Fad diets work. The problem is that people can’t maintain the weight they lose. If eating nothing but grapefruits for 3 months causes you to lose 40 pounds that is great. The problem is that the person will probably gain 50 back over the next 3 years and end up worse than when they started.
Until medical science comes up with ways to help people maintain a weight loss in a way that works in the real world with real people, nothing is going to change in the obesity issue. People can and do lose weight all the time but they can’t keep it off.
This is my problem with fad diets. They lead people to believe that you can do this diet until you reach your goal weight and then go right back to bacon double cheeseburgers five days a week.
Diets are a lifestyle choice. Which means, whatever diet you choose, you need to be comfortable with that diet until the day that you die.
So far, the only sensible diet I’m aware of that one can stay on indeterminately is the good old fashioned diet that’s been around for decades. A well balanced diet that has lots of vegetables, fruits and proteins.
First off, what a horrible news article review of the actual article. No nothing about change in measurements (which they totally butcher btw); that is trying to explain that in kids obesity is defined by percentile for age (compared to norms formed from data collected in the 60s and 70s) hence 95%ile and above is considered obese and class 2 and 3 are defined in relation to the 95%ile cut-off for age, 120 and 140% of the 95%ile number respectively. No change there, just different than for adults.
Definitely not an upper limit as only a small number (2%) are class 3 obese.
Actual article does not contradict the statement made. It specifically states:
Shocking news that over the last 14 years* obesity has increased in all classes but it does not contradict other data that it has leveled in the last few years and decreased over the past few years in a few subgroups. Yes, in particular in regions that have made an effort to address the issue.
*Really that is all that article did. It took the same data set and said sure it is level to down over the past several years but it is higher than it was 14 years ago, so it isn’t decreasing … Huh?
I don’t see the same stigma. Of course the mass media presents unrealistic ideas of beauty. That’s their stock and trade.
But in real life, it seems more a matter of personal preference. Lot’s of guys want to go after the waify model types. Others like more buxom women, others BBW, and so on.
In a certain sense, obesity is self-penalizing. It comes in the form of diabetes, heart disease, a variety of other health problems, loss of mobility, etc.
Oh if you want to get into the weeds this article has some good detailed graphs breaking out the pediatric population by sub-groups going back to the 70s.
What is clear is that there was a consistent pretty rapid increase from the late 70s until about 2003 and overall flat since then. Drops in particular have occurred in preschool boys and to a lesser degree preschool girls from that peak. In teens there are significant differences with Black boys and Hispanic girls still increasing and other groups leveling off or dropping slightly consistently over the past decade. (Same data set as the study referenced in the article.)
BTW as has been pointed out in these sorts of threads many many times … once an adult is obese becoming and staying “normal weight” is rarely achievable and for health not required. The more reasonable goal of a 10% weight loss maintained with healthier nutrition and exercise habits will capture the lion’s share of the health benefits … even though the person will likely still measure out as obese.
Preventing obesity by impacting the environments children grow up in, by a combination of regulation and education at various levels (media messaging equating giving kids high added sugar foods … and many other highly processed packaged foods … to giving your kid a cigarette or a hit of heroin; regulating ads aimed at kids and what foods can be in schools; at the healthcare system hitting parents at toddler years on, especially on sweet beverages and other added sugar foods and promoting active lifestyles … so on) is the more effective long term strategy.
Of course a child raised such a way can still become an obese adult. But a child who reaches adulthood not obese, and with good nutrition and exercise habits in place, has much better odds of surviving our obesiogenic environment without becoming obese that one who already is an obese adult.
Having stopped the overall rise in pediatric obesity and slightly reversed the trend for some subgroups is a significant accomplishment and the result of a significant public health effort that the public health system should be proud of, but it clearly is not enough.
This whole thing is just made up by screwing with the statistics. Notice how they lump together “overweight” with “obese”. So a kid thats 1 ounce overweight is in the same label as a kid 100 pounds overweight.
Oh and BTW, who exactly makes up this BMI list of who is overweight?
Also the stats dont take into account ethnic variations. For example many Asian kids are thin as rails while kids from Guatemala are just naturally short and (somewhat) plump.
They also dont take into account body types. I’ve many a young man playing football who can consume I swear a whole cow a day. They are deliberately putting on weight and they wear it well.
I work with all kinds of kids and frankly, they are NOT all that fat. Oh sure a couple are but not all kids like they like to make it sound.
