Watch Online

The Show "Losing It" premiered January 20th, 2004, The online video will be available soon. Until then, take a look at these related stories from the Frontiers Archive:

				Losing It Part 1 - Counting Down Alan and nine volunteers try to trim their waistlines and improve their health.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: As 2003 came in, the Frontiersproduction staff was busy delivering new year's gifts to a select few. Hi, Amy. Hi. How are you? Good. I'm here to set up camera stuff. ALDA: Our plan is to follow the fortunes of ten people as they try to lose weight. To help document their ups and downs, everybody's being asked to keep a video diary. Today is the first day of the video diary... ALDA: Amy was headingfor heart disease, diabetes and many other problems. And, overweight since childhood, she's had enough of literally not fitting in. Being overweight is a trauma because it's not accepted in this society. You know, and dealing with people's reactions to you and feeling like "Oh, I can't go to that place because, you know, they'll look at me funny or..." It's... and, unfortunately, people do look at you funny. ( doorbell rings ) Hi, Eric. Hi. How are you? Come on in. ALDA: Eric will be a new dad in a couple of months. He's worried his weight's reducing his energy-- maybe he won't be able to keep up. ...first day of the rest of my life. I haven't even opened the book yet, so I really don't even know where to begin. Um, but... I know I need to drink a lot more water. I don't drink nearly enough water, um... But I guess I should start by reading the book. ALDA: We've got a whole weight-lossfamily living here. Oh, hi. ALDA: Kathy wants to lose weight, but her daughter, Kimberly, doesn't-- she's thin as a rake anyway. Kathy's husband, Tom, also wants to lose, while Patrick would rather not be involved. This is not going to be easy. KATHY: We're not obese, but we're about 20 pounds overweight. Um, certainly if, you know, all the statistics tell you even that little bit, it'll make a difference according to your health in the end. ALDA: Tom and Kathy have lost and gained many times before. They're concerned about Patrick, and Kathy, who works in health care, knows very well that just ten or 20 pounds extra increase your risks of a wide range of health problems from hypertension to cancer. TOM: A few of my friends are rather obese and they've said, "You're not obese-- what's your problem? You're not overweight." And I said, nodding to myself, "Yes, I am; I know I am." I can grab a good handful of fat off my belly anytime I feel like it. ALDA: Wanting to look better-- to get into that bathing suit next summer-- and concerns about health were the twin motivators for all our weight-loss subjects. Some, like Tom and Kathy, have struggled with weight for years, while others, like John here, are just waking up to the challenge. JOHN: I thought 230 was heavy. I thought 240 was very heavy. Now, here I am 250, so... it's time to do something. ALDA: Marcy's one of our mostexperienced dieters. It's my office... ALDA: She's lost and gained weight-- but mainly gained-- many times since she was a skinny 20-something. Now, she's determined-- for the first time-- to try exercise as well as diet, and, like most of our subjects, she hopes being on TV will be a motivator. MARCY: I think it will be easy in the beginning. I think there'll be hard spots. I think there will be times when I'm going to gain weight. There'll be times when I plateau and just stay the same, week after week after week. And there'll be times when I lose. ALDA: Unlike Marcy, Robin has alwaysenjoyed exercise and sports, although, as she says, she also loves to eat. She's dieted on and off since college but always stayed active, too. She's in a classic bind-- too heavy to play sports, with her inactivity making it harder to lose weight. Now she's determined to lose weight and get back to softball this summer. ROBIN: There's a part of you that doesn't know how you let yourself go this far. Then there's another part of you that goes, "Damn, I'm going to do this," you know, and you have to wait for that part to kick in. ALDA: Rodney is our second gastricbypass surgery subject. Good to see you. Nice to see you. ALDA: When he was working hard on the deck of a fishing boat, he stayed in shape. Then he bought his own boat, got to sit in the skipper's chair all day, and the weight