Overweight Kids

We all know that obesity in children is growing.  You can see it everywhere you go.

Over the summer my wifes sister and her kids came to Vancouver to visit us.  We went to the PNE, to several parks, shopping centers and even boating.  We saw lots of kids that were overweight.  Some of their parents were also overweight but others were not, or you had one parent that was overweight.

I recently ran accross an interesting website (http://docgerrytan.com/2006/08/02/a-trick-for-children-to-lose-weight/) that had a write up about a program called “Honey We’re Killing the Kids”.  The program uses state-of-the-art computer imaging that shows parents and kids what they will look like at 40 if they don’t start making lifestyle changes now.  I thought it was quite intriguing.

I remember being told by my family doctor all those years ago that I would weigh xxx lbs if my we (parents and I) don’t do something now.  I scoffed at the time.  Perhaps if I had been shown pictures, I may have made changes earlier in life?

Here is the image from the website indicated above:

Wow.  Pretty scary?

Is it over the top?  Do we really want to scare kids into “submission”?  I know we need to do something, but which approach is the right one?

What do you do to get your kids active?

Recently we found that we’re letting our kid watch too much TV.  The TV just happened to be the ideal babysitter for when we’re trying to get stuff done around the house.

Now we get him involved.

Here’s a few things that we’ve done:

- after dinner, he has to walk around the house.  Rather than make him walk, we have him count to 100.  Each day we increase that by 10 or 20.  Not only is this helping him get a handle on counting (which he is learning through his montessori school) but it is encouraging him to stay active.

- his montessori school now regularly discusses health and not healthy foods.  Items like pizza, chocolate, donuts and soda pop have been added to this list.  Amazingly his desire for these foods has also dropped.  When he sees us with something that isn’t healthy, he will pipe up immediately “Dad/Mom — that’s not healthy!  My teacher said…”.  He keeps us on our toes also!

- bought him a RC car.  He loves it!  Since he can not use it inside, he has to go outside.  We spend maybe 30 minutes to an hour outside whenever possible.  We also bought an extra battery to keep him (and the car) going for up to 1 hour.

- we encourage him to ride his bicycle on days he can’t use the RC car.  He loves it! 

- we’ve enrolled him into swimming lessons.  He can’t get enought of being in the water.  We supplement this by taking him for more “training” (and FUN TIME) on the weekends.  It’s his special treat.  Not only does he get to practice what he has learned but it further encourages him.

- we turned on the TV in the house.  Yes, yes, yes — I know I just contradicted myself.  But we’ll turn it on during non-prime time hours and usually leave it on soccer or some other sport.  As a result, this year he’s grown fond of hit ball (baseball) and hit ball (golf) and will watch soccer as well.  I’ve bought him a kid sized putter, and when the weather gets better will take him out to the park to play a bit. 

Really it is up to the parents to do what they can to help their kids get into shape and eat well.  As well, if the schools and other public (or private) educational institutions can get involved (like my sons montessori has) it helps further the goal of helping children eat and live better.  Lets face it — kids are in school for the bulk of the day, if they get the right message from school and as parents if we can supplement what they’ve learned and provide encouragement then we are well on our way to help kids have a healthy life!

Do you have any suggestions for our readers, or things that you’ve done in your family to help kids get moving?  Please share them here!

Here is to your health,

Regards,

Mohamed

Technorati Tags: childhood obesity, sports, action games, children and weight loss, healthy lifestyles, eating well

Larger Than Life: The Root Causes Of Obesity

Hi All,

Found an excellent article from the website Medical News Today.  Source is: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/89728.php

Angst ridden 30 something Bridget Jones starts each day on the scale, obsessively tracking her weight against social expectations. She vows to become svelte, only to confide her personal dieting failures to her diary the next morning.

Author Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary resonated with women near and far, even catapulting her London-based heroine onto the cinematic screen.

