Weight Loss for Obese Teens

The number of obese children in this country is steadily getting higher and solutions on weight loss for obese teens need to start looking at any and every option.

I was at a conference about a month ago and one of the sessions was on working with obese parents and children.

When looking at statistics, between 1976 and 1980 the number of overweight and obese children between the ages of 12-15 was 5%. Between 2003 and 2006, that number is at 18%. Not Good.



It's estimated that one third of babies born in 2009 will develop diabetes before the age of 18.

An obese child is at a higher risk of having high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and it's estimated that 80% of all overweight 10-15 year olds are obese at age 25.



It's not a good sign of things to come for the next couple of generations and there are some thoughts that because of these health problems caused by obesity, that the next couple of generations born in the US may have a shorter life expectancy then current, older generations.

A new study though comes out with a new option that could be useful when it comes to helping lose weight in these young, obese children.

The study found that a high-protein, low-carb diet is a safe and effective way for severely obese teens to lose weight.

There's always been concerns that a low-carb diet could impact growth and increase cholesterol levels due to the higher fat involved in most low-carb diets.

But in this study, they found that not to be the case.

The researchers assigned a group of severely obese teens to either a high-protein, low carb diet or to a low-fat diet. The average age of the child was around 14 years old. The study had these teens on the respective diets for 13 weeks.

The results:

On average, those on the high-protein, low-carb diet lost 29 pounds over 13 weeks, while those on the low-fat diet lost 16 pounds. Both groups kept the weight off nine months after the study.

And for any health issues that they were concerned about with having these teens on the high-protein, low-carb diet:

The high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet also appeared to be safe, with no serious harmful effects on growth, bone mineral density, and various "metabolic" parameters, such as cholesterol levels. Both groups showed declines in levels of harmful LDL cholesterol and increases in levels of heart-healthy HDL cholesterol.

There always tends to be this stigma about low-carb diets and I think it has to do with the initial idea that originally came out when the diet became popular that you could eat bacon, fried food, etc. on it. And quite frankly, I just don't consider those part of a true low-carb diet.

For the most part, high-carb diets have been a more recent integration into the overall human diet.

For the vast history of human evolution, our bodies for the most part have eaten a low-carb diet.

20,000 years ago, we simply ate meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and some occasional eggs and oils. When looking at the health of people that lived then, for the most part they were stronger, faster, leaner, and overall healthier than we are today (at least in the western world).

So it doesn't really surprise me that a low-carb diet for obese teens turned out to be more effective for fat loss as well as providing overall health benefits because a true low-carb diet is what children lived on for most of our time here on earth.

I think if we could get kids (and adults as well) to simply eat those foods above, it would take a lot of the complexity away from deciding what is healthy and not healthy among the rest of the food that is in the center of the grocery store.

But, that's easier said then done. So how do we get those kids to eat those foods?

In the end, it HAS to be up to the parents to set this in motion.

I'm just taking a guess here with no scientific evidence in front of me to back this up but, chances are that if a child is overweight or obese, the parents are as well.

In other words, maybe we need to change the term "childhood obesity" to "family obesity" because that's truly where the problem AND the solution are at.

Which means, if you want an overweight child to eat healthier, then you are going to have to as well.

Don't sit there and think that you can leave junk food laying around the house for your consumption but not for your child's. It's just not going to work.

If you want to start off simple instead of making it a complete culture shock for the household, I blogged awhile ago on simple healthy changes you can make now to start on the right track.

The kids will probably complain, pout and say that if it's not junk food they won't eat it but, as the presenter said at the seminar I was at a few weeks ago "A healthy child will never go hungry." At some point, they'll eat what you give them.

Let's not forget about the exercising. Although the eating is the biggest part of the equation, you can't leave out the exercise portion.

The biggest part about getting kids to exercise is that it has to be FUN. Kids bore easily. But if you make it fun, they can get in a fairly vigorous exercise routine without even noticing it.

I wrote about a simple exercise routine for kids to start off with. It works well and don't be afraid to make the routine competitive. Kids tend to be naturally competitive so that should help increase the fun, the intensity, and the chances that they'll want to continue doing them.

Small steps to start with can become big gains in the whole grand scheme of things when it comes to weight loss for obese teens.

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Tax on Sodas

In roughly 30 states there is a tax on sodas with the idea hopefully being that the increased cost will decrease the consumption of those high sugary sodas thus helping in reducing obesity rates.

