Posts Tagged ‘weight gain’

Health Systems Rigged to Interrupt Obesity Treatment

November 17, 2023 — It’s not easy. Getting access to good obesity care and maintaining it is a challenge that is especially frustrating as we see that the options for care are improving. But it seems that health systems right now are rigged to interrupt obesity treatment. An illustration of this comes from a recent study published in Obesity. […]

Prescribing Patterns That Promote Weight Gain

August 14, 2023 — Headline writers are fond these days of depicting a “craze” among prescription writers for new obesity medicines. But in fact, it seems that long-standing prescribing patterns may promote more weight gain than weight loss. A new paper by Erik Almazan, Jessica Schwartz, and Kimberly Gudzune documents prescribing for medicines that promote weight gain in 36 percent […]

Preoccupation with Food Overshadows Sleep

May 3, 2023 — We have received enough lectures for a lifetime from people who know just what the root cause of obesity is. The lecturers know the cause and they know the solution: tax, nudge, cajole, and educate people to follow a healthier diet. Eat less of that awful ultra-processed food. But the presumption that it’s all about […]

Abundant, Ultra-Processed Food Waste

April 24, 2023 — For an accounting for the food that is fueling a relentless rise in obesity, NIH researcher Kevin Hall is a good source. At the Obesity Medicine 2023 conference in New York Saturday morning, this is exactly what we heard. Systematically, Hall described his work to understand how food can be an important input into a […]

Too Much Food That Tastes Too Good?

February 26, 2023 — Quietly and systematically, Tera Fazzino has been working with colleagues to define a concept of hyper-palatable foods that might explain the apparent effect of ultra-processed foods on body composition and thus, obesity. The latest chapter in this quest appeared recently in Nature Food. In short, a narrative is taking shape that we may have a […]

A Metabolic Gift for Gaining Weight and Hibernating

December 24, 2022 — For some of us, gaining weight (especially at this time of year) is a metabolic curse. But there are individuals for whom gaining weight is a metabolic gift and, in fact, essential for surviving in good health. In this case, we are thinking about grizzly bears. These animals gain tremendous amounts of weight every year […]

Boredom’s Call to Action, for Better or Worse

October 1, 2022 — Boredom is unpleasant for a reason – our brain wants action from us. It is a signal that, whatever we’re doing, something isn’t right. We’re not engaged with it or we’re not finding meaning in it. We need to change course. So one way or another, we will respond to that discomfort prompting us for […]

Small Change Theory? Don’t Count On It

May 30, 2022 — It’s pretty easy to find advice to make small changes that stick if a person wants to lose weight – or keep from gaining weight. It certainly sounds authoritative when a PhD psychologist offers up small change theory as a winning strategy: “When you focus on just a couple of small changes at a time, […]

Obesity Care: Taking a Longer View of Weight History

April 22, 2022 — In obesity care, the longer view of a weight history is essential to understanding a person’s journey of health. It’s all about the trajectory of a lifetime. For example, on Reddit a person reflects on their own history: “My current weight is the most I’ve ever weighed. At the moment I’m at 174 lbs. Before I […]

Uncaring Healthcare That Fuels Obesity

April 9, 2022 — What is healthcare when providers don’t provide care for a chronic disease and, in fact, make it worse? That is a glimpse of the care people mostly don’t receive for obesity. In a study of adults with overweight or obesity, Beini Lyu and colleagues found that use of anti-obesity medicines was rare. But instead, prescribing […]