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Weight Loss Forum / General Topics / October 2009CNN: Weight losers combat fear of exercise, schoolyard torment
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/14/obesity.irpt/index.html Weight losers combat fear of exercise, schoolyard torment Story Highlights * Readers overcame childhood obesity, dislike of exercise through fun fitness * Charles D'Angelo went from hiding out during recess to six-packed man * Staci Lambert-Westcott grew more comfortable with exercise, owned a gym * iReport.com: How do you make fitness fun for yourself? By Nicole Saidi CNN (CNN) -- Cowering in a school restroom stall, young Charles D'Angelo would eat his lunch alone to escape classmates bullying him about his weight. A woman at his Catholic school's rectory let him watch the news with her during his break instead of playing outside. During high school, he got a doctor's note to excuse him from physical education. After years of overeating and under-exercising, he ballooned to around 360 pounds and felt depressed. But before-and-after photos he posted on iReport.com show how the St. Louis, Missouri, resident transformed himself from overweight teen to muscular man. Now a fitness coach, his mission in life is to make exercise fun so that kids will want to stay healthy. "I'm not saying 'poor me,' but I went through a lot of pain and terrible days," D'Angelo said. "I do believe that if my story can help others, then I'll do what it takes." The need for better health habits seems greater than ever. More than 17 percent of youths ages 12 to 19 were estimated to be obese after a 2003-2006 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. That number was= just 5 percent in the late 1970s. When D'Angelo was 17, he decided to get in shape. He initially focused on weightlifting and gym workouts to build up his muscles, calling the iPod one of the best products ever invented for those seeking to get fit. Growing up in an Italian family had taught him that food and emotions go together, whether at weddings or funerals. He used to munch on junk food during recess, but as he got older, he forced himself to eat planned, healthy meals. iReport.com: Shedding pounds, becoming a fitness coach At 23 years old and a muscular 204 pounds, he has kept his excess weight off for five years and sports a rippling six-pack. He says he even got a shirtless photo of himself showcased in Cosmopolitan magazine. He hopes his= success will make him a role model for obese kids, and he tries to come up with fun and supportive ways of exercising. Watch iReporters 'dancasize' and show off fun workouts =BB "I was just scared to death of being tested or compared. I don't think we should measure people based on how many push-ups can you do, how many sit-ups can you do." Keeping exercise fun and personally fulfilling is key to helping him stay with his workouts for the long haul. He enjoys watching TV while he works out. Boot camps and other group activities provide the camaraderie he craves. One of his clients owns a local gym that "looks like an arcade," which he points to as an example of another way of giving exercise a better image. Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution stations are available. D'Angelo also said he feels he would have benefited from more-structured eating habits and routines as a child. Anything that gets the body moving can be good exercise, said Janet Fulton,= a CDC epidemiologist. The government recommends the equivalent of 150 minutes of brisk walking or other moderate exercise per week. The time spent can change based on the intensity of the exercise. Fulton said regular workouts help ward off disease and keep weight stable over time. In combination with properly balanced nutrition and caloric intake, increased physical activity can help with weight loss. Whether exercise or nutrition are more responsible for increases in obesity= over the last 30 years is unclear, Fulton said, but people seeking to lose weight should focus on both areas and pay attention to what they eat. She suggested doing an enjoyable exercise in the company of others. iReport.com: What's your fun exercise? "Find a buddy, even if you're walking your dog. You cannot only do that, but do it with your family. Be a member of the team and get your social support that way." Over time, D'Angelo developed confidence, and he says he wants to help others do the same. Dating seemed to be out of the question when he was heavier, but he now has a girlfriend. He says losing the weight and building his confidence have gone hand in hand. Many other iReporters said they also felt bad about exercise as kids and posted their own ideas for pleasurable alternatives that could help beat obesity. Staci Lambert-Westcott of Stephens City, Virginia, took up exercise and fitness to help manage the diabetes she was developing. Getting married and= having children made maintaining her weight a challenge. When she got up to= 247 pounds and at age 29, she decided to get fit. Now 37, she recalls getting an ego boost after losing a significant amount under the cover of winter clothing. When spring came, a neighbor thought Lambert-Westcott's husband had a new woman in his life. Throughout her personal weight-loss journey, she learned to get over her childhood dislike of exercise. As she lost pounds, she grew more comfortable exercising in public. Lambert-Westcott got to know the owner of her gym and eventually bought the= business from him. She had always dreaded going to physical education class, so she tried to offer fun options for women when she was in charge. iReport.com: Bought the gym, lost 135 pounds "The classes were extremely popular because they were fun, and mom and daughter could come together. While mom was working out, daughter was working with a coach in the back." Though she eventually sold the gym to go back to school, she continues to work out and maintain her healthy weight. Keeping the pressure off workouts is key, said fellow iReporter Jonathan Lund, 35, of Duluth, Minnesota. As a fitness trainer at a hospital, he works with everyone from elite athletes to patients at the facility. His experiences as an overweight teen helped show him how to help others be healthy. "I have to remind myself, it took a lot of work to get these people out of the house and into this club," he said. He grew up self-conscious about excess weight and felt like he couldn't keep up with the other kids. Individual activities such as running helped him take off the weight. "I never thought I could play sports or do anything like that. I always felt really intimidated by that. I also didn't like the aspect of team sports because it wasn't much of a workout because usually, you'd be sitting on the sidelines and you'd play for five minutes." iReport.com: Lund stops to post an iReport at a marathon He now runs marathons but got his start walking and increasing intensity little by little. He describes the long-distance events as "addictive." Along the way, Lund has battled a lot of negative thinking about himself. Despite the dozen or so marathons he's completed, including the Chicago Marathon on Saturday in Illinois and the recent Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Lund's insecurities have stuck with him into adulthood. He pushes forward anyway. "I still feel like a fat kid, even though I'm not anymore," he said. "I feel like I have to keep running in order to keep up. But at the same time,= it's the best therapy that there is. All that negative stuff gets worked out in your mind." http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1930772,00.html Should morbidly obese children be taken from their parents? That's the question an increasing number of countries are grappling with amid the Western world's obesity epidemic. The latest case to make headlines concerns a Scottish couple who lost custody of two of their six children on the basis of what was, their lawyer claims, a failure to reduce the kids' weight following warnings from Scottish social services. The couple lost their Oct. 14 appeal in a case that is far from clear-cut — representatives of Dundee City say they would never remove children "just because of a weight issue." But obesity appears to be the primary reason South Carolina mom Jerri Gray lost custody of her 14-year-old, 555-lb. son in May. She was arrested after missing a court date to examine whether she should retain custody after doctors had expressed concern about her son's weight to social services. The boy is currently living with his aunt, and his mother is facing criminal child-neglect charges. (See nine kid foods to avoid.) Several other cases in recent years — in California, New Mexico, Texas and New York, as well as Canada — have garnered attention because a child's obesity resulted in loss of custody. "It's happening more than the public is aware of, but because these cases are usually kept quiet [as a result of child-privacy laws], we have no record," says Dr. Matt Capehorn, who sits on the board of the U.K.'s National Obesity Forum. The issue of whether parents should lose custody of their obese children took center stage two years ago with a British television documentary about Connor McCreaddie, an 8-year-old who weighed more than 200 lbs. and was at risk of being taken from his mother by authorities. She eventually weaned him off processed foods and retained custody. Removing children from their parents remains a last resort, but obesity experts are increasingly debating whether doing so can boost a child's chances for a healthier life. Childhood obesity can lead to a host of health problems, including Type 2 diabetes, which until recently was primarily a problem seen in adults. Overweight children can also develop insulin resistance, hypertension, high cholesterol, sleep apnea and orthopedic problems and go into early puberty. "Children are vulnerable. If they're given food and told to finish what's on the plate, they'll eat it, and without exercise get bigger and bigger," says Tam Fry, chairman of Britain's Child Growth Foundation, who is lobbying obesity experts to consider overnutrition a form of child abuse. (Read "Mother's Obesity Raises Risk of Birth Defects.") Yet the parents' share of responsibility in weight gain isn't always easy to judge. "It's unfair to blame solely the parents, when there's a myriad of other factors influencing a child's weight," says Dr. Dana Rofey of the University of Pittsburgh, whose weight-management clinic is regularly called on during custody battles in which one divorced parent blames the other for making a child obese. She says contributing factors include not just genetic predisposition and socioeconomic status but also environmental factors, like whether children have access to parks and playgrounds. Rofey also sees children of all ages sneaking extra food behind their parents' backs. (Read "The Social Side of Obesity: You Are Who You Eat With.") And then there's the issue of parents, sometimes obese themselves, who can be in denial of their children's weight problems. When parents refuse to address the issue, Fry wants kids to be put in the care of professionals — with the provision that parents may visit — and that steps are taken