But, a new study out is showing that small taxes on sodas aren't curbing obesity rates.

When talking about how this tax didn't curb obesity rates, we're specifically about obesity rates in children.



The researcher looked over surveys of over 7,000 fifth graders and looked at how their height to weight ratio changed over a two year period and compared that to the number of high sugar sodas or sports drinks that they drank. They then compared that to the soda taxes that were in effect at the time of the survey (survey was done in 2004).

Two-thirds of the children lived in states that had a tax on sodas where the average tax was 4 cents on the dollar.

What they found was:

They found the taxes made no real difference on overall soda consumption or on obesity for kids overall. They did have a small effect on certain children — especially those from families with an annual income of $25,000 or less. Those kids — who drank about seven cans of soda a week, on average — drank one less can because of the taxes, Sturm said.

At first look, dropping from seven sodas a week to six doesn't seem like a big deal. But, I wrote a while back about soda being bad and gave the breakdown of how cutting out a regular soda habit without changing anything else in your diet can result in significant weight loss over time.

In this situation, if a child was consuming one less 20-ounce soda a week (because really, I think the chances are that it's a 20-ounce bottle they are consuming and not a 12-ounce can), that would reduce the amount of calories they are consuming by 242.5 a week. Over the course of a year, that would 12,610 less calories.

It takes a reduction of 3,500 calories to burn a pound of fat. So in this situation, that would mean over the course of a year, by just dropping this one soda a week and changing nothing else would theoretically result in a three and a half pound weight loss.

The researchers claim though that if the tax was more like 18 cents on the dollar, that might significantly reduce soda consumption.

I'm not sure that I completely buy that. I think it would have to be significantly higher for consumption to really be affected.

I think the last time I looked, a 20-ounce bottle of soda here in Michigan goes for around $1.50 (plus deposit). If you added on 18 cents on the dollar to that, you'd pay around $1.87. Chances are when you buy that now, you give the cashier $2.00. If that tax was added, you'd still give the cashier $2.00 and simply get less change back and wouldn't think twice about it.

Think of the situation with the cigarette tax. In Michigan, the state tax on a 20 pack of cigarettes is $2.00 and then there's the federal tax of $1.01. Essentially, a pack of cigarettes cost $6 with roughly half of that being a tax.

A lot of people still continue to smoke regardless of that price and regardless of the fact that half of it is a tax, but at the same time, a lot of people have quit because of that high price.

I would almost think that in order to reduce the consumption of soda significantly, the tax on sodas would have to make the price of the soda double as well.

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Overeating and Depression

I've always thought that there was kind of a chicken and an egg relationship between overeating and depression.

This article talks about a recent study done by Dutch researchers showing a relationship between becoming obese and leading to depression, and depression leading to obesity.

Obesity, Luppino and colleagues found, increases the risk of depression in initially non-depressed individuals by 55 percent and depression increases the risk of obesity in initially normal-weight individuals by 58 percent.

The study was pretty massive. Pooling subjects from 15 published studies:

The studies, which collectively involved more than 58,000 people, used body mass index, or BMI, to gauge how fat or thin a person is. For reference, a US adult with a BMI of 25 or more is considered overweight, while one with a BMI of 30 and above is considered obese.

The study also showed though that it was a little different for people that are overweight but not obese.

Being overweight increased the risk of depression in initially non-depressed individuals somewhat, but depression did not increase the risk of being overweight over time.

All of this tends to make a lot of sense into how overeating and depression can go hand in hand and can lead to a downward spiral.



You become depressed, and you go to food to find some "emotional support." That food then leads to weight gain. You notice the weight gain and it makes you even more depressed about your body image, thus, leading you to eat more, and then being depressed more, etc.

When looking at the obesity epidemic, I've always thought that there was more to it than people just eating more and exercising less. That there was a deeper root cause and that maybe what we really had was a depression epidemic that was the underlying cause of the obesity epidemic (this somewhat relates to an addiction to food post that I talked about recently).

What about an approach to deal with the issue more? What if we started officially categorizing obesity as an eating/psychological disorder just like we do with anorexia and bulimia?

Essentially, it's the same thing: They are all eating disorders, they all have some kind of underlying psychological issues involved in them and eating (or not eating) is just the bio-product of it.

Roughly 1-5% of the population will be diagnosed with anorexia and/or bulimia, yet, it's estimated that ONE-THIRD of the US population is obese.

So again, why are we not treating this as an eating disorder?

