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How do we reach the point where enough is enough? How do we get to that place deep down inside of us that pushes us to action?… Anytime we reach the point of  desperation, the point where we not only want to lose weight and need to lose weight, but we decide we can lose weight, we can do it. However, it’s at this point that we need to know–safely and effectively–how to lose weight.

One thing we don’t need is a diet. A diet is something we do to lose weight as fast as we can so we can go back to eating the way we did before! Where does that get us?… What we need is a lifestyle change. (page 16)

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Visualize your weight-loss challenge as a road–a road that ends at a healthy weight and good fitness… The road you visualize may span just a short distance, reflecting your need to lose 20 or 30 pounds. Or your road may be longer, much longer if you need to lose 100 or more pounds. No matter the distance, with patience and persistence, it’s a journey that can be completed.

Many of us have traveled this road, but most of us have never gone the distance… Maybe the reason for not achieving success is that we traveled this road by dieting alone. We didn’t add exercise to our travel plans.

Visualize yourself at the beginning of the road. You’re pumped up. You’re excited. You’re ready! (page 17)

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Movement didn’t come into my life until I started this program… and, boy, did it ever come into my life! Once I began to exercise, an amazing thing happened. I began to feel great! I began to know how a healthy body is supposed to feel. (page 101)

Bits from Her “Lose Weight Journal”

Although I “did good” with the Halloween candy–I didn’t even rummage through the kids’ bags–I learned as I got further into my program that there are better ways to approach special occasions and situations. The secret: PLANNING and CREATIVE THINKING.

Now I plan for events by coming up with alternatives to unhealthy foods. I think of ways to keep the festiveness in and the temptations out. For Halloween, I pass out pencils, gift certificates, coins, and other nonfood items. (page 29)

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I have really progressed in my fitness quest. In my former life, if I strayed from my diet I would just keep on straying… Now if I stray, I feel bad for a few minutes, then I get right back on my food plan. I don’t wait until the next meal, the next day, the next week. I get back on track immediately. (page 104)

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One of the nicest things about losing weight is that I no longer have to constantly tug my tops down over my hips to hide the enormity of my rear. Also, no longer do I have to keep my coat on at all times to hide my body. I now buy body-fitting clothes because my body is fit! (page 191)

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I could have quoted ten times as much, but this should give you something to help you lose weight. I liked the bit about 20 or 30 pounds being a short road, as that is where I am as I write this.

In today’s world, a lot of good books go out of print, and that has happened to this one. Here are three places you can find Slow But Sure: How I Lost 170 Pounds with the Help of God, Family, Family Circle Magazine, and Richard Simmons:

1. Amazon has it from used book sellers. The link goes to the page for the book. When I went there to get the link, there were a number of copies available for a penny. Of course, the shipping would be more than that!
2. AbeBooks is a collection of booksellers all over the world, and here is their page for Sandra Dalka-Prysby. Click on “View all Listings” to see what they currently have.
3. Try your local public library. If they don’t have it, ask about inter-library loan.

The final takeaway: when we decide we can lose weight, we can do it.

This article is CAN Lose Weight! from Gottaloseweight.com

What is Weight Watchers?

Weight Watchers has two parts:
•    Membership meetings take place in cities and towns in over thirty countries around the world. You get support, and beyond that, you get information that makes your success much more likely. Each country has its own plan, tailored to the specifics of that country. This article refers to the U.S. one.
•    Weight Watchers Online  is a completely online version with lots of information, thousands of recipes, goal setting and progress logging, a free public forum, mobile tracking, and fitness workouts with videos. It includes a specific section called Weight Watchers for Men.

While the two are separate programs, people who take part in membership meetings can also take part in the online program for an additional fee. People who don’t have time for meetings, or dislike meetings, or live a long ways from meetings, will likely prefer the online version.

Weight Watchers began back in the 1960s when Jean Nidetch, an overweight housewife in New York, formed a support group. She and others in the group found that the caring atmosphere they created was essential to their successful weight loss, and through word of mouth, more and more people came to the meetings. They soon outgrew using their homes and had to rent halls to meet in.  The methods used have gone through various changes, but now it offers a very flexible approach, so flexible that you can even do it while using another weight loss eating plan to choose what foods you eat.

In a nutshell, there is a PointsPlus™ program, not counting calories as such but evaluating every food in terms of calories, fats, carbohydrates, fiber, and so on. You have a number of points you can eat in a day, plus some extra points you can use any time during a week. If you exercise, you get more points, and fitness is considered important. It is not a program that has forbidden foods and must-eat foods; rather, it guides you to making the best food choices in a supportive atmosphere. You create good habits, including getting more exercise, suitable to your situation. The general food guidelines include plenty of vegetables and fruits, some dairy products and other lean protein, enough liquid, some healthy oils, and the like.

There is a Weight Watchers Magazine, which anyone can subscribe to (Amazon link). It provides recipes, nutritional information, and motivation.

Is this an effective program? Yes. It works if you do, and it gives you the tools and support to make it happen. The support is from other people who are using the program to lose weight themselves and people who have reached their goals and now help others. Here’s a book of stories of people who used Weight Watchers, which I am currently reading on my Kindle: Weight Watchers Start Living, Start Losing: Inspirational Stories That Will Motivate You Now

Weight Watchers Reviews

Overall, reviewers liked this program, though of course some of them preferred other things.

