Category: Obesity

Diet

America the Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments

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A new documentary by Darryl Roberts that explores why we have an unhealthy obsession with dieting in America and who benefits from selling us the thin is healthy ideal.

What Darryl Roberts is saying is that rather than focusing on weight, Americans should be focusing on their health. Read this interesting interview by CNN.

First off, because [if] you are defining [obesity] by BMI, then it’s erroneous. So what we may have as a problem in this country is a health problem. That I agree with. We show it in the film. We have a health problem. And what we also show in the film is that health problems come to people with or without weight. So the film is making the point that we should be focusing on the health of people and not their weight.

Where we have problems is lifestyle choices. We have too many people eating fast food. We have too many people not exercising. We have too many people not engaging in healthy lifestyle behaviors. My point is if we have more people engaging in healthy lifestyle behaviors, we will become a healthier nation, whether we lose weight or not. If you think about it — it makes sense, right?

A very interesting perspective.

I have just returned from my annual physical examination and report while I have lost weight and am still considered obese, I am in excellent health.

But, do I wish to lose additional weight?

You bet, so that I can run farther and faster.

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Diet

Want to Lose Weight? Don’t Tell Anyone!

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Anita Mills and her 200 pound weight loss

I am happy for Anita, but this method doesn’t work for me.

Anita Mills was 382 pounds when a family doctor gave her four simple rules to lose weight:

1. Eat 8 ounces of food every 3 hours

2. No sugary drinks

3. Do not skip meals

4. Do not tell anyone what you’re doing

Now 242 pounds lighter, Mills credits that last tip for helping her through the most difficult months of her weight loss journey. Not having someone questioning every bite or trying to persuade her to relax on weekends helped her focus on the goal.

“It’s so much better to walk into a room and have someone say, ‘Hey, did you do something different?’ than to announce, ‘I’m on a diet,’ and have people pointing fingers at you,” she said.

The advice seems counterintuitive. Weight Watchers and similar groups tout support as a major reason for their programs’ success, and studies have found that accountability is important in accomplishing a goal. But telling family, friends and Facebook about your diet plans could have a detrimental effect, some experts say.

I, too, have lost a large amount of weight and have taken many years to do so. I now weigh 240 pounds down from 370 plus or so (8 years ago).

I understand about friends and acquaintenances making comments, but I have found accountability to my wife, children and friends to be a good motivator. Now, I am using MyFitnessPal.com and share my daily diet and exercise with certain friends, who also wish to lose weight.

Different weight loss methods for different people……

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Dentistry

Banning Soda at School Ineffective In Curbing Consumption?

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State bans on sugar-sweetened drinks in middle schools didn’t have much impact on kids’ overall consumption, researchers found.

Although the ban significantly cut down on student-reported access at school, about 85% of students reported having at least one soda or other sweet drink in the prior week whether they could get the beverages at school or not, Daniel R. Taber, PhD, MPH, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and colleagues reported.

Bans on soda only had even less impact.

These results from surveys at schools across 40 states appeared online in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

“School is only one aspect of a child’s environment,” Taber’s group noted, “and youth have proven to be very adept at compensating for individual changes to their environment.”

The Institute of Medicine and other organizations have urged a universal ban on selling or providing sweetened beverages at school, with the rationale that limiting access at school should reduce overall consumption because students spend a large portion of their day there.

But students who reported at least daily consumption actually slightly increased their intake when the drinks were banned at school, suggesting that they more than compensated with drinks purchased at convenience stores and other locations, the researchers pointed out.

“Any impact of state school-based sugar-sweetened beverages policies on youth dietary consumption may be modest without changes in other policy sectors,” Taber and colleagues wrote.

Schools have to accompany the ban on the selling of sodas with a comprehensive education plan that delineates the problems with obesity and the role of sugary drinks. Of course, the students will simply wait until 2:30 PM and then head to the nearby store and drink their daily sodas or energy drinks.

While I do think a ban on sugary drinks, especially at elementary schools is appropriate, if it is a ban only approach, the change in behavior of drinking more healthy products will not be realized.

It is all about teaching the students what drinking too much soda and energy drinks will do to your health – especially your teeth.

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Obesity

Poll Watch: Half of German Adults are Obese and Overweight

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According to the latest Gallup Poll.

Half of German adults are obese (13.7%) and overweight (36.4%), similar to the 54.5% in the United Kingdom, but significantly less than the 62.1% in the United States.

These data were collected as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index from March to September 2011 in Germany, the U.K., and the U.S.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index uses respondents’ self-reports of their height and weight to calculate body mass index (BMI) scores. Individual BMI values of 30 or higher are classified as “obese,” 25.0 to 29.9 are “overweight,” 18.5 to 24.9 are “normal weight,” and 18.4 or less are “underweight.”

Still lower than the United States which is at 62.1%.

But, like the U.S. and U.K – way too high!

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Diet

After Finishing Dieting, Hormonal Changes May Lead to Weight Gain?

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The answer is YES, according to a new study.

By some estimates, as many as 80% of overweight people who manage to slim down noticeably after a diet gain some or all of the weight back within one year.

A shortage of willpower may not be the only reason for this rebound weight gain. According to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine, hunger-related hormones disrupted by dieting and weight loss can remain at altered levels for at least a year, fueling a heartier-than-normal appetite and thwarting the best intentions of dieters.

“Maintaining weight loss may be more difficult than losing weight,” says lead researcher Joseph Proietto, Ph.D., a professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne’s Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital, in Victoria, Australia. “This may be due to biological changes rather than [a] voluntary return to old habits.”

Scientists have known for years that hormones found in the gut, pancreas, and fatty tissue strongly influence body weight and processes such as hunger and calorie burning. And the reverse is also true: A drop in body fat percentage, for instance, causes a decrease in the levels of certain hormones (such as leptin, which signals to your brain when you’re full) and an increase in others (such as ghrelin, which stimulates hunger).

What wasn’t so well known, until now, was whether these changes in hormone levels persist after an individual loses weight. To find out, Proietto and his colleagues put 50 overweight or obese men and women on a very low-calorie diet for 10 weeks, then tracked their hormone levels for one year.

So, how do you maintain your weight loss?

Or, is being obese inevitable?

That’s not to say that weight regain is inevitable, or that these drives can’t be overcome through willpower. Although the hormone changes noted in the study are very real physical effects, Proietto says, personality and psychological factors may play a role in an individual’s ability to manage chronic hunger.

“This may explain why some people maintain weight loss for longer than others,” he says. “Maintenance of weight loss requires continued vigilance and conscious effort to resist hunger.”

Promising research is being done to discover ways to restore hormone levels in people who lose weight, Burant says. Preliminary studies from Columbia University, for example, have found that when dieters are injected with replacement leptin hormones, it’s easier for them to maintain or continue weight loss.

“When diabetics don’t have enough insulin in their bodies, we give them back insulin in order to maintain their blood glucose,” Burant says. Researchers should be finding a way to do the same for people who have lost weight, he adds, “whether it’s with a drug, a dietary supplement, or certain nutrients—something that will stimulate the release of these hormones.”

Proietto agrees that finding an appetite suppressant of this sort is the next logical step in hormone and obesity research. Until then, he says, weight-loss surgery is a possible option for some severely obese people who have not been able to keep weight off by other methods.

For now, I will continue to monitor my diet and exercise regularly. Perhaps there will be a vaccine to help the severely obese, and certainly that is a better option than surgery.

Stay tuned…..

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