Dr. Phil’s Weight Loss Advice

Dr. Phil gives his overweight family members the same advice he shares with the Weight Loss Challengers.

Support Group:
Make sure to surround yourself with supportive people to help you get through the day. Key 7 in The Ultimate Weight Solution refers to your “Circle of Support.” It is important to have like-minded people around you — if you are trying to lose weight you want to be with people who are also trying to lose weight or have already reached their goals and can give you some insight. Also, make sure you don’t hold your support meetings at places that serve food — no restaurants!

Use Portion Control:
Stick to eating foods that are High Response Cost and High Yield foods. If you are going to a party during the holidays, eat something before you attend so you are not as hungry when you arrive and are less likely to pig out on junk food.

Don’t Label Yourself:
You are not a victim or a patient. Dr. Phil’s sister Deanna says, “I already knew so much was wrong with my health, I didn’t want to find out how much more was wrong with me.” You have to start thinking of yourself as a healthy person if you are to become one. Dr. Phil told his overweight nephew Tony, instead of being a passenger in life, start doing something about your problem.

Separate Body Image From Self Image:
Make sure not to confuse the reflection of your body image with how you really are as a person.

Exercise:
Do a full-body work out three times a week if possible. You want to do a mixture of cardiovascular and weights and choose something you like to do like swimming or biking.

Don’t Blame Your Genetics:
Issues with your weight are usually only 20% related to genetics. Your lifestyle makes you the way you are and this lifestyle becomes your identity. Dr. Phil tells his sister Brenda, “Blaming your weight on the family being overweight is an excuse.”

How to Lose Those Love Handles

Although fat is the source of vitality our body needs, there is a very important difference between having enough or more than enough fat in the body. Of course there is nothing which adds more fun to watching a movie with loads of fat-rich snacks in front of you, but you are becoming fatter in the process. The next step is to spend waking nights thinking of which exercises to do to do away with the love handles, so what should you do? Love handles are those extra tires of flesh oozing out round your waist near the brim of your pants which not only look bad but are unhealthy too, so you need to make them go away. If you make exercise part of your daily routine, it can help you keep an attractive body.

But then losing those extra flaps is a daunting task requiring labor and discipline.

Source: lose weight

Kids Lose Weight with Behavioral Management Plans

Most effective programs include techniques to improve diet, exercise habits

Behavioral management weight loss programs can help obese school-age children and teens lose weight or prevent further weight gain, according to a new report.

Approximately 17 percent of American children and teens are obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI, a measure of weight in relation to height) at or above the 95th percentile for their age and sex. Children who are obese are at increased risk for asthma, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, sleep apnea, psychological harm, and other weight-related problems.

In a new study released Sept. 29, researchers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) evaluated methods for weight loss and the prevention of further weight gain in children and teens.

The researchers found that the obese children who completed weight management programs weighed between 3 pounds and 23 pounds less, on average, that obese children who were not involved in such programs. This weight difference was the greatest among the heavier children and those who were enrolled in more intensive programs.

“Effective prevention is the best way to stem the childhood obesity epidemic, but we also have to find effective and healthy ways of helping our children and teens who already are obese get to a healthier weight,” AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy said in an agency news release.

The medium- to high-intensity behavioral management programs investigated in this study met for more than 25 hours, usually once or twice a week, for six months to a year. The most effective programs included techniques to improve diet and exercise habits. Some programs focused on goal setting, problem solving, and relapse prevention.

“Obese children and their families may be discouraged about their weight, but our review found there are programs out there that can help kids to either gain weight more slowly as their grow or, where appropriate, lose weight,” Dr. Evelyn Whitlock, associate director of the AHRQ-supported Oregon Evidence-Based Practice Center at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland, said in the news release.

In one of the studies included in the report, 8- to 16-year-old obese children who participated in a high-intensity behavioral management weight loss program gained less than one pound on average, compared with their obese counterparts who were not participating in the program and gained almost 17 pounds.

The researchers also found that intensive, health care-based programs were generally more effective than school-based programs. And, prescription weight loss drugs and weight-reduction surgery were both associated with weight loss in obese children and teens, but they were also associated with adverse side effects, while there were no reported harms from behavioral intervention alone.

Source: http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/10/03/behavioral-management-plans-help-kids-lose-weight.html