Here are ten of the most useful points I found, in wading through dozens of reviews and online forums:

1. The flexibility of this program turned up in many reviews as a PLUS, but in some as a MINUS. In short, this is not a plan for someone who wants to be told exactly what to eat.
2. Although you are not counting calories, you are keeping track of everything you eat, and some people don’t like to do this. Others do like it. Feelings were mixed about the PointsPlus method vs. Just counting calories.
3. The program for men tailors not only their different nutritional needs but also the ways they like to do things differently from women. (This is the best program I have come across for men.) See http://www.weightwatchers.com/men/
4. Users of the online program like being able to login from work, home, or anywhere, to track what they have eaten or to get support.
5. It’s a good choice if you have a family, because you can cook meals that everyone can eat. Whoever is on WW eats less.
6. Eating out is easier on WW than on many other programs, because of the flexibility and because some chain restaurants provide Weight Watchers information on their menus.
7. Since fruits and vegetables have no points, it’s up to you to pay attention to whether you are eating too many avacadoes and not enough lettuce!
8. One review felt it was a drawback that Weight Watchers doesn’t encourage fat burning or appetite suppressing supplements. I would have to consider this an advantage. While some of these supplements may be safe and useful, I have my doubts about many of them.
9. Several reviews pointed out that WW does cost something to use. There is a sign-up fee (sometimes waived in promotions) and then a monthly fee. Reviewers point out that many of the benefits of the online program can be found elsewhere online for free — things like camaraderie and recipes. But the specific WW approach, with all the PointsPlus data, is really only available there.
10. Because the program gives you a lot of freedom of choice in how you eat, they don’t give you a guarantee that you will lose weight.

So In Summary…

Weight Watchers  is an excellent, proven program that is well worth doing. If you live near where a meeting takes place, think about trying the meetings version, as the personal support is valuable. If you don’t or would prefer an online program, it is still one of the top choices, as the Weight Watchers reviews proved to me.

This article is Weight Watchers Reviews from Gottaloseweight.com

Here are eight tips to help you with losing weight and keeping it off:

1. Design a weight loss plan, a way of eating that suits you and meets your nutritional needs. You may want to write down what you eat for a while.

2. Substitute more nutritional foods for ones that are less so. For example, try low fat cheese. If you are eating at a fast food place, have a salad on the side and hold the fries. Eat whole grains as much as possible and skip the empty calories from white bread or white rice.

3. Include regular exercise in your life all or most days. This could be going out dancing some evening, using a treadmill while reading or watching TV, going skiing or bike riding, walking the dog, or putting an inexpensive badminton set up in your yard and using it. (We did that one, great fun!) Think about things you have done in the past, enjoyed, but then gotten out of the habit.

4. Eat more slowly. Weight loss experts recommend this for a healthy weight loss.It may take you a while to develop this habit, but it is a very worthwhile one. One study done in Japan  found that eating until full and eating quickly were associated with being overweight in Japanese men and women, and that these eating behaviors combined may have a substantial impact on being overweight. This would most likely be true everywhere, not just in Japan!

5. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Vegetables—including beans—and fruits are high in fiber, which helps you to fill up, and they have lots of nutritional value. Deeply colored fruits, like blueberries, and vegetables, like red onions, have some extra value in terms of nutrition. You can ease into this if you don’t eat a lot of veggies now. Just work them into your meals more. Starting a meal with a salad is a great idea, as it may fill you up before you can overdo on heavier things.

6. Do enough to jumpstart your weight loss. In other words, if you only lose a half a pound a week, you may lack the motivation to keep going as the change is just so slight. Losing one or two pounds a week on average would be more encouraging.

7. Only weigh yourself once a week at the most.  Always weigh yourself at the same time—first thing in the morning, without clothing, is good. There are normal fluctuations in how much you weigh from day to day and at different times of day, so it’s good to let enough time go by that the real weight loss will show. You will eventually be at your idea weight!

8. Pay attention to the psychological aspects of what you eat. Take another turn at writing down what you eat, and this time note the emotions you feel also.

It’s kind of like the Aesop’s Fable about the hare and the tortoise. They decided to run a race. Naturally, the hare got off to a much faster start and all the smart money would certainly have bet on the hare. But once it was ahead, it took a nap… and the tortoise passed it and went on to win the race. (I like the hare’s grin in this old illustration from Gutenberg.)

So too with weight loss, where a crash diet is like the hare, and a more sensible way of eating leads you to lose weight slowly AND keep it off!

This article is How to Lose Weight Slowly and Keep It Off from Gottaloseweight.com

The nicotine in cigarettes does act as an appetite suppressant so smokers may be able to deal with hunger that way. It also means that they won’t necessarily get the nutrition they need if they skip meals and later snack on whatever is handy.

If someone is looking to lose weight, there can be the appeal of having something else to put in your mouth when you crave food. Chewing gum can help here, and the kinds made with xylitol are not bad for your teeth. (Xylitol is a sweetener with no calories and no effect on your blood sugar that is healthier than the chemical sweeteners.) Something else you could have would be a cup of green tea, as it helps perk up your metabolism, which nicotine seems to do as well. It’s also worth knowing that sugar cravings can become much easier to deal with if you go off sugars and white flour, and temporarily off other carbs too. The South Beach Diet people say that it only takes a couple of weeks to reset your cravings.

