Overweight children tend to become overweight adults, so prevention of weight-related illness and disease should begin during childhood. If your child or teen has a weight problem:

• Seek professional advice from your doctor and a registered dietitian. Together, determine an approach that’s right for the nutritional and developmental needs of your child.
• Encourage physical activities your child enjoys and make it a family affair. When role models are active, kids are usually active, too.
• Avoid referring to foods as “good” or “bad.” Let your child know all foods fit into a healthful eating plan.
• Encourage your whole family to eat healthfully, not just your overweight child. Don’t make your child feel singled out.
• Fill your kitchen with healthy snack options such as cut fruit and vegetables and low-fat dairy products.

For more information on nutrition and healthy weight information for your child, visit the Nutrition for Kids and Teens and Healthy Weight sections.

Produced by ADA’s Public Relations Team

By Margaret Furtado, M.S., R.D.

Those super-heavy, “all-natural” loaves of bread may look and sound like they’re healthy, but their density signals that they probably contain more calories than most other loaves. Plus, they’re typically made with simple sugars like high-fructose corn syrup, dextrose, and maltose that will add even more calories.

If you’re watching your weight and wondering, “Can I eat bread?”–don’t despair. I’m here to tell you that you really can have your bread and eat it too without automatically putting on weight. There’s a simple rule–the weight and starch connection–that will help you choose a loaf wisely.

What’s the weight and starch connection?

Starches, such as breads and baked goods, usually contain a standard amount of calories by weight, about 80 calories per ounce, whereas heavier breads are going to contain a higher calorie count. Most slices of regular bread weigh about an ounce (80 calories); a single slice of dense, “all-natural” bread, however, might weigh 2 or even 3 ounces (160 to 240 calories).

So if you’re looking for a low-cal bread, start by assessing how much the loaves weigh. Pick up two different loaves, holding one in each hand; the one that is lighter is generally going to be the one with fewer calories. It’s that simple.

Muffins and most other baked goods, like banana breads and plain cakes, contain roughly 125 calories per ounce. So if you pick up a “healthy,” “all-natural” bran muffin and it feels like a brick, consider the caloric consequences: A standard 4-ounce muffin weighs in at around 500 calories, almost the equivalent of 7 slices of standard bread.

Remember to “weigh in” on breads and starches before you buy them–it’s easy, free, and could perhaps save you a ton of calories in the long run!

ATLANTA – How much money would it take to get you to lose some serious weight? $100? $500?

Many employers are betting they can find your price. At least a third of U.S. companies offer financial incentives, or are planning to introduce them, to get their employees to lose weight or get healthier in other ways.

“There’s been an explosion of interest in this,” said Dr. Kevin Volpp, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives.

Take OhioHealth, a hospital chain whose workforce is mostly overweight. The company last year embarked on a program that paid employees to wear pedometers and get paid for walking. The more they walk, the more they win — up to $500 a year.

Anecdotal success stories are everywhere. Half of the 9,000 employees at the chain’s five main hospitals signed up, more than $377,000 in rewards have already been paid out, and many workers tell of weight loss and a sudden need for slimmer clothes.

But does will this kind of effort really put a permanent dent in American’s seemingly intractable obesity problem? Not likely.

“It’s probably a waste of time,” said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

Brownell’s assessment is harsher than most. But the science seems to back him up.

Only about 15 to 20 U.S. studies have tried to evaluate the effect of financial incentives on weight loss. Most of those studies were small and didn’t look at whether such measures worked beyond a few months. None could make conclusions about how much money it takes to make a lasting difference for most people.

Perhaps the largest effort to date was an observational study by Cornell University. It looked at seven employer programs and the results were depressing: The average weight loss in most was little more than a pound.

Sure, there are grounds for optimism. Smaller experiments report some success. And other studies have shown promising results against tobacco. One study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, co-authored by Volpp, found that cash rewards of a few hundred dollars nearly tripled quit-smoking rates.