It's good that we keep focusing on eduction when it comes to exercise and healthy food choices but, I think we really need to change focus a little bit and realize that there may be more "behind the scenes" when it comes to why we've become so overweight, so quickly.

I hope more is done to look into the connection between overeating and depression because I really think there's something to it.

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Addiction to Food

There's a new study out that talks about how an addiction to food, specifically the high calorie, high bad fat, high sugar ones, can be very similar to an addiction to cocaine.

I think everyone pretty much knew that about junk food. Those that really get a first hand look at it are people that have essentially lived off junk food and decide to cut it out cold turkey and go through the same withdrawal symptoms that people go through when they cut off a drug, alcohol, coffee, soda, etc.

This study used rats as the subjects for 40 days and they broke the rats into three groups:

1. One group was fed healthy rat food (I guess whatever "healthy" means to a rat..)
2. A second group was fed healthy rat food, but also given junk food that they could munch on for only an hour a day.
3. The third group could eat as much junk food that they wanted, 23 hours a day.

Shockingly, the third group that could eat all the junk food that they wanted, became obese fairly quickly.



But the interesting part is how their brains changed.

By monitoring implanted brain electrodes, the researchers found that the rats in the third group gradually developed a tolerance to the pleasure the food gave them and had to eat more to experience a high.

The researchers also added a little pain into each of the groups when food was present. When that pain was administered, the rats in the first two groups were frightened away from eating, while the rats in the third group didn't care, they were solely focused on eating that junk food.

This relates fairly closes to studies done on rats involving cocaine and heroin:

In previous studies, rats have exhibited similar brain changes when given unlimited access to cocaine or heroin. And rats have similarly ignored punishment to continue consuming cocaine, the researchers note.

When relating this to humans:

The ingredients in purified modern food cause people to "eat unconsciously and unnecessarily," and will also prompt an animal to "eat like a drug abuser [uses drugs]," says Wang.

It appears that the main culprit in all of this is the neurotransmitter, dopamine that rats (and humans) have:

The neurotransmitter dopamine appears to be responsible for the behavior of the overeating rats, according to the study. Dopamine is involved in the brain's pleasure (or reward) centers, and it also plays a role in reinforcing behavior. "It tells the brain something has happened and you should learn from what just happened," says Kenny.

Overeating caused the levels of a certain dopamine receptor in the brains of the obese rats to drop, the study found. In humans, low levels of the same receptors have been associated with drug addiction and obesity, and may be genetic, Kenny says.

How do we get past this addiction?

With continued research like this, there's always the possibility that treatments can be developed to stop the decrease of dopamine that is associated with the addiction.

There's also the practical applications of:

1. Slowly cutting bad food out and replacing them with healthier choices or
2. Just cold turkey throwing out all the junk food and going healthy (although this is the more extreme approach and can result in a withdrawal period, I tend to like this one the best. Get it over with).

But we probably need to look a little further into it to determine the "Why?" of the addiction, just like it's necessary when working with someone with a drug or alcohol addiction.

In other words, maybe people are using that junk food as a substitute for something else, and maybe digging deeper into that realm will help with getting away from the addiction of food, permanently.

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A Healthier Michigan

I was contacted last week to start blogging for a new website that is being put on through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan called ahealthiermichigan.org.

The site contains forums, blogs and a whole lot of information out there on how to make yourself, businesses, your community, and the health care system, healthy.

From a health standpoint, Michigan tends to always rank at the bottom of every nationwide study. The economy has been in the crapper for at least the last 5 years in Michigan and there are major changes headed our way when it comes to our health care system.

So I hope this site takes off and starts to throw around a lot of ideas that are "out of the box" to get some new innovative ideas on how to move forward in Michigan.

My blog over there will pretty much be a cut and past job from this site but, you'll see me floating around the Healthier You forums from time to time with some different ideas.

So make sure to go to ahealthiermichigan.org and sign up for an account and come back often.


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Inteval Training Studies

There's some new Interval Training Studies out there that are hopefully going to help with being able to use this type of exercise protocol for the overweight and even the obese population.

I've talked recently in this post that the problem withe the classic interval training of going "all out" for short periods of time can be rather difficult when dealing with people that are quite overweight due to the amount of compression that would result on various joints, particularly the knees.

That's why I was advocating in that post the concept of what I like to call "Metavals" where instead you use a number of exercises in a circuit fashion for a period of time and you'd be getting just as much fat loss benefit as you would with all out sprints.

