This is more proof that you buy the dress to fit the bride—you don’t try to fit the bride to the dress. Samantha Clowe, a 34-year-old woman in England, was always overweight, and was determined not to be a “fat bride” at her wedding. So she tried a diet program called LighterLife, which had her eating specially prepared soups, snacks, and shakes everyday for a total of only 530 calories a day for 11 weeks. She did lose a lot of weight. But then her fiancé found her collapsed at the top of the stairs in their house. He called an ambulance, but she was pronounced dead soon after from heart failure. So, so sad. And a cautionary tale. [Daily Mail]

Talk about a lip balm that promises to change your life. If you’re craving gooey, cheesy, and fried things, it’s time to reapply Burner Balm, a lip balm that promises to boost your energy and suppress your appetite. The $6.99 balm contains soy oils, caffeine, green tea extracts, and hoodia—which some think is a speedilicious appetite killer, but without a whole lot of proof. The company’s website encourages you to reapply under lipstick up to six times a day, but warns that the caffeine might keep you up at night. Meanwhile, people actually concerned with your health are afraid that the company is exploiting women’s fears about gaining weight. [Metro]

Newsflash! The New York Times interviewed the next hottest male model—a half-Arab dude from Kentucky named A. J. Abualrub, who was “discovered” by Ford Models last year—about his eating habits. He just landed himself an exclusive contract with Calvin Klein and is walking in all the top designer shows in Milan at the moment. That’s him, above, looking a wee bit hungry. You’d think he’s just blab about the usual, how he’s “naturally skinny,” how he was a total “beanpole” growing up, how he can “eat anything he wants,” but nope, he went with the real, live truth! Abualrub admitted that his normal weight is somewhere around 200 pounds and to drop the runway “necessary” 30 pounds, he’s been only eating “like, maybe twice a day” and it’s been a “challenge to take off the weight.” Refreshing! A model that actually cops to the fact that being that skinny isn’t always about genetics. [NY Times]

When I heard a few months ago that pop star Jessica Simpson was considering a reality TV show about “real beauty,” I was thrilled. Finally! A celeb who sought to use the negative press attention towards her and spin it a positive way! In the wake of the offensive tabloid lynch mob over Simpson’s “mom jeans” weight gain, taking the high road seemed like a classy thing to do.

The details of said show are finally out: in a docu-series called “The Price of Beauty” for VH1, Simpson will travel around the world speaking to women about the lengths they go to to achieve physical perfection, including their diets, clothes and beauty regimens. 

It does sounds like a cool premise for a TV program. But when I read Jessica’s statement regarding her show, I came to my senses about just who the feel-good, body-positive “messenger” is.

I have no idea how much my own weight has fluctuated in the past couple of years, but I can tell you all about Kirstie Alley’s rides on the bathroom scale. And Melissa Joan Hart’s. And Britney’s and Kelly Clarkson’s and…well, you get the idea. A girl can’t grocery shop without 42-point font headlines screaming about another celeb’s double digit weight loss.

The problem isn’t just opportunistic tabloid editors making a quick buck. As Times’ Sunday Styles section pointed out, the “Ass Size Ad Nauseum” problem is not so simple. No, some celebs are more than happy to tell us all about their jiggly parts.

Oh, no! We forgot to celebrate our new favorite holiday, International No Diet Day, on May 6th!

But it’s cool. We can still score some body-image karma by grabbing a copy of Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce With Your Body by bloggers Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby.

Both women call themselves bloggers of the “fat acceptance movement,” Harding at Shapely Prose and Kirby at The Rotund. These cool ladies critique our society’s obsession with skinny bitches and cover topics like how most diets don’t work and how women can be healthy at lots of sizes, not just when they’re Olsen-twin thin.

Maybe you want to buy it to empower a bigger woman in your life—or maybe you’re the bigger woman who wants empowerment. In any case, we’re really excited when anyone acknowledges what real women look like. [$13.95, Lessons From The Fat-O-Sphere]

Hold that diet pill! The Food & Drug Administration recently recalled a whole slew of diet products made by Universal ABC Beauty Supply International due to safety concerns.

The company didn’t officially declare the products contain an ingredient called Sibutramine. While Sibutramine is FDA-approved for weight loss, the FDA says products containing it must be labeled as such because it can “substantially increase blood pressure and/or pulse rate in some patients.” Yeesh.

Thirty-four of the company’s different dieting products are coming off the shelves. The most recognizable among them is Slim Fast. Other products include Slim Express, Royal Slimming Formula, and Body Creator. All products can be returned to the store you bought them from for a full or partial refund. Get rid of those diet pills, and play it safe—blogger’s orders. You know there are healthy and do-able ways to fit into a size six that aren’t dangerous. It’s not worth it to put your health at risk. [FDA]

In theory, I love detox cleanses. The idea of spending three to five days concentrated solely on health and emerging energetic and, um, skinny, excites me. In reality, I can’t quite conjure the joy.