began to accumulate. Now his doctor has said he's heading for trouble. In the last few years I've been diagnosed as a diabetic. I have high blood pressure. Um... I have sleep apnea. And that's all due to overweight, being overweight. My knees have been... in the last year, year and a half, my knees have been killing me. So if I don't do this, I'm looking at knee surgery, replacement. And I just want a better quality of life in my later years. I worked hard all my years. I want to enjoy my later years with my grandchildren. Hi, Wendy, how are you? ALDA: Wendy's very active, but she loves food and eats a lot after her frequent workouts. She's going to try switching to Mediterranean-style foods, like fish, olive oil and vegetables, which she hopes will be satisfying and healthy. And being on TV is important, too. WENDY: You know, this was, like, exactly what I needed to get going, and I can't wait. We'll see what happens in six months. I'd better be like this, you know? ALDA: Today, everyone's brought food that matches their different approaches. WENDY: I've got fresh basil, freshtomatoes, Roma tomatoes. What kind of cheese is that? Mozzarella. Mozzarella. Mm-hmm. JOHN: Basic hamburger. ALDA: Now, I thought you weren't supposed to have bread. Well, I wasn't in the first phase, but I'm sort of cheating a little bit. This would be probably two carb blocks. So between that and this, and then this is the proper amount of protein, and the fats from the dressing... And what's this? Just soda water. Oh, just seltzer. KATHY: This is whatthey give me on the Web. They give me the recipes and what to eat every day. So I follow that, so... It's peppers and tomatoes, then there's a dressing made of olive oil. It's got three ounces of chicken breast for each one of us in there. And then all the different vegetables and couscous. I'm having Lean Cuisine. Oh, Lean Cuisine, yeah. Yeah, but I... what I do is I take half of the rice out because there's way too much rice and carbohydrate. So I just have the protein and the vegetables. Turkey on pita... with mustard. What are you drinking? A Diet Dr. Pepper. No calories. Did you bring something? I just brought my friend. You just brought your friend. We've bonded. ( laughing ) MARCY: Chips and an orange. You can eat anything on this diet. I know, but... But I did weigh them out-- this is an ounce of baked chips. And how many points are an ounce? Two points. Two points. ALDA: One... ALDA: And by the way, I'm going to try losing it, too. Like Marcy, I'm doing Weight Watchers, but the on-line version. You still have to count your points. I forget-- how many pointare five shrimp? Anybody know? ALDA: We've asked everyone to stick with their programs for at least six months. Amy and Rodney will have their surgeries in March, so we'll follow them for about four months. Of course, this is a small group, and researchers prefer weight-loss studies to run for a year or more. So we can't claim this is a scientific study. Most dieters gain their weight back after a few years, so if anything, our time frame may exaggerate success. But we hope to get some insight into the personal challenges, the successes and failures. For a couple of years now, I've been watching this fat guy come onto the screen and stumble around on rocks. And... he looked like if he fell down, he'd never get up again, and, you know, this was me. And the other thing is that I noticed that all the scientists I was talking to who had anything at all to say about longevity or nutrition, they were all telling me that if I wanted to be healthy and live a long time, I had to get my weight under control. I started to eat properly and exercise, and I lost six pounds like that, and it was really easy. In fact, it was so easy that I lost the same six pounds three times in the next two months. I just kept losing it and gaining it back again. ALDA: After my losing-and-gaining-itexperien ce, I wondered what level of confidence we all felt. I feel that it's at least 90%. 80% sure. I can't give you a number. I've got to take it one day at a time. Eighty to ninety percent. I think it has to be 90% going into something so big. I think probably like 75%. Closer to 80% for me. I think for me it's 90. I like the way it's working and I like the way I feel on this diet. I don't have a number-- it's just scary. I'm at about 75%, maybe approaching 76. ( laughter ) Boy, that's really fine-tuned.

