By Mary MacVean Did you laugh at Chris Rock’s “GI Jane” joke? Did you find it mean or in poor taste because it made fun of Jada Pinkett’s Smith’s medical condition? …

Dry January Has Its Ups but Find Reasons Other Than Your Diet to Join In By Mary MacVean Dry January is coming to a close. …

Like Oprah, have your cake, and trash it too By Mary MacVean Did you happen to watch Oprah Winfrey dump the sizeable leftovers from a bananas Foster birthday cake into the trash? …

By Mary MacVean Today I heard a commercial for Noom, among the best-known of the dieting apps, saying it provides “the knowledge and the wisdom” to lose weight and lead a healthy life. Count me among the skeptics. My reasons? For starters, have you heard about it on National Public…

“It’s the most dieting time of the year.” By Mary MacVean I just couldn’t help myself. Even though my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, I love the songs, and today — five days into the annual dieting season, I couldn’t get out of my head “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of…

By Mary MacVean Pick your poison: latkes, Christmas cookies, eggnog? Maybe the whole damn buffet? For anyone who weighs more than svelte, or who lives in fear of gaining a pound, every bit of edible joy can be so easily sucked out of the last two months of the year. …

By Mary MacVean A billboard just a block from my house advertised CoolSculpting for a while. I passed it all the time, and every time I thought about how “cool” it would be if someone could freeze and disappear a whole big bunch of my fat cells in no time. …

A jaw-dropping idea to restrict what you eat By Mary MacVean Dieting is onerous and eventually makes you feel like a failure in most cases. But here’s a simple truth: If you cannot eat, you will lose weight. That idea has been taken to jaw-dropping extremes with a new product…

By Mary MacVean Assante Microfarm in L.A. (Photo by Mary MacVean) As people gathered along the sidewalk outside the corner house at Angeles Vista Boulevard and Olympiad Drive, motorists slowed to check out the fuss. The fuss, on a hot Saturday morning, was Asante Microfarm, which not so long ago…