Weight of the Nation: PART 1: Consequences

 PART 1: Consequences 

The first film in 'The Weight of the Nation' series examines the scope of the obesity epidemic and explores the serious health consequences of being overweight or obese. The first character we meet is Cindy. Born and raised in Bogalusa, Louisiana, Cindy is the mother of two grown sons and now a proud grandmother. Cindy allowed HBO into her home and life to discuss some very painful things. Only 99 pounds when she got married, Cindy has struggled with her weight ever since her first pregnancy. And it's only gotten harder. Health and behaviors in early childhood can have serious consequences later on in life. The Bogalusa Heart Study - of which Cindy was a participant - shows that overweight and obese children have risk factors for heart disease, even at a young age. The obesity epidemic is a problem that's emerged over the last 30 years. It threatens our nation's social, economic and physical health. But, unlike a natural disaster, obesity is often preventable. Although overall obesity prevalence rates appear to be leveling off, there are still far too many Americans who are overweight or obese and who continue to develop health problems as a result. In order to end the epidemic, everyone must be part of the solution. At the level of our DNA, we're programmed to eat as much as we can to survive and store the extra as fat for future energy use. In a world where calorie-dense, sugar-laden and fatty foods are available around every corner, that's a problem. The good news is that, even if the propensity to gain weight is written into our genes, we're not fated to a lifetime of fat. As we take a look at communities across the country - from New York City to Santa Ana, California - it is clear that we have all been getting heavier. But the problem doesn't affect all communities equally. The sad fact is that obesity rates are higher in some ethnic communities and in lower-income states. The trends are so extreme that they are attracting the attention of health officials and lawmakers. Obesity among children is also rising, and it's a real threat that may have lasting health consequences. As Anna Busby says, based on her observations as the nurse of the Bogalusa Middle School Health Clinic, overweight and obese children are at risk of being "on dialysis in their thirties if we don't do something now." The good news is that we can make a difference in our children's lives both now and as they get older by helping them adopt healthy eating behaviors and become more active. There's a powerful connection between being overweight or obese and having heart disease as an adult. The heart, our hardest-working muscle, spends every second of every day vigorously pumping blood to the farthest reaches of our bodies. The larger we become, the harder our hearts have to work to keep blood circulating. The bottom line: being overweight or obese places you at a higher risk of developing heart disease and suffering a stroke as an adult. Beyond the cardiovascular system, excess weight has negative consequences throughout the body. "Almost every organ system in the body is adversely affected by having excess body fat," says Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. Even a small amount of excess weight, accumulated slowly at the rate of a few pounds a year over many years, can lead to type 2 diabetes. Being over 45 years of age, having a family history of diabetes, being physically inactive and being overweight or obese can increase a person's chances of developing type 2 diabetes. If poorly controlled or left untreated, type 2 diabetes can lead to a number of serious health problems, including heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, amputation and even death. Obesity is not only one of the top public health issues facing our country; it's also a threat to our nation's bottom line. Rising obesity rates threaten to drag our economy down through higher health care costs and lower productivity. Currently, 69% of American adults are overweight or obese.


Watch all 4 please 

http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/watch/main-films/Consequences 

http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/watch/main-films/Choices 

http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/watch/main-films/Crisis 

http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/watch/main-films/Challenges 

Let me know what you think . . . 

Are You Living Life In a Television Comfort Zone?