Like Bridget, Sara Kirk hails from the United Kingdom and could be described as being fascinated with weight management. If they ever had the chance to meet over coffee (or given Bridget’s lifestyle, a martini) Sara would have some comforting advice: “It’s not all your fault, Bridget.”

If Bridget is taken aback at the suggestion, she wouldn’t be alone it runs contrary to conventional wisdom.

“For many years, we’ve looked at weight as an individual problem. It’s a personal responsibility willpower, call it what you will. The general consensus still is that it is an individual problem, one that should not be medicalized,” says Dr. Kirk. “Actually, there’s a huge body of literature that’s coming out now that says we need to look at the culture and the environment.”

Dr. Kirk is a former registered dietician and an expert on the management and prevention of obesity. The new Canada Research Chair in Health Services Research is with Dalhousie’s School of Health Services Administration and is cross-appointed with the IWK Health Centre.

“In my research I’m trying to understand what it’s like for the person who has a problem to go to a doctor and then be told it’s your own fault just eat less and do more activity because that’s how we treat obesity. But we must also recognize that there are other things at the core, our policies need to change,” she says.

Daily life has changed so dramatically in the past 50 years that most people have little opportunity for built in activity. The western ‘driving and convenience culture’ is seductive. “As humans, we want to take the easy way and it’s very hard to go against that,” she says.

Even the pace of change offers cause for concern. In the past 15 years, the number of people who are overweight or obese in Atlantic Canada has doubled and Nova Scotia now has one of the highest rates of obesity in Canada. “If I look at Nova Scotia, slightly over 60 per cent of adults, and one in three children, are overweight or obese and it takes about a thousand lives a year,” she says. “Certainly, with people developing a weight problem, it’s so easy to do now that it’s almost becoming normal.”

Her first Halifax-based study, funded through the IWK Health Centre, and focusing on the ‘obesiogenic environment’ in childhood, is up and running. The study is looking at the factors in the environment access to green spaces, access to food that may contribute to obesity in children in Nova Scotia. The next step is to measure the body mass index (BMI) of children and map this according to the characteristics of the environment. “We’re going to identify factors in the environment that actually contribute to childhood obesity, and then ask ‘can we do something to change the way that people respond to the environment?’”

She is also co-applicant (along with Renee Lyons, Atlantic Health Promotion Research Centre and Jill Grant, of Architecture and Planning) on another study, funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and CIHR. This research will use cutting-edge technology, including global positioning systems (GPS) to understand how children interact with their environments and exploring the intersection of community planning, physical activity and body weight. Studying the interaction of behaviour and the environment will help prevent obesity.

“Can we intervene earlier? If we can identify people before they become overweight or obese, can we get in there and actually stop them from gaining weight? And how do we equip health care specialists to do that well?” she asks.

There are known risk factors associated with obesity, such as having a parent who is overweight, having pregnancies close together and struggling to quit smoking. If these lifestyle issues could be attached to an electronic health record, the knowledge could be incorporated into the management of the health care system.

In the future, she would like to explore the attitudes of health care professionals toward people who are overweight or obese.

“There’s a real issue in that health care professionals hold unrecognized attitudes towards obesity and they don’t know what to do. The patient doesn’t like to discuss the issue because they feel bad enough about themselves. So, the easiest thing to do is ignore the situation, and it worsens,” she adds.

Literature supports the idea that health professionals, like the broader public, hold negative attitudes toward obesity and that patients with obesity may face discrimination. There’s evidence that people who are overweight or obese are less likely to receive certain tests, are prone to greater complications from treatment and face inadequate staffing and equipment during care.

Various avenues of research will provide answers for different aspects of the issue. She expects huge implications for how we prevent and manage obesity in Nova Scotia and across Canada.

“We need to look at the politics around how we price, package and market food. We need the policy to change, like agricultural policy. For instance, corn syrup is in pretty much everything, because it’s cheap to produce,” says Dr. Kirk.

“I’m only half way through my first year here, but there’s a lot to be done,” she says. “The problem is that, as humans, we want to take the easy way. And I wonder whether we can actually put the genie back in the bottle?”

