New TV Shows Center Around The Pleasantly Plump

The latest TV lineups feature some shows about everyday people who are a bit overweight. Some focus on their lives as normal people and others are about the struggle to lose weight. As reported in USA today recently, here are three good looking picks.

Dance Your Ass Off
Yes, that's actually the name of the show! Airing on the Oxygen network at 10 pm eastern time on Mondays, 12 overweight men and women are coupled with professional dancers who teach them new dances each week. If you've ever watched the hit series "Dancing With The Stars" you recall how the celebrities are always shocked at the amount of physical work they are doing and never hesitate to happily tell us how many pounds they've lost during the time they spend on the show.
On this show the contestants are judged not just on how well they dance, but also on how many pounds they lose each week. The show does not emphasize any dieting, letting viewers and contestants alike watch as the dancers whittle their weight off through the joy of dancing.

More To Love
Another "bachelor"-type show, this reality TV program features a husky single man looking for love with 20 pleasantly plump ladies from which to choose. Premiering July 28 at 9 pm Eastern time on the Fox network, it should be interesting to see if the personalities of what the programming director calls "regular people" can be as entertaining to watch as the model-type ladies who are usually featured on The Bachelor .

Ruby
This show is entering its second season on Sundays on Style at 8 pm Eastern time. Ruby is a real woman from Savannah, Georgia who has been losing from her starting weight of nearly 500 pounds. She lost nearly 100 pounds last season and has changed her focus on what it's all about. "It used to be 'let me lose weight so I can start eating pizza and ice cream' [now it's about] the rest of my life". We see her life struggles and successes and meet her supportive friends. Her actual weight by the end of season two is not revealed, but it looks like she loses another hundred pounds! Congratulations Ruby--We'll be cheering you on.

Let us know which show YOU become addicted to and we'll have a chat here!

Having a Happy Life

My sister in law is here visiting and shared a great story with me this morning that I want to pass along. We were talking about how wonderfully happy life is when you surround yourself with positive and happy people. Likewise, you may not realize what a downer it is when some of your friends and family are negative, pessimistic, whiny, and even make a regular habit of insulting you. Some days we just know we are in a bad mood after being in certain company, or we aren't looking forward to spending time with a particular person, but can't put our finger on why. Maybe we know a person makes us miserable but feel obligated to spend time with them because they are a friend or family member.

I mentioned to my sister-in-law how coaching teaches us to identify toxic relationships and remove these people from our lives, or at least let them know that we will not tolerate certain behavior from them. So she told me the story of The Black Walnut Tree.

"Several years back I had a little garden I tended in my back yard," she told me. "I wanted to grow some herbs and vegetables, but I was not successful with the plants. Every year the plants wouldn't survive. Every new year I resolved to try again; to figure out what I was doing wrong and find new ways to be successful in my gardening endeavors. But it never worked. I was frustrated year after year at my failure to grow these plants and see them through the season.

"One day someone pointed out to me that above the garden plot there was a large black walnut tree. 'Did you know that nothing will grow under a black walnut tree?' they asked me. 'There are toxins from the tree that will kill the plants'.

"All these years I wondered why I couldn't get the herbs to grow. I thought it was something I was doing, some way that I had failed them. But it was the black walnut tree that was poisoning their environment.

[this is really true: see more info at http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1148.html)

"I had an epiphany then: The same thing was going on in some of the relationships I was trying to cultivate. I didn't enjoy how I felt around certain people and kept wondering what I was doing wrong and what I could do differently. I suddenly realized that in many of these cases there was a toxic environment and it was not coming from me. I was putting forth an effort to nourish and tend and give love, but without the proper atmosphere and climate, my efforts would not matter.

"Now my friends and I recognize there are people we come across who are negative forces in our lives. We call them Black Walnuts and we realize they are literally toxic to us. If people in our lives bring us down despite our attempts to communicate positively with them, it is time to free ourselves from the relationship".

This holiday weekend, take an assessment of the friends and family your are spending time with. Are you having a fabulous weekend like I am with my loving friends and family? Or are you dreading having to go through with your dinner plans this evening because of the people in whose company you will be? Consider that you are not obligated to be in the presence of people who are offensive and insulting. Think about how pleasant your life might be if you decided to avoid certain people (after letting them know what behaviors you are not willing to tolerate).

Know how happy your life can be if you make a conscious effort to seek the company of those who are positive, optimistic, giving, and caring. Please share with us your stories about someone in your life who makes you happy, or how much better your life is after having cut off a toxic relationship.

And be sure to stop by my sister-in-law's great blog Sophie, seriously; she's really smart and introspective and you can spend all day reading her stuff!

More News On the State of Obesity in America

Thanks to Rosa Sow for forwarding this video with more details on the state of obesity in America! http://www.newsy.com/videos/the_obesity_epidemic

The American Annual Obesity Report Results

The nation's annual obesity rankings are in, and the report does not bode well for either the health of many Americans, or the purse of medicare.

Over the past year obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states. The rates did not decline in any state. This report does not even count how many adults are merely overweight, with a body mass index (BMI) between 25 and 30, but focuses on those who are obese which means having a BMI greater than 30. An example of a person with a BMI over 30 would be someone who is 5 feet 7 inches tall weighing over 190 pounds.