Not to mention we parents arent stupid. We know what our kids need and we try to feed them right and get them to exercise. Almost every kid I know is involved in sports or some other physical activity.
Most of what you want to do involves either taxing, giving away free meals in school, regulating and going against corporate interests. I doubt any of these measures will be enacted.
What good is subsidizing fruit and vegetable growers when nobody eats the stuff? What good is cutting calories in school lunches and offering “healthy” items when the kids dont eat them. Have you ever gone to a school cafeteria and saw what was thrown away? It wasnt the pizzas or cookies. It was the brocolli and other vegetables.
What, you going to force kids to eat crap they dont want to eat?
And where have you been? Schools have been preaching healthy diets for decades.
People just choose not to follow them.
Quick story. A few years ago they put in this big youth soccer complex where I live. They ordered that the concession stands be healthy food only. So no hot dogs, soda, or candy. Know what? They dropped it a year later because sales were so bad. Nobody wanted all that “healthy” food. They would rather walk across the street to the Sonic.
Now keep in mind these kids are soccer players. And their parents damn well know about healthy eating. They just preferred the junk food.
I personally have a hard time believing lack of nutritional knowledge plays more than a middling part in obesity. I can think of no functional adult who doesn’t know fruits and veggies are better than chips and cookies, baked is better than fried, etc.
All untrue. Stats are in fact kept for “overweight” (which includes many athletic kids and some chubby), and overweight of various levels including the extremely overweight, and for various ethnic groups. The list is again based on percentiles which were normed before the rapid increase in the late 70s.
Funny thing. If you offer your kids a choice between fast food and healthy food they will likely choose the crap and eat lots of it. It’s what that crap was designed to do: to trigger the eat me centers and not the fulla uppa ones. If the crap is not there they won’t eat it and if they are hungry they will eat what is there. The school cannot offer the crap as a choice. Competing with a Sonic across the street? No contest.
There is a pile of candy and a healthy meal and the kid chooses the candy. The responsible decision is not to give up on offering the healthy meal. It is merely to make filling up on the candy a non-option.
Also funny thing. Parents of soccer players do not make better nutrition decisions than anyone else. Some think that having exercised deserves some crap. Sometimes organized sports causes MORE obesity issues because it interferes with home meals and by scheduling in the dinner hours gets parents going through the drive through for dinner quickly instead. Between that and the treats that parents bring the net is negative not positive in quite a few cases.
Habit is definitely part of it, but it isn’t the whole story. People are hardwired to like sweet, fatty, and salty. Part of it is fighting your biology. Can be done, but it’s not much fun.
Yep. I sometimes like to enter chili cook offs. Whenever I enter one and it’s going to be judged by the public rather than a panel of judges, I’ll throw a handful of brown sugar into the pot.
I always score better when I use the sugar. Even though the sweetness added is hardly noticeable.
That is sad, but predictable. I eat a low carbohydrate diet, less than 60 grams of carbohydrates a day so I am vigilant about reading labels. It is outrageously difficult to find any sort of processed foods without sugar, sometimes in several different forms, even in foods that by any reasonable standard don’t need sweetening. Why would blue cheese salad dressing require high fructose corn syrup?
Some would say they add it because it’s cheap, but leaving it out is even cheaper. It must therefore increase sales, even though at least some people will avoid it because of the sugar, so we have to assume there’s a net gain.
I read somewhere that diabetes going way up may be due to our diet changing very fast. They said people have not had time to “evolve” to get used to the fact that now food is very plentiful. That is probably related to weight gain too.
I currently attend the College of Public Health at my university, and nobody has yet mentioned the most important solutions, according to our profs and guest speakers:
Stop building American cities in such a way that they encourage hopping in a car for even short trips, and discourage being a pedestrian or bicyclist. Make sure there are green spaces, walking/bike paths, playgrounds, etc. Build neighborhoods so that it’s easy to walk to the corner store for things, instead of having to jump in the car and drive to a large shopping center every time. In other words, build exercise into the daily lifestyle. Make it safe to be a pedestrian or a bicyclist, instead of a driver. Stop suburban sprawl and build actual mixed-use neighborhoods.
Companies that pay for health insurance for employees should offer healthy food options at cost in cafeterias and easy-to-access, enjoyable exercise facilities, because this lowers health care costs.