Just two days after nearly 100 tornados sent a devastating storm through Wichita, the city’s mayor, Carl Brewer, carved out time to welcome a gale-force of health to KU Medical School. Dr. Wayne Andersen, co-founder of Take Shape for Life and author of Habits of Health, visited Wichita last night to talk to the local medical community about creating health, not reacting to disease. It’s all part of his Take Shape for Life initiative.

“Wichita has some ugly [health] statistics,” said event coordinator Deb Floodman, who introduced the mayor. Running on only a few hours of sleep, he took notice that Deb glanced his way way when she made the statement, and laughed when responding “I’m working on it!” He welcomed Dr. Andersen, his message, and the potential it has to help reform one of the most unhealthy, overweight cities in the country. A starting point is to educate Wichita’s doctors so that they can properly care and treat thousands of overweight and obese patients.

“Our patients are patched up, but not fixed,” said Dr. Andersen at the top of his lecture. He shared some startling statistics about health and obesity, including how obesity recently overtook smoking as the most costly health problem. He explained our biological history and how we’ve gotten ourselves in to the mess we’re in because “we’re eating way too much food,” and the wrong kinds at that. And he talked down a $68 billion diet industry that “doesn’t work,” only exacerbates a seemingly endless problem.

Watch our exclusive interview from the event, then read on to learn more about Take Shape for Life.

Read Full Post >

The quality of Americans’ diets has declined since last year. From fruit and vegetable consumption to exercise, and even smoking, Americans are reporting worse habits than this time last year.

A Gallup poll of 1,000 Americans that was released last week reveals the 55.9 percentage of Americans reported eating five or more servings of fruit and vegetables at least four days out of a week. Last May, the poll found that number to be 57.8 percent.

The poll concluded that produce intake is specifically down among Hispanics, young adults, seniors, and women compared to 2010.

In 2010, 68.2 percent of people said they “ate healthy all day yesterday.” This year that number dropped to 66.2 percent. That percentage translates to 4.5 million less Americans eating healthy this May.

Read Full Post >

Many Americans begin the month of January on a diet. After a week of eating greens, practicing cleanses and blending protein shakes, the second week of January is when we fall off the wagon and succumb to chocolate cake cravings. The third week in January? Stop dieting for good and commit to a balanced diet that you can maintain throughout the year.

Healthy Weight Week (Jan. 16-22) was created by health professionals to help us “celebrate healthy living habits that last a lifetime and prevent eating and weight problems, rather than intensifying them, as diets do.”

Instead of extreme dieting, Healthy Weight Week promotes healthy lifestyles for both children and adults of every size. Healthy Weight Week is meant to help people develop reasonable, rational diet and exercise patterns that they can feel good about.

How can you celebrate Healthy Weight Week? Francie Berg, chairwoman of 2011 Healthy Weight Week told the Monterey Herald, “Normal eating means having a healthy relationship with food that is natural, trusting and flexible.”

Read Full Post >

Dr. Wayne Andersen, the Medical Director of Medifast and the chief architect of Take Shape for Life, joins us again this week as a featured guest blogger. His book, Habits of Health (releasing this month), provides the knowledge and support needed to achieve optimal health. He also manages his own health-minded blog. You can see Dr. Andersen here at DietsInReview.com every Tuesday during July! If you missed last week’s post about Optimal Health, view it now.

I am a firm believer in using the portion-controlled meal replacements. It is crucial to eat every three hours, and portion-controlled meal replacements (PCMRs) make this process a lot easier.

In my upcoming book “Habits of Heath,” I talk about PCMRs being the “Healthy Fast Food for the Twenty-first Century.” Our lives are so busy that is it often difficult to actually sit down and plan meals. Most of us just go, go, go until we are so hungry and hypoglycemic that we make the impulse decision to pull over and grab some McDonalds.

This is the same mentality that’s given rise to the fast food phenomenon and the “Golden Arches,” which is now a $129 billion a year business. Look at it this way, if you were driving your car on a long road trip, wouldn’t you make sure your gas tank was full before you started your journey? Well, then why do so many people get in such a hurry that they make the decision to skip breakfast, or worse, call grabbing a Starbucks Coffee and pastry eating breakfast?

We can’t afford to wait to fuel our bodies until they are screaming for food and then make the decision to fill up at an unhealthy fast-food fueling station. This is where PCMRs come in, a convenient alternative to support my “Habits of Health” program.

Medifast makes the PCMRs that I use successfully, the company I am currently medical director for. With nearly thirty years of efficacy and safety, Medifast’s meal are backed by research studies from prestigious institutions such as Johns Hopkins.

Here are a few of the reasons I am an advocate of PCMRs:
· They help you control calories.
· They offer plenty of variety.
· They’re cost effective.

What are your experiences with PCMRs?