Feb
05
2011
Hello fans of mine, and welcome back to The Best Diet in the Universe. It’s what you all have been waiting for. It’s what you have been preparing for. It’s time to get started. It’s time to get fit and healthy. It’s time to get into shape! So all of you that have read the last two blog columns-you are ready!
Let’s take a moment and review all the major points that got you this far:
The junk food in your kitchen is gone-hasta la vista baby! It’s replaced by healthier items. Don’t worry-I will give you a list of the healthy items you should stock up on.
You got on the scale and now you know! Had to be done! This is your starting weight. And we all need a starting point. You will weigh yourself every few days and watch the weight fall off.
You made a realistic weight loss goal. This is so important. So many times we say-I am going to lose 20 pounds, or 30 pounds.” Never happens. This goal needs to be something you CAN actually reach. This doesn’t have to be the only goal. Once you reach this weight target, you reassess and look at the next goal. One of the major problems that we all face is once we achieved the first goal-we don’t sustain it and we gain back the weight. So a realistic weight ...
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Oct
26
2010
A new study from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center* found that Type 2 diabetes among adolescents has increased dramatically. Why? Well, it is related to the increasing rates of childhood obesity that we are seeing. With the rates of overweight and obese children rising, we are seeing the secondary medical problems that are surfacing-type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Additional problems such as arthritis, cancer, sleep difficulty and respiratory disorders will also be seen. And my friends this is not just a domestic issue. As adult and childhood obesity spreads throughout our world, we can expect these associated medical problems to increase as well. According to the World Health Organization (WHO)*, 1 billion adults are overweight; 300 million adults are obese; there are over 285 million people with diabetes and 42 million children in the world currently classified as overweight or obese with 22 million children under the age of five estimated to be overweight! By the year 2030, almost 500 million people world-wide will have diabetes. This is an epidemic!
What about in the United States? According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)*, one in three adults will have diabetes by the year 2050 and the rates of diabetes will double and even triple in that time period. Over 24 million Americans (adults and kids) have diabetes and 25 % of them don’t even know it! ...
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Sep
28
2010
I want to start this column by thanking all of the people that send in comments and letters regarding my articles. It’s nice to know that my words are being read and are triggering thoughts and opinions. This past week, I received the most letters so far, pertaining to my column “Medical Clearance for Student Athletes: Add an ECG and Echo.” It seems that this hit a sensitive spot among parents and coaches. It should! Providing the best care for our children who enter sports programs should be a priority. Who among us doesn’t feel a gut wrenching sensation when we read about a young child that has died prematurely, whether on an athletic field or other setting? It stings. So when we are actually able to help prevent this from happening, we need to take full advantage. I will continue to be an advocate for using current medical technology and better pre-participation methods to evaluate our children prior to entering a sports program.
Now I want to discuss a problem that has been occurring on a regular basis: the “W-G-W effect”-weight-gaining weekends! Our kids are gaining extra weight on the weekends-why? What do we know? How many of us gain weight on the weekend too?
We already know that kids spend somewhere in the neighborhood of ...
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Sep
11
2010
Despite many efforts, the obesity epidemic persists. Adults and kids are getting heavier every minute. Continuing my goal to allow us all to understand the problems associated with childhood obesity, I am now presenting part three of the Childhood Obesity Series* on definitions. Parts One and Two have explained some basic terms that we all read and hear daily. I would call them buzz words that so many of us in the press use to convey our messages. Now we need to increase the size of our lexicon to include more advanced terminology and explanations in order for us to arrive at a solution:
1 - Five a Day*
We have been told that we need a minimum of five servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Most research shows that fruits and vegetables are vital to promoting good health. Fruits and vegetables contain essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber that may help protect you from chronic diseases. Compared with people who consume a diet with only small amounts of fruits and vegetables, those who eat more generous amounts as part of a healthful diet are likely to have reduced risk of chronic diseases, including stroke and perhaps other cardiovascular diseases, and certain cancers. To get the amount that's ...
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Sep
06
2010
I read an article recently that indicated the incidence of childhood obesity in the kindergarten population of most cities is still high. How can this be? There has been a dramatic change in the constituents of the diets-notably the elimination of transfats, the switch to low fat dairy products, the elimination of sweetened drinks and candies from school vending machines, the increased postings of nutritional information and the restriction on salt. So how can the majority of our kids still be obese and overweight? Okay-let’s break this down. In some school systems, besides the dietary changes, there is a push for more exercise time. As noted previously in this column, there is even a push to change recess into a structured exercise program. That’s important since a healthy child is one that has a balance of good nutrition and physical fitness. Adding more nutrition and fitness education into the curriculum from pre-school through middle school is also showing positive effects (Dr. Gary D. Foster-Director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University, Philadelphia-June 27th, The New England Journal of Medicine). So why are our kids still over weight? Well, as we all know, our kids spend only a portion of their day at school-between six to eight hours. The rest of the afternoon and evening is devoted ...