You are the author of your life. Everyday that you live, you write the script in your head and play it out during the day. As you write your life’s script, your mind constructs everything it needs to complete the story. A big part of that story is its setting. Where does the story of your life take place? What kind of scenery have you constructed? In the theatre, the scenery is often taken for granted but it can make or break a production. The mental scenery that you create for your story has enormous impact on its outcome. Does your story take place mostly in the “The Comfort Zone”? The truth is; most of us live in a perpetual comfort zone. We tend to find comfort in the scenery of familiar places, people and, most of all, habits. It is the warm light of this “scenery” that brings us comfort and familiarity.  Like that worn old baby blanket or that shabby favorite sweater, this environment envelopes us and make us feel safe.  Although this scenery makes us feel comfortable in the moment, it doesn’t always serve our best interests. Sometimes we keep the old ratty sweater simply because we are used to it. We cling to it even though it has an odd odor and is riddled with holes. Its familiarity gives us a sense of comfort. Often the warm glow of our “scenery” is dim and dirty, but our familiarity with it keeps us from exploring change. The feelings we have when we are in the “zone” are so familiar that we seek them out over and over again, even when they are not doing us one bit of good. Staying in the “comfort zone” rarely brings growth or happiness.  We need to realize that that comfort zone only makes us comfortable for a small moment in time.  Living in this zone does not support growth or allow us to reach our goals. For many of us, our comfort zone is our prison. Your comfort zone could take the form of a bad habit, a tendency toward inaction or a propensity to hang around people that constantly deflate your attempts at self improvement. Even the most comfortable prison is still a prison.
Living in the “zone” makes us sit down and watch television instead of going out and taking a walk.  In fact, if you go out and take a walk you may find that you actually feel better and, as an added bonus, you have done something good for yourself.  How much have you honestly accomplished for yourself while watching TV? Was it really time well spent? Do you honestly believe that it has enriched your life?  Add up all the hours you have blown passively watching TV. Have those hours really amounted to anything? Be honest! 

What you may not know is that the most the best experts in the field of weight loss have never even attended college. They have, however, graduated with honors from the school of hard knocks. These true experts are the people that have successfully lost weight and are keeping it off.

            The National weight loss registry is a list of over 6,000 people that have done just that. This is one of the largest studies on weight loss in the world. A couple of times a year the researchers design a survey for the participants to answer. They ask all kinds of personal questions and then hound you to send back the survey. The information they gather is then interpreted for the scientific community and spit out in the form of reports and journal articles. We weight loss professionals wait for these journals with the same level of excitement that most people feel when they are waiting for their EBAY purchases to arrive.  As a member of both the scientific and the participant sides of this study, I fill out the surveys and get the results. When the studies are released, I am particularly excited to see how my answers stack up. It turns out that, according to the latest weight loss registry report, these weight loss “experts” (you know, the ones that actually lost weight) don’t watch that much TV. As it so happens, these folks spend a lot more time living than they do watching life on a small screen. In most cases, the life they live makes a more exciting story than those they are missing on TV. These same people also have managed to limit their addiction to the internet. I guess these people are so busy “living” that they don’t have time to waste surfing EBAY for exercise equipment they will never use. 

The Great TV Experiment

When my kids were young I did an experiment to help them watch TV less and exercise more. The experiment was that, in order to watch television they had to first “pay for it” with physical activity time.  I did not care what the children did but if they expected to watch television they needed to first do some kind of physical activity.  I found a marvelous device called a time scout (which is no longer available) it is a simple credit card like machine that attaches to the television set.  As the children accumulate physical activity time they accumulate credit on their television card.  When they put their card in the machine the television turns on and the clock starts.  When their television time is up the television goes off.  No arguments because who are they going to argue with, the machine?  They tried but it does not answer them.  When I first tried this I was considered a mean and nasty ogre.  With the Time Pilot, I am out of the loop and the machine is now the ogre.  We endured a lot of flack about this, but, with the card system, exercise went up and TV time went down. In a very short time, we saw some amazing things happen. 

In addition to the predictable outcome of having more physically fit children, we also saw some very pleasant unexpected results. Without the mind numbing TV, they started to read more. Their grades really picked up! Both my son and daughter were becoming routine members of the honor roll.  My daughter became a better musician achieving the lofty position of first chair her very first year of the fifth and sixth grade orchestra.  Her teacher was so impressed that she actually called us to say that my daughter was on track for a music scholarship to any music school she chose! All of this because they watch television less and moved more, it was a breath of fresh air. 

            As another added benefit it turns out that my kids have become quite math geniuses now that their TV time has been tied to an accounting system. They have figured out how to conserve their time and use it like a bank account. Because of this training they are already becoming more skilled fiscal managers!  How about that! My children have gotten smarter, more creative and have become better money managers simply because they move more and watch less TV. My genius daughter negotiated a deal that if she exercised while she was watching television she could accumulate television time while watching the TV off her card “for free.”  This led to the kids petitioning for a tread mill to be placed in the living room! Should we add the art of the deal to our list of new skills?  We are now the talk of the neighborhood with our “new” piece of furniture.  It seems like all my kids friends can not stop talking about the fact that we have family dinners together, we go for walks together and smack dab in the middle of our living room is a hideous looking treadmill.  What amazes them even more is that my kids actually use it. 

