There has been a great deal of discussion in the media about anorexia and bulimia being very significant eating disorders faced by our population. Of that, there can be no doubt. However, a far more common, yet much less discussed eating disorder is binge eating. Whenever it’s mentioned it is often confused with bulimia and there’s no clear agreement from the medical community as to what the symptoms are to correctly diagnose the disorder in the first place. It’s no wonder binge eaters are left to fend for themselves with no real support to deal with this very real problem.
In a recent study conducted by researchers at the Harvard University affiliated McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, it was revealed that binge eating affects roughly 2% of men and 3.5% of women. While binge eating has been known to occur in those of average weight, it generally is more common amongst people who are obese.
So does eating a tub of rocky road ice cream in one sitting classify you as a binge eater? Not necessarily. There are a host of signs associated with binge eating, however to truly qualify as a binge eater one must experience at least 3 of the following conditions more than 2 times a week:
Eating an unusually large amount of food in one sitting.

• Eating when not hungry.
• Eating when depressed.
• Eating alone to avoid having your eating disorder discovered.
• Eating quickly and keeping it as a secret.

According to the National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) roughly 1 in 5 obesity sufferers engage in binge eating. The NEDIC adds that there are two primary reasons for binge eating. One reason is that people over-eat in an effort to feel more comfortable in otherwise uncomfortable situations. Another reason is that “they are very hungry because they have been dieting or restricting their eating in some way.”
While binge eaters may eat a lot of tasty foods and snacks that are high in fat, sugar and salt, those foods generally lack the proper nutritional value (vitamins and minerals). As a result, they become prone to various illnesses including certain types of cancer, heart disease, depression, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol levels and a risk for type 2-diabetes. Generally those with binge eating disorders work hard to control their overeating, going so far as to avoid social settings so that they’re not in situations where they are prone to eating until they are uncomfortably full.
This feeling of being uncomfortably full is one shared by many who have sought the assistance from Slimband. The Slimband solution works to ensure that this feeling of being full occurs long before you ever have a chance of overeating. The minimally invasive Slimband surgical procedure ensures that your stomach sensors more quickly experience the feeling of being full and subsequently causes you to control your eating. By controlling binge eating, you not only greatly reduce your risk of suffering from any of the associated diseases, but you also give yourself the opportunity to once again resume your life and not miss any more of the social scene.

After being banded for amost 4 years now, I came to the conclusion that it’s finally time to say goodbye to the “Big Girl Inside”. What’s the “Big Girl Inside”? Everyone who has ever struggled with weight has one. Either  Big Girl or  Big Boy.

Now granted, that “Big Girl Inside” is that voice that keeps me humble. It’s the voice that reminds me that I need to take care of my body. That I need to laugh more, dance more and slow down and appreciate my body and it’s changes, every step of the way.

However, The Big Girl Inside can also work against me. It is the voice that sometimes whispers bad things in my ear and tells me that I’m not good enough, not slim enough, not pretty enough.  That Big Girl inside compares me to others and often sees me much differently than others see me.

A year after my procedure with Slimband, I found myself walking into a clothing store and heading straight for the plus size section. The lady currently working on the floor approached me with an akward smile as I piled clothes over one arm and headed to the change room. “Excuse me Miss, did you realize you were in the plus size section”..I looked at her like she had two heads. Of course I did. I had been shopping in this section practically my whole life. That was the first day I realized that I needed to say goodbye to “The Big Girl Inside”. With a weightloss of over 50 pounds at that point, I decided not only was it time to let her go, but it was also time to let go of the idea that I was living in a body that just didn’t exsist anymore.

So that night, it went. The clothes, the bad self talk, the attitude. . I am walking a lot taller, making more eye contact, smiling confidently at those that smile at me,but, there will always be the good part of the “Big Girl Inside” that will keep me who I am today.

And does she sometimes come back to visit me? Sure! Every time I walk past a plus size store I remind myself to keep walking.

Rachael.

DWTS star Niecy Nash and her dancing partner

 When is a joke funny and when does one call “foul”?

The April 26^th episode of Dancing with the Stars crossed that fine line, when judge Len Goodman made some comments about contestant Niecy Nash’s physique.

After performing the tango with her partner (using a cookie as a prop), Len commented, “the Argentine tango is the story of a lady of the night trying to get money from the man … you were trying to get food… It’s obvious that you’re an enthusiastic eater — so why wouldn’t you go for a cookie?”

Niecy did not seem to be offended, saying she has always been proud of her body and her “jiggly parts.” As a regular panelist on The Insider, she even confirmed she took it as a joke because she is after all a comedienne.

