Author Archives: Jonah Soolman

He Said, She Said: Obesity Awareness Month

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He Said

The concept of National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month is flawed in several ways, many of which Joanne covers in her She Said passage. The most glaring issue, in my opinion, is that by promoting the use of weight as a proxy for health, the government is paradoxically distracting from matters of actual health.

Human beings can be healthy at a variety of weights, which is why we cannot draw accurate conclusions about someone’s health or behaviors based solely on their size. Thin folks can have plenty of medical woes. A couple of years ago, I wrote about a slender friend of mine who was diabetic, suffered a heart attack, and ultimately died of cancer. Someone might be thin due to food insecurity, a medical condition, psychological disturbances, eating disorders or disordered eating, or overexercise, just to name a few of the health-threatening issues that might lead to lowered body weight.

With a focus on obesity, not only do we miss an opportunity to identify and assist people at risk for or suffering from these problems, but we actually push them in the direction of trouble. For example, I have recently seen an increase in pediatric patients, including males, with eating disorders or disordered eating that reportedly stemmed from a fear of getting fat brought on by discussions at school or the doctor’s office.

One of my teenage patients recently told me how his pediatrician praised him for having lost weight from one annual checkup to the next after having chastised him the year before, but what his doctor did not know was that my patient had overexercised and restricted his food intake leading up to the appointment for fear that his doctor would again be mad at him if he had not lost weight. My patient’s behaviors brought him further away from health, not towards it, and the poor communication between him and his doctor puts him at risk for improper care in the future. Furthermore, food restriction elevates his risk for binge eating disorder and, ironically, ultimate weight gain.

Trust me, children who are obese already know it. They hear about it on the playground, in gym class, on television, online, maybe in the pediatrician’s office, and from other sources that tell them something is wrong with their bodies and it is their fault. National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month calls even more attention to them and their bodies, thereby exacerbating stigmatization and bullying.

The concept of National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month may be well intentioned, but its fallout is the exact opposite of the desired effect. If we want to improve the actual health of our children, better to promote size diversity and the importance of healthy behaviors, such as fun and appropriate physical activity, for everybody.

 

She Said

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. Per the HHS website, “one in 3 children in the United States are overweight and obese,” putting kids at risk for developing health problems such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. The website goes on to say that childhood obesity is preventable, as “communities, health professionals, and families can work together to create opportunities for kids to eat healthier and get more active.” Some of the strategies that the HHS recommends are nutrition based, such as “keeping fresh fruit within reach” and providing healthier food options at school, and other strategies are focused on activity levels, such as encouraging families to go on an after-dinner walk and incorporating daily physical activity at school.

While I actually applaud the strategies put forth by the HHS to improve kids’ health, I am saddened to see the focus be on body size. Thanks to Michelle Obama, childhood obesity is at the forefront of the American consciousness. Kids are being weighed and measured at school and then later sent home with a health report card telling them whether they are at a “healthy” body mass index (BMI) or are in the “overweight” or “obese” categories. Even though the medical community as a whole willingly acknowledges that the BMI is woefully flawed as an indicator of health status, it still condones its use in determining the health of our kids. Time and time again, studies have shown that behaviors rather than weight are a better determinant of health, but unfortunately, this is not being reflected in current policy.

My greatest concern is the effect that focusing on childhood obesity could be setting up kids to develop eating disorders (EDs). I cannot tell you how many preteens who have stepped into my office had been sent home with their BMI report card and then developed either extremely disordered eating or an actual diagnosable ED. What often happens is that the parents become alarmed at their child’s negative BMI report and will start to impose harsh diet restrictions and exercise ultimatums. I had one patient whose father promised her and her sister iPads if they both lost weight. Not only would he limit their access to “junk” food, he would make them run laps around their neighborhood after dinner every night. As a result of this, the patient developed a very disordered relationship with food and her body. This story is not unique, unfortunately. I have heard it too many times to count.

So, I have a few issues with the HHS’s focus on obesity. First of all, I don’t believe that we should have schools be weighing and measuring kids and sending them home with a BMI report card. Instead, the child’s pediatrician and parents should be the gatekeepers of the child’s health. Every child has their own unique growth charts – some trend on the higher end of weight for height, while others trend on the lower end of the chart. In other words, some kids are just meant to be in bigger bodies, while others are meant to be in smaller bodies. These body sizes do not tell us anything about the child’s health unless there are major changes in either direction. For instance, one would expect a child trending on the 85th percentile to stay at that percentile. If there was a sharp drop to the 50th percentile, that would be cause for concern. Similarly, if a child was trending on the 50th percentile and then jumped up to the 90th percentile, that should also be looked at. One body type is not inherently healthier than the other – every body is unique.

In addition, I think it is so important to not speak negatively about a child’s weight. Kids are like sponges, and they pick up on everything. Talking with one’s child about how their body works and teaching them how to take care of it is one thing, but telling a child that they are too big and need to lose weight is extremely damaging and can set the child up for years of negative body image and a life of disordered eating. Many EDs start when a well-meaning parent tries to teach their child to diet and use exercise to burn calories. In fact, there are a number of studies that show that when children are put on restricted diets, they will often end up being heavier adults.

Also, I think that if a parent has concerns about his or her child’s weight, they should talk with their child’s pediatrician separately (i.e., not with the child in the room). Instead of telling the parent that their child simply needs to lose weight, it would be wonderful if pediatricians did not just make an assumption based solely on the child’s weight that the child is engaging in unhealthy behaviors. If it is determined that the child is in fact not practicing healthy lifestyle behaviors, it would be best if the doctor just focused on helping the child develop these healthy habits (perhaps by referring them to a registered dietitian or other health care provider) and measure the child’s progress by their weight.

Given that, I don’t think that National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month is helpful at all in helping our kids lead healthier lives. By teaching them that weight is synonymous with health, we are doing them a major disservice. Perhaps September could instead be called National Healthy Habits Awareness Month? Just a thought.

Busted

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Football player Rob Ninkovich announced today that the league has suspended him for four games for taking a banned substance. Ninkovich explained, “Few things are more important to me than my name and reputation. This might call that into question for some, which has me heartbroken. I don’t want to cut any corners. I want to do things the right way, with high integrity, and that’s what I have always wanted to stand for.”

