national obsession with thinness that is shattering the lives of many women, young girls and their families. News release, awards and consumer handouts available on website.

Please send nominations by Dec. 1, to Healthy Weight Network, 402 South 14th Street - Hettinger, ND 58639, along with advertisements, catalog, or other supporting material, or email by clicking here to email to Francie using the subject line: Berg – interview
website www.healthyweight.net

See below for a second news article,
from News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, Jan 27, 2008

News Release: Jan. 18, 2008

Healthy Weight Week Jan. 20 – 26
repudiates the cult of thinness

In a culture inundated with gaunt female idols, dieting fads and exercise plans, it’s hard to remember that the medical focus of all this began by promoting health. Somehow it became twisted into a cult of thinness that is far from healthy.

Healthy Weight Week reminds people of the value of a healthy nondiet lifestyle and helps them move ahead to improving their health in positive ways. It celebrates normal habits that prevent eating and weight problems, rather than intensifying them. This year, Healthy Weight Week takes place between January 20 and January 26.

“The hysteria over weight is causing tragic problems. Health experts are only beginning to realize the risks that people of all ages and sizes are taking in efforts to pare down their bodies to thin ideals. Risks range from depression to eating disorders, heart arrhythmias and sudden death,” said Francie M. Berg, whose organization Healthy Weight Network started Healthy Weight Week 15 years ago and the Slim Chance Awards 19 years ago.  

The Slim Chance Awards, to be presented on Tuesday , Rid the World of Fad Diets & Gimmicks Day, highlight the year’s "worst" weight loss schemes .  The 2008 awards expose the false advertising by Evercleanse and three other diet aids: WorstProduct is HoodiaHerbal; Worst Claim, Bio SpeedSLIM; Worst Gimmick, Hollywood Detox Body Wrap; and Most Outrageous Claim, Evercleanse.

“ It’s outrageous and offensive that the Evercleanse hucksters are telling people they are excessively heavy due to waste stuck within their colons ,” said William M. London, EdD, MPH , Professor, Health Science Program, College of Health and Human Services, California State University, Los Angeles , and a member of the panel evaluating the diet promotions.

If toxins and waste were really retained in the body, the human race would not have survived, said Vincent F. Cordaro, MD, an FDA medical officer. “The whole concept is irrational and unscientific.”

Healthy Weight Week also honors businesses that portray an appreciation of size diversity, with the Women’s Healthy Weight Awards given on Thursday. The 2008 honorees are the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (business), PlusSizeYellowPages.com (cataloging), and How to Look Good Naked (television).

More size tolerance is needed, said Berg, a licensed nutritionist and adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine. Today, you can hardly open a newspaper or turn on the TV without hearing about the costs of overweight and obesity in America. However, she points out, some of these concerns may be misplaced and, in fact, a moderate amount of body fat may be beneficial.

Research at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Nov. 7, 2007, and Apr. 20, 2005), shows the fewest deaths in the U.S. are associated with overweight, and higher health risks actually are linked to underweight and even so-called normal weight.

Berg’s recent books Underage and Overweight: Our Child Obesity Crisis and Women Afraid to Eat, articulate the damage to children and women by the obsession with thinness in our society, and encourage them to improve their lives in lasting ways by living actively, eating normally, relaxing and feeling good about themselves and others.

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News Article from The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware
Delaware Online, Jan 27, 2008

Abandon your diet, a health group urges

by Marianne Carter, Special to The News Journal

Imagine a world without diets. Where no foods are “good” or “bad.” Where there are no fads or gimmick. Where body loathing doesn’t exist. Where the obsession with weight is replaced by attention on achieving overall health through physical activity and good nutrition.

That’s the premise of the Healthy Weight Network, which for 20 years has pioneered the “health at any size” approach.

The group of like-minded professionals is led by Francie Berg, a licensed nutritionist and adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine.

Why dump the diet? Over the past several decades, Americans have dieted without success. Weight loss is generally temporary, and unhealthy diet approaches have been linked with health damage and even death.

Dieting has also contributed to an increase in eating disorders.

So what’s the alternative? A total shift in our thinking. A move away from diets. A change toward making choices for better health. Eating for pleasure, in response to internal cues of hunger. Embracing the need to be active daily, and finding enjoyment in movement.

To that end, the Healthy Weight Network started the Slim Chance Awards 19 years ago to help educate consumers. They were part of the lead-up to Healthy Weight Week, which was last week.

The awards, co-sponsored by the National Council Against Health Fraud, help bring attention to the need to move away from diets.

The Slim Chance Awards for 2008 were presented in several categories. For Most Outrageous Claim, the winner was Evercleanse, promoted as a way to lose weight and detoxify the body by ridding it of undigested food and waste stuck inside the colon. We’re not overweight because food is stuck in our colons.

The winner of the Worst Product Award was Hoodia Herbal. The Federal Trade Commission this past summer charged the manufacturers with falsely claiming that using the product can result in permanent weight loss of as much as 40 pounds a month.

In the Worst Claim category, the winner was BioSpeedSLIM. This product is advertised as a breakthrough in weight loss that requires absolutely no change in eating or activity. If only this were possible.

Finally, the Slim Chance Award for Worst Gimmick went to the Hollywood Detox Body Wrap, which claims to draw toxins out through the skin, promoting immediate weight loss.

Healthy Weight Network encourages us to develop a healthy lifestyle involving active living, eating well and feeling good. Weight loss will follow. For more information, and the hand-out “Top 10 Reasons Not to Diet,” visit the network’s Web site at www.healthyweight.net.