People who have reclaimed their health by losing large amounts of weight often have stories to share, sometimes about the turning points in their lives. The first one, courtesy of Reddit.com, comes from a 23-year-old former obese child who lost 180 pou …

If there is a category of childhood obesity survivor superstars, the personality known as “boogie2988” (YouTube) and “uberwolf0” (Reddit) surely belongs in it. His YouTube channel contains hundreds of short videos — character sketches, talks about ele …

What motivates kids to do the stuff that helps them lose weight and get healthy? That depends on the kid — but some seem to respond to dog-assisted intervention. Not much research has been done yet, but the idea has a lot going for it, such as empiric …

The company that conducted a study of obese Mayo Clinic employees used to be called Gympact before the name was shortened to simply Pact. Their program is available online, where it is used by at least one adult Childhood Obesity News visitor, who endo …

At first glance, it seems as if media product such as a weight-loss TV show, or a large-scale international public-relations event like Dubai’s “Your Weight in Gold” competition, might tell us something about the relationship between weight loss and th …

Will people do anything for money? Even do whatever is necessary to lose weight? The idea of paying the obese to slim down is a total reversal of the dominant paradigm, where it is the obese who must pay for gym memberships, pre-portioned meals, exerci …

Recently Childhood Obesity News talked about obesity’s ghost — the tendency of former fat kids to be haunted by the specter of their younger selves. They sometimes suffer from insecurity and heightened anxiety, and even from weird fears like going to …

For first-person childhood obesity experiences, nothing can beat the message boards at Dr. Pretlow’s Weigh2Rock  website. Nevertheless, Childhood Obesity News has been reaching out across the Web to find examples of weight-loss motivation in children. …

By 2008, fitness was catching on in China, and the country had well over 160,000 gyms with, in the words of Megan Shank, “spinning, yoga, step, salsa and even pole dancing — anything to entice office workers.” Depending on the usual factors that influ …

Katie Couric has filled a lot of roles in front of the camera, including network news anchor and daytime talk show host. For an episode of Katie titled “Kids Who Have Battled Obesity and Won,” one of her guests was Keyanna Williams, a teenager who was …

Roberta Russell wrote a book called Are There No Cures which asked the question, “What Works in Psychotherapy When It Does Work?” Here is the answer she found: It is the feeling of alliance between the therapist and the patient, as perceived by the pat …

At UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory, a team looked into how sleep deprivation impairs the brain, specifically in regard to food choices. Twenty-three adults took part, undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging after a good night’s …

Sean Croxton is being listened to by a lot of people these days. They even wear shirts emblazoned with the letters JERF, an acronym for his slogan “Just Eat Real Food.” He promotes the idea of personal responsibility because it’s so obviously the fines …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at earlier work done by the STRONG Kids Project in its attempt to identify the main causes of childhood obesity. This research program is hosted by the University of Illinois, and its name is short for Synergist …

The Fat Acceptance Movement is one of the more puzzling and problematic societal currents of the past few years. Many strange theories are afloat. Some people think that recognizing the health hazards of obesity is the moral equivalent of condemning ob …

When interviewed by Alison Rosen, actor and comedian Adam Ray revealed that he had been “a big kid … not just chubby … pretty fat.” He added, “Fat kids know the true meaning of ‘seconds.’ ‘Cause guess what, that second plate? There’s maybe seconds …

This story “torn from today’s headlines” is about a young Canadian who devoted a year to losing 130 pounds. Lucas Irwin decided to surprise his parents with what the reporter characterized as “the ultimate Christmas gift,” and in this he succeeded, par …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News considered the Cracked.com perspective. Now let’s see what the much more mainstream Dr. Phil (Phillip C. McGraw) has to say about the escape from obesity. Of course, Dr. Phil is encouraging people to use his method, wh …

A couple days ago, Childhood Obesity News traced the early-development stages of Dr. Pretlow’s W8Loss2Go smartphone application, the long-term tool based on the substance-dependence treatment model. Now, an exciting milestone has been reached — the co …

Childhood Obesity News has been following the development course of Dr. Pretlow’s W8Loss2Go smartphone app, whose approach is based on the addiction-treatment model of withdrawal and abstinence from problem foods and large food amounts. In 2011, this p …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News talked about morbid or severe obesity. Another important term is “co-morbidity.” In the realm of obesity, co-morbidities can include the well-known insulin resistance syndrome (or metabolic syndrome), Type 2 diabetes a …

The descriptive phrase “morbid obesity” seems to have been replaced by “severe obesity,” which doesn’t sound quite as deadly. The association is useful, because when a person embarks on the journey into “morbidly obese” territory, she or he will probab …

In a Forbes article a few weeks back, Kate Harrison made a cogent point: “Halloween is our annual free-for-all, but what starts as a one-night binge can quickly stretch out into months of sugar overload.” For a lot of Americans, it’s all too true. Even …

One thing that humans do is, we fool ourselves into thinking that after some arbitrary and magical date — January 1, for instance — everything will change and we will do things differently. As parents, we convince ourselves to believe that after the …

Culturally sensitive disclaimer: Whenever the word “Christmas” occurs here, please feel free to mentally substitute any holiday of your choice — because this is exactly the point. Cultures and religions have their festive holidays, the times for gathe …

In November, Dr. Tom O’Bryan of theDr.com gathered 29 researchers, clinicians and nutritionists to pool their intellectual and experiential resources for a Gluten Summit. Rye and barley also contain the protein they deem toxic, but wheat is by far the …

What’s so bad about gluten? Well, nothing, according to mainstream medicine and Dr. Pretlow. The idea that gluten has particularly harmful qualities is not universally accepted. The majority opinion is that obesity results from eating too much food, i. …

In the science of forensics, transfer theory holds that a criminal will always leave trace evidence at the crime scene. A person with celiac disease has to be as suspicious and hyper-vigilant as a detective dusting for fingerprints. If the grocery stor …

In 2011, William Davis, M.D., published the book Wheat Belly, whose message is that “over-consumption of wheat is the main cause of the obesity and diabetes crisis in the United States.” Some of his medical peers are uncomfortable with assigning so muc …

As we have seen, one school of thought holds that gluten is addictive. A lot of foodstuffs (as well as myriad other products) contain gluten, and gluten critics say the substance is what causes so many people to be addicted to certain foods. Any doubt …