He continued, “Any supplement I’ve ever used was bought at a store. I was unaware something I bought had a substance in it that would give me a positive test because it wasn’t listed [as an ingredient]. One thing I have learned is that if a supplement is not NSF certified there are no regulations that ensure that what is on the label is 100 percent accurate. That is a hard lesson for me to learn at this stage in my career, but I take responsibility for it. It’s a mistake I made and it hurts that I won’t be there for my teammates.”

Patients frequently ask me about supplements, particularly protein powders. Pop culture nutrition is fickle. Not too long ago, we emphasized carbohydrates and feared dietary fat. Today, we are scared of carbohydrates and worship protein. As such, people who are already getting more than enough protein often feel they need even more and turn to a protein supplement.

Protein powders, like other supplements, are largely unregulated. Generally speaking, we have no idea if the contents match the listed ingredients or if the quantities reported on a bottle’s nutrition label are accurate. Back in 2008, I read a study (which I unfortunately cannot find right now) that analyzed actual protein content in various powders and found that most did not contain nearly as much protein as advertised.

Furthermore, as odd as it may initially sound, realize that manufacturers have incentive to add secret ingredients. Competition is fierce; a quick search of GNC.com yielded 512 different protein supplements. Consumers often make their selections based upon the perceived results or testimonials of others. If you are a supplement manufacturer and you want your product to stand out among the rest, to be the one that is perceived as yielding the best results, the one that gets talked about and recommended in the locker room, you may decide it is in your best interest to slip in an unlisted ingredient that produces the desired effect.

Whenever an athlete like Ninkovich gets busted and blames his supplements, the common reaction is to assume they are lying and covering for having purposely taken a performance enhancer. That may indeed be true, but we have to remember that what we often see as an excuse is also a completely plausible explanation.

You may or may not get drug tested the way that many professional athletes do, but the uncertainty of supplement contents can still impact you. Might an ingredient, listed or otherwise, interact with one of your medications, make you nauseous, give you a headache, accelerate your heart rate, or damage your liver? You could have no adverse reactions at all, wind up dead, or anywhere in between. That’s the risk.

If you use a supplement or are considering taking one, think about the potential ramifications, and remember that the lesson Ninkovich apparently learned today is actually an important lesson for us all.

Hold Off On Time-Delayed Eating

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You may have caught a recent New York Times piece entitled “Time-Delayed Eating Leads to Better Food Choices” in which the author writes, “A series of experiments at Carnegie Mellon University found that when there was a significant delay between the time a person ordered their food and the time they planned on eating it, they chose lower-calorie meals.”

Dr. Eric VanEpps, the post-doctoral student who led the research, elaborates, “If a decision is going to be implemented immediately, we just care about the immediate consequences, and we discount the long-term costs and benefits. In the case of food, we care about what’s happening right now – like how tasty it is – but discount the long-term costs of an unhealthy meal. [When we order a meal in advance], you’re more evenly weighing the short-term and long-term costs and benefits. You still care about the taste but you’re more able to exert self control.”

Self control, unhealthy, lower-calorie . . . Based on the language Dr. VanEpps uses and the undercurrent of a good/bad food dichotomy, time-delayed eating sounds like yet another dieting tool right up there with drinking a glass of water before sitting down to a meal, consuming caffeine to stave off hunger, or not eating after a certain time of evening. We all know by now that dieting rarely works, right?

Regarding the research at hand, two of the pieces discussed in the New York Times article are hidden behind pay walls except for their abstracts. While I can only comment on what I am able to read, the information available to me leads to many important follow-up questions.

What happens when the time comes to eat and the food you ordered long ago does not meet your intuitive needs in the moment? Will you eat it anyway? If not, what is plan B? If you do eat it, might you consume more of it than you really need in an attempt to satisfy yourself through sheer quantity? Will you overeat by beginning your feeding with your pre-ordered food only to follow it up by eating something else that you actually want?

Consider a personal example. A little over a decade ago, I went through a phase where I was modifying cookie recipes in all sorts of ways in an effort to make them “healthier”: nuts and dried fruit instead of chocolate chips, oil instead of butter, whole wheat instead of white flour, reduced sugar, etc. These changes sounded good in theory, but who was I kidding; these “cookies” were only cookies by name and bore a stronger resemblance to pancakes. They never quite hit the spot. When you want cookies, no amount of pancakes will satisfy. Either I ate the healthier cookies by the batch in an effort to quell my cookie craving, or I chased them with traditional baked goods anyway. Now that I make normal cookies full of butter, sugar, white flour, and chocolate chips, I only need to eat one or two in order to feel satisfied.

Consider the short-term and long-term ramifications of time-delayed eating. If you just consumed a meal you did not really want but ate anyway, what happens at the next meal, or later that evening? How do you eat the next day? The next week? The next six months? The restriction/binge cycle of dieting suggests that sooner or later there will be consequences somewhere down the road.

One of my patients is coming off a serious health scare and has completely revamped his way of eating over the last year. On the weekends, his family maps out exactly what they will eat each day of the upcoming week and then they shop only for the ingredients necessary to implement their plan. When Thursday evening rolls around and the dinner entree he scheduled five days earlier no longer sounds appealing, he eats it anyway. He may not love it, but he can tolerate it.

Right now, he does not mind taking a utilitarian approach to his eating. So far, it seems to be working for him, and who knows, maybe it always will, but as his dietitian I have to think ahead to what might happen in the coming months and years as the fear associated with his medical incident subsides and leaves him with a different picture of motivation than the one he holds today. In other words, how long can one tolerate eating foods that may seem healthy on paper, but on the enjoyment scale are only meh?

Similarly, I encourage you to consider the aftermath you are likely to have on your hands if you try time-delayed eating and find yourself trying to reconcile the food you pre-selected for yourself and what you actually want to eat in the moment. If the research teaches us anything, it’s that such discrepancies are a virtual certainty to occur.

He Said, She Said: My Big Fat Fabulous Life

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In a recent episode, of My Big Fat Fabulous Life, the protagonist visits her alma mater where she gives a talk about body positivity and then fields questions from students. Who knows what really went on in that auditorium, but if we take the video at face value, she did a fine job of responding, especially for a layman who was put on the spot. With time and expertise on our side, we took our own stabs at answering two of the questions that arose.