So, take heart, Bridget. You’re far from alone in your struggles. And now, not only does the dashing Marc Darcy like you ‘just as you are’ you’ve also found a champion in Sara Kirk.

“We’ve got to move away from the individual and look at it as a societal problem and address it at multiple levels. We need to accept that there’s no one solution to the problem, it’s a complex problem and it needs complex solutions.”

Dalhousie University
Room 218, Second Fl., Henry Hicks Academic Admin Bldg.
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 3J5
Canada
http://www.dal.ca

Main News Category: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness

Also Appears In:  Public Health

Obesity and Prostate Cancer

Guys – here is yet ANOTHER reason for losing the weight.

Doctors use common blood test to detect the presence of PSA or prostate-specific antigen.  However in obese men, who have a high BMI had a higher blood volume and subsequently lower PSA concentrations.

“Men with a body mass index, or BMI, indicating obesity had a higher blood volume and lower PSA concentrations. The most obese men had PSA concentrations 11 to 21 percent lower than those recorded in men of normal weight, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

These men could have a total amount of PSA in the blood that might signal prostate cancer, but because they had so much more blood, the PSA concentration was so diluted that the test results seemed to show no cause for alarm, they added.”

The researchers analyzed the reports of 14,000 men between 1988 and 2006 and drew those conclusions.

The article goes on to say:

“Dr. Carmen Rodriguez, an American Cancer Society epidemiologist who participated in the study, said the findings were particularly important considering the rising rates of obesity in the United States and worldwide.

Rodriguez said doctors had known obese men were at higher risk of developing more aggressive prostate cancer. She said this study indicates one of the reasons may be that some obese men could have had false negative results in PSA tests, with their cancer then detected much later after it had grown more advanced and more dangerous.”

Prostate Cancer DOES KILL

“Worldwide, prostate cancer is estimated to kill about 221,000 people annually, with 679,000 new cases diagnosed.

The American Cancer Society estimates that about 27,000 men will die from prostate cancer in the United States this year and about 219,000 men will be diagnosed with it.”

To read the full article, point your browser here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071120/hl_nm/cancer_prostate_dc;_ylt=AlDBFVNuCZ6vEzLrLU0mOTeISbYF

Guys — so this is another warning to work on losing the weight!

Technorati Tags: prostate cancer, cancer, obesity and prostate cancer

Here is to your health,

Mohamed

FREE PEDOMETER

Get a FREE PEDOMETER from Lose Weight Feel Great!

We are GIVING AWAY 10 PEDOMETERS.  All you need to do is reply to this e-mail with your weight loss story and why you think that the pedometer will help you lose weight or help keep weight off.  Remember to provide your REAL e-mail address so that I can contact the winners and mail them their pedometer. 

The 10 best weight loss stories will get a FREE PEDOMETER (it may not look like the one pictured in this post).  If you don’t have a pedometer, and want one now is your chance to get a FREE pedometer.  It would also be great if you would be willing to provide a picture of yourself.

From the 10 best weight loss stories I’ll choose one TOP story and will send them a special prize as well.  I won’t hint at what that prize will be though.

Simply leave your comment to this post and you could get yourself a FREE PEDOMETER.  We WILL NOT spam your e-mail address and your e-mail address WILL NOT be shared with anyone.

Technorati Tags: pedometer, free pedometer, lose weight feel great, weight loss, pedometer to help lose weight

Here is to YOUR Health!

Mohamed

Lose Weight with a Pedometer

…well not really, not THAT way, but a pedometer may encourage individuals to lose weight. When I used my pedometer religiously daily, I always strived for 10,000 steps. Now — I don’t use it as much, and walking hasn’t become a priority for me. Here is a great story from Yahoo Health News on Pedometers:

By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
Tue Nov 20, 11:03 PM ET

CHICAGO – A $20 fitness gadget stood up to multiple research studies, helping people walk an additional mile each day — but only if they logged their steps. Those who did lowered their blood pressure and lost a few pounds, an analysis found.