One problem: “Food is more difficult than tobacco,” said Steven Kelder, an epidemiology professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health.

While cigarettes can be addictive, people don’t need to smoke to live, and advertising and clean-air restrictions curb tobacco’s presence. People must eat, however, and sugary drinks and fatty snacks are everywhere, Kelder and others said.

Health officials lament that more than two-thirds of American adults are overweight and one-third obese, and lecture on fat’s role in deaths from diabetes, heart disease and other conditions.

In a campaign led by Michelle Obama, federal officials are emphasizing several approaches to slim the nation. Food companies, worried about potential anti-obesity rules and laws, have publicly endorsed the first lady’s message and recently pledged to offer lower calorie foods, change recipes and cut portion sizes.

While watching to see if foodmakers follow through, some experts remain fascinated by the idea of using economics to get people to eat better and exercise. Sales taxes have been used to drive up the cost of cigarettes and drive down smoking rates, and Brownell and others are pushing for similar taxes on soda.

Companies tend to be more interested in incentives than disincentives like taxes. But the perks they attach to wellness programs come in a variety of forms and sizes.

Some reward employees just for having a health evaluation or simply enrolling in a class — whether they complete it or not. Others require measurable weight loss or exercise achievement, sometimes structuring it in a contest along the lines of “The Biggest Loser” TV show.

Some companies offer money, some vacation trips. Some refund the cost of Weight Watchers classes. Others reduce health insurance premiums.

The value of rewards can range from measly to thousands of dollars. Hunches and human resources budgets — not research — often drive decisions about financial incentive details. Companies are quite frank about it.

OhioHealth set the maximum reward for its step-counting program at $500. “It just sounded right to us. We thought that would be a big enough number to help people think twice,” said Lisa Meddock, OhioHealth’s benefits manager

IBM rewards employees for doing 12-week Web-based health programs. They offer $150 per program completed because there was a feeling that was the right amount to get people involved, said Dr. Joyce Young, the company’s wellbeing director.

Companies “are making best their guesses about what might work and giving it a shot,” said Robert Jeffery, a University of Minnesota professor. He’s been experimenting with financial incentives and weight loss since the 1970s and is perhaps the most veteran researcher in the field.

If companies asked the experts, they might be counseled to make their incentives more dramatic — more cash or a bigger penalty in premium costs.

Psychologists say people are more motivated by the risk of losing their own money than by a chance they’ll win somebody else’s. Applying that idea to weight loss, some studies have set up refundable bond systems: Volunteers sign a contract agreeing to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date or they forfeit their deposited money.

One of the seven companies in the Cornell study offered a refundable bond option to employees. Its average weight loss was nearly 4 pounds. That doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s almost twice as much as the average weight loss at companies that paid quarterly rewards.

A 2008 University of Pennsylvania study found that after 16 weeks people who put their own money on the line lost about a pound more, on average, than people who got cash from others.

Besides employers, a few companies market refundable bond contracts to people trying to lose weight. Using a twist of black humor, a company called StickK.com, sends the forfeited money from those who fail to an organization the customer despises.

“The most popular is the George W. Bush Presidential Library,” said Sam Espinosa, a company spokesman. “Last year, we sent $6,000 to them.”

Such programs are voluntary. But critics say that while they may work for a few very motivated people, they may not be effective for most.

Some employers worry that if they go too far, it may seem coercive and even grounds for a lawsuit. “They’re very nervous about doing anything that might seem invasive,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health.

Many employers believe the wisest approach is to use financial incentives as just one facet of a broader effort to create a culture that makes it harder to be lazy and gluttonous.

Kevin Acocella illustrates their point.

Acocella, a 35-year-old IBM marketing manager, was 5-feet-9 and a chunky 185 when he decided two years ago to enroll in the company’s web-based fitness program.