 

He Said

“The medical community actually agrees that obesity can lead to a shorter life span. Do you think that your No BS [No Body Shame] campaign, which emphasizes feeling confident and beautiful at any size, do you think that that can coexist along with the very real facts that they do cause legitimate health concerns?”

The premise of this question is faulty in a few different ways.

No, the medical community does not agree that obesity can lead to a shorter life span.

Research actually suggests that other factors have a greater impact on mortality than does body size. For example, a 2012 study by Matheson et al. looked at the impacts of consuming five or more fruits and vegetables daily, exercising regularly, consuming alcohol in moderation, and not smoking and found that mortality was virtually identical across all studied body mass index groups when subjects had all four healthy habits. In other words, when it comes to our risk of dying early, behaviors are a better predictor than is body size.

In his 2010 study, Fogelholm found that physically active obese individuals had better cardiovascular and all-cause mortality risk than sedentary “normal weight” people, again suggesting that when it comes to matters of life span, behavior is a more important factor than is body size.

The entire body of research is bigger than just two articles, and of course, not every study reaches the same conclusion, which reinforces how much we still have to learn and underscores how inaccurate claims of universal agreement within the medical community are regarding this complex topic.

Size acceptance and health are two separate issues.

“The mission of the No Body Shame campaign,” according to its website, “is to help every individual overcome the debilitating effects of societal-induced shame. Supporters of No Body Shame have named weight, height, skin color, sexual orientation, gender, different abilities, and specific physical attributes as causes of shame. Whitney believes that when we commit ourselves to living our best lives now, accepting ourselves as we are even if others do not accept us, real changes in confidence and quality of life are not only possible, but imminent.”

Note that nowhere in the mission statement does health appear. No BS is part of the size acceptance movement, which is related to, but not synonymous with, initiatives like Health at Every Size (HAES®) that promote a paradigm shift within the medical community to focus on actual health instead of weight.

In explaining size acceptance, Ragen Chastain writes, “Everybody deserves basic human respect and civil rights and that should never be up to show of hands or vote of any kind. Fat people have a right to exist, there are no other valid opinions about that. Our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not someone else’s to give, they are inalienable. SA [Size Acceptance] activism is not about asking someone to confer rights upon us but rather demanding that they stop trying to keep them from us through an inappropriate use of power.”

HAES, on the other hand, can be succinctly encapsulated as a weight-neutral approach to health. The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) elaborates by saying, “The framing for a HAES approach comes out of discussions among healthcare workers, consumers, and activists who reject both the use of weight, size, or BMI as proxies for health, and the myth that weight is a choice. The HAES model is an approach to both policy and individual decision-making. It addresses broad forces that support health, such as safe and affordable access. It also helps people find sustainable practices that support individual and community well-being.”

While size acceptance and HAES are different concepts, clearly they relate. The situation is more complex than I am about to make it seem, but for the sake of brevity, consider how weight stigma pushes people into weight-loss pursuits that are most likely to worsen their health. If we as a society are more accepting of people of all sizes, we free each other up to instead focus on our actual health.

The implication that feeling unconfident or unbeautiful at certain sizes inspires better health is the exact opposite of what tends to actually happen.

Tomiyama and Mann conducted a study in which they posed two sets of questions to different subject groups. One set of questions was designed to make the subjects aware of weight stigma while the control questions asked about ecofriendly behaviors.

After subjects answered their questions, researchers presented them with a variety of foods and gave them permission to eat whatever and however much they would like. The people who had just responded to questions about weight stigma consumed significantly higher amounts of sugar and calories than those who answered neutral questions.

Their findings mirror our clinical observations and experiences. People often believe that self-dissatisfaction will somehow inspire better health, when in reality the individuals who love and accept themselves as they are tend to be the ones motivated to take better care of themselves.

Correlation is not synonymous with causation.

The questioner ended her inquiry with, “the very real facts that they do cause legitimate health concerns.” The context suggests that she misspoke when she used the word “they” and was actually referring to obesity.

If that presumption is indeed correct, then she is confusing correlation and causation. Earlier this month, I watched a fireworks display one evening and then a parade the next morning. Did the fireworks cause the parade, or did these events occur in close proximity to each other due to another factor, say, Independence Day?

Similarly, when we consider the diseases linked to obesity, we must remember that correlation does not equal causation. The link, in other words, might not be a causal relationship, but rather an association due to other factors. Many examples exist, but for the sake of brevity, consider just one: stress. Cardiovascular disease, which is often blamed on obesity, is also associated with life stress.

If you are not obese yourself, do your best to put yourself in those shoes for a moment: You live in a society where the government has declared war on your body size; where fat hate and bullying are prevalent online and in real life; where you might fear going to the doctor because you are more likely to receive a judgmental directive to lose weight rather than an actual evidence-based medical intervention; where commercials, memes, advertisements, talk at the gym, the grocery store, and over the dinner table hammer at you repeatedly throughout the day, every single day, that something is wrong with you and it is your fault. Tell me, how is your stress level?

 

She Said

“My father passed away this past April. He was severely overweight, he was diabetic, and he was an avoider, right. Do you think there is an ethical concern in folks who view you as a health and fitness expert or at least a public figure and use that body positivity message as an excuse to avoid actually addressing their real health concerns?”

While the second sentence of this audience member’s question is not a question at all, I think it needs to be addressed. Although he didn’t specifically say so, this statement reads as though the questioner believes that his father’s weight was to blame for the development of his type 2 diabetes (T2D). As we have discussed numerous times before, weight and health are two very different things and that while being “overweight” or “obese” might be correlated with certain health conditions, such as diabetes, there is no evidence that being “overweight” or “obese” causes these conditions.

In a 2012 interview for the Health at Every Size blog, author Linda Bacon explains, “while it’s true that the majority of people with T2D are in the BMI categories of ‘overweight’ or ‘obese,’ that’s at least in part because the insulin resistance that underlies most cases of T2D often causes people to gain weight. In fact, weight gain may actually be an early symptom—rather than a primary cause—of the path toward diabetes.” In addition, Bacon cites a “review of controlled weight-loss studies involving people with T2D” which showed that while “overweight” or “obese” individuals with T2D had initial improvements in their blood sugar levels with weight loss, those levels eventually returned to baseline within 6 to 18 months, even for those few individuals who had managed to keep the weight off.