Another way to lose weight is to exercise more. There is something called the “runner’s high” which comes about when you exercise vigorously—it doesn’t have to be running—and the endorphins your body produces make you feel good.

The whole idea of losing weight via smoking got a big boost from cigarette advertisers, who typically targeted women. This 1929 ad gives you the idea! It’s only one of many ads that Lucky Strike used in that era to get women into smoking with their slogan “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet.” At that time, smokers tended to be men much more than women. Later, beginning in 1968, the Virginia Slims cigarettes totally focused on women. (Calling the cigarettes “slims” was part of their strategy to make them appealling. By then, the cancer-causing effects of smoking were widely known.)

Researchers have found that some teenage girls who are anxious about their weight will try smoking as a way to cope. It may kill them later, though; according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, six million kids who are alive today will ultimately die from smoking.

One great source of information on diets and fitness for teens is Sparkteens.  This free website asks, “Are you ready to make your life an adventure?” It’s a spinoff of the terrific weight-loss site, also free, called Sparkpeople.

Here’s a video about the harmful effects of smoking on your body. I found it sad that some of the comments under it were clearly from people who were in denial about the risks. When you are young, that may be easy to do, but as you get older, I have noticed that people who take good care of their bodies tend to enjoy their lives a lot more and suffer less physically. They look better; it’s easy to spot long-term smokers by their wrinkled skin.

In doing research for this article, I found a couple of good sources online:

• One from Wikipedia on cigarette smoking done for weight loss
• And this one from Vanderbilt University

These will give you a lot more facts and figures about studies on the relationship between smoking and weight loss. In a nutshell, the answer to “Does smoking make you lose weight?” is “Advertisers stress this point and it might, but at a terrible cost to your health.”

This article is Does Smoking Make You Lose Weight? from Gottaloseweight.com

Why the South Beach Diet? I decided to try it for three reasons.

First, a couple who are good friends of mine have made impressive improvements in how they look and in their health this way.

Second, on SB you don’t count calories, and that is not an activity that comes naturally to me.

Third, in some ways it’s pretty close to how I like to eat anyway: lots of veggies and salads plus lots of lean meat and other proteins. I’m allergic enough to wheat that I eat it rarely — I don’t have celiac disease but wheat tends to make me sleepy. When my husband makes homemade whole wheat bread in his Zojirushi bread machine, I greatly enjoy the smells. It’s been interesting to discover I can enjoy food smells without wanting to eat whatever smells good! Once in a while I do have a small slice of his bread. So from not eating wheat to going easy on all grains is a pretty natural step for me.

As this point, I am in the most demanding part of South Beach, Phase 1. It only lasts for two weeks, a good thing! I have to admit to eating a couple of fresh strawberries on the vine when I went out to the garden this morning, despite the no-fruits rule for this phase.

Rebounding is a joy, and I will write about it for the exercise section of this site. Rebounding is said to be very beneficial for your lymphatic system, and I am noticing that I have more power and energy on the rebounder as I get used to it. A word of caution: Cheap rebounders can hurt your knees. I’ve had cheap ones and now I have a good one and the difference is amazing.

So between South Beach and Rebounding, I’m down over five pounds. Actually only one of those pounds is since I started SB a few days ago. The other weight just kinda came off from the extra exercise as I read the The South Beach Diet Supercharged book and got things together for the full-fledged program.

This article is Blog: What I’m Doing So Far from Gottaloseweight.com

How did we get to the point where Americans have been consuming so much of it? That goes back to 1977, when the U.S. put tariffs on the importing of sugar from other countries, and today sugar costs roughly twice as much in the U.S as on the world market. As a result of that, plus massive subsidies to the American corn industry, corn syrup is very cheap. Manufacturers like that, as well as some characteristics that make it easier for them to use than sugar.

The corn refining industry has come up with a new term; they would like it to be called “corn sugar.” So if you come across this term in the future, be aware of what it is. If you are in the U.K, you may know this substance as glucose-fructose syrup. In Canada it may be called glucose/fructose. Many parts of the world say maize where we Americans say corn, and so they call the stuff high fructose maize syrup.

Glucose and Fructose

Fructose is easy to remember because it is the kind of sweetener in fruit. So the FR at the start of both words is helpful. Is fructose unhealthy? Yes, though healthy eating certainly includes some fruit and sweet vegetables.

Ordinary sugar, made from sugar cane or sugar beets, is composed of half glucose (often called simple sugar) and half fructose. HFCS is not actually much higher in fructose than sugar, as it is 55%. Agave syrup, widely touted as a healthy sweetener, is way up at 90%, and fruit juice concentrates are quite high too. The “high fructose” descriptor in the term high fructose corn syrup is there to distinguish it from other kinds of corn syrup which have more glucose.

Still, in the typical American diet, HFCS is the main source of fructose consumed—and HFCS is a significant source of calories for Americans.

WHY Is High Fructose Corn Syrup Worse than Sugar?