But this new interval training study that said it's not completely necessary to go "all out" in order to be effective.

As Gibala explained to the press:

"We have shown that interval training does not have to be 'all out' in order to be effective."

"Doing 10 one-minute sprints on a standard stationary bike with about one minute of rest in between, three times a week, works as well in improving muscle as many hours of conventional long-term biking less strenuously," he added.

So the part about the sprints being just as effective in a short workout compared to a long distance session is something we've known. But the part about not having to go all out and still being effective is something new.

In this new study they used a standard stationary bike and a workout that was still beyond the comfort zone of most people (about 95 per cent of maximal heart rate), but was only half of what might be regarded as an "all out" sprint.

This less extreme form of HIT should work well for people whose doctors might be a little worried about them taking up the "all out" form: that is people who are older, less fit and likely to be overweight.

The subjects in this study had six training sessions over a two week period where they completed 8 to 12 one-minute high intensity bursts (although it still wasn't "all out") followed by 75 seconds of active rest period between the bursts. I'm assuming they had some kind of warm up and cooldown so each workout probably came out to 30 minutes at most.

The results:

The results showed that the training significantly increased exercise capacity in two cycling time trials (one for 50kJ and the other for 750kJ).

The researchers also compared biopsy samples of vastus lateralis muscle (the largest part of the quadriceps) taken before the 2 weeks of training with samples taken after, and found that the later samples showed increased maximal activity of mitochondrial capacity and other relevant chemical processes.

The conclusions:

"This study demonstrates that a practical model of low volume HIT is a potent stimulus for increasing skeletal muscle mitochondrial capacity and improving exercise performance."

The researcher also concluded that to get the same results within the same time period (2 weeks) of slow steady state endurance, a person would have had to go for 10 hours, rather than the 3 hours of total work that it took to get these results in this study (at the same time, it would have been interesting if they would have had a separate group of subjects actually doing that in the study so that they could make a better comparison of that).

I like the fact that they used the bike on this and I think if interval programs were to be used for those that are fairly overweight, it's probably the modality to use since there's less jolting of the knees. NOTE: If you're going to use a stationary bike, use the upright one, not a recumbent.

But if that's not available, I still wouldn't recommend running sprints for this particular population since it's a knee injury just waiting to happen. The metavals that I talk about in this post are still your other best option.

It's great to see though that Interval Training studies are still coming out and showing that it's a more efficient and effective workout compared to slow steady state cardio.

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Salt in Processed Food

I hate processed food and I hate the fact that there is so much salt in processed food.

Blunt enough?

Well, it looks like according to this article, the food companies are getting that point as well.



According to the article:

Last week, Kraft Foods Inc. announced it would cut the salt in its North American line by an average of 10 percent in over 1000 products over the next two years. On Monday, PepsiCo unveiled a global nutrition initiative to reduce sodium in food products by an average of 25 percent by 2015. The company also has a 10-year plan to decrease added sugar in beverages by 25 percent and saturated fat in foods by 15 percent. Other companies, such as ConAgra, Sara Lee, and Campbell Soup, already have plans underway to reduce salt in key product categories.

That's great to hear. But this part of the article really blew my mind on how much salt there really is in the food we buy:

Kraft's initiative alone is projected to eliminate more than 10 million pounds of salt from the food supply over the next two years

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10 million pounds of salt will be eliminated in two years, and that's just from ONE food company? That's pretty amazing.

I worry though that they are just going to find another ingredient to add into their products that is going to be just as harmful as salt.

Trust me, they aren't just going to pull the salt out of all those foods that are big sellers because of craving people have for salty food and watch people stop buying them. These companies wouldn't be taking this initiative for the health benefit of the nation if they thought they were going to see a disastrous decline in their profitable products.

Let me live in my little dream world for a moment though.

I don't add any salt to my food. I don't buy products that have salt in them (if they do, it's very minimal).

I haven't died of starvation or deprivation due to no salt.

If you want to truly stay away from salt, stick with these foods:

1. Meat, fish, chicken, turkey, pork etc.
2. Vegetables
3. Fruits
4. Nuts
5. Oils
6. Non-salt spices like garlic and onion powder and a slew of others for taste

Sure, you might go through a little withdrawal of the lack of salt in those foods but, you'll adapt and you'll be surprised how much better you'll feel when you focus on just eating those kinds of foods listed above, 90% of the time.

There's no need to eat all that salt in processed food. There's many other foods out there that can taste just as good and that are much more healthy for you.

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