I also think it is important to look at the way that the questioner described his dad: as an “avoider.” That tells me that this man believes that his father did not take care of himself to the extent he could have in order to have prevented his untimely death; that if his father had not “avoided” his health issues by presumably eating better and losing weight, he might still be here today. That seems like a very serious assumption. Sometimes even when people take all the right steps in dealing with their health condition, they will still pass away. We all like to think that if we eat perfectly, don’t smoke, don’t drink, and do all the “right things” (i.e., healthy life behaviors), we will live forever. Unfortunately, none of us is immortal.

Now to address the actual question that was asked. I find this question problematic for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t think that Whitney (the protagonist of MBFFL) has ever tried to portray herself as a “health and fitness expert.” Over the first 3 seasons, she has consulted with a registered dietitian who practices Health at Every Size® (HAES®), has seen a cardiologist, and has been working with a personal trainer in addition to other health professionals. She herself admits that she struggles with the health and fitness part of her life, particularly in that she battled an eating disorder for much of her teens and twenties. She has never presented herself as an expert in nutrition, fitness, or medicine.

The second reason I find the question problematic is that the questioner assumes that the message of body positivity is being used as an excuse for people of size to avoid dealing with their health issues. This is simply untrue. Body positivity is about seeing all bodies as “good” bodies, that no one body type is the “ideal,” regardless of what our society (particularly the media) likes to tell us. In other words, the body positivity movement says “there is no wrong way to have a body.” It also recognizes that “good health” is not a requirement to have a body and that sometimes (due to circumstances outside of one’s control) our bodies might not be healthy. This does not mean, however, that these bodies are any less good.

At the end of the day, I think the best way to think about this question is through the lens of the “Underpants Rule,” coined by the brilliant blogger Ragen Chastain of Dances with Fat. Ragen defines the rule as such: “everyone is the boss of their own underpants so you get to choose for you and other people get to choose from them and it’s not your job to tell other people what to do.” This means that others do not have a right to tell you how you should take care of your body and vice versa. Whitney has never told her viewers (at least to my knowledge) how they should be treating their health conditions – she is only focusing on her own body and health issues.

Body positivity does not assume that everyone is actively trying to be living their healthiest life. It is more about helping people realize that skinny bodies are not the only bodies that are worthy or beautiful. Yes, some individuals might show love for their bodies by trying to take care of them by eating a varied, nutritious diet, being physically active in an enjoyable way, getting enough sleep, and managing stress. But not everyone is able to engage in all of these behaviors. The body positivity movement says that even if one is not in the best of health, their body is still valuable.

He Said, She Said: Parents

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He Said

June 2nd was World Eating Disorders Action Day, which was an important occasion that helped to cast desperately needed light on these conditions that are so common, yet receive so little attention.

Many of our colleagues shared articles, blog posts, and memes on social media to commemorate the day. One particular meme caught my attention because it read in part, “Families are not to blame, and can be the patients’ and providers’ best allies in treatment.”

To be candid, that statement is only partially true. On one hand, eating disorders can certainly arise in the midst of even the most loving and supportive family dynamics. On the other hand, environment is an important factor in the development of eating disorders, and this broad term that encompasses television, social media, print media, teachers, friends, coaches, co-workers, and many other influences also includes family.

Neither Joanne nor myself is here to pass judgment on anybody. Parenting is hard work, and all of us, parents and otherwise, make mistakes sometimes despite our best intentions. If we are to help families become the supportive allies that the meme correctly states they can be, then we must acknowledge the reality that even well-meaning and loving parents sometimes inadvertently contribute to the problem.

This month, Joanne and I discuss some of the most common mistakes parents make that can promote or exacerbate an eating disorder or otherwise hinder their child’s nutrition care, and we suggest alternative behaviors that can be more helpful. Joanne tackles the behaviors most related to eating disorders while I address others that I see in my side of the practice, although overlap certainly exists between the two.

Mistake 1: Modeling disordered behavior

“I can’t do moderation,” one of my patients insisted. She was 12 years old. With both of her parents out of the room, she explained to me how her parents oscillate between restriction and overconsumption. The former might take the shape of cleanses, clearing the house of “junk food,” enrolling in weight-loss programs, or other similar actions, while the latter might manifest itself through binges, lamenting their eating behaviors, or expressing concerns about a food “addiction” or feeling out of control.

The patient in question was well aware when one of her parents was about to transition from one state to another. “You cracked the seal!” her mother reportedly exclaims to her father (or vice versa) when a “bad” food is brought into the house. Because this is the behavior modeled in my patient’s household, no wonder she similarly feels, at such a young age, already destined for and incapable of anything beyond an all-or-nothing relationship with food as well.

Improvement: Model a healthy relationship with food

Children often learn through observation. Family meals in particular are an excellent time for parents to model their healthy relationship with food. Serve and consume a wide variety of foods. Destroy the good/bad food dichotomy by incorporating “bad” foods and showing that one is neither guilty for having them nor virtuous for sticking solely to “good” foods.

Similarly, keep a wide variety of foods in the house, as attempts to restrict the food supply typically backfire sooner or later. Children are bound to encounter “bad” food at friends’ houses, camp, and other environments, so better to help them build a healthy relationship with these foods early in life before they grow into young adults who do not know how to handle the newfound freedom that accompanies all-you-can-eat college dining halls.

In order to model a healthy relationship with food, parents must first of all have one. Be candid with yourself and realize that the best way to help your child might be to recognize and seek help and support for your own eating issues.

Mistake 2: Putting too much responsibility on the child

Encouraging autonomy and empowering children have their upsides, but parents sometimes take these actions too far. They step so far back that children are left without the parental support that they need to succeed. Parents might leave their children alone with us for more time than would be ideal, decline invitations to meet with us without the children or to check in with us between sessions, opt not to reinforce at home the ideas we discuss in session, or fail to implement action steps that necessitate parental involvement.

Improvement: Work together as a team

Just as children of all ages look to their parents for a variety of resources, everything from physical needs to unconditional love, they need similar help with their nutrition. Children have their own feeding responsibilities, but so do parents. In order to suss out who is responsible for what, parents must actively participate in the process. Initially, parents may not see eye to eye with us or have questions or concerns about our approach, and these thoughts are best expressed in private so as not to confuse the child with conflicting paradigms. In short, working together as a team tends to yield the most fruitful results.