IBM’s worksite wellness program is often called a model, with roughly half of the workforce earning at least $150 a year for taking part. But Acocella failed twice.

The money got his attention. But the problem, he said, was the culture he was in. “In New York City it was, ‘What restaurant can we go to, or what bar can we go to?’”

Early this year, Acocella moved to the IBM office in San Jose, Calif. “Here it’s, ‘What activity can you do, and what can you go see, and how can we figure out a way to not take a car there,’” he said.

Acocella had lost 9 pounds in the three months he’s been there. He recently signed up for the IBM reward program again, but this time it’s incidental to his new active lifestyle.

“The real issue was getting myself in a program I could actually do and could keep up with. I don’t think those things swing on a dollar,” he said.

Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by eight years.

The results, based on brain scans of 94 people in their 70s, represent “severe brain degeneration,” said Paul Thompson, senior author of the study and a UCLA professor of neurology.

“That’s a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that attack the brain,” said Thompson. “But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control.”

The findings are detailed in the online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping.

Obesity packs many negative health effects, including increased risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers. It’s also been shown to reduce sexual activity.

More than 300 million worldwide are now classified as obese, according to the World Health Organization. Another billion are overweight. The main cause, experts say: bad diet, including an increased reliance on highly processed foods.

Obese people had lost brain tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes, areas of the brain critical for planning and memory, and in the anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions), hippocampus (long-term memory) and basal ganglia (movement), the researchers said in a statement.

Overweight people showed brain loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, white matter comprised of axons, and the parietal lobe (sensory lobe).

“The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean, and in overweight people looked 8 years older,” Thompson said.

Obesity is measured by body mass index (BMI), defined as the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters. A BMI over 25 is defined as overweight, and a BMI of over 30 as obese.

The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for Research Resources, and the American Heart Association.

You don’t have to spend much time with teenagers to know that the average adolescent would rather devote an afternoon to sitting in front of the TV, computer or video-game console than working out in a gym. And in recent years, as physical-education classes have been progressively cut from cash-strapped public-school curriculums, teens have had even more time to lounge, slouch, hang out or do anything but break a sweat.

It’s no surprise, then, that obesity rates among U.S. youngsters have skyrocketed, tripling from 1976 to 2004. Public-health experts and obesity researchers attribute the trend in part to kids’ increasingly sedentary lifestyles. As teens spend more and more time anchored before a screen — burning fewer and fewer calories each day — they’re storing more of that unused energy as fat. Hence, the ballooning rates of obesity. (See TIME’s video “Obesity and Social Networks.”)

That’s precisely why the findings of a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health came as such a surprise. The report, published last week in the journal Obesity Reviews, finds that the amount of physical activity among U.S. teens has not in fact changed significantly over the past two decades, even while that population has gotten heavier.

“On the one hand, we have seen the obesity-prevalence increase, but we don’t see a decrease in physical activity,” says Dr. Youfa Wang, an associate professor at the Center for Human Nutrition at Hopkins and lead author of the study. “This suggests that physical activity is not a good explanation for the increase in prevalence of obesity.”

In simple terms, body weight is a reflection of the balance between two variables: the calories a body takes in and the calories it burns off. As far as the average U.S. teen is concerned, the study suggests, the culprit behind weight gain is not a decrease in exercise but an increase in consumption.

Of course, that doesn’t mean teens are getting adequate exercise: Wang analyzed data from nearly 16,000 high school students between the ages of 15 and 18, who took part in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s longitudinal Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, about their physical activity. He and his team found that in 2007, only 34.7% of teens met federal physical activity recommendations, which call for activity strenuous enough to cause heavy breathing for a total of an hour a day for five or more days a week. (See nine kid foods to avoid.)

But the survey also found that teens’ overall rate of daily exercise had not changed much since 1991, when the study sample was first asked to report their participation in gym classes in school and their level of physical activity at home. The percentage of teens attending daily gym class has stayed relatively steady since 1991; on average, the yearly change in the proportion of students participating was less than 1%.

