Just when I thought no one could exploit her struggle with weight any more than Carnie Wilson, Kirstie Alley is fat again and eager to capitalize on it. Rumor has it that she signed on to do a reality show on A&E about her struggle to lose weight. I wonder if it will air in the same time slot as Carnie’s show, “Unstapled”? And I wonder what it will be called—my best guesses are “Tipping The Scale” and “Really Fat Actress.” Inner grimace. Inner groan.

And now for the latest in crazy Japanese products: the Beauty Waist Cushion, an ergonomically designed pillow which will give you a rockin’ bod just by sleeping on it. The Beauty Waist is “designed to enforce healthy posture and the tightening of key muscles, which in turn encourages an ideal body shape.” Wow, and to think all this time you were killing yourself with crunches when you could have just been dreaming yourself to rock-hard abs. But that’s not all! There’s also the Beauty Bottom Cushion, which will make your butt “taut enough to bounce a 100 yen coin off of.” So would this mean you could literally sit on your ass all day and get some benefit from it?

Sounds like the best workout ever. Also, if you believe all this, we have this bridge to sell you ... [Japan Trend Shop]

Want to eat cookies and lose weight? Sure ya do. According to Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet, it’s entirely possible. With a $59 per week purchase at CookieDiet.com, you’ll receive a set of cookies and instructions to eat six of the treats a day, along with one “real” meal of something like skinless chicken and steamed vegetables. One woman stuck to the diet and in three months she lost 40 pounds. In 2008 alone, the creator made $12 million in revenue—so, people must be loving it. Of course, there’s a catch ...

Just can’t stop yourself from eating the three solid meals a day that are totally making you F-A-T? Can’t afford costly stomach stapling and/or Courtney Love‘s favorite detox spa? Have we got a solution for you! California cosmetic surgeon Dr. Nikolas Chugay (interesting name) has developed a wildly innovative weight loss tool. He’ll sew a mesh patch over your tongue, which makes eating food so excruciatingly painful that patients are forced to stick to a liquid diet. Ten whole patients have been crazy desperate brave enough to try it and some lost “as much as 20 pounds” a month after the surgery. Kinda makes exercise and salads sound appealing, no? For patients who can’t make it out to see Dr. Chugay, we’ve got another solution: Simply imagining there is a mesh patch on your tongue is a total appetite killer! [Chicago Tribune]

It often seems like the future is never coming. I mean where are our hover boards and why haven’t Dippin’ Dots caught on yet? But scientists are coming up with some super-futuristic solutions that will be improving our lives way sooner than you’d think. Within the next decade, we could all be skinny, telepathic, and have the ability to fly! OK, so I lied about the last one, but who needs to fly when we’ll be able to turn on the TV with our brains and lose weight from the comfort of our own couches?

Want a neato way to lose weight without going to the gym? Introducing Banglz Bracelets, the accessories with 1/2-pound weights in them that allow you to sculpt your muscles and look super trendy at the same time! Just slip on the muscle jewelry to increase your daily exercise and do your best soccer mom impression. Choose from a variety of prints to match your outfit, such as a multicolored polka dot, black and white squiggles, zebra, or floral designs. Maximize the look with one-pound anklets, also available in leopard and paisley designs. You may look a bit strange wearing Banglz, but at least when people give you stares, your punch will pack it. (Cough.) [$24.95 and up, Banglz.com]

Physique 57 is an exercise studio in New York City where people walk in with their too-many-donut butts and come out looking like Heidi Klum. No, seriously. Physique 57 has a reputation for giving their clients long, lean muscles through a challenging routine of isometric exercises, interval training, and stretching. The studio has just launched a DVD series, allowing you to take advantage of the luxury workout at home.

Getting yourself to exercise at home isn’t easy, but you won’t suffer from lack of motivation from Physique 57’s video choices because they’re cut down into short, specialized workouts. Choose from the Classic 57 Minute Full Body Workout, the Arm and Ab Booster 30 Minute Workout, or for the ADD-inclined, an “express” full body option that only lasts 30 minutes. [$24.95-49.95, Physique57.com via Stylecaster]

Everyone knows that there are good bacteria and bad bacteria. And we know that touching and ingesting yucky things is how we pick up most bad bacteria. But how exactly does one get the good stuff in her system? Probiotics, that’s how. And new studies show it’s good for all kinds of reasons.

As if trying to lose weight wasn’t demoralizing enough, a new website called Flaab.com also embarrasses you and takes your money if you fail to shed the pounds. The website’s motto is, “Lose weight or else.” Basically, when you sign up, you tell the site how much weight you want to lose and give yourself a deadline. Then you bet a bunch of money that you can do it. If you drop the weight, the money is yours. But, if you don’t drop the pounds, the dough goes to a person or group you hate—like an ex, an annoying coworker, or an evil organization. Apart from losing money, “Flaabers” can also concoct another awful punishment for themselves if they fail. One girl vowed she would publish her phone number on the site and beg people to call and harass her. Someone else swore if they didn’t lose 30 pounds they’d give up sex for a month.

So what do you think—is this a good way to give people motivation, or is this totally twisted? [Flaab.com]

As a true believe in diet and exercise as the way best way to lose weight and keep it off, when I read about people who go to extremes like getting hypnosis to hoax them into believing they had gastric band surgery, I am quite the cynic. Seriously, put down the bacon cheeseburger, buy a treadmill, and walk on the damn thing. But rather than taking the proven route to successfully losing weight, one Daily Mail writer chose to go to Spain to undergo the new weight loss treatment known as the Gastric Mind Band.

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.

Hear us out. We can see your fingers poised over the “comment” button already! Allow us to make a case for the argument that maybe it wasn’t such a thing for Anna Wintour to suggest Oprah lose weight before she ended up on the cover of Vogue:

Beyonce tells Self that her dream of winning an Oscar is what keeps her in shape. She has a painting of the golden statue in her gym, she explains. “I look at it, and I’m like, OK, I have to stay in shape,” she said. I don’t get the connection between winning an Oscar and staying in shape. Jennifer Hudson proved that smaller sizes aren’t the ones winning Academy Awards. Maybe Beyonce was trying to take a dig at Hudson, who didn’t look her best when she won the Oscar for her role in “Dreamgirls,” which costarred Beyonce. Let’s face it, B. isn’t a great actress—she’s slightly better than mediocre—so she should probably give up her dream or at least stop talking about it. Her performances as a singer/dancer to be more entertaining. Saying her love of unitards forces her to stay in shape would have made more sense. [E! Online]

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]

Finally, a weight loss strategy that requires me to do absolutely nothing! From now on, your fat will make you thin. According to three papers published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, humans are filled with “brown fat” (gross) which burns calories at super speed.  [WebMD]

For those of us who fantasize about losing weight while sitting around in our underwear, a chemistry company, of all things, may have the answer to our dreams. Japan-based company Teijin has just announced the development of underwear that can burn away body fat. The magic underwear is made of a “Nanofront” fiber that’s said to be 200,000 times more flexible than conventional polyester fibers. Apparently, the fibers are so thin, a strand of hair is 7,500 times thicker. I have no idea how all this equates to a smaller waist, but the company claims that people who have worn the underwear in experiments for “40 consecutive days lowered their body fat by ‘several percent’ and consequently reduced waist size by several centimeters.” Wow, several centimeters! That leaves enough room for a whole extra tic-tac in your daily diet. “All that wearers need to do is let the fabric hug their skin to generate friction resistance when they go about their daily routines.” Sounds kinda dirty. The company hopes to have the fat-burning underwear perfected in time for next year’s spring/summer season. In the meantime, we should probably hold on to our gym memberships. [via CrunchGear]