Mistake 3: Assuming their children can lose weight because they did it themselves

Many of the children at our practice have parents who are high achievers. Through hard work, discipline, sacrifice, and other life choices and factors, they have reached the pinnacle of their respective fields. Some of these parents have applied these same traits to their own weight-loss endeavors with similar results. They assume that if their children take a similar path, they will reach the same outcome.

Improvement: Differentiate between typical and atypical results

If you have lost weight and kept it off, recognize that you are the exception, not the rule. Approximately 95% of people who attempt to lose weight will regain it one to five years down the road, and roughly 60% of these individuals will end up heavier than they were at baseline. Weight regain is common even if someone maintains the behaviors that promoted the weight loss in the first place.

Contrary to popular myth, our weight is largely out of our hands. The calories-in-versus-calories-out paradigm is a gross oversimplification of the complexities affecting weight regulation. While we might be able to manipulate our body size through behavior changes for a short while, biological mechanisms promoting weight regain almost always win out in the end.

Even genetics and behaviors together do not tell the whole story. For every Griffey or Boone family, we have hundreds of major league ballplayers whose offspring will never make it in the pros. Set aside the notion that what worked for parents will work for a child, and accept that your child may never lose weight and keep it off no matter what he or she does.

Mistake 4: Encouraging weight loss

A desire to lose weight leads to dieting, which is a predictor for eating disorders, worse health, and ultimate weight gain. Parents may understand the dangers and futility of dieting and instead encourage “lifestyle change.” Unbeknownst to them, the behaviors they have in mind, such as restricting calories or certain food groups, keeping a food journal, weighing or measuring portions, or staving off hunger by filling up on liquids or low-calorie foods, are still tricks of the dieting trade. Different packaging, but same contents.

Improvement: Promote size acceptance

Weight stigma is real and widespread. Children encounter it on the playground, on television, on social media, in the classroom, and maybe even at the pediatrician’s office, but they do not have to face it at home. Promote size acceptance and discuss the stigma they inevitably bump into as they move about the world. An additional and important lesson: Teach them not to contribute to said stigma.

Mistake 5: Talking about “health” as a euphemism for “weight”

Sometimes parents have a sense of the dangers associated with focusing on a child’s weight, so they substitute in the word “health” instead. Children are perceptive, however, and they learn about our cultural obsession with weight and size at an early age. When their parents say, “I just want you to be healthy,” they interpret this in context and hear, “I just want you to lose weight.” When they start talking to the big kid in the family about “health” and bring him to a dietitian while his skinnier siblings receive no such treatment, trust me, he knows exactly what is going on.

Improvement: Recognize that health and weight are not synonymous

Health and weight are not nearly as synonymous as we have been led to believe. Studies have shown that weight loss does not automatically lead to better health, and other research that controlled for behaviors found that health risks between groups of people of different body weights were nearly identical when engaging in similar behaviors. If health itself is indeed the priority, then apply it to everyone in the family, regardless of body size.

 

She Said

June 2nd was World Eating Disorders Action Day, during which numerous organizations and activists all over the world brought to light the prevalence of eating disorders (ED) and the need for comprehensive treatment. Jonah and I noticed a meme that was circulating on that day which outlined nine facts about EDs. While overall I felt like the meme was accurate and could be quite helpful for those unfamiliar with EDs, I felt like one of the “truths” was not completely accurate. This “truth” states, “Families are not to blame, and can be the patients’ and providers’ best allies in treatment.” My issue does not lie with the second part of the sentence, as I fully believe that parents can be wonderful allies in helping someone recover from an ED. But I do not agree with the statement that families are not to blame.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that it is solely the parents’ fault if their child develops an ED. But absolving parents of any blame doesn’t ring true to me.  As in most diseases, genetics play a large role as does environment. One way of thinking about it is this saying: “Genetics load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger.” Well, parents are part of the child’s environment, and therefore they can contribute (even unwittingly) to the development of their child’s ED.

99% of the time, parents are acting out of love for their child. They don’t want their child to suffer and only hope that he or she will be happy and healthy. But even with the best intentions, sometimes parents (and other family members) can inadvertently trigger an ED in a genetically predisposed patient. The following are some examples of how this can occur:

Example #1: The parent speaks negatively about his or her own body.

This might be surprising to some people, but children of parents who speak disparagingly about their own bodies (i.e., not their child’s body) are more likely to develop issues with eating and body image. I’ve had numerous patients whose parents only tell the patient how beautiful/handsome/perfect he or she is, or that there is nothing wrong with the child’s body. However, oftentimes the child will overhear their parent complaining about their own “love handles,” saggy body parts, or “unsightly bulges,” and even though these comments aren’t directed at the child, he or she learns to internalize these messages and can start to believe that his or her body is “wrong” too. The best way to prevent this from happening is for parents to avoid negatively talking about their own bodies, especially in the presence of their child. All bodies are good bodies, and stressing this message can help kids develop a more positive body image.

Example #2: The parent puts too much responsibility on the child and does not take an active role in his or her ED recovery.

Sometimes I encounter parents who want to take a step back from their child’s ED, as they believe that the child should be in charge of his or her recovery. While I agree that the patient needs to take an active role, most kids are dependent on their parents for food, as parents are the ones who go grocery shopping and who do the meal prep and planning. A child who is dealing with an ED cannot be counted on to feed himself or herself appropriately. Very few kids with EDs take the initiative to prepare a snack or meal for themselves. I had one patient that often would skip meals and snacks because she knew that her parents weren’t watching her. My advice would be that parents need to take an active role in their child’s ED recovery, especially if that child is a younger teenager. This means that parents might need to supervise meals and snacks, make sure that there are ample and appropriate food choices in the house, and hold the child accountable for food eaten outside of the house. Regarding the latter, signs may suggest that a child is not following her meal plan while at school, for example. In such instances, parents have the responsibility to arrange for a teacher or school nurse to supervise the child’s eating to ensure compliance with the meal plan.

Example #3: The parent encourages their child to lose weight.