This is not to say that I don’t force myself through them on a semi-regular basis. I’ve tried a number of cleanses, from the popular BluePrint juice diet to the extreme Master Cleanse. I was excited when last week a friend (who is also into this stuff) recommended I try Gwyneth Paltrow’s regime from her GOOP newsletter. I was eager to try something new, something homemade that (I assumed) wouldn’t cost me too much. However, I ended up dumping the whole thing in three days.

Supposedly, if I were to cut out soda from my diet, I would lose 15 lbs. But I don’t want to lose 15 lbs. and especially not at the expense of my Diet Coke addiction—Current’s Sarah Haskins feels my pain. In her first 2009 installment of “Target Women,” she takes New Year’s diet resolutions to task. Like swapping your favorite unhealthy snacks for healthier options—like a fifth of whiskey instead of a sick pack of beer! Her new fad diet proposal at the end is hilarious—but could get you an ear infection. Whatever it takes to be skinny!

Hey look! It’s my least favorite issue of Us Weekly—“2009 Diets That Work!”! That is, CELEB diets that work—all of the diets, workout plans, and “weight loss tricks” are ones that have worked for big money stars like Jennifer Aniston (such a fatty before, RIGHT?), Britney Spears, and Beyonce. And by the way, only women are featured in the “28 page bonus” section (ZOMG, I am tots getting my $3.99 worth). Sure, the vast majority of Us‘s readers are female, and presenting the perfectly perfect bodies of celebs is supposed to be aspirational, but c’mon. Gimme a few male chubsters who lost some weight and how they did it—like Horatio Sanz and Seth Rogan. I want to know how those guys—who were truly overweight—lost the lard.

Most of us, upon the arrival of the new year, swear to begin a nutritional regimen Madonna would of and take up jazzer-yoga-lates or some other new fangled workout routine. Some will stick to their resolutions; others will last a respectable amount of time before binging on burritos; and a solid portion will cave by January 7th. Regardless, for the, now, 30 days remaining this month, just embrace all the delicious food and beverages being shoved in your face at holiday parties, dinner dates, and mom and dad’s house. You have all of next year to feel crappy about yourself with Glamour‘s help! For now, eat like a fat kid let loose in Magnolia Bakery and drink like an alcoholic swimming in a river of vodka. Here are some recipes that will help.

See all the ways to make the most of the last 31 days of 2008 here.

The Amazing Hydration Diet sounds like an elixir an old timey quack doctor would sell out the back of his wagon at a carnival. However silly sounding, it’s really a trendy diet that was recently popular with folks in Britain.  Licensed nutritionist Barbara Nash suggested her chubby client, Dawn Page, take a little bit off by drinking excessive amounts of water—nearly 10 glasses a day.  Sure, it seems refreshingly healthy for a diet when compared to the all-you-can-eat-meat Atkins diet, the cabbage soup only diet, and prepackaged low fat foods, but in actuality life-giving water can also kill. Apparently, there is such a thing as water intoxication.  Not as fun as plain intoxication and sadly, a Californian woman died last year from a water drinking contest to win a Nintendo Wii.  Luckily, Dawn Page survived her hydration detox, including all of the vomiting and the epileptic fit it induced. 

Victoria Beckham had an early birthday dinner in April with some celeb friends, and Katie Holmes wasn’t there, so people started gossiping: What happened to the two of them being BFFs? “Women go into relationships too fast and too furiously with other women,” said Liz Pryor, author of What Did I Do Wrong? When Women Don’t Tell Each Other the Friendship is Over. “They need to slow down.” However, a source said one reason Posh and Katie aren’t spending as much time together is because Tom is worried about how thin Katie has gotten from following Victoria’s 900-calorie eating plan. Um, yeah. Starving yourself would probably make you less than delightful to be around. [Daily Mail, U.K. and LATimes.com]

If you want to start eating better and you have a special person in your life, you better get him on board, because one partner’s diet makeover changes mealtime for both. Canadian researchers interviewed 21 couples in which one person was trying to make a diet change. The non-dieting person was usually supportive, but some proved to be a hindrance, basically saying, “I don’t think you’re going to be able to stick to this. You’re going to be back on the Cheetos like Britney in no time.” The sad thing is that people didn’t even know they were doing so. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t have a boyfriend, because lately I’ve been eyeing a barrel of cheese balls at my grocery store. I would be a terrible influence. [Reuters]