				Losing It Part 2 - Debunking the Low-Fat, No-Fat Myth A top nutrition expert says that adding 'good' fat back into our diets will help us lose weight.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: for an imaginative, tasty and healthy lunch, but Walter Willett-- one of the country's top nutrition experts-- works upstairs, so this cafeteria is different. With Dr. Willett's guidance, over the last two years, the menu has been transformed. Today we have grilled turkey cutlets with a papaya mint salsa. ALDA: Brown rice, steamed vegetables, and olive oil used on the grill. MAN: Glazed salmon. It's marinated in fresh ginger and garlic. ALDA: Same rice and vegetables and, again, olive oil on the grill. PATTY GREGORY: Wild mushroom burger. It has three different types of wild mushrooms. Puréed tofu binds it. Fresh thyme, parsley, little salt, little pepper. MAN: We really tried to make sure that everybody had a healthy option no matter what kind of meal that they wanted to choose. There are a wide range of selections here. For example, some people really do want a pizza. ALDA: Pizza smells good, too. It does smell pretty good. ALDA: Here you can get a regular pizza, or Dr. Willett's version. He wants whole-grain crust-- it hasn't lost its nutrients, and it's digested slowly so it's satisfying. We follow Dr. Willett's guidelines-- nutrition guidelines: whole-wheat grains, brown rice as opposed to white rice, whole-grain pasta and whole-wheat rolls. We don't use margarine-- canola oil, olive oil. It's a new way of thinking and it's pretty exciting. ALDA: Dr. Willett's thinking on fat is a surprise. He wants us to eat it, so long as it's the right kind. Fat in food makes it taste good and be satisfying. It is kind of startling after a decade or two of hearing about the importance of low fat, to hear from you that's the wrong track to go down. We've known for a long time that any type of calories can make you fat. But the public was really led to believe-- and some dietitians just repeated it so often enough that they believed it themselves-- that it was only fat calories that made you fat. And, of course, that led to dramatic overconsumption of high-sugar products and things that were low-fat but high... And foods that were low-fat, the fats were replaced by sugars to make them more palatable? Right, people were given the idea that you could load up on all these fat-free products and because they didn't contain fat, you wouldn't get fat. But, of course, that was a terrible mistake. ALDA: Dr. Willett uses salad dressing to drive home an important point: Don't eat saturated fats, like butter, and hydrogenated "trans" fats, like margarine, but do eat vegetable fats like olive oil. They're satisfying and have a health bonus. WILLETT: All too often there's been recommendations to go for fat-free salad dressings. That's really a big mistake, because the fat in salad dressings is one of the healthiest types of fat. It's virtually always made from nonhydrogenated vegetable oils, which will help bring down your blood cholesterol levels. And we have evidence that people who consume full-fat salad dressing regularly have a lower risk of dying from a heart attack. ALDA: Widespread refined-carbohydrate, low-fat, high-sugar foods have helped America become fatter, says Dr. Willett. We should reintroduce fat-- the right kind-- and eat whole grains. Our food would be more satisfying and healthier, and we'd be thinner. WILLETT: These high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets actually make it more difficult to control your total caloric intake. One of the basic problems is if you have this fat-free breakfast, for example, with a bagel and jam or jelly-- you know, fat-free-- you're going to be hungry by 10:00 or 11:00. And then if you're running out for a snack, by the end of the day, your total calories could actually be higher. ALDA: The low-fat craze, fast foodand more sedentary lives have all contributed to a fatter America. After you see the behavioralpsychologist... ALDA: On average, adults havebecome ten pounds heavier over the last 20 years, but that's enough to push obesity rates from 15% to 30%. Increasing numbers of people are seeking help at obesity clinics like this. It's hard to lose weight and keep it off, and surgery is becoming more common. MAN: If we took everyone who tried diets, exercise, even medications, you know, we said the average weight loss is about ten percent. If we take people who have surgery, the average weight loss is about 35% of their body weight. The other difference between not surgery and surgery is that you're more likely to keep it off when you have an operation. You hit a plateau, so your weight loss stops. You want to think about your negative thoughts and beliefs. You had been losing weight and you stopped losing weight. ALDA: Here the idea isto explore attitudes to food and weight loss, because they've found educated patients do better after surgery. "I can't stand myself." "Same old problem." SMITH: Same old problem. Here we go. Naomi? "I'll never obtain my goal." So a more positive belief. "I guess I need to change my eating pattern." SMITH: Okay. "I've overcome so many challenges in the past. I can handle this," okay? I have to make a better plan. You have to plan your meals ahead of time and be prepared to change the plan. ALDA: There's practical advice, too, like how to break habitual behavior chains that lead to overeating. SMITH: Buy the cookies, put them on the kitchen counter, stay home on a Saturday afternoon when you know that's a vulnerable time for yourself, sit on the couch, start to feel lonely, and so forth. And so each of those events is a link in the chain. And the idea is that... that we can learn link-breaking techniques for each link. So, for example, buying the cookies, it might... a link-breaking technique might be shop from a list, have a partner shop for you. Um, let's say that that didn't happen. Then we move on to the next link, which is put them on the kitchen counter. So to break that link, it might be freeze the cookies or portion them out in small bags. I don't think it was fully appreciated,

				Losing It Part 3 - Heavy Hormones Do our bodies actually resist weight loss?
