Comfort Eating and Kirstie Alley
Actress Kirstie Alley is a wild woman who has freely admitted to an interviewer, “It was the greatest thing in the world getting fat.” But being fat? Not so much. Still, if there is one public figure (besides Oprah Winfrey) whose every ounce of gain and loss has been tracked, minute by minute, by millions […]
Obesity, Environmental Toxins, and Denial
In “Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation: White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President” (available online as a PDF file; link is ours), the section called Chemical Exposures starts on page 17. One of the consequent Recommendations is, Federal and State agencies conducting health research should prioritize research […]
Denial = Bad, Awareness = Good
Childhood obesity is a tough problem, and when parents look for answers, the answers might depend on the attitudinal states of various family members. Maybe you realize that your child has a problem, but he or she refuses to acknowledge this. Or maybe your child is asking for help, and you are the one […]
Why Parents Don’t Want to Hear About Food Addiction, Part 8
The Psychological Food Dependence-Addiction Paradigm is a very simple concept. People, yes, even kids, can become addicted to high-calorie, low-nutrient, hedonically engineered substances that masquerade as food. Food can be a drug of abuse, and it’s a lot easier for kids to get hold of than most other drugs of abuse. The good news is, […]
The “DSM-5” and Obesity, Part 2
We looked yesterday at the difficulties faced by the editors of the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-5, as explained by Gary Greenberg, who also talks about the currently favored method of considering an array of symptoms. Until a more “scientific” way can be found, the hope is to move away from either/or definitions of […]
Sarah Palin Not Worried About Childhood Obesity
Sarah Palin just can’t seem to stay out of the news. Now she has everybody riled up over cookies. But what’s a tea party without cookies? The state of Pennsylvania has some new guidelines in the pipeline aimed at reducing the childhood obesity rate. We learn from an ABC News story attributed to three writers […]
Fat Boy Thin Man: Michael Prager
Fat Boy Thin Man is Michael Prager’s memoir of “a fat and troubled childhood that lasted almost 35 years.” He spent more than 10 years over the 300-pound mark. When Prager hit 365, he opted for standard addiction treatment, just like any substance abuser might, upon realizing that he’s in the grip of a lower […]
Motivational Interviewing and Childhood Obesity
In “What is MI?,” Stephen Rollnick, Ph.D., and William R. Miller, Ph.D., talk about the spirit of motivational interviewing, which tends to downplay formal technique. The authors summarize it in seven key points, which are also briefly summed up here, but explored much more fully in their article. Drs. Rollnick and Miller explain the usefulness […]
Why Parents Don't Want to Hear About Food Addiction, Part 1
Why do many parents reject the food addiction paradigm? One reason is a plain old denial in the face of irrefutable facts, such as statistics. Of course, it takes a bit of savvy to understand statistics, and, in the interpretation of the Body Mass Index charts, Dr. Ayala takes a backseat to no one. A pediatrician, […]
Parents Kid Themselves More Than Kids Do
At the University of Sydney, Australia, researchers looked at parental attitudes about overweight and obesity in children and teens, and Michael Booth wrote up the results. Other team members were L.A. King, D.L. Pagnini, R. L. Wilkenfeld, and S. L. Booth, and what they had discovered was that there may be a bit of cognitive […]