to alter the family's diet so the child may eventually return to a healthier home. Last year, Fry introduced a motion to that effect at the U.K.'s National Obesity Forum conference but could convince just one-third of the delegates to support it. "I knew that I was running against the tide, but I'm seeing others slowly but surely coming around," he says. During the 20 years Dr. Melinda Sothern has been working with obese children, the Louisiana-based exercise physiologist and author of Trim Kids has seen only about a dozen removed from their homes. But in recent years, she's noticed a real change in attitude. "I've seen less and less willingness on the professional side to understand how hard it is on the parents' side, especially from younger professionals," she says. "[Child protection] laws have changed, so a lot of times they worry that if they don't report parents, they'll get in trouble." (See a special report on the science of appetite.) Dr. Sothern also notes how difficult it is for many of her patients to shed weight, including one boy whom social workers recently considered removing from his home. "They were saying, 'This mother must be feeding him to death. We need to remove him.' I said, 'Guys, before you do that, we need to look at more options — he's obese, but he's fit, enrolled in sports. He can run. His breathing has improved.'" This child, like Gray's son, had difficulty finding a weight- loss program for which he wasn't over the cutoff weight. Gray's lawyer, Grant Varner, says she had been unable to find any programs in South Carolina that could handle her son. Even programs dealing with morbidly obese kids reportedly told her that he was beyond their maximum weight. (See the video "Heavy Mexico.") According to Varner, Gray was worried that her son had an undiagnosed medical problem but that as a single mother with limited means and no health insurance, she was at a loss and couldn't monitor his eating 24/7. "If she's found guilty, it could open a Pandora's box," says Varner. "Where does it stop? Who tells you how big is too big? Will parents of 16-year-old girls who are obsessed with being skinny be next in line?" Dr. David Ludwig, who directs the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston, says there's plenty of blame to go around. "Parents have a responsibility, but it's also society's responsibility — the national government spending billions of dollars on farm subsidies for poor-quality foods, communities placing their priorities on development revenue rather than parks, cutbacks to school nutrition," he says. "All this is unfair to the kids." http://wmgt.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2792&I temid=2 You've heard that being overweight puts you at risk for all kinds of health problems. But a recent study links obesity with memory loss. Researchers at UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh say, as a result, being obese or even overweight puts you at much higher risk for Alzheimer's. When compared to the brain scans of normal weight subjects of similar age, the overweight and obese people showed brain tissue loss of four to eight percent more. UCLA Neurology professor Paul Thompson explains. "So the obese people looked about 16 years older in terms of how their brain looked on the scan. And overweight people looked about 8 years older on average. They were more at risk for Alzheimer's", Thompson said. In fact, researchers called it "Severe Brain Degeneration", especially in the areas that control multitasking and memory. "So someone first coming to the clinic with the first signs of dementia might have lost about 10-percent of their brain tissue. These obese people have lost 8-percent", Thompson said. The study analyzed the brain scans of 94 people. But then researchers went back and looked at 200 additional brain scans of people that were completely unrelated to the study and found the same disturbing trend. A brain expert with the alzheimer's association wasn't surprised at the findings. Dr. Debra Cherry, Executive Vice President of the Alzheimer's Association of California Southland says it's long been known that an unhealthy lifestyle contributes to alzheimer's risk. But this study shows one possible reason why. Your brain actually shrinks. One cause could be because fat- clogged arteries prevent enough oxygenated blood from reaching your brain. "Maybe some of those people will start heeding those warnings when they realize it's not just your heart but also your brain", Dr. Cherry said. Currently, a little over five-million americans suffer from alzheimer's. That number is expected to double by the year 2020. Your best bet in deterring Alzheimer's? Experts say it's no fancy pill or medical device. The alzheimer's association says even if a person is overweight or obese, adding regular exercise helps slow down the onset of the disease. http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-chubby-baby-denied-health- insurance/ When it comes to babies, our throbbing ovaries tell us the chubbier, the better. We could just coo and squeeze 4-month-old Alex Lange, weighing in at 17 pounds, all day! (Before coming to our senses and handing him back to his mommy, that is.) But Rocky Mountain Health Plans denied health insurance for this cutie-patootie because he’s a “high-risk patient” with a “pre- existing condition of obesity.” WTF?!? Alex is in the 99th percentile for height and weight for a baby, but, apparently, Rocky Mountain Health Plans won’t provide health insurance to babies who rank any higher than the 95th percentile. “I could understand if we could control what he’s