However, the viewers of The Insider do not seem to agree. On their online poll, 55% of viewers think that Len Goodman went too far, while only 45% think it was okay.

What do you think?

Sit-ups, push-ups, treadmill, elliptical; you may have even watched all those aerobics DVDs and taken a boot camp class or two. And still, your weight stays the same. So why is it that we still obsess over the idea of exercise? Are we just sweating out our energy, time and money for nothing?

A recent article published on Canada.com highlighted this confusing exercise debate. According to Eric Ravussin, director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Centre (Pennington Biomedical Centre, Baton Rouge), the amount of exercise that would make even a dent in weight loss is more than what most people are capable of, especially when one considers obese individuals. He pointed out that even if the benefits of exercise are numerous (better cardio, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, among others), it’s just not the best way to beat obesity because of two reasons: First, this group hates exercising, and second, one would need to exercise a whole lot to burn the calories he or she takes in anyway.

Other experts disagree of course. Dr. Robert Ross, a Queen’s University physiologist, says that we should consider the type of fat that exercise can help reduce – “visceral fat” (i.e., the more dangerous kind of fat that wraps around the liver and other organs). “Exercise mobilizes more fat from the abdominal region… you get none of that if you just calorically restrict.”

Which leaves overweight and obese Canadians (a whopping 61% of us!) confused. To exercise or not to exercise? That is the question. The answer?

Balance.

If you don’t exercise, reduce your calories. If you do exercise, don’t overcompensate for the calories you just burned (which a lot of people mistakenly do). As Montreal surgeon, Nicholas Christou says, “If you run a [42 kilometre] marathon, you’ll burn 3,000 calories… one can easily eat that in a sit-down meal in a good restaurant. Easily.”

Basically, allow yourself to move and reap the benefits of exercise. But as Christou concludes, “The key is calorie reduction. Exercise is icing on the cake.”

Just don’t eat a whole cake afterward, of course.

New research from the University of Penn State suggests that depression can lead to obesity in teenage girls, but not boys. Both boys and girls experience a spike in the stress hormone cortisol when depression and anxiety are running high, but for some reason only the girls gained weight in response to higher stress levels.

Some scientists believe this gender difference may be due to physiological and behavioral differences in how boys and girls (and men and women, for that matter) cope with stress. Girls release estrogen and tend to have emotional sessions of binge eating, while boys don’t.

Previous studies have shown that obese people are more likely to be depressed, and vice versa. It’s not hard to see why an obese individual who suffers from low self-esteem, poor body image, and frustration over their failed weight loss attempts would be prone to depression. Imagine being an overweight teenage girl with the added stress of feeling “unpretty” on top of all the usual trials of adolescence.

If, as this study shows, depression precludes obesity in young women, healthcare providers should treat this mood disorder before the depressed girls become obese women who are prone to emotional eating in response to any stress in their life.

Young women who find they’re reaching for food every time they’re anxious or depressed may want to look into stress management techniques like meditation, aerobic exercise, or journaling. If that doesn’t help, and your weight and the emotional eating seem to be getting out of control, recognize that you need support and talk to someone about a permanent solution.

As discussed in an earlier post about being a couch potato, sitting for one added hour each day increases risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity regardless of how much you exercise.

The average adult spends up to 90 percent of their waking hours doing one of the most inactive things you can do - sitting. Standing still, chewing gum or fidgeting all burn more calories than simply sitting and walking would be considered really hard work in comparison! As research shows, the ill effects of sitting go beyond a lack of caloric expenditure.

University of Missouri physiologists found that sitting results in metabolic changes at the cellular level. Levels of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, which is involved in how the body breaks down fat, drop after prolonged periods of inactivity. Low levels of lipoprotein lipase have been linked to heart disease and other health issues because of it’s role in fat metabolism.

The health effects of a sedentary lifestyle (sedentary comes from the Latin word meaning to sit) are well known and it’s time for the solutions to become common knowledge too. Combating “sitting syndrome” can be as simple as get up to from your desk every so often, just to give your derriere a break. To test the effectiveness of this simple remedy, researchers observed people who sit for many hours. They found that those who took frequent short breaks to stand up, stretch, or walk down the corridor had slimmer waists than their peers who didn’t uninterrupted their sitting with periodic activity.

With each passing year, we burn fewer calories as our body ages and metabolism slows. Most of us fail to compensate for this effect by eating less food, but a little more time spent doing anything but sitting could make up for that. Find out more about about how non-sitting, non-exercise activities can translate into weight loss and get off your chair!