A multi-million dollar ad campaign produced for the Corn Refiners Association state that HFCS is a natural product (“natural” tends to be a rather meaningless word when applied to food), and a good number of scientists have agreed with their assertion that it acts in the body in the same way as sugar.  Actually, HFCS shouldn’t be called natural because quite a complex chemical process is used in making it, which includes using an enzyme which is genetically modified. (What corn nowadays isn’t genetically modified?)

But a study done at Princeton  compared the effects of HFCS and table sugar on rats. I know you are not a rat, but these little rodents have bodies that act very much like ours in terms of how they handle food. This study is noteworthy in that many of the previous studies have compared the effects of pure glucose and fructose, rather than comparing the items we actually consume.

So what they did at Princeton was that they gave one group of rats free access to water sweetened with HFCS, while another group got water sweetened with sugar. Their finding:  “Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.” The harm didn’t stop there; the HFCS rats gained more fat on their abdomens and their triglycerides rose more. You can read more about the research at Science Daily.

It isn’t just rats that get fat, including the undesirable belly fat that is linked to serious health problems. Humans who consume a lot of HFCS in sodas or in many items on grocery store shelves may also discover that fructose tends to produce fat directly, where glucose is either used for energy or stored as a carbohydrate. This is quite possibly a main reason that American obesity rates have gone way up in recent years. It may be occurring because the fructose in high fructose corn syrup is not chemically bound with the glucose in the same way that it is in sugar. This seems to make it easier to create fat in our bodies. For more on this see an article titled Corn Syrup’s New Disguise.    In the article—worth reading all the way through—a researcher is quoted as saying, “Our study shows… the surprising speed with which humans make body fat from fructose..”

Dr. Andrew Weil says on his website  that HFCS is bad for you and for the planet, and that it is a “major driver of the obesity epidemic.” Dr. Oz is no fan either.

There is evidence that HFCS consumption is linked with higher rates of diabetes, reason enough to remove it from your diet.

So What to Do? Seven Tips

1. Read labels. Take your reading glasses to the grocery store, or a pocket magnifying glass, if you can’t read the fine print often used. You may be surprised at how many items contain it.
2. Drink plain water. You could add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice. Even a dash of fruit juice wouldn’t do you much harm if it was really just a tiny amount in your glass of water.
3. Don’t assume that artificial sweeteners like Splenda™ and NutraSweet™and others are a better choice. They can be worse. Here’s a book on Amazon that explains that more fully. Even if you don’t get the book, reading the reviews will give you the idea: Sweet Deception: Why Splenda, NutraSweet, and the FDA May Be Hazardous to Your Health
4. Find a sweetener that you like, such as stevia or xylitol.
5. Don’t worry about the amount of fructose you get in eating fruit or sweet vegetables, as you get nutrients and fiber as well. But don’t overdo them.
6. Either stop eating at fast food places or at least ask if they use HFCS. Starbuck’s has stopped using it, and no doubt many other places as well.
7. Try going off all sweeteners for a couple of weeks and see if your tastes and cravings change. This approach is one of the mainstays of how the South Beach diet works.

In sum, is high fructose corn syrup bad for you? is high fructose corn syrup worse than sugar? Yes, yes.

This article is Is High Fructose Corn Syrup Worse than Sugar? from Gottaloseweight.com

As I began reading the book, a red flag soon went up. Dr. Dukan makes the pronouncement about overweight people (page 3) that “Their appetite and their apparent lack of restraints were a camouflage concealing a need to find comfort in food.” Well, there is some truth in this but I found it a bit simplistic. Lifestyle factors are a huge part of the issues in my mind. Then I read this:

“What overweight individuals are looking for is an outside will, a decision maker who walks ahead of them offering guidance and specific instructions, because what overweight people most hate and simply cannot do is decide for themselves when and how they are going to deprive themselves of food.” (Pages 3-4)

I didn’t go for that. This website is created with the attitude that each person’s weight loss journey is unique, and with respect for the many different ways we can meet our goals. I don’t think most overweight people need an outside will. Quite the opposite, I think the most effective weight loss in the long run comes from paying attention to our own internal cues as to what ways of eating and exercising suit our own needs. We can use a program, we can follow the Dukan diet rules (more on them shortly), South Beach, Weight Watchers, or whatever. Or it can be your own mix of things.

Anyway, read on to find out what the principles are of losing weight this way.

Dukan Diet Phases

There are four phases to this plan: the Attack Phase for a few days, the Cruise Phase until you reach your weight goal, the Consolidation phase while you work to not regain the weight, and the Permanent Stabilization Phase for the rest of your life.

1- The Dukan Diet Attack Phase

The Dukan diet attack phase food list is quite simple. It consists of protein and oat bran, along with plenty of water and some spices. You don’t count calories and you can have all the meat you want, with a few exceptions of the fattiest meats. Fish, eggs, tofu, seitan (derived from wheat protein), unsweetened soy milk or yogurt, and nonfat dairy products are also permitted.

You need a lot of water with this approach, and Dr. Dukan’s definition of water includes diet soda. It also includes coffee and tea, which surprised me as caffeine is a known diuretic.

No vegetables, no fruit, no grains.

You eat this way for two to seven days and the book states that you may experience fatigue, bad breath, dry mouth, and constipation. But you should notice a nice weight loss!

