Tag Archives: weight gain

The Sex Talk is Easier Than the Weight Talk For Parents

Parenting is the most difficult, most important job you are ever going to have. While there are many happy, feel-good moments, there are also painful and uncomfortable moments; it’s all part of being a parent. Traditionally, one of the most uncomfortable moments for a parent was thought to be the discussion of “the birds and the bees”. While talking to your kids about where babies come from may be difficult, a recent study has revealed that there is another conversation that parents dread more.

The idea of talking to your kids about maintaining a healthy weight is so frightening for parents that more than 20 percent admit to never broaching the subject at all, according to research from the Raising Fit Kids study, a partnership between webMD and Stanford University. Compare that to 5 percent who are uncomfortable discussing alcohol, drugs, and smoking; 10 percent of parents who are uncomfortable discussing sex; and nearly 25 percent of parents who are uncomfortable discussing weight and health. It is probably the same 20 percent of parents that seem to believe that the pediatrician should be the one responsible for discussing health and weight with their children.

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Posted on September 21, 2023 by Brooke Randolph

Miss Mexico Gains Six Pounds and Loses her Crown

Six pounds of weight gain will strip you of a pageant crown. At least, this is the claim Cynthia De La Vega, former Miss Mexico, is making.

La Vega, a model, was crowned Miss Mexico in September at the Nuestra Belleza Mundo pageant. La Vega placed second in the pageant, qualifying her to represent Mexico in the Miss World contest. However, she will no longer be doing so as she was officially withdrawn last month. Pageant organizers claim the 19-year-old had a “lack of dedication and discipline.”

La Vega voiced a different opinion as she was interviewed on Good Morning America recently. She explained that her weight gain of six pounds is what lead to her dismissal. La Vega further explained in a press conference how her coach has had her on a specific diet during this season. The entire ordeal has left the model very upset and she admits to feeling deceived.

This isn’t the first time pageant contestants have made these claims. Recently, 17-year-old Domonique Ramirez’s crown was revoked too. Ramirez was a sash bearer for Bexar County, Texas. Ramirez also claims that she was dismissed due to weight gain. Again, the pageant officials stated other reasons for their decision.

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Posted on August 13, 2023 by Lacy

Vikings’ Bryant McKinnie is Too Big for Professional Football

Bryant McKinnie was a professional football player for the Minnesota Vikings. An offensive lineman, McKinnie signed a contract extension in 2006 that was worth almost $50 million dollars. It looked like McKinnie would be a long-term Viking, but he was recently cut from the team’s roster after he showed up to training camp, weighing almost 400 pounds. This is 65 pounds more than he weighed last year, and evidently, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Judd Zugland, a reporter at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, said that McKinnie’s weight gain was the “final straw” that allowed the team to dismiss him from their ranks. In the past, McKinnie has had several off-field issues such as being involved in a brawl in 2024 and was a key player in the infamous “Love Boat incident”, a sex party on a rented boat involving many members of the team, which was very embarrassing for the franchise.

In a sport where the players have to be big enough to clear the field for their teammates to score touchdowns and have to stop the other team from rushing the ball, shouldn’t bigger always be better? Surprisingly, no. These NFL linemen have to walk a thin line between being big but still athletic, and so overweight that it slows them down. It seems that the Vikings determined that McKinnie had finally gotten too big, and was no longer an asset to the football team.

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Posted on August 5, 2023 by Health Buzz

Are Environmental Toxins Causing Your Weight Gain?

By Steven V. Joyal, MD, VP of Medical & Scientific Affairs at Life Extension.

The simplistic “eat less, move around more” solution for weight loss cannot explain the sharp increase in the rise of obesity over the past 30 years. The disturbing fact is that toxins in our environment are hidden causes of weight gain.

Our children represent the future. Yet their future may be irrevocably mortgaged by toxic chemicals that seep into our food supply, lying in wait to trigger damaging effects. The startling truth is that infant obesity rates have skyrocketed 73% over the past 30 years (since 1980), and an important, yet under-recognized culprit, is the presence of special types of environmental toxins in our food supply.

Certain hormone-mimicking chemical toxins in our foods act on genes during development that literally create more fat cells. These toxic endocrine disruptor chemicals change our metabolism to hoard calories as body fat. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that mimic the effects of certain types of hormones in your body to promote weight gain.

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Posted on July 23, 2023 by GuestBlogger

Americans are Snacking Their Way to Weight Gain

For many people, snacking can be part of a healthy diet that can lead to effective weight loss. However, according to research presented at the 2024 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Food Expo, snacking, as well as beverage consumption outside of a regular meal, continues to increase among Americans, accounting for more than 25 percent of calorie intake each day.

Between 1977 and 2006, snacking in the American diet has grown to constitute “a full eating event,” or a fourth meal consisting of about 580 calories daily, according to Dr. Richard D. Mattes, Ph.D., professor of foods and nutrition at Purdue University.

While overall, snacking has increased, “there has been a significant increase in the amount of calories consumed through beverages,” said Mattes.  Beverages are estimated to account for 50 percent of all calories consumed through snacking.

According to Mattes, many Americans don’t equate beverage intake with calorie intake so they are less likely to count these calories or make up for the excess by cutting back elsewhere in their diets.

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Posted on June 29, 2023 by Maris

Food Sensitivity: The Surprising Reason You’re Gaining Weight

By Steven V. Joyal, MD, VP of Medical & Scientific Affairs at Life Extension. Life Extension has been a pioneer in funding and reporting the latest anti-aging research and integrative health therapies while offering superior-quality dietary supplements to consumers.

