By Matt Sloane
CNN Fit Nation Producer

There are a few times in life when you're faced with a decision that could change the course of your life forever. Which college do I attend? What career is right for me? Should I marry that person?

If you're not so healthy, feeling a little overweight, maybe your blood pressure is high... here’s one of those life-changing opportunities!

Here’s your chance to get a six-month training program. We'll give you the trainer, we'll give you the nutrition guidance, and we'll give you all of tools you need to change your life. At the end of this six-month period, you're going to be a different person! You will have lost a few, if not several pounds. You will have gained endurance, strength and muscle; and you will be jumping into the Hudson River next July.

Why? Because you will be competing in the New York City Triathlon. Intrigued? It gets better! Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be training right alongside you!

Five months ago, Sanjay committed to getting into the best shape of his life by the time he turned 40. Well, the big birthday came, and he was in tip-top shape. Now he's vowed to stay in good shape for the rest of his life – and the quest starts with the New York City Tri.

If you want to sign up, go to CNN.com/Fitnation, and share your story with us. Are you 40 or even 50? We want you! Are you overweight and have never run a mile in your life? We want you! Who knows? It might be a decision that changes your life forever!

By Matt Sloane
CNN Medical Producer

There are few things that excite me more in my job than a run of Fit Nation Tour events, and that's exactly what we're kicking off this weekend! It's not the travel so much that I'm excited about, but the opportunity to meet thousands of people who are eager to hear the latest information about obesity, losing weight and healthy living.

I've written these numbers over and over again: 66 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese; 33 percent of children fall into this same category. This is NOT OK! So, we've partnered with the YMCA – a fantastic community organization – to get kids moving again. We've taken a page from the YMCA of Cleveland's book and modified a program called "We Run This City" – where kids run 25 miles of a "marathon" over the course of two months, and run the final 1.2 miles during their city's big marathon. Once they cross the finish line, they receive a medal, a certificate and a sense of confidence – a feeling, that they CAN stay healthy and have fun.

This Sunday, we'll hit the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon in St. Paul, Minnesota, followed by Chicago on Sunday, October 11. We’ll also be at the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, October 25th. If you're in one of these cities, come out and visit! Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be joining us in Minneapolis and Chicago, and he'll be signing advance copies of his new book: “Cheating Death.”

To learn more about the Fit Nation Tour, and for tips and tricks to help you get fit, plus stories of how other people have conquered the battle of the bulge, go to CNN.com/Fitnation.

As a regular feature of CNNhealth.com, our team of expert doctors will answer readers' questions. Here's a question for Dr. Gupta.

From Barbara, Chicago:

"I’ve lost 5 pounds since jumping on board with your fitness forum. How are you doing so far? Have you noticed changes in the last month?”

Answer:

Barbara, thanks for joining the forum and congratulations on losing 5 pounds! Keep up the great work.

It’s been three weeks since we started the #1023 trending topic group on Twitter. (Read the tips, join the conversation, by typing in #1023 Twitter's search browser) People are already starting to write in about their own progress. I really encourage you to read all the comments coming in – witty, inspiring, proactive and most of all, helpful.

@melmcd99: started morning with a yummy smoothie-2cup-stawberries, 1-banana,1cup-soymilk, 1scoop protein powder and tsp-almond butter! #1023

@JackRyan53: Rotated 10 min walks with 10 minutes of hard labor on the Elliptical. Not a bad routine. Feeling the effects!! #1023

@nhPNP: got up to 4.5 mph on the treadmill- could only sustain it for about 3 min, but it's a start. Love the interval training prgrm. #1023

@claudiasiegel: Friends gave me consequences for skipping exercise. So far it is working. Haven't missed a day since challenge started. #1023

@melmcd99: Walk to your next meeting instead of driving or riding the bus! #1023

As I mentioned in my initial blog, this isn’t about losing weight or inches, but about health and fitness. For my part, I am finally on a strict routine. Since I started three weeks ago, I have been able to work out 15 times (five times per week). I have not missed breakfast once and I have started to meditate almost every afternoon for about 10 minutes.

Without question, it hasn’t always been easy. For example, I had a day when I started work at 6 a.m., finished at 7 p.m., and then jumped on a plane that landed around midnight. As hard as it was, I woke up an hour early on that day – and got in a 4-mile run, followed by push-ups and sit-ups. I immediately look for a hotel gym or any other place to exercise when I am on the road.

In Haiti, I asked our cameraman if I could carry the tripod during our long hikes up hills, and I did curls with the tripod on the way. One of the best pieces of advice about diet that I received:  “don’t eat anything that is not worth eating…”

My biggest concern now is that I am becoming too lean. My producer Danielle pointed out that I was looking skinny after a recent shoot down in Texas. There is no doubt that I am losing weight, but I have to be careful to maintain muscle mass. After all, it is the muscle that is the metabolic engine for your body.