Slow down, savor your meals and you may even shed a few pounds. According to a new study published in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, taking longer to eat a meal results in a greater release of hormones that signal feelings of fullness or satiety.

In this study, 17 healthy men volunteered to eat a little over one cup of ice cream (675 calories) in random order on two different occasions. Sometimes they gobbled it up in five minutes while in other sessions they made the treat last 30 minutes. After each session, the men rated their feelings of fullness and the researchers measured their levels of glucagon-like peptide-1 and peptide YY, two satiety hormones.

When the meal was stretched up to last 30 minutes, the men reported feeling fuller and showed more pronounced hormonal responses to the food. Eating too quickly stunted the release of satiety hormones. Subsequently, the 5-minute meal was less satisfying.

These findings support numerous recent studies which show how mindless eating can cause weight gain while eating at a delibrately slow pace can decrease portion sizes, cut down the number of calories consumed, and increase feelings of fullness.  It’s a win-win situation. When you slow down your eating, you can lose weight and enjoy your food more.

For more on this study, check out the Health section of the New York Times.

Let’s face it. Very few people in our society use food strictly as fuel for their daily activities. We eat for flavors. We eat for entertainment. We eat to alleviate boredom, fatigue, excitement or heartache. We eat to be part of a social event. We eat because advertisers spend millions of dollars seducing us into equating their food products with happiness, sex, excitement and other wonderful things. It’s no wonder that we use food to soothe and satisfy a vast array of human needs – we hunger and crave lots of things that are not food.

Hunger is an incredibly complex phenomenon that we experience in many areas of our lives. We hunger in our relationships if our emotional needs are not being met. We hunger for physical energy or for sensory stimuli if we are bored and in need of entertainment. A craving or hunger for food is not always a physical need for caloric intake brought on by low blood sugar.

To get to the root of your hunger try this quick exercise. Pause for a few minutes before you eat and think about how you know you are hungry. Write down everything you are feeling at that moment to help give you clues to what you are really hungry for. Then, brainstorm non-food related activities that deal directly with what you are feeling. For example, if you if want to eat because you’re tired, consider taking a nap. If you’re eating because you’re lonely, call a friend. If you’re eating because you’re stressed, take a bath or try some relaxation techniques.

To lose weight, we must eat less. However, if the focus is shifted away from food restriction towards getting to know our hunger cues and our real reasons for seeking food, eating less slowly becomes more natural and much easier to handle.

Repetition of behavior is comforting because it’s secure and familiar, and we like to know what to expect. This applies to all aspects of life including food.

We all have well-worn neural networks that get triggered when we see a food that used to be a regular part of our diets. Without conscious thought, your brain automatically says, “Eat it!” even though we want to avoid that particular food.

Then, the guilt and shame neural networks get triggered. And our brains knows how to lead us down that pathway, too. The reality is our brains are not in charge because they are simply following the well-worn path.

To change how you behave around food, you will need to create new neural networks. This is not as easy as following the same old path but you can do this using positive self talk.

Remind yourself that the discomfort you are feeling is temporary. Eventually your new patterns will overtake your old patterns and you will no longer eat on auto pilot. Visualize yourself digging a new path in your brain, a path that takes you away from life as an overweight person.

Forming new eating patterns in your brain takes more than three weeks because you are establishing a neural change, not just a behavioural habit . After several months of reinforcing new eating patterns the change will become permanent and the old impulses to eat poorly will be a distant memory.

A new study published in the February 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that morbidly obese teenagers who get laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding 10 times more weight than their equally obese peers who received diet and exercise plans for weight loss.

In this Australia-based study, half of the study participants underwent gastric banding surgery which involves placement of silicone ring under the top of the stomach to create a smaller stomach pouch thereby reducing the amount of food eaten. With the gastric band, the teens were asked to eat three small meals and exercise for 30 minutes each day. The other group recieved no surgery and were just counselled to eat less and exercise.

After two years, the teens who had surgery lost an average of 79 percent of their excess weight while those who tried diet and exercise alone lost an average of only 13 percent.

Study co-author Dr. Susan Sawyer was quick to point out that gastric banding is not a quick-fix for teenage obesity. Before proceeding with the surgery, both the teens and their parents were asked to consider the importance of following the recommended eating behaviors that go with being banded.

However, in light of the childhood obesity epidemic, these findings clearly indicate that gastric banding should be more readily considered as a safe and effective option for young people are obese and unsuccessful with the traditional means of weight loss. It’s a permanent solution to teenage weight issues without the emotional and physical consequences of weight cycling.

In addition to weight loss, the banded teens were healthier and happier with a higher quality of life than their peers who struggled with sticking to a diet and exercising.