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: We'll get back to our weight-loss people in a moment, but first we'll talk to the man who ten years ago started a revolution in our understanding of how the body controls weight. Yeah. Yeah? Actually, I've had requests for them. ALDA: The revolution began with some very fat mice. For grandchildren. They're actually... as you'll see, they're very docile animals, and they're gentle and they make a visual impression, so people thought they'd be a nice substitute for hamsters. So, those are three obese ones huddled together. ALDA: It turned out these obese mice had by chance acquired a genetic defect. FRIEDMAN: Brothers and sisters of those animals, and I think the difference among them is pretty obvious. These animals have been housed in exactly the same fashion-- all exposed to as much of this food as they care to eat, all confined to this cage up till now, and these animals weigh three times as much and have five times as much fat as those animals. So, what does this defective gene do to that animal that makes it obese? In the case of these mutant animals, the brain never gets the signal that there are adequate fat stores, and these animals keep eating. And ironically these animals are obese because they think they're starving. ALDA: The genetic defect stops fat cells from producing a hormone which signals the brain that there's enough fat. Jeff Friedman called the hormone "leptin," and there was great excitement when some obese people were found to be leptin-deficient. For them, leptin therapy is effective, but most obese people are not leptin-deficient. The body's weight-control system is more complex than that, as Jeff Friedman explained. The way it appears to work is something like this. There's a region of your brain called the hypothalamus. ALDA: The hypothalamus is constantly receiving hormone signals. Leptin signals how fat we are. Ghrelin signals about hunger and fullness in the stomach. And peptide YY sends signals about the state of the intestines. So when all these signals gather together up here in the hypothalamus, is that where they get... that there's some kind of communication going on and one is suppressed and the other is given a go-ahead, or what? There's some complex information processing there, the real details of which we don't understand yet. And to make it even more complicated, many other things go into this decision. Not only higher cognitive thoughts-- emotional factors influence the likelihood you'll eat or not; sensory factors certainly do. Mm-hmm. So somehow all these different factors get integrated and translated into an on-or-off response. You either eat or you don't eat. ALDA: The fact that different people have different tendencies toward obesity is evidence for the complexity of our eating-control system. People like the Pima Indians, who have the so-called "thrifty" gene, are good at laying down fat in an environment of scarcity. But they get too fat when there's constant plenty. Now add another layer of complexity. The Pima's close cousins, who live across the border, are not fat at all. But they are much more physically active, and while they have enough food, it's quite unlike the American diet that the Arizona Pima eat. The eating-control system we get from our genes is constantly juggling and assessing how much food we have, what type, how we feel and our activity levels. At the end of all that, we gain or lose weight, or stay the same. That's the complex system our group is seeking to influence, one way or another. I asked Jeff Friedman if he thought there are genetically determined barriers to what we were trying to do. If you have somebody who's a hundred or 200 pounds overweight, then the effect of... of a genetic defect might be much more powerful in that individual than willpower or environment. But if you have somebody who's 20 pounds overweight, 30 pounds overweight, even though they might find it hard to take it off and keep it off, would you think they'd be a candidate more for a genetic defect than the other two factors? People can function comfortably in a 15-, maybe 20-pound range, so that you can see weight fluctuations in that amount in just about anyone. And maybe someone has to work a little bit harder to be at the lower end versus the higher end of their range, but they won't go too far outside that range, uh... uh, by and large, over a very long term. I think once you start to think about reducing weight in amounts greater than that, it becomes increasingly difficult, because to a