Feeling bloated? Gaining weight but don’t know why? Food sensitivity might be the cause. Chronic, low-level inflammation due to food sensitivity is a little-appreciated contributing factor for unwanted weight gain, along with other health conditions like fatigue, fluid retention, headache, and skin conditions.

Before we review how sensitivity to certain foods can make weight loss difficult, we need to understand the difference between food sensitivity and food allergy.

Classic food allergy occurs when certain foods trigger the immune system to release large amounts of the chemical histamine. When large amounts of histamine flood the body, a potentially life-threatening condition called anaphylaxis can occur. This potentially fatal condition causes the throat to swell, potentially cutting off the air supply to the lungs.

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Posted on June 26, 2023 by GuestBlogger

Avoid Packing on the New Relationship Pounds

Dating – either as a single person or half of a committed couple – can make for a very exciting time. When you think of going on a date, most often you might envision dinner, maybe a movie, or coffee and dessert.

New relationships always seem to pack on the pounds. Many experts say it is because once you are comfortable, happy and secure in a relationship, you are not as diligent about your physical appearance. While in the beginning it is a nice feeling to be able to relax in a new and exciting relationship, a few months in, you may look in the mirror and wonder where all your hard work went.

Especially in the summer, dating can often involve activities and foods to keep your temperature down, but summer time dating doesn’t have to be a body buster. Instead of curling up with your cutie in a dark room, some ice cream and watching TV, here are some terrific summer date activities that will help you keep your cool, but won’t leave you running for a mu-mu to cover up your not quite ready for close up body.

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Posted on June 16, 2023 by Carmen

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution: Lessons Learned

After the disappointment in the last episode of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, it was a wonderful surprise to see that the administrator of West Adams High had hopefully found a loophole, so that Jamie and his kids could indeed cook for the entire school, at least as an assembly. The administrator said that the school was based on experiential teaching and preparing kids for college, so healthy eating fit right into their principles. In the mean time, Jamie continued his role of instructor, trying out different subjects beyond culinary arts.

In math class, Jamie taught about calories and consequences by allowing students to choose a snack between soda, chocolate bars, pizza, or oranges. He then allowed them to experience weight gain using weight backpacks. Jamie then took his math students out to the track having the students walk around the track enough times to burn the calories of what they had just eaten.

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Posted on June 14, 2023 by Brooke Randolph

What You Need to Know About Natural and Artificial Hormones

Carolyn Dean, MD, ND is a health pioneer with over 25 years of experience with women’s health issues. She’s authored 22 books including “Future Health Now Encyclopedia”, “The Complete Natural Guide to Women’s Health, “Hormone Balance”, “Menopause Naturally”, “The Yeast Connection and Women’s Health”, “IBS for Dummies” and “The Magnesium Miracle”. She is the medical director for the Nutritional Magnesium Association. For more info you can access a Free 32-page guide to the benefits of magnesium written by Dr. Dean at the non-profit www.nutritionalmagnesium.org.

Hormones have an important role to play in every woman’s health and well-being. When hormone levels fluctuate, this can cause weight gain and affect your ability to lose weight as well as affect mood, sexual desire, fertility and ovulation.

The female hormones estrogen and progesterone are produced by the female body in specific ratios every month. An imbalance of either can cause menopause and all the symptoms associated with it. These hormones are influenced by certain factors such as nutrition, diet, lifestyle, exercise, stress, emotions, age and ovulation. When estrogen and progesterone dance to the tune of stress and chemical disruption, they can fluctuate wildly and then gradually decline as we age.

Aging brings its own “blessings”—wisdom and memories—but also the possibility of weight gain and declining organ function—thyroid and adrenals, especially.

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Posted on June 8, 2023 by GuestBlogger

Leggings Unfairly Blamed for Causing Weight Gain

Rumors are circulating that leggings can make you fat. If this were true, I wouldn’t be able to leave my house without the assistance of a team of paramedics cutting a hole in my wall.

Can clothes really make you gain weight? We all know that clothes making you thinner is a big marketing gimmick right now, however true it may or may not be (*cough* still not convinced *cough*), but some are saying tight, stretchy pants like leggings and jeggings (a cross between jeans and leggings) can make you pack on the pounds.

If you’re wondering what the possible connection between the two could be, join the club, but London physiotherapist Sammy Margo told the Daily Mail that leggings cause muscles to become “lazy”. “They hold in and support the quadriceps (thigh muscles), buttocks and core muscles in your tummy, and do the job the muscles are supposed to do,” Margo has said. “As a result, the muscles are allowed to relax and switch off, so when we reveal our bodies for the first time as summer approaches, they are not as svelte or firm as they otherwise would be,” she added.

Um, what?

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Posted on May 5, 2023 by Kelly

How To Recognize Signs of An Eating Disorder

Is there someone in your life whom you worry might have an eating disorder? Do you know how to recognize symptoms of an eating disorder? While some symptoms are obvious, some are simply exaggerations of healthy behaviors taken too far.

One obvious symptom of an eating disorder is weight loss or weight fluctuation; however, this does not apply to everyone with an eating disorder. Meghan Bennett, Recovery Care Specialist of Selah House, LLC reminds us that “someone struggling with bulimia or ED NOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) may not experience much weight loss, may be over weight due to binging and purging, or not lose weight rapidly or drastically. The stereotype is that someone must be severely underweight or losing rapidly to have an eating disorder is misleading. Nearly half of the clients I work with in an inpatient ED facility have to do little to no weight restoration.”

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Posted on April 28, 2023 by Brooke Randolph