Help For Obese Eating Disorders
Help For Obese Eating Disorders
As this website is part of the fight against obesity an interesting question has to be asked:
Is obesity an eating disorder?
It is simplistic to imagine that the entire problem of obesity is, or is not, an eating disorder. One of the few consensus views in this field is that obesity is a multi-factorial entity in which the aetiology and treatment are unlikely to follow a single unified line of reasoning. Yet it is probable that an understanding of the nature of eating disorders, and their relevance to subgroups of the obese population, may assist our understanding and treatment of this complex problem.
Let’s take just one step back just in case you just landed on this website as many viewpoints exist concerning the whole obesity subject and the fact is globally so much has changed lets look briefly at the following:
Physicians consider a person to obese if s/he weighs more than 20% above expected weight for age, height, and body build. Morbid or malignant obesity is weight in excess of 100 pounds above that expected for age, height, and build.
In recent years, the definition of expected, or healthy, weight has expanded to include more pounds per height in view of research that links reduced mortality (longer lives) with more weight than is currently considered fashionable.
For example how many Americans are obese?
A 1999 study reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that sixty-one percent of adults in the U.S. are overweight. A breakdown of that figure shows that thirty-five percent are slightly or moderately overweight, and that twenty-six percent are obese or grossly overweight. In addition, about thirteen percent of U.S. children are overweight or obese.
Another government study published in October, 2002 indicates that thirty-one percent of the American public is obese. It further suggested that fifteen percent of young people between 6 and 19 are seriously overweight. Even ten percent of toddlers between 2 and 5 are seriously overweight. The study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (10/9/02).
A more recent study indicates that about 31 percent of American teenage girls and 28 percent of boys are somewhat overweight. An additional 15 percent of American teen girls and nearly 14 percent of teen boys are obese. (Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, January 2004) Causes include fast food, snacks with high sugar and fat content, use of automobiles, increased time spent in front of TV sets and computers, and a generally more sedentary lifestyles than slimmer peers.
The prevalence of overweight and obesity is increasing in all major socioeconomic and ethnic groups, including kids and young adults between 25 and 44. (David Sacher, U.S. Surgeon General, December 2001)
What are the causes of obesity?
- Consumption of more calories than are burned through work, exercise, and other activities. In the late 1990s, Americans ate about 340 more calories per day than they did in the mid-1980s, and about 500 more calories per day than in the 1950s. The extra food was often some kind of refined carbohydrate (white flour or sugar) combined with fat, saturated fat in the unhealthiest cases. (University of California Wellness Letter, January 2002)Americans are eating out more often than ever before. Restaurants and fast food outlets offer much larger portions than they used to. The amount of home cooked food eaten with family around the dining room table has decreased, but portion size has increased. Food prepared at home offers the easiest way to make healthy choices about fat, sugar, salt, etc., but in today’s world convenience often wins out over a home cooked meal.
- Inexpensive, tasty, plentiful food and a combination of passive leisure pursuits, sedentary lifestyle, TV, time spent on the Internet, and other “activities” that require little or no physical effort.
- Attempts to numb or escape emotional pain and distress. For various emotional reasons, including loneliness and depression, some people eat when their bodies do not need food.
- Diets and prolonged caloric restriction. When people try to make the body thinner than it is genetically programmed to be, it retaliates by becoming ravenous and vulnerable to binge eating. Ninety-eight percent of dieters regain all the weight they manage to lose, plus about 10 extra pounds, within five years. Yo-yo dieting repeats the cycle of weight loss followed by ever-increasing weight gain when hunger ultimately win.
- Some individuals are obese because of specific biological problems such as malfunctioning thyroid or pituitary glands. Others may have physical problems or disabilities that severely limit or prohibit exercise, strenuous work, and other physical activity.
- Studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine (March 2003) indicate that certain genetic processes are an important and powerful underlying factor in the development of obesity and binge eating.
- In addition, new research suggests that there is a biological link between stress and the drive to eat. Comfort foods — high in sugar, fat, and calories — seem to calm the body’s response to chronic stress. In addition, hormones produced when one is under stress encourage the formation of fat cells. In Westernized countries life tends to be competitive, fast paced, demanding, and stressful. There may be a link between so-called modern life and increasing rates of overeating, overweight, and obesity. (Study to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Author is Mary Dallman, professor of physiology, University of California at San Francisco [2003].
- Researchers believe that in most cases obesity represents a complex relationship between genetic, psychological, physiological, metabolic, socioeconomic, lifestyle, and cultural factors.
- We have so much information today that it is fare to say it is not all about just eating but about our lifestyles this is the area we need to focus on.
Miscellaneous factors.
- The children of overweight parents are more likely to be overweight than the children of thin parents.
- If friends and family members offer comfort in the form of food, people will learn to deal with painful feelings by eating instead of using more effective strategies.
- Poor folks tend to be fatter than the affluent.
- People living in groups that frequently celebrate and socialize at get-togethers featuring tempting food tend to be fatter than those who do not.
- Even artificial sweeteners are implicated in weight gain and obesity. In a recent study at Purdue University, rats that were given artificial sweeteners ate three times the calories of rats given real sugar. Researchers hypothesize that the engineered sweeteners interfere with the body’s natural ability to regulate food and caloric intake based on the sweetness of different foods. (“A Pavlovian Approach to the Problem of Obesity,” International Journal of Obesity, July 2004)
- Some individuals eat great quantities of food, exercise moderately or not at all, and never seem to gain weight. Others walk past a bakery and gain ten pounds. No two people are the same, and no two obesity profiles are identical.
