Posts Tagged ‘overweight’

FLOTUS tackles America’s FATNESS

February 3rd, 2010

Like previous First Ladies, Michelle Obama has found her First Lady Issue – and luckily for America, it’s Childhood Obesity.

America has to do something about childhood obesity…NOW.

Our collective lifestyle is essentially a perfect storm that ensures that our children are going to keep getting fatter and sicker year after year.

But, what are we supposed to do.

  • Most families require two incomes…ergo home cooked meals are hard to come by.
  • America’s food producers make a greater profit on processed “food in a box” than they do on fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, etc… so we can’t expect them to lead the healthy eating parade.
  • Between our anti-pedestrian neighborhoods and our fear of strangers, our kids don’t play outside anymore. I remember as a kid being outside for hours playing sports and doing kid stuff. I bet you do too. When was the last time your kids spent an entire Saturday outside in the fresh air, running around doing something good for their health?
  • Add to this tv, video games, insane amounts of homework, the internet, the fact we drive everywhere, mega malls, etc….

It all seems pretty grim, doesn’t it.

But, like the first Lady says, “childhood obesity is imminently solveable”

We just need a good plan.

And that’s where we are right now. At the planning stage.

No big gov’t involvement…yet. No big corporate sponsored advertising campaigns. No new taxes or regulations.

So, before all of that happens, America’s parents might want to take 15 minutes and think about what help they want from their government so that they can keep their children lean, fit & healthy.

If you need some help getting started,perhaps these articles can give you some ideas.

And I would love to hear your suggestions.

Heck, I would love to assemble all of your suggestions and forward them to the First Lady.

So, think about it and leave a comment.

Or email her yourself via the White House Contact Form.

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Posted in Diet/Nutrition, Exercise, I Wanna Be Healthy, I Wanna Look Great, fat, fat loss, fitness, fitness - general, health, nutrition, obesity, politics, weight loss

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Childhood Obesity: A Cruel Kindness

January 11th, 2010

Waaaaayyy back in 1967, medical experts were concerned about the growing threat of childhood obesity.

Little did they know that the “fat kids” from their time would be considered “normal” in 2010.

Don’t believe me?

I recently came across the following olde-tyme educational film from Great Britain (c 1967). The film documents the typical home life for Brits in the late 60s…including their attitudes towards food and meal times. It also addresses obesity in children.

A female GP narrates the story of three children who are overweight for their age stressing that although there may be some inherited causes of their obesity, it is mostly due to over-feeding on the part of the parents, what the GP calls a cruel kindness.

Cruel Kindness

What a great description.

  • Why do we feed our kids pizza instead of broccoli?
  • Why do we let them play hours & hours of XBox instead of kicking them outside to get some exercise (and a real life)?
  • Why have we let fast food become the largest food group?

Cruel Kindness

It’s easier to give them what they want, instead of what they need.

But that isn’t parenting…is it?

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Enjoy the film.

Or better yet, talk to your children’s school about screening the film during phys. ed or science or during an assembly.

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The status-quo is broken…We need a new model for burning fat and getting fit

May 11th, 2009

trust me, i'm a doctor

For decades, we have listened to the nation’s health experts tell us:

  • what to eat,
  • what not to eat,
  • how much to eat,
  • how much exercise we need,
  • what type of exercise we need….

And, after all of that advice, we have become a nation world afflicted with runaway obesity, diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, cancer, etc…

And yet, when we want to improve our health or reduce our waistlines, we still turn to the experts.

Why?

Everyday I meet people who are trying to get into shape. For years, they have been trying to follow the rules laid down by the experts.

  • They followed the food pyramid
  • They cut the fat out of their diets
  • They did their 20 minutes of fat-burning cardio
  • They choked down their egg white omelettes
  • They ate their fiber

And they watched their backsides get wider and their blood pressure rise higher and higher.

It’s time for a change.

The status quo is broken.

The top-down approach doesn’t work.

But with the technology available today, we don’t need to rely solely on that expert advice from up above.

We can connect those people who are desperate to transform their bodies with those people willing to help.

We can create a tribe of people devoted to health, fitness and each other.

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Future Trends in Global Obesity

April 13th, 2009

obesity_chart1

A couple of weeks ago, the OECD (Organisaton for Economic Co-operation and Development) released a working paper entitled:

The Obesity Epidemic: Analysis of Past and Projected Future Trends in Selected OECD Countries

In that paper, the OECD has brought together the most accurate data on the current state of obesity in its member countries.

For those of you interested in health, obesity and staring at pages and pages of graphs and charts, prepare to enjoy.

And for those of us who aren’t so graph-inclined, I have taken it upon myself to crunch the numbers for you.

And what I found most interesting was that there was an obvious difference in the obesity trends between one group of countries and a second group of countries.