What is your Lose Weight for Good!® Vision?

This week I had a great conversation with a client who was struggling to lose weight. She revealed to me that she had lost weight before – and she simply could not recapture her old enthusiasm and get back on track. I asked her to tell me what it was like to be 130 pounds. How did she feel? What kind of clothes did she wear? What did she do then that she doesn’t do anymore? In other words: How was her life different when she was at that weight? Did she feel better? Was she happier? I asked her to find that “thin self” within her – knock on her door and have an honest conversation. Chances are, I said, that former you is dying to hear from you. I am sure she has a lot to teach us about how to help you get better and what you need to avoid.

She immediately perked up. "I do remember one thing I did before! When I lost weight the first time, I made a game out of it! Like, if I wanted ice cream, I told myself I would go for ice cream on Saturday if I were real good all week – when Saturday came - I would decide not to go BECAUSE I was so good. I challenged myself not to go and I didn’t! It was like a game and I was winning."

After asking her to connect with those forgotten thoughts and feelings, I thought it might be a good idea to start looking forward.

I asked her to write a list of all the things she would GAIN when she lost weight for good!. Sort of a bucket list but rather than things you want to do before your life ends, hence the name “bucket list”, it would be a list of opportunities her new life would offer her. “I want to ride my bike to work”, she said. “I haven’t been on a bike ride in years – I think I would like to do that.”

She also mentioned that she used to get excited about clothes. She remarked that she used to like looking through women’s magazines for clothing ideas. Lately, she admitted, all she bought the magazines for was on the off chance that they would contain the latest fail-safe diet miracle.

I then remembered a book I had read on success by Keith Ferrazzi ( http://www.keithferrazzi.com/ ) where he talked about how he would look through magazines and cut out pictures of his vision of success: a new car, an expensive watch, a house, a family on vacation in a tropical paradise and the like. It was a visualization technique he used to keep his mind trained on his goals. This sort of stuff is the substance of legend in the success world. It is said that Jim Carey wrote himself a million dollar check while living out of his car as a way to maintain his focus. For Keith – nothing made this exercise more real than the day he moved into his dream home and happened across one of his “dream boards” as he called them from years before. The power of the visualization became clear to him when he realized that the house he was moving into was the EXACT house he had cut out of that magazine!

I asked her to make a dream board of phrases and pictures of what Losing Weight for Good!® would bring her. I told her to include clothes, vacations, men – it was her dream board. I hope that she pulls it out in five years before her night out on the town with Josh Groban she gets a chuckle.

Although I never made a wish board, I might consider it now. I do remember my list though. It was to ride a horse without it being considered cruelty to animals, go rock climbing, take flying lessons in a small plane, run a triathlon and do some kayaking. . . to Block Island. Although that may seem ambitious for a 410 pound man, I have done it all. My list helps me to stay focused on what it means for me to Lose Weight for Good!. Every time my list runs short, I make a new list. Now, my list includes the Adventure racing (http://www.genesisadventures.com )with my son, hiking the entire Appalachian trail (http://www.appalachiantrail.org ), the 500 mile walk of El Camino de Santiago in Spain - (http://www.caminosantiago.com/way_of_saint_james/index.php ) and the Tough Guy© (http://www.toughguy.co.uk/ ) event in England.
By the way, one of my clients, Jack beat me to that one. He is did the grueling Tough Guy© challenge with his son in February 2009.

Quantum Weight Loss

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to travel back in time? I know I’m captivated by the concept of time travel. I loved Jules Vern’s “The Time Machine,” Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” the TV series “Quantum Leap” and, especially the “Back to the Future” movies. I don’t think I’m the only person that loves to fantasize about time travel. I mean who wouldn’t give anything to go back in time and fix the spoils of a misspent youth, or simply to retract those 5 Big Macs from yesterday? I think what I like most about these fantastic stories is the notion that small changes in the past can have a huge impact on the future. Maybe the reason these stories are so captivating is they offer us the prospect of getting another chance to get it right. Imagine you had the power to change your past. How would you use it? Chances are, you would use it to change your future.

Unfortunately, until Wal-Mart starts stocking flux capacitors, we are all stuck in the present and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you are stuck in the present, you can’t change the past . . . or can you?

