How Is Your Health Esteem?

January 4, 2023
Leave a Comment

January is World Health Esteem Month. Here are some simple yet effective daily choices and useful practices to try in the new year.

Yes, Journaling — Continued

November 9, 2022
Leave a Comment

Writing your journal entries by hand activates regions of the brain that are not touched by keyboarding, and changes the whole cognitive process.

Yes, Journaling

November 8, 2022
Leave a Comment

Journaling is a method with a proven ability to permanently carve new pathways into the brain by exploiting the hand-brain connection.

Manage Holiday Stress and Eat Less!

December 3, 2021
Leave a Comment

Whatever events are on the agenda, try to plan rationally and make allowance for obstacles. Make lists.

The Rise of Cyberbullying

October 16, 2019
Leave a Comment

A Canadian study of children of 11 to 16 years verified that overweight and obese teens were likely to be bullied verbally, physically, and relationally.

New Publication, and Dr. Pretlow Articles

August 21, 2018
Leave a Comment

Psychological problems are amenable to varying types of intervention. Not all obesity-reduction mentoring relationships need to be conducted in person.

The Place of the Mind

April 27, 2018
Leave a Comment

While making major dietary changes, the first two or three weeks are crucial. Resistance skills are vital in fighting the inability to resist cravings.

Ten Points for Health From the U.K.

April 14, 2017
Leave a Comment

Childhood Obesity News has been following the history of how the U.K. deliberated along the way to finally instituting a sugar tax.

Season of Challenge

December 19, 2016
Leave a Comment

The winter holidays would be incomplete without advice on how to survive them.

Obesity in Four Books and a Theater Piece

August 16, 2016
Leave a Comment

Several recent books deal with such issues as the underlying causes of obesity, bullying, eating disorders, and disdain for the overweight.

Teen Bariatric Surgery – Successes and an Unrelated Failure

January 29, 2016
Leave a Comment

The Teen-Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery, which is known as Teen-LABS for short, aims to document “the efficacy and complications of bariatric surgery in the adolescent surgical patient and its role in the overall management of obesity pri …

Bariatric Surgery for Teens – Risks and Complications

January 26, 2016
Leave a Comment

Weight loss saves lives and reduces the likelihood of numerous co-morbidities. Alas, the effects rarely last. Without surgical intervention, it is said that “only 2% of severely obese teenagers can lose weight and keep it off.” So a case can be made th …

Into the New Year

January 4, 2016
Leave a Comment

“Well, I already broke my New Year’s resolution, so I guess I’ve blown it for 2016. I’ll just have to start over again next New Year.” Here it is January 4, and somewhere, a certified fatlogic ninja has formulated that rationalization, or one very much …

Escaping Winter Holiday Hell

December 30, 2015
Leave a Comment

All the winter holidays are basically the same: festivals of consumption that make it easy for a person to justify or excuse overeating. A helpful tip for any one of the holidays is likely to be effective for the others. Childhood Obesity News passes a …

Fitting Into the Winter Food Festivals

December 29, 2015
Leave a Comment

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News  looked at only a couple of the ideas espoused by Dr. Billi Gordon. Thanks to his Psychology Today column “Obesely Speaking,” he was named one of the “30 Most Influential Neuroscientists Alive Today” by a website that …

Obesity, the Holidays, and Fitting In

December 27, 2015
1 Comment

At Kansas State University, journalist Darrah Tinkler interviewed associate professor of psychological sciences Don Saucier about how eating can provide social validation, which means monkey-see/monkey-do behavior that allows a person to fit in and gai …

One Woman’s Story – Chrisetta Mosley

July 22, 2015
Leave a Comment

Occasionally, to see what can be learned, Childhood Obesity News looks into the lives and thoughts of formerly obese people, not all of them national or international celebrities. Chrisetta Mosley has achieved renown in her neck of the woods, an area t …

Everything You Know about Addiction is Wrong

June 11, 2015
Leave a Comment

In a recent Huffington Post article, Johann Hari discussed what he calls “the essential mystery of addiction:” What causes some people to become fixated on a drug or a behavior until they can’t stop? How do we help those people to come back to us? He s …

Reply from a British Mum

June 10, 2015
Leave a Comment

Because all of Dr. Pretlow’s time is spent working hard on a program to guide millions of children out of the prison of obesity, he is not able to respond to every individual. A recent letter, a true cri de coeur from an English mother at her wits’ end …