This is a tough one. In our fatphobic and fearmongering culture, being overweight or obese is seen as a terrible fate. With the help of Michelle Obama, every parent is vigilant about their child becoming a part of the “childhood obesity epidemic.” Even if a parent feels like their child is “fine,” pediatricians can scare parents into seeing their child’s weight as a ticking time bomb. I’ve had too many patients to count whose parents bring them in because their doctor wants the child to lose weight. In some cases, these kids are encouraged to go on diets, and they receive praise for every pound lost. I had one patient in particular whose parents promised her a new iPad if she lost a certain amount of weight. Obviously, I feel that encouraging one’s child to lose weight is very problematic. Study after study has shown that kids who start dieting from an early age are actually more likely to become overweight or obese in adulthood. In other words, the end result is the exact opposite of what these parents are hoping for. My best advice is to stop focusing on your child’s weight. Instead, focus on his or her health, as we know that health and weight are not necessarily synonymous. Also, I would recommend talking with the child’s pediatrician (without the child present) to discuss taking the focus off the child’s weight, as negative messages about the child’s weight can lead to a preoccupation with food and even development of an ED.

Thus, while I really agree overall with the “truths” outlined by the meme, I would modify #2 to say that family dynamics can play a role in the development of an ED. While it is true that parents are not solely to blame for their child developing an ED, they can use some of the above strategies to make it less likely that their child will go down that treacherous path.

An Important Shot Bricked Off the Glass

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If ESPN is going to advertise their story with a provocative before-and-after pictorial of Kevin Love’s body transformation, then let me begin my response by pointing out that the chiseled-armed latter version of Love is arguably a worse player than his earlier, pudgier self.

Sure, now that Love is LeBron’s sidekick in Cleveland rather than the focal point of offense in Minnesota, one might expect some of his numbers to be down. However, his points per game, rebounds per game, and assists per game have all worsened despite nearly identical minutes per game and playing in the midst of what should be his peak basketball years. That’s tough to do. Given that, someone will have to explain to me why we are focusing on his physique instead of his noteworthy and curious decline.

That someone, however, might not be Jackie MacMullan. Normally a fantastic sports journalist, one of the best in her field, she took a shot at an important subject with her ESPN article entitled, “From Kevin Love to Draymond Green, NBA players struggle with food more than you think,” but uncharacteristically threw up a brick.

Her piece begins with a detailed account of Love’s meticulous and rigid eating habits. “Not 10 almonds, not 18 almonds — 14 almonds,” his trainer reports. “Kevin is exactly on point. If he’s supposed to eat every two hours, then on the days when he wants to sleep in, he’ll wake up, eat and go back to sleep.” Even his teammates raise their eyebrows at his eating behaviors, which also include bringing his own food on the team plane rather than “be tempted by a postgame spread that might be high in calories and carbohydrates.”

The aforementioned content and the article’s title set up perfectly to discuss disordered eating, which is sorely in need of more attention and dialogue. “NBA players, in truth, are just like us,” the author writes, before listing various eating behaviors common to both professional athletes and laymen. A glaring omission from her list is that professionals are susceptible to dysfunctional relationships with food, eating disorders, and nutrition myths just like the rest of us. Sometimes abnormal behaviors are so prevalent that we mistake them as normal, and I think the author may have fallen into that trap.

More troubling is that instead of discussing Love’s eating habits as a red flag of concern, the author presents them in the context of his lower weight and improved endurance. Consider the impact this kind of message has on readers. For you parents out there, do not be surprised in the least when you walk into the kitchen and find your teenager counting out his or her almonds.

Furthermore, while Love is no doubt eating in a way that he believes serves him best on the court, we must remember that professional athletes often focus on the here and now while long-term risks take a back seat. The stakes are simply different for them. Professionals put their long-term health on the line for short-term rewards that are unavailable to the rest of us. Love just rushed back on the court from a concussion so he could continue playing in the NBA finals. If you suffered a similar concussion, would you risk permanent brain damage in order to play out the remainder of your YMCA rec league’s spring season? Similarly, readers must understand that following an eating plan as rigid as Love’s is risky and makes little sense for the general population.

The author turns her attention to Oliver Miller, “. . . who at his peak weighed over 375 pounds, ate so much of it [pizza] that the Suns took drastic measures, including hospitalizing him and hooking him up to IV fluids. ‘But then they found out he was ordering Domino’s from the hospital,’ [former teammate Danny] Ainge says. ‘They had to put a security guard outside the room.'” Under a photograph of Miller is a caption reading, “Oliver Miller had to be hospitalized because he couldn’t keep his eating under control. The root of his career-long battle? Pizza.”

Look, I have never met Oliver Miller or viewed his medical records, but whatever was going on with him during his playing days, I promise you that the root cause was not pizza. By talking about pizza, or any other specific food, in this way, the author further propagates the myth of food addiction. When we abandon the diet mentality, uncouple moralization from eating behaviors, break up the good/bad food dichotomy, build intuitive-eating skills, and make trigger foods available in abundance, “food addiction” typically resolves, which is the exact opposite outcome that an addiction model would predict in response to such treatment.

Even if Miller was suffering from binge eating disorder, which, as with other eating disorders, is a mental illness that gets played out through food, pizza is still not responsible for his struggles. More importantly, neither you nor I know whether or not he had such a disorder. Hopefully, one of our takeaways from our shameful treatment of Pablo Sandoval over the winter is the lesson that we cannot determine someone’s relationship with food or the presence of an eating disorder based on his or her body size or weight. The notion that we can is yet another myth.

“But it’s not as easy as simply losing weight. Becoming lighter, in many cases, often doesn’t translate into peak performance,” the author later writes. While I completely agree, the article’s subsequent content seems tenuously related at best. She discusses Roy Hibbert, who lost weight upon request by one coach and then put it back on when the Pacers hired a new coach who asked him to regain it, but that was apparently related to differing philosophies in team play between the two coaches, not a change in Hibbert’s performance. A more direct and relevant example would have been to discuss Love’s aforementioned regression despite his body transformation.

The article’s most important passage reads, “Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle says the one thing he has learned in his 27 years in the league is not to judge a player by his body type. Mavericks guard Raymond Felton, for instance, is more diligent about his diet than Russell Westbrook, yet you’d never know it by a simple eye test.” So true, but these 54 words are drowned out in a 2,910-word article largely about dieting and weight. Besides, in an age in which attention spans seem to rarely exceed 140 characters, how many readers even make it far enough in the article to reach this important paragraph?

While I commend the author for taking on this topic, her article could have been so much more than it is. She could have brought to light the societal prevalence of disordered eating, eating disorders, and nutrition misinformation so widespread that they infiltrate professional locker rooms. She could have explored how the eating habits of star athletes impact the general population, especially minors. She could have addressed the dangers and damage stemming from coupling weight with performance. Instead, she did none of those.

