I subscribe to the news service operated by the International Association for the Study of Obesity, and I think you should, too. But the purpose of this post is not to pimp but to promote a couple of related stories on this week's report.

The first is by amednews.com that highlights what four states are doing to address obesity among their residents. The four include Colorado (the least obese state) and Mississippi (the most); a prevailing strategy is to target youngsters.

More notes from the inaugural “Your Weight Matters” conference in Dallas...

They played the Jennifer Livingston video (she’s the Wisconsin anchorwoman who was flamed in e-mail for being overweight) at the opening session, declaring her as a hero for standing up to the cretin who wrote to her.

OAC isn’t the only weight-advocacy group to praise Livingston, and I continue to struggle with that stance.

Our booth neighbors over the fence at the Obesity Action Coalition's "Your Weight Matters" conference in Dallas last weekend represented Take Off Pounds Sensibly, or TOPS, as it is known.

More notes from the inaugural “Your Weight Matters” conference last weekend in Dallas...

The "Center for Consumer Freedom," the Big Food-funded mouthpiece whose falsehoods begin with its name, cites the “latest study” when it serves its purposes, and mocks it the rest of the time. Sometimes this happens in back-to-back posts. They deserve the scorn of every thinking person on earth. But anyway.

For someone who regularly screeds (not a verb, but oughta be) about the evils of advertisers, I should have been all over leanwashingindex.com, an Austin-based reader-interactive site that evaluates marketers’ health claims.

Regular visitors will know that I think that write off the cost of advertising their crap on their taxes is absurd, and that all marketers are indeed liars, as Seth Godin coined it.

More notes from the inaugural “Your Weight Matters” conference last weekend in Dallas...

Even though my chief topic is fast becoming sustainable personal change, and has never been strictly about weight loss, one of my “selling points” is that I’ve lost 155 pounds. The number tends to grab people’s attention, and then my challenge is to capitalize on that attention for the forces of good.

Wringing out from Sandy’s glancing blow to our home, I have a few anecdotes to share from my attendance over the weekend at the Obesity Action Coalition’s first “Your Weight Matters” conference.

I went hoping first to sell books, the first time I’d tried the trade-show route, and my experience did not rise to even my most tamped expectations. Oof.

I've said some of this before, but a BBC health report (Obesity surgery "seen as quick fix") says it too, affording an opportunity to extend my remarks: Bariatric surgery might be the right choice for some obese people, but I have a very hard time regarding it as a complete solution for the people who qualify to receive it.

I didn't get to be 365 pounds with "only" an eating problem, and the size of my stomach was not a primary cause. So how could surgery that only would have made my stomach smaller resolve all?

Friday and Saturday, I'll be in Dallas at the first "Your Weight Matters" conference hosted by the Obesity Action Coalition.

I'm looking forward to meeting many of the several hundred folks who are registered, and hope to sell a few copies of "Fat Boy Thin Man" while I'm there.

I'll be sharing booth real estate with Meredith Terpeluk, a friend and colleague who has just released her book, "Healthy Voice."