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There's no denying it: Canadians are getting fatter and fatter. The proof is in the ballooning obesity rates.A recent report revealed nearly half of all Canadian adults are overweight or obese. The proportion of obese Canadian adults tripled to 14.8 per cent in 1998 from 5.6 per cent in 1985.

Most overweight people have been on the fad diets, read the self-help books, sweated to the videos. Losing weight is one of the most common New Year's resolutions made -- and broken -- in North America. It's also become big business, with myriad choices offered by self-proclaimed prophets.

So how do you make it work this time around?

First and foremost, experts say, it takes time to make a permanent difference. Not a week, not a month. The resounding advice is: Go slow.

"If you want to lose weight, you have to change your eating habits for the long term," says Janet Polivy, professor of psychology and psychiatry at University of Toronto at Mississauga who studied the diet industry. If you don't stick to a healthy eating and exercise regime over a long-term period, no amount of low-carb, low-fat, low-cal food is going to work.

That's a message echoed by Weight Watchers, one of North America's longest-running weight-loss programs. But the other key factor -- one that might explain the program's four decades of popularity -- is this: Enlist support.

Weight Watchers began as a discussion group when, in 1963, Jean Nidetch invited her friends into her Queens, N.Y., home to talk about weight loss. These days, about one million people meet each week on the company's program.

According to a recent University of Pennsylvania study, Weight Watchers was the only one of 10 diet programs that could prove it works over a sustained period.

"Motivation is very important," Dr. Pierre Lefebvre, professor of medicine at Liege University in Belgium, recently told Associated Press. "Weight Watchers is part of behavioural management of a serious condition and they do it very, very well. It has a place."

Sandy Hill is certainly motivated. "I finally made my 10 [pounds]," she yells, throwing up her arms up at a weekly Weight Watchers meeting at Toronto's Hope United Church. The noise of 30 pairs of hands erupting into applause echoes off the basement walls.

When the clapping subsides, meeting leader Penny Bond, Weight Watchers' regional manager for Toronto, hands the beaming Ms. Hill a sticker that says "I did it" and a ribbon that marks her 10-pound stepping stone.

"I can't do it by myself," Ms. Hill says. "Hearing positive stuff from other members is a great support. Almost two months before I joined I was trying to do it by myself and I was struggling."

It's the fourth time she's joined -- the other times she veered off course when she dropped the weekly meetings. Prof. Polivy says such group meetings offer dieters the feeling that they're not alone.

For those who need support but prefer privacy, there are programs such as Jenny Craig, which offer counselling outside group meetings. Jenny Craig herself lost 45 pounds by following an exercise and healthy-eating regimen after a difficult pregnancy and. In 1983 at the age of 50, she founded the first of the Jenny Craig Weight Loss Centres in Melbourne, Australia. Since then, 650 worldwide centres have provided services to more than 10 million people.

Critics say these types of programs prey on vulnerable dieters and that long-term maintenance of weight loss is heavily dependent on staying in the program. And this can get expensive. At Weight Watchers, dieters pay for attending meetings - the longer the plan, the less it works out to be per week.

At Jenny Craig, members pay for the already prepared food, about $15 to $18 a day for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. That's $420 to $504 for one month.

For dieters like Erin Morrow, the expense is worth it.

She's spent more than $500 on the Weight Watchers registration fee, cookbooks and meeting fees since last April. Forty-five pounds later, she's down to a 5/6 clothing size from 15/16.

Weight Watchers members are assigned a maximum of points that they are allowed to eat every week; the higher the calories, the higher the points. For example, 23 pretzel sticks are one point while a McDonald's Big Mac is 14.

"I am a stickler for wanting to know how many points [foods are] worth," Ms. Morrow says during the meeting, adding that she has calculated the number of French fries she can eat from a certain brand -- 22 to be exact.

Prof. Polivy says point counting can be beneficial in making people aware of what they're eating. But she cautions: "If you're so obsessed with your points that you can't go out and enjoy a meal, I would say that's harmful."

Like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig's plan is based on information from a medical advisory board. They both espouse increased physical activity, smaller portions and a lower calorie intake from all the food groups.

For anyone who wants to start losing weight, Ms. Bond suggests a couple of tips. She calls the first, the "one-to-10 rule."

"When you put it in your mouth, if it doesn't taste like a 10, don't finish it," Ms. Bond says, pointing out that this is handy for party spreads, where the variety is tempting.

She also says portion control is key: "If you were to take half your portions for a week, you'd survive, and you would be very surprised to realize you're satisfied."

At Jenny Craig, instructors suggest that dieters learn from lapses and enlist support so that they are kept accountable by friends.

Both programs have evolved over they years. Most recently, each adapted to the advent of the low-carb phenomenon.

In August, Weight Watchers introduced the TurnAround program, combining the traditional point-counting system with a system that allows members to eat lower-carb foods without tracking points.

And last fall, Jenny Craig launched the YourStyle program, which customizes diets to fit a client's lifestyle. In one ad, a woman says she used to be a size 18 carb-lover, adding: "I'm still a carb-loving diva, just 48 pounds thinner."

The Jenny Craig food product line also felt the low-carb ripple with new snack alternatives like nut-based snacks, or vegetables instead of potato side dishes, said Janet Walker of Jenny Craig Canada.

As long as waistlines expand, however, dieters will hope for an easier route and the next gimmick.

But the experts insist -- and successful weight-droppers know -- there is no quick fix.

"Any places that offer you more than one to two pounds of weight loss a week are lying," Prof. Polivy warns. "Anything that promises weight loss is a sham. It doesn't work that way."