From the LA Times, on September 20, 2013
By Alene Dawson
There’s something about fall — with its back-to-school, new-start feeling — that compels many of us to revisit our plans to diet, and sometimes those plans involve fads.
Even celebrities who can afford the best personal trainers, nutritionists, doctors, therapists and private chefs are susceptible to diet gimmicks. And when “Hunger Games” starJennifer Lawrence says that by Hollywood standards she’s “obese,” something’s wrong.
“Women across America are weight-crazed, but women in L.A. are probably more so,” says Paulette Lambert, director of nutrition at the California Health & Longevity Institute, a medical and fitness center in Westlake Village.
“My patients who fly in to New York from L.A. are so different from my usual patients,” says Dr. Macrene Alexiades-Armenakas, assistant clinical professor at Yale University School of Medicine and director of the Dermatology and Laser Surgery Center in New York. “They’re like ‘Get me to where I need to be [weight-wise] at all costs.’ ”
“Diet fads seem to cycle back around about once every 10 or 12 years. Long enough for people to try a fad diet, see that it doesn’t work, forget that it doesn’t work, then try it all over again. Sometimes these diets are just repackages with different names,” Lambert says.