2- The Cruise Phase: the Alternating Protein Diet

This phase lasts roughly three days for every pound that you want to lose, and you stay on it until you  have reached your weight goals. You alternate between Attack-Phase style days and days on which you can also eat non-starchy vegetables. How many days in each cycle depends on a variety of factors spelled out in the book.

3-The Consolidation Phase

This phase lasts five days for each pound that you have lost, and Pierre Dukan says it’s crucial because your body is eager to gain back its reserves. You can slowly add back in bread, fruit, cheese, and carbohydrates, in an order he spells out.

4- The Permanent Stabilization Phase

There are three Dukan diet rules for this phase, which lasts for the rest of your life.

• You do one pure protein day a week, choosing a day (Thursdays in his example) and staying with it. On these days, you eat just like the Attack Phase. The rest of the time, eat “normally.”
• No more elevators and escalators.
• 3 tablespoons of oat bran a day.

Does the Dukan Diet Work?

The Dukan diet reviews around the internet are mixed. WebMD, a well respected site, says skip this fad diet.    Other sites like it better, and it has certainly been popular. Many readers at Amazon, for example, reported success on the diet.

The Dukan diet does work for weight loss. It may work for keeping it off. But it is far from an ideal way of eating to maintain a healthy body lifelong: it’s not a varied enough diet. This is a high-protein, low carb and very low fat way of eating that I really think you should ask your doctor about before trying. Sure, everyone says that you should ask your doctor about any diet, but I would emphasize: this one more than others! There have got to be a lot of people for whom this diet would not be healthful.

The one general concept that I really liked was the idea, once you have reached your desired weight, to do one day a week of a strict way of eating. That makes sense to me, to help keep your awareness focused.

To find out more about the Dukan Diet book, click on the image of the book cover to go to Amazon.

This article is The Dukan Diet Book from Gottaloseweight.com

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right!” (Henry Ford)

Here are two about food that I did find:

Take twice as long to eat half as much.

Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.

So I decided to do a series of articles with the best motivational quotes I could find from my weightloss books. I’m starting with Inner Eating by Shirley Billigmeier. Enjoy these thoughts, and if one inspires you on your own weight loss journey, great! Many of them are food for thought rather than tips, but there is quite a mix of sayings here. Some are in the form of affirmations, and others are observations. An affirmation is a short, positive, present tense saying that is uplifting. It can be fun to repeat out loud, or to put up somewhere in your home. If you repeat them out loud, or even silently in your mind, you may notice that you don’t agree with some of them at first but that after you repeat them a few times, they sink in more!

Weight Loss Affirmations

• Becoming aware of my eating pattern helps me understand what I’m doing.
• Each time I eat, I know I can eat again when I get hungry.
• I can choose what I want to eat.
• I satisfy my taste buds with quality instead of quantity.
• I can stop eating when I choose.
• How frequently I eat is my choice. I choose what works best for me.

Weight Loss Thoughts

The act of eating is the focus of all eating problems: what you put in your mouth, chew, and swallow.

You have a choice. The choice to begin, to continue, and to change anything you wish regarding your eating is within your power.

Losing weight, although important, is a bonus from becoming intimately aware of your mind, body, and emotions, and how they interact with your eating habits.

Most people are unaware of what, how, and when they eat.

You’ve probably been living wholly or partially by someone else’s rules for your body.

If you eat under stress, the body isn’t equipped to handle the digestion necessary.

Research indicates strongly that adults who spread their total food intake into smaller meals throughout the day will be leaner than those who eat larger but fewer meals.

Today I ate too much. I won’t beat myself up about it, but I will remember how it feels.

You’d like to feel energized by your food. If you discover that even small amounts of something make you feel sluggish, you can decide which is more important—how the food tastes or how your body feels.

If we deprive ourselves of tasty foods, we are in danger of bingeing.

Put very small portions on your plate. You’ll be surprised how little food you need to feel satisfied.

We have sabotaged ourselves by believing that we have to be thin and we have to be perfect.

You have a variety of choices and continuing to eat until you are stuffed is only one option.

When you ask yourself what you want, you get down to the core of who you are.

Start listening to hunger, learning good nutritional practices, and respecting your taste buds.

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These are from Inner Eating: How to free yourself forever from the tyranny of food, and that’s an Amazon link if you want to find out more about the book. It’s much more profound and interesting than just a few quotes can show! In any case, I hope these weight loss motivational quotes get you to do something differently today!

This article is Weight Loss Motivational Quotes from Gottaloseweight.com

“Because of the increasing rates of obesity, unhealthy eating habits and physical inactivity, we may see the first generation that will be less healthy and have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.”  — Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona

The number of obese children in America, and indeed in many parts of the world, is huge. This article will begin with the all-too-depressing facts about obesity in children, along with the causes of this epidemic. If you know all  about that, just skip on down to the more encouraging section on a variety of solutions, from what needs to happen on a societal level to what parents,  other family members, and children themselves can do. All along, you will find links to useful articles, books, and a BMI calculator for children.

The Problem of Obesity in American Children

Obesity in children has surpassed drugs and smoking to become the #1 health concern of American parents, according to the American Heart Association.