The percentage of ninth- through 12th-graders getting adequate levels of moderate physical activity — exercise such as slow bicycling, fast walking or pushing a lawn mower, which did not make participants break a sweat — also changed very little, from 26.7% in 1999 to 26.5% in 2005, the latest year for which the data was available. Yet obesity rates continued to rise.

So does this mean that exercise isn’t important in controlling weight? As tempting as that conclusion might be, Wang and other health experts say that’s not exactly what the new data show. The findings may say less about the role of exercise by itself than about the other variable in the weight equation — diet — and the interaction of the two. While exercise may not contribute directly to weight loss, it is critical for maintaining a healthy weight, since it helps calibrate the balance between energy taken in and energy burned off.

“The data is too gross, and too general to assume that [exercise doesn't count],” warns Dr. Janet Walberg Rankin, a professor in the department of human nutrition, foods and exercise at Virginia Tech. “We need to have a dual approach to weight involving both activity and diet. I would hate for people to take away from this study that activity has nothing to do with weight.” (See pictures of what makes you eat more food.)

Rankin points out that even small changes in a person’s energy balance can have a significant effect on weight. Studies have shown that eating just 10 to 20 extra calories per day — that’s one peanut M&M or one tortilla chip — that don’t get burned through activity can result in a 2-lb. gain on average over the course of a year. “But none of the methods we have now are accurate enough to pick that up,” says Rankin.

She advises people to take the new data with, well, a grain of salt. The information was collected by asking participants to self-report their exercise habits, which is a notoriously unreliable method — people are not very good at gauging their activity accurately. Add to that the fact that questionnaires are not refined enough to pick up small changes in people’s energy intake and expenditure, and it’s obvious why the findings are informative but not game-changing. “These data are useful in highlighting who should be targeted — the most difficult cases,” says Rankin. In the new study, that group includes African-American girls, who got the least amount of exercise among all adolescent groups.

Still, the study highlighted some encouraging trends. For instance, the percentage of teens who spent more than three hours a day in front of the TV dropped from 1999 to 2007, from 43% to 35%. While Wang acknowledges that students may simply be substituting computer or other sedentary screen time for television-viewing, he notes that it’s still a trend in the right direction. Far from being an excuse not to exercise, Wang sees the data as a wake-up call for parents and teens.

“The important message is that compared to the recommendations for physical activity, the physical activity of American adolescents is still at a very low level,” says Wang. “We still need to make a greater effort to promote physical activity. Even if it does not explain obesity, it has many other beneficial effects.”

From DrMirkin.com

If you think you’re too thin and want to gain weight, don’t just sit on the couch and stuff yourself with food. Weight gain should always be in the form of muscle, not fat.

To build muscle, start a weight-bearing exercise program. Go to a gym and learn how to do the weight training circuit. Build up those arms and legs! As you exercise, your appetite will respond to meet your needs. It only takes 15 extra grams of protein a day to build a pound of muscle a week — so you really won’t need to eat a lot more.

(Remember that muscle weighs more than fat and also burns calories while fat simply stores calories. Think of a car engine versus a car trunk — Lori)

It’s never too late to start a weight training program. Underweight older people look and feel frail because they have lost most of their muscles, not because of lack of fat.

If you are inactive, you lose muscle mass to the point where you are unable to carry out daily activities — climbing stairs, getting up out of a chair — because your muscles are not strong enough to move the weight of your own body.

Avoid adding fat to an already weak body. Overweight older people often have the double burden of weak muscles AND 20, 40 or more extra pounds to lug around with them every day.

Once you are exercising regularly and gaining muscle, your appetite will probably increase and you will eat more without any conscious effort. Most muscular people and heavy exercisers will eat plenty to meet their calorie needs. The training tables for football teams are piled high with every kind of food.

