The cultural consciousness is slowly adapting to the idea that some relationship might exist between childhood obesity and sleep, but exactly “what’s up with that” is not yet clear to anyone. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has several ideas, some of which are obvious. The way they phrase one of them is, “Screen time [...]
Kids Say the Darnedest Things
February 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
In the struggle against childhood obesity, listening to kids and paying attention to what they say is tremendously important. Dr. Pretlow has learned this from years of watching the results come in to the Weigh2Rock website, which was created primarily to give kids a voice. They express anger, frustration, discouragement, shame, and anxieties. It was [...]
Vanquish Food Cravings With “W8 Loss 2 Go”
January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As Childhood Obesity News has mentioned before, a large part of the human race seems to have lost the instinct that tells a healthy animal what to eat and what to avoid. This instinct needs to be recovered or recreated, similar to what Dr. Pretlow writes on the topic of kids who have addressed their [...]
Four More Ways to Not Be Fat
December 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Recently, we brought news of several suggestions found in the year’s news, toward ending the obesity epidemic. Here are a few more. Pick the Right Father This is essential. Maren Kasselik reports on a childhood obesity study done by the Fathers and Families Program at the University of Newcastle in Australia: Even if the mother [...]
“W8 Loss 2 Go” iPhone App Fills Important Role
December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Way back in 1977, visionary writer/director Eric Luke made a short science fiction film called Dark Ages, described thus, Wandering a post apocalyptic wasteland in search of adventure, a samurai and his talking Cyber spear stumble upon a quest involving his old enemy… The hero, Jack, is accompanied by this electronic counselor who dishes out [...]
Obesity Awareness or Discrimination?
November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A couple of days ago, we looked at the state of Georgia’s childhood obesity billboards, but, believe it or not, they are only the tip of a very large iceberg, consisting of what some see as a national trend that is headed in exactly the wrong direction. AllVoices contributor Anne Hart put together a very [...]
Childhood Obesity — Who, Me?
October 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
There is overweight, and then there is perception of overweight. This is one of the areas investigated by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) program which, under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, uses both physical exams and interviews to assess the health and nutritional well-being of people in [...]
iPhone App Fights Childhood Obesity
October 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment
We know Robert Pretlow, M.D., as a pediatrician and childhood obesity expert, director of Weigh2Rock.com, writer of many articles (most recently, an important one published by the journal Eating Disorders), and author of Overweight: What Kids Say. As we have been discussing, Dr. Pretlow is also the developer of an iPhone app based on the [...]
Comfort Eating, Addiction, and the iPhone App
October 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Dr. Pretlow has developed an iPhone application with interesting potentialities in the area of childhood obesity. Below, he describes the impetus behind the innovation and retraces the thinking that inspired it: Charleston Children’s Hospital came to us about five years ago and said that the patients who go through their 8-week intensive face-to-face program, all [...]
iPhone App Introduced to Thwart Childhood Obesity
October 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Of course, kids and teens are crazy about social networking. The need for social approval and interaction is deeply ingrained. Its dark side may show up as the type of unwholesome peer pressure that can lead to undesirable behavioral outcomes. But the bright side of the human need for other humans is the therapeutic value [...]