Pedometers, also called step counters, clip to a belt or waistband and count the steps the wearer takes during the day. They range in price from $5 to $60, with simple yet reliable models costing around $20.

The analysis found that increasing physical activity depended on setting a goal and keeping a diary of the number of steps walked each day, said co-author Dr. Dena Bravata of Stanford University. Her report appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Every night, you write down how many steps you walked that day,” she said. “By flipping back through your diary, you’re able to see patterns: ‘On the two days a week I took the stairs, I increased my steps.’”

Bravata, a practicing internist, wanted to recommend pedometers to her patients. But she “really wanted to know if these little gizmos that now are increasingly popular worked.”

She and her colleagues analyzed 20 studies from the United States and Canada and half a dozen from Japan, Europe and Australia. The average age of participants was 49, and 85 percent were female because some studies targeted women. The total number of volunteers overall was more than 2,700.

The research showed that pedometer users increased their physical activity by about 27 percent, walking about one mile more a day than they did before they started their step-counting routines. Most of the studies established a baseline by asking these walkers not to change their usual activity while wearing a sealed pedometer, that is, one where they couldn’t see the number of steps, for three to seven days.

On average, the volunteers lost a few pounds. And their blood pressure dropped enough to lower their risk for stroke and heart disease, Bravata said.

Keeping a step diary was key; those who didn’t do that showed no significant increase in walking. Pedometer users who didn’t have a step goal also failed to increase their physical activity.

A Japanese fitness movement sets a goal of 10,000 steps, but more modest goals also worked to increase activity, Bravata said.

It’s still unclear whether the effects are long-lasting, she said. The studies followed patients, on average, 18 weeks.

There were lasting effects for Marcy Ross, 54, an encyclopedia editor from Great Barrington, Mass. She has clocked more than 3 million steps since putting on a pedometer 2 1/2 years ago and has lost “five to 10 extra pounds.”

“It’s the best thing I ever did,” Ross said. Recording her steps on the Web site of the non-profit group America on the Move inspires her to walk instead of drive when doing errands and to get up to talk to a co-worker rather than send an e-mail.

Dr. David Bassett Jr. of the University of Tennessee praised the analysis for pulling together what’s known about pedometers and fitness. Bassett has done pedometer research, but was not involved in the new analysis.

“This puts us on firmer ground in saying what we know about the use of pedometers in changing behavior,” Bassett said.

The analysis was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging.

Here is to your health!

Mohamed

Good Calories, Bad Calories

There was an excellent PODCAST on the CBC website, this was an interview conducted by the host of the radio program with Gary Taubes.

For the last thirty years, medical advice on obesity has been very clear. Eat less and exercise. But what if that was all wrong, a big fat lie, as Gary Taubes would put it? Mr. Taubes is an award- winning science writer based in New York, and in his latest book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, he explores the history of diet and exercise advice from the late nineteenth century until the present. According to his research, eating fatty foods doesn’t lead to heart disease, cholesterol levels aren’t something to worry about, and exercise doesn’t help you lose weight. In fact, according to Mr. Taubes, everything the medical profession advocates, in terms of eating and exercise, is at best a waste of time, and at worst, may actually be killing us. He says it isn’t fat we should be worrying about, but instead carbohydrates, especially white flour and white sugar. He thinks the current obesity epidemic, the rising levels of diabetes, even cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, may all be a result of our modern diet of carbs and sugars.

Here is the URL to the page: http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/nov17.html

You can download only the interview, or the entire program in one BIG 22mb file.  It is well worth the listen!

There are also several other related links, that I’ve included below for ease:

• The Soft Science of Dietary Fat, article by Gary Taubes from Science Magazine in 2001
• ‘What if it’s all been a big fat lie?’ Taubes article in the NY Times that spawned the book
• Knopf Page on the Book
• Interview with Gary Taubes – includes links to critical articles that challenge his hypothesis
  

Regards,

Mohamed

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