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Aug
23
2010
My friends, we are back to school. Summer has come to an end and the fall school schedule quickly approaches. In many parts of the country, school has either started or is about to today! That’s right, those yellow Thomas school buses will be crowding the streets. The slow speed school zones are in force and kids are crossing the streets-so watch out! Lunches and snacks are being prepared at home. Please make them healthy! After school activities are being scheduled. And parents, the driving begins again! OMG! Another season is upon us. It seems that this summer went quicker than most. I guess it was because it was filled with so many activities. There was barely enough time to enjoy the peaceful time off the road. Oh well, here we go again.
So I begin my new season with another issue that has caught many by surprise as we all go back to school-there is a new push to eliminate “unstructured” playtime-also called recess and morph it into structured time-like physical exercise (PE). The reason-from the “more exercise time will help stop childhood obesity” side-is just that. These advocates feel that our children need to burn off more calories in a structured exercise program to balance the calories/food being consumed. There is a good point there-balance. Remember as I have said in many articles, the calories-as food that are consumed must ...
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Aug
15
2010
Can you believe it? A feat of fashion technology has been developed-“smart clothes” that help you know when you are sweating, clothes that can track vital changes in your system like your pulse and blood pressure, clothes that can tell you are under stress and clothes that help you lose weight! That’s right, you read it correctly. There are new fabrics that have been developed-now called “smart clothes” that are designed to move fashion to a new level-one that is closely aligned to your body. So not only will you look for the size and color, but you will decide on what attributes the clothes will help you with. This is not entirely a new field. After all, NIKE came out with their performance driven “Dri Fit” technology ( a hybrid microfiber and polyester fabric) that is able to quickly “wick” or absorb sweat away from the body-keeping the skin dry. Also NIKE has “Therma-FIT” which uses a fabric to keep cold air out and body heat in. Let’s not forget the clothing with “stain-resistance,” “wrinkle-free,” “water-proofing,” and “sun/UV-ray resistance.” Others with built in “bullet-proofing,” “insect repelling, “I-Pod docking stations,” “global-GPS,” and NASA’s astronaut clothing that keeps dust and space out. So it seems that the newest generation of “smart-clothing” has gone one step farther. Now, sweating in a shirt will reveal a slogan-or phrase and let everyone know that ...
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Aug
11
2010
This seems like a no brainer-but I will ask you anyway-when we take our kids to the supermarket-how many times do they chose a particular item on the basis of their prior knowledge of the brand and or characters on the packaging? Dah! As my daughter would politely say. Of course they do. Kids are sponges for the thousands of advertisements they hear, see and read. I hear my daughter reciting those ads in the car with her friends when I take them to dance class. They laugh about the ads. But it shows that these ads stick. And when they go into an environment like a market or mall, these colorful, sometimes celebrity driven, musical and rhythmic ads have their way of influencing their shopping decisions and eating decisions. So it is not unusual to discover that ads can influence even a younger age group-which we know spends a lot of time in front of the TV and are starting to spend even more time on the computer. Even at the age of three, kids food choices are being manipulated by what they are viewing-which is then is passed along to the purchasing selection by their parents. A study from 2007, Effect of Fast Food Branding on Young Children’s Taste Preference, demonstrated that, “By the early age of 3 to 5 years, low-income preschool children preferred the tastes of foods ...
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Jul
26
2010
I was running on the treadmill last night and listening to a news story about a research study that showed the benefits from “light or moderate intensity physical activity.”* It made me think about all the times I have recommended to my friends and readers of this column, that all you need to start with is ten minutes of exercise a day (read “Take Ten”). The results are now proven scientifically: even a low level (low intensity) of exercise, over a small amount of time, can be helpful at improving your life* in quantity and quality. So then I started to think about whether we can correlate this to eating and did some preliminary research into the calorie restriction concept. From very early studies in mice and monkeys*, calorie restriction has led to longer life spans and has delayed the onset of many chronic diseases (e.g. cancer, heart disease and stroke).
In the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent estimates, there are over 36 million people over the age of 65 and about 200,000 people over the age of 100. And according to the United Nations, by 2013, there will be over 3 million people in the world over the age of 100. So our population is growing and living ...
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Jul
19
2010
Let’s congratulate our bipartisan representatives in the United States Congress for passing the legislation: Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act (H.R. 5504) on July 14th, 2010. We are all aware that millions of kids come to school each and every morning hungry. According to Share Our Strength (Strength.org), over 12 million kids go to sleep each night with food insecurity. And we also know that the only chance at a healthy and nutritious meal (breakfast and or lunch) for these children is at school. There have been multiple studies published that demonstrate the importance and benefit of an adequate breakfast on the learning and skills of children.
What will this legislation do? Here are the highlights:
Improve Access to School Meal Programs
Increase the number of eligible children enrolled in the school lunch programs by using Medicaid/SCHIP data to directly certify children who meet income requirements without requiring individual applications and requiring states to establish and execute a plan to increase rates of direct certification.
Provide enhanced universal meal access for eligible children in high poverty communities by eliminating paper applications and using census data to determine school wide income eligibility.
Increase children’s access to healthy school breakfasts by providing competitive grants to school districts to start up or improve their program.
Improve Access to Out of School Meal Programs
Ensure fewer children go hungry year round by providing meals ...
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