eating. But he’s 4 months old. He’s breastfeeding. We can’t put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill,” said his father, Bernie Lange. His parents also made a joke about putting Alex on SlimFast once he’s eating solid food. Hey, don’t give anyone any ideas! [Denver Post] UPDATE: This Monday, Rocky Mountain Health Plans changed its policy to cover Alex and “other healthy babies.” It’s still not OK that only “healthy” babies get coverage, but at least this insurer has stopped with this obesity silliness. http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/1821175,CST-NWS-flu13.article Rapidly worsening breathing problems in the sickest H1N1 flu patients in Mexico and Canada suggest a scary worst-case scenario for what doctors in the United States will face as winter flu season sets in, new reports suggest. In the first wave of the global swine flu outbreak, many critically ill patients in both countries were obese, though their death rates weren't higher than others. Many in both countries also were younger than those typically hard hit by seasonal flu, as has been found in the United States. Patients studied worsened quickly after being admitted to hospitals. Most survived after intensive, lengthy treatment, though the death rate in the Mexican patients who were studied -- 41 percent -- was much higher. The reports were published online Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They aren't a true snapshot on prevalence. But a journal editorial says they provide clues on what hospitals elsewhere might see in coming months. http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2009/09/24/2009-09- 24_obesity_is_now_the_leading_cause_of_cancer_beating_out_smoki ng_and_hormone_repla.html Waging war against those extra pounds just might save your life. The leading cause of cancer these days is obesity, according to The Associated Press, with about 1 in 12 new cases of the disease due to excess weight. European researchers say that obesity now accounts for up to 8% of cancers on the continent, according to the AP. “Obesity is catching up at a rate that makes it possible it could become the biggest attributable cause of cancer in women within the next decade,” University of Manchester cancer expert Andrew Renehan told the AP. He spoke this week at a joint meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology and the European Cancer Organization. The news on this side of the pond’s not much more encouraging. Obesity and being overweight account for up to 14% of cancer deaths in men and 20% of cancer deaths in women, according to the National Cancer Institute. Some 20% to 30% of common cancers such as colon, postmenopausal breast, uterine and esophageal may be related to being overweight and to a lack of physical activity, according to the institute. In the findings in Europe, colorectal cancer, breast cancer in menopausal women and uterine cancer accounted for 65% of all the cancers because of being overweight, according to the AP. Though scientists don’t know why being obese increases cancer risk, they think it may be linked to hormones, according to the AP. Chubbier people produce more hormones, such as estrogen, that help tumors thrive. And big-bellied people have more stomach acid, which can lead to stomach and intestinal cancers. Anyone who’s not sure whether or not they qualify as obese can check out the National Cancer Institute’s Web site. If you have a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 to 24.9, you’re a healthy weight. Overweight people have a BMI of 25.0 to 29.9, and obese people weigh in with a BMI of 30 or higher. The take-away message from the National Cancer Institute? Get moving! Lack of activity is the big culprit for why so many Americans are too fat, says the institute. Sedentary pastimes like TV watching are to blame. One of the National Cancer Institute’s target goals for next year is to increase to 60% the proportion of adults who are at a healthy weight. Renehan said it’s necessary to devise strategies to help people maintain a healthy weight, according to the AP. “We need to find the biological mechanism to help people find other ways of tackling obesity,” he said. “Just telling the population to lose weight obviously hasn’t worked.” Maybe giving them some scary stats will. >http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2009/09/24/2009-09- >24_obesity_is_now_the_leading_cause_of_cancer_beating_out_smoki [quoted text clipped - 56 lines] > >Maybe giving them some scary stats will. Fat protects you from cancer. >>http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2009/09/24/2009-09- >>24_obesity_is_now_the_leading_cause_of_cancer_beating_out_smoki [quoted text clipped - 58 lines] > >Fat protects you from cancer. Now this is humanity in action! <NOT> > In the findings in Europe, colorectal cancer, breast cancer in > menopausal women and uterine cancer accounted for 65% of all the > cancers because of being overweight, according to the AP. > > Though scientists dont know why being obese increases cancer > risk, I don't believe this. Nobody who is calling himself a scientist would claim there is a cause-and-effect relationship between two correlated parameters, while at the same time not having a clue about the nature of the alleged cause-and-effect relationship. Maybe the common cause is stuffing yourself with crap! People who eat too much probably eat badly too. If you don't care how much goes into your body, you probably do other things wrong, like not caring /what/ goes into your body. Multiple wrongs correlate. |
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