And no wonder, with about one third of American children and teens overweight or obese. The figures are higher among Hispanic and Black children.  The heavier a child is, the greater the risk of being obese as an adult.

These numbers are sobering for a variety of reasons. Children who are obese  are at much greater risk of being obese as adults than children of normal weight. So they are looking at a lifetime of health and emotional problems, which include diabetes, high blood pressure, low self-esteem, depression, dying younger, cancer, breathing problems, heart disease, anxiety, and more. Physicians now are seeing many health conditions in children, like Type 2 diabetes, which used to be found almost entirely in adults.

How is the BMI Used to Assess Childhood Obesity?

Overweight in both adults and children can be measured using the BMI. That’s short for Body Mass Index, a mathematical formula that measures weight and height in relation to each other. The BMI for children also takes age into account, so it is a slightly different measurement than the one for adults. Here is an informative article about children’s BMI, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a very credible source for health information online.

They also have a free BMI calculator for children.

Once you get a BMI score for a child, it is compared to the scores for other children of the same age and height. Children who have a higher BMI than 85% of the other kids are defined as overweight and children whose BMI is higher than 95% are obese. The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of American pediatricians, suggests that doctors should track children’s BMI scores regularly, as the pattern over years can be useful to see. (By the way, this organization published the book A Parent’s Guide to Childhood Obesity: A Roadmap to Health and you can see it at Amazon by clicking on the book cover image or the link.

What Causes Childhood Obesity?

In the past couple of decades, some changes have taken place in our society that are not exactly for the better. Our fat kids are paying the price. For one thing, most fast food chains dramatically increased portion sizes. This was excellent for their profits but not so good for anyone’s health. Over the same time period, more and more families chose to eat fast food more often and to cook meals at home less frequently. Pizza, hamburgers, fries, shakes, and the like thus became a higher percentage of the American diet.

The increase in calories alone would have caused health problems, but this all happened at the same time that children became much more sedentary than they used to be. Instead of playing outside after school, they frequently prefer to play computer games, go online, or watch TV or DVDs. Of course, television has been around for over half a century, but still, with so many enticing activities that don’t require movement, and fewer parents at home after school to enforce a balance of activities, the net result is kids who don’t move much. Many school systems have removed physical education courses to save money, so that too contributes to the situation.

More children now are being raised by one parent, and often that hardworking person isn’t home at meal times. When kids choose what to eat for meals themselves, studies have shown what you can imagine, that they don’t make as healthy food choices as the adults might. Even when eating at home with a parent, not every child gets a great role model. If a child has one obese parent, the odds are 50-50 that the child will also be obese. But if both parents are obese, the child has an 80% chance of following in their footsteps!

At the most basic level, of course, people of all ages become overweight when they take in more food, measured in calories, than they expend in activities. Some people have a greater genetic tendency to gain weight than others, and emotional factors such as stress also play their part in how much someone eats. None of this is simple, but the results are clear: there are lots of kids who are obese.

Solutions

The problem of obesity in children is so daunting that it can be easy to be overwhelmed in thinking about what we can do. I have found this fact helpful: The more obese a child is, the more likely he or she is to be an obese adult. How is this helpful rather than depressing? It means that even modest improvements in a child’s obesity have value.

Also, as children are still growing, it is not usually necessary that they lose weight. If they can keep from gaining much as they grow taller, their obesity will diminish and they will be closer to the midrange.

The solutions will need to be implemented at societal levels, community levels, and family levels. They will all involve getting children to exercise more and to eat more  of the healthy foods and less of the unhealthy ones. Some of the larger changes include changing the contents of school lunches to be more nutritious, getting children to exercise more at school, getting the fast food world to improve its offerings, and more.

It’s important to realize that by and large, diets aren’t the way to go with children. It’s much more useful in the long term to get them to learn healthier eating and exercise habits that will stand them in good stead for their entire lives.

Since many of the family members of obese children also have weight issues, it’s important to go with small steps that can be implemented as time allows. If you are the parent or guardian of a child who is obese or tending in that direction, there are many things you can do to help the child. They will take time, patience, and possibly some money, but you can make a difference.

What has been found to be successful? Children are most likely to become a better weight if they are getting the same or similar messages in different places, for example, school and home. But even when the school isn’t offering the best choices, and television is advertising less-than-ideal foods, studies have shown that the more involved parents are, the better. This is especially true for parents who themselves improve their own ways of eating and methods of exercise.