Group #1

Group #1 consists of Australia, Canada, England and the United States.

I grouped these four countries together because they represent phase 1 of the globalization of the Western Diet.

The people of these countries were the first to:

  • Replace real food with junk food
  • Replace water with Coca Cola
  • Replace whole grains with Wonder bread
  • Replace walkable communities with SUV required suburbs

As a result of their early adoption of this lifestyle, their current and future levels of obesity are much different than the other countries surveyed by the OECD.

If you look at the graphs below, you will see that:

  1. Group 1 countries can expect a substantial further increase in obesity.
  2. Conversely, the percentage of simply overweight citizens should level off or even decline.

A closer look at the statistics from these countries shows that the “numbers of individuals in the lower sections of the overweight range have been decreasing sharply in these countries, while numbers of individuals in the upper section of the overweight range have been increasing.”

These changes are projected to broadly offset each other, leading to stable or slightly decreasing overweight rates.

So, what do all of these numbers mean?

It means that in these countries, the chubby population is disappearing. Overweight people are either getting fit and dropping back down into the healthy weight category, or graduating to full fledged obesity or even morbid obesity.

Maybe the animators at Pixar had it right?

wall-e-chub-chub

Obesity Trends – Group #1

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United States of America

Obesity trends - USA

Obesity trends - USA

Canada

Obesity trends - Canada

Obesity trends - Canada

England

Obesity trends - England

Obesity trends - England

Australia

Obesity Projections - Australia

Group #2

Unlike Group #1, the obesity rates for Group #2 countries are projected to grow at a relatively slow pace.

However, their overweight rates are expected to increase at a much faster pace…especially South Korea.

Why the difference?

Even though there is not enough data to conclusively prove it, the general assumption is that Group #2 countries are simply at an earlier stage in the progression of obesity caused by the Western Diet/Lifestyle.

They are simply becoming overweight as a precursor to their evolution into full blown obesity.

Obesity Trends – Group #2

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France

Obesity trends - France

Obesity trends - France

Italy

Obesity trends - Italy

Obesity trends - Italy

Austria

Obesity trends - Austria

Obesity trends - Austria

South Korea

Obesity trends - Korea

Obesity trends - Korea

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Reference

OECD Health Working Papers
No. 45,  20/03/2009, English, 82 pages, doi: 10.1787/225215402672
The Obesity Epidemic: Analysis of Past and Projected Future Trends in Selected OECD Countries
Franco Sassi1; Marion Devaux1; Michele Cecchini; Elena Rusticelli1

1: OECD, France

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Binge Eating: Is Your Brain Making You Fat?

October 10th, 2008

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that “overeating throws critical portions of the brain out of whack, leading to a malfunctioning hypothalamus, metabolic inflammation, insulin resistance, leptin resistance, obesity and type 2 diabetes”.

The study, published in the October 3 issue of Cell, attempts to expand on previous research which showed that over-nutrition is associated with chronic inflammation in metabolic tissues.

Specifically, they wanted to see whether metabolic inflammation compromises the brain’s metabolic regulatory systems and therefore promotes over-nutrition associated diseases.

Translation:

They wanted to see if a trip to the “All You Can Eat Buffet” would mess with your brain, causing an impaired metabolism and increased obesity.

The Results:

A trip to the “All You Can Eat Buffet” will mess with your brain, causing an impaired metabolism and increased obesity.

The Details:

There is a substance in your brain called IKKβ/NF-κB.

IKKβ/NF-κB is a mediator of metabolic inflammation. Most of the time, it just sits there, inactive.

However, a single session of overeating activates the IKKβ/NF-κB found in your hypothalamus.

Once activated, the IKKβ/NF-κB increases inflammation in your metabolic pathways and interrupts the normal signaling of the obesity regulation hormones, leptin and insulin.

When this happens over and over and over again, your body becomes resistant to insulin and leptin.

And you become fat.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the increased obesity leads to even more inflammation. Which leads to more leptin / insulin resistance and so on and so on.

This all results in quite the little vicious circle of inflammation, hormone resistance and obesity.

Conclusion

The researchers have concluded that “their findings could lead to treatments that might stop this cycle before it gets started”.

If they can inhibit the IKKβ/NF-κB pathway in the hypothalamus, they may be able to eliminate the inflammatory response to over-eating and the resultant hormone resistance and obesity.

They also noted that “if realized, such a strategy would likely offer a safe approach given that the critical pathway appears to be unnecessary in the hypothalamus under normal circumstances.”

APPEARS TO BE UNNECESSARY

Hmmmm, I don’t know about you, but being told that part of my hypothalamus “appears to be unnecessary” doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

Instead, I think that I will just skip that second trip to the trough…errr…buffet table and avoid the entire problem altogether.

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References:

EurekaAlert

Cell

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