Shavonna Coakley knows about obesity in the black community because she's been there, and back.
"I was an obese child," Coakley said this week as she ordered salad for lunch at a local restaurant. "My mother was obese and my grandmother was obese. It's a cycle of old-fashioned bad habits that we've got to break."
A large number of Canadians have been putting on the pounds -- to the point they're at risk of a host of illnesses.
"There is an epidemic of obesity in North America," Guelph General Hospital chief of surgery Dr. Ken Reed said yesterday, commenting on Ontario Health Minister David Caplan earmarking $75 million for obesity surgery, including significantly expanding the capacity of Guelph General Hospital to perform these potentially life-saving procedures.
David Adam (40), who weighs 34 stone, has been denied bariatric surgery after NHS Fife said they do not refer cases outwith the Kingdom.
He has now labelled them “the very definition of a postcode lottery? as other health boards in Scotland make the surgery available.
My daughter is desperately excited by her upcoming fifth birthday – not least because apparently she will ‘look like six’. She’s not daft; she knows that the labels on the clothes that I buy her now read ‘Age 6-7’, and that she is taller and heavier than some of her friends.
My daughter is not fat – although according to recent research from Newcastle University, eviscerated by Tim Black on spiked, as a parent I would be the last person to admit that she was. But she isn’t a skinnymalinks either. I’m quite pleased about this because I think she looks healthy and beautiful, and my instincts tell me that denying children pudding and sending them to bed hungry is neither necessary nor desirable in this day and age.
Watching Dillon Star amble along, it's hard to believe that a few months ago, the San Diego teenager struggled just to finish a walk.
"I was morbidly obese, 330 lbs, I was a big kid. I wasn't satisfied with the way I was run out of breath going up the stairs," said Star.
Now down below 200, he says he's a golden example of what dozens of classmates are accomplishing, at a unique kind of boarding school where learning to lose weight, is the core curriculum.
It's that time of year again when Canadians shed layers of winter garb to reveal parts of their bodies they've kept covered for months -and many Canadians won't like what they see.
Canada is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Locally, about half of the adults who live in Sarnia-Lambton are overweight and one in five is considered obese.
Obesity is a complex disease with many factors contributing to its development, yet the idea that obesity can be "cured" with quick fixes continues to be promoted by a weight loss industry that is not regulated. At any given time, 70 per cent of women are dieting and the weight loss industry is capitalizing on this. North Americans spend $50 billion a year on pills, potions, diets and programs promising quick and easy weight loss.
Eat your vegetables. Exercise. Don't drink so much beer. Blah. Blah. Blah.
Even fewer Americans in their middle and later years adhere to this healthy lifestyle advice than they did two decades ago.
Despite the well-known benefits of a lifestyle that includes physical activity, eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables, maintaining a healthy weight, moderate alcohol use and not smoking, only a small proportion of older adults follow this healthy lifestyle pattern, a new survey finds.
Think in terms of nutrition per dollar and the nutrition "powerhouse" in the diet is fruits and vegetables. They offer higher vitamin, mineral and fiber content per calorie compared to just about everything else you can eat! Fruits and veggies, including 100 percent juice and beans, provide both nutrition and great taste, making them a great value for your food dollar.