Ten Tips for Parents and Other Family Members to Help Obese Kids

1. Make exercise more a part of life. This could be by walking more, or doing other activities that kids often like, such as bicycling, playing sports, swimming (unless they are too embarrassed about their bodies to enjoy it), and so on. Even a lively game of ping pong can burn calories.
2. Have as many meals together with your children as you can. Children who have regular meals with their parents or guardians tend to be more emotionally secure. And have the television off during most of those meals.
3. Gradually make the meals more healthy. For example, if you stop for some takeouts on the way home, when you get home, make a salad as well. Provide low-fat milk instead of sodas. Cut calories.  Get fewer takeouts and make more regular trips to buy the groceries you will use for the next few days or week, including healthy snacks like fresh fruit or string cheese.
4. Don’t go so far as to forbid favorite foods outright, unless your doctor says your child really needs that. It’s better to allow them now and then as treats, because this is much more likely to work long term.
5. Get the child motivated, however you can do that. This will be different for different children. Calling them chubby or fatty doesn’t help. But getting them motivated is the only way that better habits will develop. Give your child a pedometer to track how many steps are taken in a day.
6. Involve your doctor or clinic. A medical evaluation can be a good idea.
7. Don’t use food to reward your child. Use money, time doing something special, or other things.
8. For some children, overeating has emotional aspects as well. If their eating problems involve bingeing or other emotional components, see about getting some professional help. If you can’t afford it, look into the free and low cost resources in your community.
9. Turn to community groups such as Overeaters Anonymous or a local Weight Watchers group, or to online resources such as the free online weight loss plans described on this website. Some of them focus on children’s needs.
10. Be sure to talk with your child about things besides weight! Emphasize any strengths the child has, such as drawing, singing, certain parts of schoolwork, etc.

Two More Ways to Help Obese Children in America

Spend some time at a website on children’s health, kidshealth.org, run by a large non-profit called Nemours which does many things for the health of children. Here is their page on overweight and obese children.

Here’s a book that describes a very useful program to help overweight kids:

This article is Obese Children in America from Gottaloseweight.com

• Vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, which give you fiber and nutritious carbohydrates… but you stay away from “bad carbs” like white flour or sugar
• Olive oil, canola oil, and other healthy unsaturated fats… but not “bad fats” like a lot of fat from meat
• Fish, lean meats, beans
• Low-fat dairy foods
• Desserts with healthy ingredients and sugar substitutes
• Coffee and tea, with the caffeinated kinds in moderation.

This is about the quality of the foods you eat as well as about the amounts. And unlike so many diets, you don’t need to count calories. Dr. Arthur Agatston, the cardiologist who created this diet, explains  that South Beach is a balanced diet, neither extremely low-carb nor utterly low-fat. He actually didn’t start it as a weight loss program. It was designed to help his patients lower the risk of heart disease and stroke. When they began losing weight easily as well, word spread fast.

Does the South Beach Diet Really Work?

There are South Beach diet testimonials all over the internet. You’d expect them on the company’s website, but many blogs also describe how the bloggers have lost weight and how the diet has worked well for them. You can also see glowing comments on the online forums that discuss weight loss plans. Based on this, and on studies that have been done, I can say, yes, this is one diet that works. It is not the only one, of course, but the fact is that it has worked for many, many people. Not too surprising, really, since it  is based on sound nutritional principles.

So what is it about this particular way of eating that makes it effective for many? And more to the point: would it suit you?  With this plan, you eat three meals a day and two or three snacks. You never need to experience hunger as you are encouraged to eat as much as you want of the approved foods. You will be filling up, largely on vegetables, but if that sounds boring, not to worry. You are also eating lean meats (unless you are a vegetarian) and much more. There are some delicious recipes in the books and on the membership website… more on these resources later in this article.

There are three parts to the South Beach diet.

Phase One

What it is: Phase One only lasts two weeks, and admittedly it is on the challenging side. You can choose from a wide list of vegetables, beans, low-fat dairy products, and lean meats, but you can’t have bread, grains, fruits, potatoes, carrots, or alcohol. No sugar or honey is allowed, but substitute sweeteners are.

How Does Phase One Work? By cutting out the foods just mentioned, cravings and hunger drop off or at least way down. You can expect to see fast weight loss when you get on the scale—which they suggest you only do once a week. By skipping carrots, beets, winter squash, and other foods that are high on something called the glycemic index, blood sugar stabilizes and thus so do energy levels and moods. The glycemic index is important in this way of eating: it is simply a measure of the effect that different carbohydrates have on blood sugar levels. As you digest the carbs, some will more quickly metabolize into simple sugars than others. You will be avoiding the faster ones.

Of course, people have different results with Phase One, but the exultant reports of significant weight loss are easy to find online! Belly fat often shrinks too.

Phase Two

Phase Two of the South Beach diet begins after you have done Phase One for two weeks. Sometimes people want to stay on Phase One, but this is really not recommended. It’s such a restrictive way of eating that you are not getting enough nutrition in your diet to eat that way for more than a short time. In Phase Two, you follow a suggested schedule to add back in grains, fruits, and other things—including, if you wish, one ounce of dark chocolate a day. (Yes, I admit to checking that out right away!) You are eating three meals a day and snacks, and you can have a little wine with meals at times.

How Does Phase Two Work? In Phase Two, you are setting the stage for a what can become your lifetime way of eating.  The rate of weight loss slows but should still be satisfying, especially when you consider that fast weight loss is less effective long term than slower. Deprivation diets all too often become yo-yo dieting, which is when your weight goes down and back up like a yo-yo!

In other words, on a too-fast weight loss program, you may lose the weight very quickly but in the process an ancient metabolism device kicks in. Throughout history, when people have been in starvation situations, their metabolisms have slowed down, to help them live. So if you try a deprivation diet, your body will slow down your metabolism to keep you alive. Not what you want, and this in a nutshell is the reason that crash dieting so often leads to weight gain soon after.