Don’t worry if you lose a lot of weight because of a temporary illness. You will recover your appetite and return to your normal weight, gradually, without overeating.

However, unexplained weight loss is a serious concern and should be reported to your doctor.

You’ve heard about them in email forwards and late-night infomercials, but these five “miracle diets” just plain don’t work. From straight-up starvation to a steady diet of boiled cabbage, here are diets to steer clear of:

#1 The Grapefruit Diet

The claim is that eating grapefruit with protein triggers a “magical” fat burning process. We’re always wary of the word “magic” in regards to a diet, and this one is no exception. While grapefruit is loaded with vitamin C and fiber and is a great way to start your morning, there’s no evidence to support its reputation as a “fat-burner.”

#2 Juice Diets

While a liquid diet has the potential to starve your body into shedding excess pounds, a super low-calorie diet like this one kicks your metabolism into survival mode. Unsure where the next meal is coming from, your body hangs on to the nutrients it has, slowing your metabolism, and burning fewer calories overall. The minute you switch back to solid foods, there’s a good chance those pounds will “magically” reappear.

#3 The Apple Cider Vinegar Diet

We love apple cider in a vinaigrette for a salad, but the recommended 3 tablespoons of it before meals in this diet is so high in acidity, it might actually damage your stomach lining. Other than possibly making you too nauseated to eat, we couldn’t find any evidence that it aids in weight loss.

#4 The Cabbage Soup Diet

This diet claims you can lose 10 or more pounds by eating just cabbage soup, but this is largely just water weight. Those pounds will likely reappear the minute you return to eating a normal, balanced diet that includes solid food. To add insult to injury, followers of this diet reported light-headedness, weakness, and trouble concentrating. In other words, you need more than a bowlful of cabbage soup to power you through your busy life.

#5 The Maple Syrup Diet

While we think maple syrup is a miracle food when it comes to pancakes and waffles, it’s not what you would call a weight-loss miracle. That infamous cocktail of maple syrup, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper reportedly melts the pounds right off your body, but this is little more than a starvation diet. With almost no protein, this diet will likely cause you to lose metabolism-driving lean muscle, resulting in a slowed calorie-burning capacity. And that’s not a miracle any of us is interested it.

If you want to lose weight, there’s no magic potion or concoction to get you there. A healthy, balanced diet and regular exercise is the only way to shed pounds.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The number of Americans with diabetes will nearly double over the next 25 years, rising from 23.7 million in 2009 to 44.1 million in 2034, according to a study by the University of Chicago.

In the same period, medical costs associated with treating the disease will triple from 113 billion dollars to 336 billion dollars, even without a rise in the incidence of obesity, according to the study published in the December issue of Diabetes Care.

“If we don’t change our diet and exercise habits or find new, more effective and less expensive ways to prevent and treat diabetes, we will find ourselves in a lot of trouble as a population,” said lead author Elbert Huang.

The study said its projections, despite being significantly higher than other recent estimates, may be too conservative because they assume the rate of diabetes and obesity, a risk factor for the disease, will remain stable.

In 1991, scientists projected that the number of Americans with diabetes would reach 11.6 million people in 2030, but some 20 years before that date the figure is already double that.

The study’s authors acknowledge that obesity rates have risen steadily in past years, but predict that they will level out over the next decade and then decline slightly from the current 30 percent level to around 27 percent in 2033.

The US health program Medicare, which provides health care for older Americans, spends some 45 billion dollars a year on diabetes treatment for 8.2 million people.

By 2034, the number of people with diabetes covered by the program is expected to rise to 14.6 million, according to the study, with associated costs rising to 171 billion dollars a year.

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A compelling statement of mission.

A clear need for intercession.

Our collective encouragement and educating of others is mandatory in order to reduce the national consequences of overeating.

Click the photo at left to open a page with a gripping Powerpoint presentation and you’ll see why inaction is no longer a responsible choice.

Powerpoint presentation