Forums: Obesity

Next time you decide to comment on another person's weight, you might want to ask them to comment on yours. At least that's what the results of a Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll say. That's if you tend to believe the same experts that brought you the H1N1 epidemic in 2009. From Yahoo! News via Healthday: Many Americans Don't Even Know They're Fat Many Americans have skewed perceptions when it comes to their weight, often believing they are thinner than they really are, even when the scales are shouting otherwise, a new poll finds. As part of the Harris Interactive/HealthDay survey, respondents...

It locks up. It locks up Blogger, too. It did it when I was composing this despatch, and I had to recreate it. What a waste of my time! Furthermore, it takes forever to load, as if it's scanning every byte of my computer for stuff it can parse with my email and put together into some sort of profile of me that it can sell to someone. I'm over that. I'm also over this obesity shit. I see people who literally *wobble* around, wearing this "oh, feel sorry for ME!" look on their faces. When I was a kid,...

Earlier this year, Michelle Obama announced she wanted to take on childhood obesity. There’s rarely been a more non-controversial topic touted in Washington, D.C. It’s like grade inflation for poll numbers.  So she rolled out this nationwide initiative, Let’s Move, earlier in 2010.   She said she learned when she and Barack were working that her children’s nutrition was suffering from not being able to cook meals for them. She said she started making changes and wanted to bring those lessons to the White House. Apparently, they were all lessons she forgot when trying to win over Iowa voters on the...

BANGKOK -- A 603-pound (274-kilogram) woman believed to be the heaviest in Thailand left her apartment for the first time in three years Thursday with the help of Bangkok city hall and a forklift. Neighbors of 40-year-old Umnuayporn Tongprapai contacted the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority when they learned she needed medical attention to remove a tumor in her right leg.

The weight-centric approach to health is the most common, but least effective philosophy. A healthy metabolism is more important than numbers on a scale. Despite what personal trainers, nutritional gurus and the diet industry have been telling you all of these years, weight loss and weighing less is not the key to living a healthy lifestyle. As a matter of fact, there have been studies that show weight loss can increase the risk of premature death from heart disease. But these findings haven’t dissuaded the forces that perpetuate the notion that thin is in. Rather than worry about numbers on...