greater extent, as more weight has to be lost, the biological drives that resist that get more and more and more potent. And I think by the time someone has to lose a hundred or 200 pounds, it's... it's exceedingly difficult and may even be impossible for the vast majority of people. ALDA: We're only beginninto understand how the body resists weight loss. Robin, one of our dieters, is having her resting metabolism measured. That's the energy she burns just keeping her body running, even if she's asleep. It's normal-- about 1,700 calories a day. This number is fixed, unless Robin exercises. Exercise not only consumes calories as you do it; it also increases muscle, and muscle, unlike fat, burns energy even at rest. Now look at the obese mice. Because they don't make leptin, they think they're starving and want to save energy. They can't reduce their resting metabolism, so their bodies cut back activity. In other words, they're resisting weight loss, just like the 85% of dieters who regain their weight within five years. Everybody is told OPTION VALUE="1408201">And then you're saying And then you're saying that if you eat less, to some extent you're not going to feel like exercising more. FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I mean, there could be some subconscious drive that actually would lead you to be less interested in exercise. But these differences could be things like exercise or could be sort of unconscious movements, like how many calories do you burn if you're a little more, rather than less, twitchy or shaking your leg or not. I mean, I think there are very powerful, uh, forces that control how many calories we burn. And... and... and there's reasons to believe that these mechanisms are at least as powerful as those that control food intake. ALDA: Our body's powerful forcesthat resist weight loss are arrayed against another powerful force, the diet industry, and neither side can claim total victory. At a typical Weight Watchers meeting, for example, some people are losing weight, and some aren't. COUNSELOR: You did very good today. You're down 2.8-- good. Good, you stayed the same. I stayed the same? You stayed the same. I thought maybe I lost. Why are you disappointed? I can't lose weight. Yes, you can. I've been here since May. Okay, you know what to do? We're going to talk in class. We're going to help you. Good morning, good morning, and welcome. Nice to see everyone here this morning. You know what? When it's cold like this, it really tells me how bad people want to lose weight. You've been here before? WOMAN: A few years ago. A few years ago? So you're a repeat offender, huh? That's okay. Anybody else? Is this your first time here? You've been here before. You've come back-- why? I... Why? Why did you come back? I need to get healthy for my kids. You need to get healthy. Yep. Why don't you do it without coming to the group here? I've been trying that for the last year and a half and I just keep going up. If a person has never lost weight before, won't they tell you, "Just stop eating, okay?! "Just lose weight, all right?! "Smarten up! "Get some duct tape! "Put it on your mouth, okay?! Just do that, all right?!" But people that walk in our shoes-- you know what they say? "It's hard, but it's possible. It's doable, isn't it?" Brag about it. How much weight have you lost? Nine-and-a-half pounds. What? Nine-and-a-half pounds. Nine-and-a-half pounds! How good does that feel? Tell them how much you've lost. Uh, 61½. 61½! MARCY: It helps to laugh. It helps to... to share stuff. It helps to share the failures, like she was talking about, because, I mean, I'm only on week two, and, you know, I can... It's pretty much a given that I'm going to lose weight at this point because I'm really motivated. Three months from now, you know, there's nothing that says that I'm not going to be up. And we measure everything in Weight Watchers. ALDA: Marcy can eat anything, so long as she stays within her daily points allowance. Take a frozen dessert, for example. Okay, say for instance, these-- this has one gram of fiber, 50 calories and half a gram of fat. So you take your handy-dandy POINTfinder-- 50 calories, one gram of fiber. Then you go over here to this column and you find your fat grams. So it's got half a gram of fat. It equals one point. ALDA: The point system is designed to limit calories to about 1,000 a day in Marcy's case while encouraging balanced nutrition. So vegetables, salad or fruit have low point value, while steak is high. Marcy's husband, Tim, is also on Weight