Ms. MacMullan, an important story is begging to be written here, and I believe you can still author it. Please consider grabbing your own rebound and putting up another shot.

Day 795/326: Tennis

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Joanne and I are grateful for everybody who has recently joined us online by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, and reading our blogs. Whether you have been with us for one day or several years, we thank all of you for being part of our virtual community.

For the new folks, let me get you up to speed on a theme that occasionally pops up in my writing: the three back surgeries I have undergone, including two in the last two years, and my ongoing recovery.

Generally speaking, I am pretty guarded when it comes to talking about my own life because self-disclosure can so easily do more harm than good. However, as I headed into my 2014 operation, I decided to make an exception and document my recovery because it can be helpful for patients to remember that while our specific challenges may differ, we are coping with similar themes:

  • weighing the pros and cons of imperfect treatment options,
  • coming to grips with the reality that health outcomes are never guaranteed and only partially in our hands despite our best efforts,
  • mourning abilities or characteristics once possessed that might be gone for good,
  • accepting our new identity and discovering new ways to thrive,
  • other story lines in human existence to which patients and practitioners alike can relate.

Those of you who have followed my recovery know that my ultimate goal is to play competitive tennis again. After playing for my high school and college teams and then in adult leagues, I have been unable to compete for nearly a decade.

On Sunday, 794 days after my second surgery and 325 days after my third, I took a significant step by returning to the tennis court for the first time in three years. Unsure of what my back could handle, Joanne and I began with gentle mini tennis, just tapping the ball back and forth as we each stood at our respective service lines. No pain, to my surprise, so we backed up a little bit more into no-man’s-land. All systems still a go. Five minutes after we got to the court, we were back at our baselines hammering ground strokes to each other almost as if I never had a layoff.

Muscle memory is a crazy thing, as is modern medicine. While Joanne and I exchanged forehands and backhands, my thoughts were with everybody who contributed to my recovery: my surgeon, Dr. Jean-Valery Charles-Emile Coumans, my outpatient physical therapist, Sue Bloom, the inpatient physical therapy and nursing staff at Massachusetts General Hospital (Sorry again for pooping in my gurney, guys!), my friends, and my family, including and especially my wife.

I cannot thank them enough for helping me to find my way back home.

Court

 

The Tipping Point

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You probably heard about Gina Kolata’s piece in the New York Times earlier this month detailing commonplace weight regain among Biggest Loser competitors, but you may have missed Dr. Sandra Aamodt’s excellent follow-up piece in which the neuroscientist shares research showing just how unlikely long-term weight loss is for any of us, not just the show’s former contestants.

While this information might be news to some of us, data showing commonplace weight regain among people who attempt to lose it has been available for quite a while, yet it has not garnered much mainstream attention despite years of efforts from researchers, advocacy groups, activists, and practitioners around the world, including myself.

Regardless of what our goals are, nobody wants to hear that they are probably unattainable, which partially explains why the myth of weight loss has survived. Unfortunately, yet understandably, people are reluctant to listen when receiving a message they do not want to hear.

The problem, however, runs deeper. The notion that we can lose weight and keep it off if only we try hard enough has taken on “everybody knows” status. We hear it in our fitness centers, around the proverbial office water cooler, up in the bleachers at Little League games, and at spring cookouts. The message is so commonplace that we do not stop to question its validity.

Doctors, dietitians, and other healthcare practitioners can inadvertently contribute to the mess. We are human and vulnerable to the same “everybody knows” paradigm too, and sometimes we take treatment guidelines at face value without looking into them for ourselves.

Lump the green version of myself in there as well. I shake my head with embarrassment and shame at some of the advice I doled out early in my career before I knew better, and I wish my profession as a whole would get up to speed.

We see the “success stories,” the people in our lives who were able to lose weight and keep it off, at least so far. The Massachusetts State Lottery website features pictures and stories of its recent million-dollar winners, but their enticing smiles do not change the reality that the most likely outcome of buying a ticket is financial loss.

Children observe their parents looking critically in the mirror, associating guilt and virtue with eating and exercise behaviors, and oscillating between rigid restriction and binges. The torch of dieting and weight obsession passes to the next generation.

If the myth of weight loss dies, so do the $60,000,000,000-per-year diet industry and the privilege enjoyed by the thin in a culture thick with fat shaming and weight stigma. They keep the fantasy alive and have plenty of incentive to make sure we continue to feel bad about ourselves.

Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force to overcome, not just for laymen, but for everyone. Given the strong headwind, I am pleased to see this information finally receiving the widespread attention it so desperately needs.

Ms. Kolata and Dr. Aamodt certainly deserve credit for their parts, but so does everybody who has ever made an effort to get the word out – practitioners and researchers who risked career suicide, activists for whom death threats are a daily way of life, and patients who have stood up and demanded evidence-based care – as they have also contributed to what I hope is finally the tipping point.

An Iatrogenic Condition

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Joanne and I were watching Shark Tank the other night and I found myself wondering if the negotiations and business analyses might be so bogus that venture capitalists and MBAs get a good chuckle out of the reality show. Maybe real estate agents, general contractors, and interior designers watch Love It or List It and shake their heads. Since these programs cover topics outside my area of expertise, their content could be spot on or largely misleading and I might not know the difference.

Yesterday, the New York Times exposed the Biggest Loser for some of the long-term harm it does to its contestants and the unrealistic expectations it sets for viewers. Most notably, weight regain is pervasive despite the ex-contestants’ best efforts to keep it at bay.

For myself and other practitioners who use a similar approach to ours, some of the minutiae may have been new to us, but generally speaking, the Times piece went right into our “Yeah, no sh-t” folders, as we have known the show to be fraudulent and problematic since its inception.

Having said that, it occurs to me that for readers whose expertise lays elsewhere, this might have actually been news. If that includes you, and you were surprised to learn about the contestants’ weight regain and struggles, I hope you do not feel gullible. How were you supposed to know?

However, any seasoned obesity or metabolism researchers who found themselves surprised by these results ought to be embarrassed. Data showing commonplace weight regain among people who attempt to lose it has been available for quite a while. Even some of the most ardent weight-loss supporters reluctantly admit that although we have several methods of inducing short-term weight loss, we have no idea how to produce long-term weight loss for more than a tiny fraction of the people who attempt to achieve it.

