OBESITY

How to Prevent Obesity

Obesity is a chronic disease affecting more and more children, adolescents and adults:

• Obesity rates among children in the U.S. have doubled since 1980 and have tripled for adolescents
• 15% percent of children aged six to 19 are considered overweight
• Over 60 percent of adults are considered overweight or obese

Healthcare professionals are seeing earlier onset of Type 2 diabetes (normally an adult-onset disease), cardiovascular disease and obesity-related depression in children and adolescents. The longer a person is obese, the more significant obesity-related risk factors become. Given the chronic diseases and conditions associated with obesity, and the fact that obesity is difficult to treat, prevention is extremely important.

A primary reason that prevention of obesity is so vital in children is because the likelihood of obese becoming obese adults is thought to increase from about 20 percent at four years of age to 80 percent by adolescence.

Preventing Obesity in Infants

The longer babies are breastfed, the less likely they are to become overweight as they grow older. Breastfed babies are 15 to 25 percent less likely to become overweight. For those who are breastfed for six months or longer, the likelihood is 20 to 40 percent less.

Preventing Obesity in Children and Adolescents

Young people generally become overweight or obese because they don’t get enough physical activity in combination with poor eating habits. Genetics and lifestyle also contribute to a child’s weight status.

There are a number of steps you can take to help prevent overweight and obesity during childhood and adolescence. (They’ll help you, too!) They include:

• Gradually work to change family eating habits and activity levels rather than focusing on weight. Change the habits and the weight will take care of itself.
• Be a role model. Parents who eat healthy foods and are physically activity set an example that increases the likelihood their children will do the same.
• Encourage physical activity. Children should have an hour of moderate physical activity most days of the week. More than an hour of activity may promote weight loss and subsequent maintenance.
• Reduce time in front of the TV and computer to less than two hours a day.
• Encourage children to eat only when hungry, and to eat slowly.
• Avoid using food as a reward or withholding food as a punishment.
• Keep the refrigerator stocked with fat-free or low-fat milk and fresh fruit and vegetables instead of soft drinks and snacks high in sugar and fat.
• Serve at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily.
• Encourage children to drink water rather than beverages with added sugar, such as soft drinks, sports drinks and fruit juice drinks.

Preventing Obesity in Adults

Many of the strategies that produce successful weight loss and maintenance will help prevent obesity. Improving your eating habits and increasing physical activity play a vital role in preventing obesity. Things you can do include:

• Eat five to six servings of fruits and vegetables daily. A vegetable serving is one cup of raw vegetables or one-half cup of cooked vegetables or vegetable juice. A fruit serving is one piece of small to medium fresh fruit, one-half cup of canned or fresh fruit or fruit juice, or one-fourth cup of dried fruit.
• Choose whole grain foods such as brown rice and whole wheat bread. Avoid highly processed foods made with refined white sugar, flour and saturated fat.
• Weigh and measure food to gain an understanding of portion sizes. For example, a three-ounce serving of meat is the size of a deck of cards. Avoid super-sized menu items particularly at fast-food restaurants. You can achieve a lot just with proper choices in serving sizes.
• Balance the food “checkbook.” Eating more calories than you burn for energy will lead to weight gain.
• Weigh yourself regularly.
• Avoid foods that are high in “energy density” or that have a lot of calories in a small amount of food. For example, a large cheeseburger and a large order of fries may have almost 1,000 calories and 30 or more grams of fat. By ordering a grilled chicken sandwich or a plain hamburger and a small salad with low-fat dressing, you can avoid hundreds of calories and eliminate much of the fat intake. For dessert, have fruit or a piece of angel food cake rather than the “death by chocolate” special or three pieces of home-made pie.
• Crack a sweat: accumulate at least 30 minutes or more of moderate-intensity activity on most, or preferably, all days of the week. Examples include walking a 15-minute mile, or weeding and hoeing the garden.
• Make opportunities during the day for even just 10 or 15 minutes of some calorie-burning activity, such as walking around the block or up and down a few flights of stairs at work. Again, every little bit helps.

Keeping the Weight Off

Losing weight is hard enough. Keeping it off presents its own challenges. Between 80 and 85 percent of those who lose a large amount of weight regain it. One theory why is that people who decrease their caloric intake to lose weight also decrease their metabolic rate, making it more difficult to burn calories and lose weight over a period of months. A lower metabolic rate likely makes it easier to regain weight if you resume a more normal diet. For these reasons, we don’t recommend extremely low-calorie diets and rapid weight loss programs.

Instead, work toward losing no more than one or two pounds per week. Incorporating long-term lifestyle changes will increase the chance of successful long-term weight loss.

Working toward achieving a healthy weight for your height can lower your cholesterol and blood sugar levels, lower blood pressure, reduce stress on bones and joints, and ease the workload on your heart. Which is why it’s important to not only lose the weight but maintain the loss to gain health benefits over a lifetime.

Keeping extra weight off requires as much effort and commitment as losing weight in the first place. Reaching your weight loss goals require changes in diet, eating habits, exercise and, in extreme circumstances, surgery.

Strategies To Keep Weight Off

The steps you take to lose weight can also help you keep the weight off:

• The support systems that helped you take weight off can also help you keep it off. A study conducted by the National Weight Control Registry found people who lost weight and continued bi-monthly support group meetings for one year maintained their full weight loss. Study participants who didn’t regained almost half of the weight.
• Studies show that even non-rigorous exercise like walking and using stairs, has a positive effect. Activity that uses 1,500 to 2,000 calories per week is recommended for maintaining weight loss.
• Diet and exercise are vital strategies for losing and maintaining weight. A study by the National Weight Control Registry found that nearly all of 784 study participants who had lost at least 30 pounds, and had maintained that loss for one year or longer, used diet and exercise to not only lose the weight, but also to maintain the weight loss.
• Once you reach your desired weight, you can try gradually adding about 200 calories of healthy, low-fat food to your daily intake for one week to see if weight loss continues. If it does, you can add more calories of healthy foods to your daily diet until you determine the right balance of calories to maintain your desired weight. It may take some time and keeping track of what you’re eating to figure out how adjusting your food intake and exercise levels affect your weight.

Continuing to use healthy behaviors can help you maintain weight. Be aware if you’re eating as a response to stress, and use exercise, activity or meditation to manage stress instead.

Returning to old habits doesn’t mean failure. Paying renewed attention to dietary choices and exercise can help you continue behaviors that maintain weight loss. Identifying situations such as negative moods and interpersonal difficulties and incorporating methods other than eating to cope with them can prevent you from slipping into old habits.

Weight Cycling

Weight cycling is losing and regaining weight multiple times. Some studies suggest that weight cycling, also called “yo-yo dieting,” may result in some health risks such as high blood pressure, gallbladder disease and high cholesterol. However, these studies are not conclusive.

You can avoid weight cycling and maintain healthy weight through physical activity and healthy eating.

One myth about weight cycling is that a person who loses and regains weight will have more difficulty losing weight again and maintaining it compared to someone who hasn’t gone through a weight-loss cycle. Most studies show that weight cycling doesn’t affect the rate at which your body burns fuel, and a previous weight cycle doesn’t influence your ability to lose weight again. In addition, weight cycling doesn’t increase the amount of fat tissue or increase fat distribution around the stomach.

Always consult your physician for more information.