So, I plan on sticking with the program but adding on more strength training with some free weights. Look for more updates soon!

By Matt Sloane
CNN Medical News Producer

When I first heard about the TOGA procedure, I have to be honest, I was a little shocked! TOGA, which stands for transoral gastroplasty, involves doctors putting a garden hose-sized tube down your throat, passing a camera and a staple gun through the tube, and stapling your stomach from the inside. Pretty cool, eh? It's the latest procedure in "natural orifice surgery," an innovative and attention-getting area of medicine. Gallbladder removal through the vagina, brain surgery through the nose, and now stomach stapling through the mouth – the very orifice where most obesity begins.

The procedure – if approved – could help take the place of laparoscopic obesity surgery, which comes with scars, and several days of recovery. Lose weight, no scars, very little recovery time, and the only complaint most people had in the clinical trials was a bad sore throat? Sounds great, but not so fast, says Dr. John F. Sweeney of the Emory University Center for Bariatric Medicine.

"This is really innovative, and it's pushing the envelope on what we're doing endoscopically," said Sweeney, "But stomach stapling really doesn't work long term."

Lets take a step back. There are two types of obesity surgery. Restrictive operations make a pouch or sleeve inside the stomach, thus making it harder for food to pass, and creating a feeling of satiety, or being full. Malabsorptive operations actually re-route the gastrointestinal anatomy, so that there is less stomach surface area to absorb the nutrients you normally take in with food, thus causing you to lose weight. TOGA, as well as procedures like the LapBand are restrictive surgeries, and although they can be very successful at first, the long-term success rate is not stellar.

"Folks often aren't compliant with their diet," said Sweeney, "Sweet eaters easily defeat restrictive operations, other folks overeat and disrupt the staple lines."

And according to a 2002 study in the journal Surgery, Body Mass Index (BMI) for patients that had undergone gastric banding operations declined for the first three years after surgery, but then began to climb – almost to pre-surgery levels in the years following.

So just who would be the right candidate for this procedure?

"The whole point of this operation is to make a pouch where large food will get stuck," said Dr. Edward Phillips, chairman of surgery at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "So, if you're a meat-and-potatoes kind of eater, you will probably do pretty well with this type of procedure."

But having done dozens of TOGA procedures himself, Phillips says, "liquid calorie eaters" tend not to lose as much weight.

"If you eat alot of ice cream or liquid calories, those kinds of things are going to pass right through the sleeve very easily."

Overall, in the first phases of clinical trials, the TOGA has resulted in an average of a 45 percent weight loss after one year. How it does after two, three or even five years? That's the big question that will determine how revolutionary the TOGA really is, and we may not get the full story for another year or two.

When the procedure becomes available, would you have the TOGA procedure done to lose weight?

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Matt Sloane
CNN Medical Producer

As I approached the dividing line between Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish, a huge stack of sandbags lay across the road. We'd heard reports that Jefferson Parish fared worse than downtown New Orleans during the storm, but I wasn't sure what to expect. Would there be flooding on the other side?

Sand bags lay across the street at the entrance to Jefferson Parish

Luckily, the barriers were just there as a precaution. The engineers let me cross the dividing line but warned, "Once you're in, you're on your own if you get caught." I went anyway because there was something very important on the other side - the playground just built for the community of Metairie. It was the culmination of an eight-month-effort to bring KaBOOM! on as a new partner in the CNN Fit Nation fight against childhood obesity. It was an important step in our efforts to make a difference at the community level.

There were some downed trees, power lines and road signs on the way in, but the playground was still standing. Good thing, because this was more than just any old playground. It was a symbol of rebirth after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. It was a place for community residents to gather and work together, and most importantly, it was, and still is, a place for the kids to play.

Play can be such an important tool in helping to heal the wounds of trauma. In this case, getting the kids to draw what their dream playground would look like allowed them to take their minds off the scars left by Katrina and let their imaginations run wild. Even cooler was seeing the kids watch their dreams became a reality in just six hours.

Debris was scattered around the playground at Pontiff Park, but it stayed in tact

Just two months later, the thought of those dreams being crushed, again, was unbearable. Yes, it did look like a hurricane had come through. There were a few branches in the sandbox, some of the paint came off the hopscotch court and there were a few puddles of water. But the few scars left behind by Gustav do nothing to harm the progress made by rebuilding Pontiff Park. The community still has its park. The parents still have their symbol of rebirth, and more importantly, the kids still have a place where they can let loose and just be kids!

Editor's Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.