While we humans have not mastered the art of physically traveling through time, our minds can allow us to “travel” anywhere we want and that includes our past. The truth is we travel to the past all the time and our future depends on what we do once we arrive there. Our present feelings, behaviors and capacity to change are all affected by our impression of the past. Problems arise when we focus on the disempowering moments of that past.

Generally, people are not stupid. We find it easier to do things we believe will bring us results and we don’t want to waste energy on doing things that appear useless. Our beliefs about our potential help us to set odds on whether or not a specific action will actually lead to success. We then use those odds to subconsciously decide if we really want to expend energy on the activity or not. Faith in your ability to succeed is especially important when the task at hand is particularly difficult or does not return an immediate result. In fact, according to Stamford psychologist and Author of Mindset the New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck, PhD, developing a belief in one’s ability to succeed (she calls it a growth mindset) “allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

Since weight loss success involves a lot of seeming small, decidedly difficult actions that do not always appear to return immediate results, you really need to believe in yourself. Since one’s impression of the past plays a key role in the belief in oneself and since believing in oneself is essential to completing difficult tasks, if you could improve your impression of the past, you could improve your future. Thus, allowing you to achieve the dream of every time traveler without the need for a nuclear powered DeLorean.

I specifically use the phrase “impression of the past” because that is exactly what it is, an impression. Your memory is not like a computer hard drive. It does not blindly record every bit of data that it receives. That’s actually a good thing because at any given moment, your body receives millions and millions of data bytes from all of your sense organs. That not only includes your eyes and ears, it also includes information from your skin, internal organs and a host of other bodily systems too numerous to list. All-in-all a lot of data. In fact, your brain probably receives enough data in just one day to fill all of Google’s servers. If our memory had to store all that data, it would likely be all filled before we reach our third week of life. Not only that, but if we were asked to remember last week and our brain had actually stored all the data from “last week” it would take all of “next week” to replay it. 

Instead, our brain is designed to break down the totality of life’s experience into fragmented bits of critical information and store only those that are most important. When we need to travel to our past, these bits or “impressions” are re-collected from the brain and used as some of the building blocks of what we perceive as memory. That recollection, however, is incomplete. So what does the brain use to fill in the details? It uses a building material called the present. Research by Harvard psychology professor Dan Gilbert, PhD, shows that the way we feel right now has a huge influence on how we remember the past.  In his book, Stumbling on Happiness, Dr. Gilbert calls this phenomenon “presentism.”

What that means is that you can control your past by controlling your attitudes in the present. One reason this is so powerful is that by arming yourself with a better past, you will automatically have more faith in your abilities and as a result your actions will likely manifest a better future.

One of the easiest ways to start improving your past is to go back with the intention of finding something worth going back for. I always ask my clients to specifically remember something positive about the previous week. The challenge is we are conditioned to find fault with ourselves. So when the client travels back in time, all they see are their failures. What I try to do is to help them to see what went right.

In a recent conversation with a client, she said, “I ate all the wrong things last week.” If that were true, it would be pretty discouraging and for that client at that moment it was true and she was discouraged. After just a few more minutes of coaxing though, we were both pleased to discover that, while her food choices were not perfect, she did “stop eating when she felt full.” As a result she admitted that she ate a lot less food than she normally would have. This was actually pretty exciting. Once she realized that, she was able to recall all sorts of positive reflections of the past week.

By creating just one positive moment of confidence in the present she was able to “re-collect” an awesome past which lead an explosion of confidence about her future potential. Please don’t misunderstand, revamping your past to be more positive does not mean ignoring your failures, it means that you change the way see them. To create that moment of confidence, I didn’t simply change the subject to sweet smelling rose pedals and soft squishy puppy dog kisses. I used a technique I call the MAGIC WAND. First, I introduce the notion that Mistakes Accomplish Growth If Changed (MAGIC) and then I ask, “What About Now Differs? (WAND)”

It is possible make something quite positive out of what you perceive as a failure by simply recognizing it as a learning experience. Think about it: Failure, or simply not getting something right the first time, is the way everybody learns. True growth actually comes from a mastery of failure. What I ask is that people simply re-frame the way they remember failure. Honestly, the whole concept of failure just clouds your perspective and is completely unproductive. Whenever you catch yourself thinking something you did was a “failure,” substitute the word “mistake.”