Watchers. Marcy's allowance is 22 to 27 points a day-- the same as mine. I just got back from joining a gym, and this is no small thing, because I hate exercise. I hate it. I really hate it. I went to the gym three times and still come back with a gain. I just, you know... It's, like, you just want to just quit. ( sighs ) Fortunately I have a television camera in my office, so I have a little more motivation than normally I would at this point. Basically what I did was drown my sorrows in cream cheese, which is actually a change of behavior for me. You know, normally it would be chocolate, but... although come to think of it, there was a little bit of that involved. Anyway, I decided to just give myself the day off and then regroup tomorrow. I still have these little arm, bat-wing things that I hate, but I have... for the first time in my life, I've got... See that mound? Can you see that? I've got this muscle. I actually have, um, quite a collection. Yes, I've made a number of attempts at this throughout my life. This represents my attempts at losing weight since 1987. I want to show you this bag of potatoes. This is a 15-pound bag of potatoes. This is a ten-pound bag of potatoes. Well, actually, it's a little less than ten pounds because we ate three of them for dinner, but together with this 15 pounds, and this ten pounds, this is 25 pounds of potatoes, and I've lost 26 pounds as of today. I mean, it's like I had no idea I had this many potatoes on my body. I'm paying attention to what I'm eating, and I had reached the point where I was just putting it away, and I really wasn't enjoying it. I'd eat a big plate of pasta and drink, you know, more wine than I'm drinking now and not really notice it. I really am noticing what I take in now and I really like it. The interesting part, of course, is going to be when I reach that final goal and then see if I can maintain it for the next four months or six months or what I hope, you know, forever. Counting anything out about the food-- whether it's calories or points, or portions, whatever it is-- you would think that would make you enjoy your food less. It continues to make me enjoy my food more. I mean, I'm thrilled at every meal. I'm really paying attention to what I'm eating-- much more so than when I stuffed myself. ALDA: Now let's see how John's doing with the Atkins diet. Many doctors are concerned that this high-protein, low-carb diet could increase heart disease, cancer and other problems. But there are no long-term studies, so we don't know for sure. We do know people who stick to it can lose weight fast, probably because they just eat less-- protein and fat are very satisfying. Hi, how are you doing? End of the second week in the Atkins diet, which is supposed to be the end of phase one, but I had a little relapse on Saturday. Bread was the first thing that I had... almost craved as I went down the bread aisle feverishly looking for low-carb or no-carb bread, and I just couldn't find it. Next day after work, I just went in and bought the bread and proceeded to make a few sandwiches and be happy. I was going to eat dinner with my mother who had just come back from Italy, and Italy is the land of pasta. So we went to the North End of Boston, which is the Italian section, and I had linguini with clam sauce, and I loved it. I actually was at home and I had the craving for pizza, my other favorite carb. And I held off for about an hour and then I ordered one. I ordered one out. And... I consumed about half of it, then I said, "Okay, that's enough." But then about two hours later, I was eating the other half. So, um, that was the end of phase two. ALDA: After a few weeks, John abandoned his diet, having lost about ten pounds. He then entered a diet study, was placed in the control group, and gained the weight back. Here's Wendy, making one of the Mediterranean-style dishes that she hopes will help her lose weight. I put a little bit of tofu cheese in, or I'll put a little bit of regular cheese in, which kind of, you know, makes the fat content go up, but still very good. So, basically, I just put this... I have jalapeños and regular red peppers and onions, lightly sautéed. A little bit of cilantro in there. ALDA: If Wendy sticks to the diet and controls her portions, she'll lose weight, especially since she works out a lot. But there was something Wendy was not admitting, even to herself at first. I just quit smoking on Sunday... by hypnotism, and so far, so good. I'm a little edgy and actually want to eat more. You know what? I think in every entry