In contrast, on Phase Two of the South Beach Diet, you are eating moderately and your exercise plan (more about that in a moment) also helps you to lose weight. Phase Two may take some patience on your part now and then, but it works. By the way, some people can start the diet at Phase 2: this would be people who have less than ten pounds to lose AND who don’t experience any cravings normally. How long you stay on this phase depends on how much weight you have to lose.

Phase Three

This is the lifetime plan. The old saying “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle” certainly applies here. You go on Phase Three when you have reached your target weight. It consists of all the veggies you want, plenty of protein, low-fat dairy, and whole grains including breads. You can have occasional decadent treats, even made with sugar.

How Does Phase Three Work? By eating a variety of healthy foods, you are getting a wide variety of nutrients in your diet. By almost always staying off bad fats and bad carbs, you are doing your body a great favor. By this time, you are at your target weight and may be feeling better than you have in some time!  If you do eat too many bad  things, and gain some weight, just go back on Phase One for a few days.

No specific food is totally banned in Phase Three. By the time you get there, you will understand the South Beach principles well enough to follow them routinely. People report that by removing the bad fats and the bad carbs from their meals, they have more energy, they get hungry less, and cravings drop to nothing… or close to it. YMMV, of course. (Your mileage may vary… and even that seems to depend on how much “cheating” on the diet you do.)

Exercise and Fitness

When The South Beach Diet  was published in 2003, the book was focused on the diet. There weren’t specific exercises in the book. Cardiologist Arthur Agatston, M.D., the author,  felt that at that time he didn’t have anything new to add to the discussion of exercise and weight loss, though he was a big advocate of exercise for health. He later teamed up with exercise experts and now there are exercises as an essential part of the program. You alternate days of interval walking (or another interval activity if you prefer)  with core exercises. It can all be done at home, or you can go out and do sports if you like.

Interval walking — If you are already walking for fitness and weight control, but not using interval walking, you may be pleasantly surprised that you can get more health benefits in less time. This method  consists of walking at varying speeds, for about twenty minutes a day. For example, you might walk for a few minutes at a regular pace, then for one minute at a very fast pace. You would repeat this cycle throughout your walking time. The result is that walking at different rates kicks your metabolism into higher gear and you burn more energy. Even people who are out of shape can do this, changing between very slow and a bit faster, with their own doctor’s okay of course.

Dr. Agatston uses an amusing but useful analogy to explain how interval exercise (walking or anything) burns more energy, that is, more calories. We are all familiar with how we get worse mileage in stop-and-go traffic than if we are driving along at a steady speed that would be the average of all those stops and starts. We don’t like it in that situation, but it’s great when it’s our bodies using more energy!

Core Exercises— Core exercises are exercises that strength our core muscles, which are all the muscles around the core of our body. Back muscles, abs and other pelvic muscles, shoulders, and more would all be called core muscles. In this world of labor-saving devices where we ride around in cars and sit hunched over computers, it is all too easy for our core muscles to be weak. This can lead to back pain and all the other problems so many people have. Core exercises help with balance, with strength, and with flexibility. A short but intense core workout is now included in the South Beach approach to healthy living. Of course, you do it to the extent that you are able without overdoing it.

Who is the South Beach Diet For?

It’s really for just about anyone. If you are a vegetarian, if you eat a gluten-free diet, if you are diabetic, or if you have any other specific needs, you can easily tailor the South Beach diet to meet your needs. So this is a way of eating that can suit everyone. This is certainly convenient at home, when different people have different food needs and desires.

Should children go on South Beach? Dr. Agatston says they can eat according to the principles of of the diet, but he doesn’t advocate any diet for kids. If they need to lose weight, get them outside playing more than inside with their video games, for one thing. He is very concerned about the future of our children and says a lot more than we can do justice to here.

Want to Find Out More About the South Beach Diet Program? Here’s How…

I first found out about this method by reading a book titled The South Beach Diet Supercharged,  by Arthur Agatston, M.D.—the cardiologist who created the program—with Joseph Signorile, Ph.D—a professor of exercise physiology who contributed to the exercise section. That link goes to Amazon, where the book is available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle versions. (Much as I love  Kindles, I recommend an actual book as a better choice here. I have read and marked up my paperback copy.) There are quite a few South Beach cookbooks you can find from that page as well.

Don’t read the original book, The South Beach Diet, as the supercharged South Beach is much more current and includes exercise and newer food lists.

For doing the exercises, there is a DVD: The South Beach Diet Super Charged Workout at a very low price.

The South Beach Website

A friend of mine became so interested in doing this diet herself that she explored South Beach online and  joined the official website at http://www.southbeachdiet.com. There is a modest fee. The site has a lot of friendly and enthusiastic people, mostly women—no surprise there, since most people who go on weight loss programs are women. She likes the site. One thing that is fun is that many people on the forums use colorful tickers to show their weight loss, and it is inspiring to see how much weight some of them have lost!

(There are also a lot of free weight loss forums online, and some of them have South Beach sections. But one drawback to them is that people are not always following the SB diet accurately. Another problem can be that many of these boards are not that active, so questions don’t get answered soon, if at all. )

So if you have been wondering, “How does the South Beach diet work?”  I hope that now you know—and that you will consider trying it.

This article is How Does the South Beach Diet Work? from Gottaloseweight.com