Category: Media
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New Diet Drug: Qnexa
17 comments on New Diet Drug: QnexaPatients on the highest dose of Qnexa lost an average of 8.9 percent of their weight after adjusting for the effects of a placebo. More than 60 percent of patients on middle and high doses lost at least 5 percent of their weight, compared with 20 percent for those getting a placebo. — NY Times Recall that the National Institutes of Health states that a “8-15% weight…
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Wonder if Michelle Obama reads the New York Times
From a New York Times article on how some anti-childhood obesity funding is cutting into funding for anti-smoking efforts: Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University, notes that there are many assumptions about what will work — more healthful foods in schools, a soda tax, getting children to be more active. Yet no interventions, when tested in large studies, have caused a big difference in children’s…
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Science doesn’t understand? Or doesn’t ask?
A blog post on how exercise experiments that replicate on men don’t on women ends with the observation: [W]hen it comes to women, there’s a great deal that sports scientists “just don’t understand.” As if they’ve tried and tried and tried, but women are somehow outside the realms of understanding. Which is bullshit. As the blog post put it: Scientists know, of course, that women are not…
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Fat Birth Control
A friend pointed me to this op-ed on making (at least some) birth control pills available without a prescription. Generally I think that making birth control easier to get is a good thing. I’d also welcome more research on the efficacy of hormonal birth control in fat women. Plus something tells me I’m not the only fat woman who found she had trouble inserting/removing things like…
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Betty
Lately I’ve become more fond of the newspaper comic strip Betty. Today’s Springsteen reference didn’t hurt. Betty is smart, capable, and yes, a bit chunky. Unlike, oh, Blondie, she doesn’t have an exaggerated shape. Also unlike many women in comics, she works out, plays hockey, and is quite capable at work and around the house. I also love that in the current storyline she’s dissatisfied with her…
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Music Monday: Atlantis
I’m not a space geek per se, but even I noticed the space shuttle Atlantis made her last trip – which reminded me of Marian Call‘s song “Good Old Girl” (lyrics) from her album Got to Fly.
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Why Don’t I Diet?
Simple: There isn’t a proven, permanent method of weight loss that works for all (or even most) people. Yes, most dieters lose 5-10% of their body weight in the first few months. They then regain some or all in the long term. This has been shown by a number of studies, including studies run by diet companies. (PDF) Depending on how long dieters are tracked after the…
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No, really?
USA Today discovered that — guess what! — fat kids are more likely to be bullied. Researchers at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor analyzed the bullying incidents of 821 children ages 8 to 11. The study, reported today online in Pediatrics, found that obese children were more likely to be bullied than normal-weight peers, regardless of gender, race, socioeconomic status, school demographic profile, social skills or academic achievement.…
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Things I don’t want to share…
…I don’t want them to need sharing. I don’t want them to be real. But they are. Item: Man justifies murdering his wife, Maheshwari, because she was fat. Sadly, “bride-burning” — murdering a new wife because the dowry’s too small — is an all-too-common form of domestic violence in India. Item: Pheobe Prince killed herself because of bullies. Seanan McGuire speaks of her experience; so does Adrienne Jones.…
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Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution”
I didn’t watch the show. I wasn’t going to blog about it, for one thing. But this article Arun Gupta wrote at Alternet is fascinating, digging into the various federal and state requirements for school lunches, how both policy and kids’ tastes encourages the use of processed foods … and here I am, blogging about it. That [Jamie Oliver] failed to meet the nutritional guidelines, went way…
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Quote of the Day
From an Alternet article focusing on Linda Bacon’s book Health At Every Size, Jamie Oliver’s new show, and Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign: [R]esearch shows that people of all sizes have similar diets, but it only manifests as weight gain in some of us. People today eat more calorie-dense, nutrient-poor convenience foods than Americans did in the past. How we eat also plays a role, as eating while…
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Sleep Eating and Fat Dissolvers
On the one hand, I think it’s great that more sleep research is going on and that it’s possible to treat those who become violent in their sleep or who sleepwalk (or drive). Busting myths can definitely be a good thing (“violence during the night does not signify lurking aggression.”) Communicating that yes, some people do eat during their sleep, and it doesn’t necessarily signal a daytime…
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Music Monday
…I spent the weekend running around a fan convention.* Today is my “recuperation” day before I return to work. One would think I could write a great article today, but … no. I can’t brain today, I haz the dumb. So instead, here’s a sweet song about fandom. Sung by: Vixy & Tony Written by: Tom Smith and Ron Balder. *…and if you are curious about fan…
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Things to Read
Some cool things you may have missed: Meowser at Fatfu on fatergories: [N]ot everyone has the same shot at permanent thinness, at least not the kind that is associated with the kind of vim and vigor that people typically pursue thinness for. […] That’s how I came up with my “fatergories” theory — specifically, that there are four basic categories of people in the world when it…
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“Every Little Bit Helps!” Really? Depends on your goal.
Maybe in increasing overall health, but not in losing weight, it doesn’t. This reminder was brought to you by this week’s Well column: Numerous scientific studies show that small caloric changes have almost no long-term effect on weight. When we skip a cookie or exercise a little more, the body’s biological and behavioral adaptations kick in, significantly reducing the caloric benefits of our effort. [B]odies don’t…
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Friday Fluff
Okay, y’all, this week has been depressing. First Michelle Obama wants to make fat kids thin through the magic of exercise. Then the media asserts that deaths from alcoholic liver disease are due to childhood obesity and talks about diet and exercise for kids as if it’s never been done before and all of this reminds me of how every diet I’ve been on eventually resulted…
Living ~400lbs 