Red Flags - Weight

Fat Crimes

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 04:00:00 -0500

A U.K.-based comedian tells a joke about a man who makes an insulting remark to a fat woman. “That’s an insult against me just because I’m overweight. You’re ‘fattist’,’’ she rebukes him.

“No,” he replies. “I think you’ll find that you’re fattest.”

And here is one of the latest web postings by a U.K. doctor in the ongoing debate about withholding treatments from obese people, a subject I covered recently.

Should Fat People Be Left To Rot?

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 04:00:00 -0500

I have been following a story, and the fallout from that story, about denying obese individuals various operations in one region of the U.K. — primarily knee and hip operations. While it is based in the U.K., the general points would apply to most other health systems.

To my mind, what this story has exposed is a powerful judgmental streak amongst doctors. Before getting into that, here is a précis of the story from a web site called doctors.net. You have to be a registered U.K. doctor to gain access.

Supersize Me Just One More Time

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 04:00:00 -0400

If there is one thing that I really enjoy, it is a study that can be waved in the faces of the “food fascists,” as I call them. Those puritanical control freaks who are forever telling us how unhealthy our diets are, how McDonald’s Inc. is creating a race of hyper-blobs, and how we should eat this or that tasteless muck because it is “good and healthy.”

My own view has always been that the rise in people who weigh more than we consider “aesthetically pleasing” — I have decided to remove the word obese from my vocabulary — is mainly due to the fact that no one exercises any more. Correction, a large majority of people do not exercise.

Outbreak – Run For Your Lives

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 04:00:00 -0400

(It might help you lose weight)

I seem to recall that there was a film called Outbreak, based on a book of the same name. Just shows how lazy I’m feeling today, I can’t be bothered searching the Internet. Anyway, sometimes it’s best to remember things rather than look them up all the time. Even if you’re wrong.

In the film Outbreak, the one that I remember anyway, a sadistic General played by Donald Sutherland wanted to hit an infected small town with a daisy-cutter bomb, thus evaporating it, plus virus. Meanwhile, Dustin Hoffman, playing a hero (bad casting in my view – Dustin just isn’t the hero type), heroically saved the day and got a kiss from Helen Hunt – or maybe it was that actress from What Women Want - or maybe Helen Hunt was in What Women Want, and I’m thinking of someone else whose name I cannot remember. The one who was in Tin Cup with what’s his name – you know Waterworld (what a stinker). Kevin Costner – of course. But blast – what was her name….

B Mi Baby

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 04:00:00 -0400

I suppose most of you will be aware of the research published in JAMA which showed that being ‘overweight’ helps you live longer. It seems to have caused a stir on this side of the pond, although I have to admit that I stifled a bit of a yawn. This ‘amazing fact’ has been proven many times before, most clearly in Norway, where a Body Mass Index (BMI) of twenty seven was associated with the greatest longevity.

Confessions Of A Diet Junkie

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 04:00:00 -0400

Yesterday, I did some people-watching as I stood in line at the cash at Costco. Sometimes the goods in people’s shopping carts tell interesting stories, as was the case with the young family in the cash line next to me.

Both parents were slightly overweight, the mother more so than the father, and their three children were morbidly obese. The youngest boy may have been five-years-old at the most. His cheeks were the size of grapefruits that made his eyes, nose and mouth look more sunken in than they ought to have been. His double chin covered his neck. The girl had to be the middle child. She looked about 12, and slightly younger than her teenage brother who must have weighed at least 250 pounds. She weighed more than her brother, and I could imagine how hard it must be for her to get up in the morning to go to school where she probably felt ostracized by the more popular skinny girls.

A Sugary Tale - Part IV

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 04:00:00 -0500

Part Three here
Part Two here
Part One here

Goodness me, it’s all getting a bit complicated. I feel like one of those jugglers who tries to spin fifty plates at the same time. Instead I am trying to keep fifty strands of thought spinning. I am beginning to understand Lenin, who said (sic) ‘everything is connected to everything else.’

A Sugary Tale – Part III

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 04:00:00 -0500

Part two here
Part one here

A lot of people have asked when I was going to write this follow-up article, and why has it taken so long? The answer is that I have been trying to write it for months, but my lack of skill as a writer has driven me mad, as I have been unable to get my thoughts down on paper. Anyway, here is my attempt to make what is clear in my mind, clear in yours.

Berardinelli-Seip – Explain That?

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 04:00:00 -0400

first article of the series here

For those of you who read my last article, ‘A sugary tale’, and who didn’t agree with a word that I said, which could well be almost everybody. I would like to introduce you to a fact that you may find surprising – to say the least.

Just to rewind for a moment. Basically I said that obesity probably wasn’t the underlying cause of type II diabetes. (I also said that there was no such disease as type II diabetes, but we’ll get to that later). In order to prove my first point I thought it would be interesting to try and find out if there is a population with zero adipose tissue to see what happens to their insulin resistance, levels of blood sugar, and rate of type II diabetes.

A Sugary Tale - Part One

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 04:00:00 -0400

(First article in a series on ‘type II diabetes’)

part two here

For the past 30 years, give or take, people with type-II diabetes have been instructed to eat a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. Why? Because it is “known” that a high-fat diet causes heart disease. It is also known that people with type-II diabetes have a greatly increased chance of dying of heart disease (true). Ergo, type-II diabetics should not eat fat.

Calories And Diets: The Apparent Paradox Of High-Fat Diets And The First Law Of Thermodynamics

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:16:39 -0500

I’m sorry to see that Malcolm Kendrick has fallen into the ’First Law’ trap. Let me see if I can clarify the apparent paradox whereby people eating a high-calorie diet lose weight more easily than those eating a low-calorie diet.

Atkins And The First Law Of Thermodynamics Are Both Scientifically Sound

Sun, 08 Feb 2004 16:10:08 -0500

By Fred Ottoboni, PhD, MPH and Alice Ottoboni, PhD

We learned a long time ago that when our data cast doubt on the First Law of Thermodynamics , the reason (always for sure) was that our data were somehow wrong.

From Fat To Thinner At Menopause

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 04:00:00 -0500

Not Easy but Doable

I gained a whopping 60 pounds on hormone replacement therapy, and I didn’t like it one bit. Following a hysterectomy and ovary removal procedure in 1991, the gynecologist promptly prescribed Premarin, saying it would help to keep me in a good mood now that my ovaries were gone. What he didn’t say was that it could cause weight gain, and lots of it. Don’t you just hate it when doctors forget to tell you about ALL the risks associated with the drugs they push on you?

Atkins And The First Law Of Thermodynamics

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 19:31:02 -0500

(Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Cap'n)

‘The change in internal energy of a system is equal to the heat added to a system minus the work done by the system.'

Please don't get me wrong. I am a great supporter of the Atkins diet. Anything that helps to demolish the myth that eating animal fat, or saturated fat, causes health problems gets my vote every time. And I do believe that many people who try the Atkins diet do lose weight – when no other diet has worked.

Why The Atkins Diet Is Healthy

Sat, 22 Nov 2003 04:00:00 -0500

I was idly watching a programme on the Atkins diet last night which, to my surprise, was reasonably balanced. Yes folks, the Atkins diet has crossed the pond to reach the United Kingdom. Although, in reality, all it is doing is returning. After all we invented it nearly one hundred and fifty years ago.

A man called Banting promoted a diet pretty much indistinguishable from that of Atkins in 1863. In fact, the verb to ‘bant’ is used in Sweden as a term for going on a diet