Once you can be free from the mental bondage of failure, you are free to ask “What about now differs?” When I asked this question to my client, it gave her a chance to refocus her mental reconstruction of the previous week on the specific accomplishments she felt broke her old destructive patterns. By comparing a mistake of last week (eating a Twinkie) with a mistake you might have made 2 weeks ago (eating a box of Twinkies), it is easy to see that progress has been made. The comparison elicited by the question serves to literally transform the perception of the mistake. Now that same event is not seen as the total disaster it was thought to be. Focusing on how your mistakes are getting better will free your mind of guilt. Without guilt, you will be able to step back, learn and move ahead. All mistakes teach valuable lessons. If you take a little time to search for the betterness in your mistakes you are likely find them. Actually, just the fact that you are positively reflecting and analyzing your past is an improvement in itself. Most people don’t do that.

Once you see you have in fact improved, you can move forward by asking another WAND question, “What Accomplishes New Directions?” While this works best before or while you are in the process of making a mistake, it can also work a week later as you analyze it. By asking this WAND question, you get to decide on a new direction for your life and limit current and future damage. For instance, if you are halfway through a sleeve of cookies when you ask this question, you might just throw the rest away. If you ask the question a week after eating the whole sleeve, you might resolve to slam the door on the next troop of cookie hawking girl scouts that come banging at your door. Really, either way you should emerge from the incident with the proud recollection that you have grown instead of feeling shameful.

If you are still longing for the day when you can actually go back in time and have yourself an old-fashioned playground style “do-over” on life, try to remember that  that TODAY is your tomorrow’s past! In a very real sense, from the perspective of the future you, you are already in the past. Why don’t you impress that future you by starting your do-over today? In fact, to make it a bit less daunting, forget about doing your life over and concentrate on doing your better. When you think about it, if you begin your “do-better” right now you WILL change your tomorrow.

What do you gain by losing weight?

When you think about it, the term "lose weight" is kinda silly. When you lose your keys, you go looking for them - right? When you lose your glasses, your kitty, your car in a large parking lot, the only thing you really want is to get it back.

Besides, making a real effort to LOSE anything seems kinda weird. Could you imagine putting this much effort into losing a basketball game or even a game of cards? No matter how you look at it, losing is defeating and most of the time we avoid it like the plague.

Maybe that is one small reason that losing weight is so darned difficult! Our mind is trying to avoid losing! While that may sound silly, it's not. Experts in the field of psychology are now finding that the way we think about difficult tasks has an effect on the outcome. It might just be likely that thinking about losing all the time may not be helping you.

Try this. When you think about losing weight, try focusing on what you GAIN.

HERE IS THE MISSION:

Write down as many things as you can that you will GAIN by losing weight.
Post the list where you can see it every day. Use pictures to illustrate your gains if you want!
Read the list everyday for a week, AND

Try to remember at least one thing from the list when you are faced with a difficult eating situation.
Email me with any insights that you gain from this exercise.

Remember, your excess weight is not at all like your keys, glasses, kitty or car. When you finally do exile (not lose) it, you NEVER want it back! I am sure you want to Lose Weight for Good! and I am here to help you do just that.


Sincerely,


Dr. Russ L'HommeDieu
Lose Weight for Good!

I had a nurse friend of mine make a very interesting observation about chronic illness. She said that "chronic illness is something insidious that consumes bits and pieces of a person's self-esteem, independence, quality of life and quality of relationships. And most people are not even aware of it."

I see this a lot in my work with people who are trapped in a body that is too big for the life they want to lead. Unfortunately, being overweight is basically a chronic disease and most people are not aware of it until . . . the light goes on.

The light, however, is different for everyone. Most of the time it arises from some kind of discomfort. An extreme uneasiness about where you are. For me, it took an actual diagnosis of per-diabetes. Since my vision of myself included that I was NOT chronically ill, this new (reversible) diagnosis was my light bulb. I don't mind telling you, I was really uncomfortable with the idea of being sick, blind and legless depending on the help of others for many of my basic needs.

The key to making this discomfort bearable is to recall the words of M. Scott Peck- “The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

Often this discomfort is created from getting in touch with where you want to go. Visioning what you want so vividly that you can feel it in your bones. Wanting it so bad, you can't help but to be committed. I mean all-in committed.

Once you have that vision, it becomes like your true NORTH. It is the ONLY magnetic pull strong enough to keep your motivational compass pointed toward your goal. Your vision is what keeps you going in the right direction.