Addiction’s Received Wisdom is Challenged

May 26, 2015
Leave a Comment

Lance Dodes, M.D., whose latest book is The Heart of Addiction, seems to have rethought the field from the ground up and arrived at some conclusions that can only be described as heretical. For instance, when a person seeks a rehab facility, scenery sh …

Famous and Formerly Fat – Matt Mira

May 7, 2015
Leave a Comment

Writer and producer Matt Mira is renowned for his work on Attack of the Show, The Nerdist, @midnight, Tosh.0, Math Bites, and numerous other projects. He was also a fat kid who only survived high school because, he says, “I was funny and I played footb …

Stress and Displacement Activity

May 5, 2015
Leave a Comment

Stress triggers the fight-or-flight reflex. Laboratory rats can’t flee, and have reasons of their own for not fighting, but they still want to feel better. Given the opportunity, they will take drugs or use food as a drug. For the most part, stressed-o …

Motivation and Two Men

April 14, 2015
Leave a Comment

In discussing self-image, Childhood Obesity News has mentioned Corey Stoll, who has been remarkably frank about his struggles with weight. A morbidly obese child and 300-pound teenager, Stoll grew up to become well-known actor in “House of Cards,” “Law …

Tales of the Formerly Fat

April 13, 2015
Leave a Comment

Childhood Obesity News has been looking into the lives and thoughts of some formerly obese people to see what can be learned. For a CNN iReport, Linda Roche shared the story of her earliest educational experiences: By the time I started kindergarten I …

Self-Image and the Formerly Fat

April 7, 2015
Leave a Comment

Sometimes, photographic images help to form people’s self-images, particularly around issues of obesity, but not always. Childhood Obesity News has looked at various strange relationships between people and their pictures. For the Good Men Project, Kim …

Images and Self-Image

April 6, 2015
Leave a Comment

Every day, knowingly or not, we meet up with people who used to carry around excessive weight, and who somehow figured out how to get rid of it. More importantly, they figured out how to make it stay gone. We meet them online too, in discussion groups …

Words from the Formerly Obese

April 3, 2015
Leave a Comment

It might be instructive to listen to someone who lost 140 pounds, 30 years ago, and sustained that loss. Such a person is self-described food addict William Anderson, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who specializes in eating disorders, addictions, a …

“Bite Size” Hits the Ground Running

March 25, 2015
Leave a Comment

Last week, Childhood Obesity News explored the four individual stories of obese kids from the film Bite Size: Emily, Moy, Davion, and KeAnna. Guess what just happened over at iTunes? Bite Size has arrived there. We have said this before, but it is wort …

Bite Size – KeAnna

March 20, 2015
Leave a Comment

The introductory material about Bite Size can be found in the earlier Childhood Obesity News post about Emily, one of four young people whose stories are told by the film. We also “met” Moy, a gaming enthusiast and novice filmmaker. Today’s discussion …

Bite Size – Davion

March 19, 2015
Leave a Comment

Bite Size is a captivating film that follows the weight loss journeys of four American kids. Childhood Obesity News already took a close look at two of them, Emily in Florida and Moy in Southern California. The other two young people are both from Miss …

FAQs and Media Requests: Click here…

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Obesity top bottom

The Book

OVERWEIGHT: What Kids Say explores the obesity problem from the often-overlooked perspective of children struggling with being overweight.

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Dr. Robert A. Pretlow is a pediatrician and childhood obesity specialist. He has been researching and spreading awareness on the childhood obesity epidemic in the US for more than a decade.
You can contact Dr. Pretlow at:

Presentations

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the American Society of Animal Science 2020 Conference
What’s Causing Obesity in Companion Animals and What Can We Do About It

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the World Obesity Federation 2019 Conference:
Food/Eating Addiction and the Displacement Mechanism

Dr. Pretlow’s Multi-Center Clinical Trial Kick-off Speech 2018:
Obesity: Tackling the Root Cause

Dr. Pretlow’s 2017 Workshop on
Treatment of Obesity Using the Addiction Model

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation for
TEC and UNC 2016

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the 2015 Obesity Summit in London, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s invited keynote at the 2014 European Childhood Obesity Group Congress in Salzburg, Austria.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2013 European Congress on Obesity in Liverpool, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2011 International Conference on Childhood Obesity in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2010 Uniting Against Childhood Obesity Conference in Houston, TX.

Food & Health Resources