What we see more commonly, not just in Biggest Loser contestants, but in people across the board who attempt to intentionally lose weight, is ultimate weight regain that often exceeds their baselines.

As an example, consider the following growth chart, which is from a real patient of mine (All information that could possibly reveal her identity has been removed.) Looking at her chart, hazard a guess as to when her parents and doctor first attempted to intervene with her weight. Do you think it was at age 17, when she first came to see me?

Example

No, it was just after age eight, when her BMI-for-age, which was in the 92nd percentile at the time, was deemed a problem. She was naturally a bigger kid, okay, but this fact’s implications have more to do with stigma than health. The focus on weight and a belief that an intervention would help to lower it created an iatrogenic condition. In other words, her weight became a problem because it was viewed as one.

Not only was the diagnosis off base, but the attempted interventions worsened the problem. The first diet produced a slimmer 10-year-old, who subsequently rebounded into a chunkier tween. Based on the research, this was to be the most likely result. As the patient’s teenage years began, subsequent attempts to lower her weight produced similar patterns of weight gain.

They took a child in the 92nd percentile and dieted her up to the 99th percentile, and in the process screwed up her relationships with food, her body, her doctor, and her family, all of which she is now working hard to untangle and fix.

None of that was the child’s fault, nor are the parents to blame, for they were just doing what they thought was right by following instructions from trusted practitioners.

And really, I do not blame the doctor either. Pediatricians and other primary care doctors are tasked with a tremendous responsibility to maintain basic knowledge about a myriad of conditions, everything from sore throats, to sexually transmitted diseases, to early signs of cancer, but this very demand limits them from being experts in any one field, including weight regulation.

The chain of education and direction has to begin somewhere. While these data on Biggest Loser contestants might have come as a surprise to laymen, the researchers who are responsible for the foundation of our healthcare policies should have seen them coming. That it took a New York Times article to wake them up is shameful, but they sure seem to be paying attention now, at least for the time being.

He Said, She Said: Exercise as Penance

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He Said

Data are only as useful as our understanding of them. Food labeling represents an opportunity for education while simultaneously illustrating the tremendous challenge of conveying complex ideas in a space only slightly larger than a postage stamp.

The nature of my work is one-on-one counseling, and as such, public health policy is not my area of expertise, but I can still recognize when those charged with such decisions are barking up the wrong tree. Such is the case with Britain’s idea to indicate the exercise load necessary to burn the calories in a given food.

First, remember that proclamations of calorie content are often flawed. Earlier in my career, I created nutrition labels for a university dining service as well as for cooking software. The labels that I produced reflected my best estimates based on other people’s estimates of generalities. Food manufacturers utilize a similar process to create their labels, and laws that allow rounding further cloud the picture. As the game of telephone teaches us, inaccuracies creep in with each step we take further away from the source.

Second, despite what activity trackers and cardio equipment dashboards would have us believe, estimations of caloric expenditure are similarly problematic. Your soda can may inform you that you need to run for 15 minutes to burn off the calories contained within, but this overgeneralization does not take into account your age, size, body composition, running mechanics, exercise intensity, course terrain, or any of the other variables that impact the energy that you as an individual will expend during a specific 15-minute bout of jogging.

Third, even if the data for calories consumed and burned were as accurate as can be, the implied calories-in-vs.-calories-out paradigm is an oversimplification of the complexities affecting weight regulation and overall health. Our eating and physical activity behaviors do matter, of course, but they are mere pieces in a puzzle mainly comprised of factors that are out of our hands.

Last, the presentation of a tradeoff between eating and physical activity reinforces a commonly held and problematic notion that food choices are worthy of punishment and exercise is our penance. As I recently told BuzzFeed and the Daily Meal, the good/bad food dichotomy, so prevalent in our society, links issues of morality, virtue, and guilt to our eating behaviors and is counterproductive. Nutrition and exercise activity have enough variables already without confounding them further with judgment.

A healthy relationship with food and physical activity means uncoupling moralization from such behaviors, not reinforcing the bond.

She Said

Earlier this month, Jonah and I were watching NECN when a news story came on that made us both cringe. Apparently, Britain is considering creating new food labels that not only tell the consumer how many calories are in the food, but how long the consumer would need to exercise to “burn off” that food. The proposed label would look like this: next to the calories that are listed for the food, there would be two stick figures of a person walking and running. Underneath those stick figures would be the number of minutes that someone would have to engage in either walking or running to negate the calories they consumed.

I find this idea to be highly problematic for several reasons. Firstly, as Jonah and I have written about before, the idea of “calories in, calories out,” is very much oversimplified. Most people believe that if an individual eats an extra 500 calories per day, that individual will have gained a pound of fat after a week. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. Numerous studies have shown that everyone processes calories differently, with some individuals getting more calories from the food they eat and others getting fewer calories from the same amount of food, resulting in some people gaining weight and others not gaining a pound.

One such study looked at identical twins and weight gain. Each pair of twins was fed an extra 1,000 calories per day for 100 days while under close observation (i.e., they were confined to a closed section of a university dorm). What the researchers found was that while the twins in each pair gained (or did not gain) the same amount of weight, there was a huge difference between the sets of twins. For instance, one pair of twins gained more than 29 pounds by the end of the intervention, while another pair only gained about 9 pounds. The conclusion that was reached was that some people are more efficient calorie burners, while others are more efficient at storing extra calories.

Aside from the fact that every body processes calories differently, I also take issue with the idea that one should be concerned with “burning off” what they are eating. In my work with people with eating disorders, there are quite a few individuals who engage in exercise bulimia. This means that these individuals will binge and then will try to compensate for the binge by over-exercising. It is a debilitating disease, and I believe that these labels would exacerbate symptoms for these individuals.

Finally, as I have written about before, I believe that exercise should not simply be viewed as a way to burn calories or to “right our wrongs.” Rather, as the Health at Every Size® principles suggest, physical activity should be a way for us to connect with our bodies by engaging in activities that we enjoy. Instead of torturing oneself in the gym to repent for last night’s cake, how about enjoying a walk outside in the sunshine to improve one’s mental, physical, and emotional health? Instead of calculating how many minutes one would need to log on the treadmill to “undo” a cookie, I think it is much healthier to use exercise as a way to feel more alive in our bodies rather than as a weight control tool.