The results: Mississippi wins again (or loses) as the state with the most obese adults having 32.5% in this category. Other states with more than 30% of the residents obese include West Virginia, Alabama, and Tennessee. The states with the fewest obese population are Colorado , Massachusetts, and Connecticut coming in with 20%, 21.2% and 21.3%, respectively.

The connection to medicare is the fact that the rate of obesity continues to rise in the 55-64 year old population group. Health economists once believed that obese seniors would weed themselves out of the high medical costs by dying younger of obesity-related illnesses. Now, however, it appears they are living as long as non-obese adults, living sicker, and costing a lot in healthcare dollars. The average obese older adult spends an average of $1400-$6000 more in healthcare per year than other adults.

Is there any good news? Well, last year the incidence of obesity rose in 37 states. Maybe we are starting to see a slower gain and this would be a welcome trend.

The Move To Fat Acceptance

For several decades there has been a movement, and even an association--The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance--to influence our society to stop being prejudiced against fat people. Yes, they call themselves fat, and there's a carefully thought out reason for this: labeling a person as "overweight" or "obese" lends more credence to the condition because of the clinical and scientific sound of the title.

Now with over a full third of the American population obese (previously clinically defined as 20% above their ideal weight, and now as have a body mass index [BMI] of 30 or above) more and more are joining the movement. Many women claim that being fat--even weighing as much as 300 pounds--is not what makes them unhappy; dieting is what makes them unhappy. They want to stop obsessing about their weight and their eating and stop experiencing the prejudice and public gawking they suffer because of their size. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) works to have laws passed to prohibit discrimination in the work place and act to intervene when children who are overweight are bullied at school. Indeed, these fat women assert that the number on the scale or the size of their clothing or the way that they look should not be what determines their acceptance in society, their happiness, or their self-worth. They point out that mental well-being is important just as physical health is, and that they suffer greatly from being singled out, stared at, and experiencing self-loathing because they don't meet society's ideal standard of weight.

For those who believe this is just an excuse for these fat people to eat what they please, most of the member of the fat acceptance movement say they are concerned about their health and do keep up regular exercise and sensible eating. They go to their doctors for physicals and evaluations and many can honestly say that their blood pressure, cholesterol, and sugar levels are normal. They also point out the dangers of yo yo dieting, which are well documented.
While the people who are part of the fat acceptance movement say they are happier accepting their weight as it is, feeling great in every aspect of their life--including dressing well and finding worth in their family, relationships, and career insteadof their size--health professionals still acknowledge there is no denying that extra weight will more than likely contribute to chronic illnesses as these people age. No one can say being one hundred pounds overweight is good for you.

Another stand I take issue with is the NAAFA's statement that "society believes fat people are at fault for their size". I believe people are at fault for their size. As long as an overweight person attributes their weight to an outside factor--whether it's their metabolism or genetics, the fast food industry, or their destiny--taking the responsibility away from themselves is being in denial. This greatly reduces the chance they they will ever assume responsibility and do something to take control of their situation

Lose Just 10% for Better Health

For people who are very overweight, the journey to get the extra pounds off seems never-ending. The good news is, you don’t have to worry about getting all the way down to your ideal weight in order to experience many of the benefits of weight loss. Evidence is now clear that losing just 10% of your body weight can reap huge benefits to your health! This means if you weigh 230 pounds you don’t have to shoot for an all-or-nothing 50, 60, or even an 80 pound weight loss (depending on your height and gender). Just 23 pounds off your frame can ease the pressure on your joints and your back, help your blood glucose response, bring your blood lipid levels down, and reduce your blood pressure. Of course, the more you lose, the better the results, but it’s a huge relief for most people to hear that a little bit of weight loss will do a whole lot of good.

Think about what 10% weight loss is for you. If it doesn’t sound very significant to drop 20-something pounds, check out this perspective to see how it would feel if you could instantly feel the difference. Imagine yourself carrying a 25 pound bag of dog food or cat litter: what a relief it is to get it out of the car and into the house and finally put it down. If you had to carry it up a flight of stairs it feels even more heavy!

So how differently would you feel, how much easier would you move, how much less out-of-breath would you be if you weighed 25 pounds less?
Think about carrying a gallon of milk in each hand: they weigh a total of 16 pounds. It doesn’t sound like a lot to lose from your body, but it feels like quite a struggle if you have to carry this 16 pounds around for a while. What would it be like to drop 16 pounds and go about your day without this extra weight?

The struggle to lose weight can feel like a long, uphill battle. You can make it easier by acknowledging all of your successes along the way. Pat yourself on the back for every five pounds you lose and set a new, smaller goal today. Work your way to losing just 10% of your body weight over the next six months. You’ll find it much easier and less stressful to reach a goal you’ve set, and reap the benefits that resonate throughout your mind and body!

You Should Know About This

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a watchdog organization who blows the whistle when they find out about hugely unreasonable amounts of fat, salt, and sugar hidden in common foods and restaurant menus. They are a highly reputable group of physicians who work to let the public know what's really in movie popcorn, fast foods, and other sickening surprises. There are "extreme" cases they report here (http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/x-treme_eating.pdf) of many restaurant entrees providing nearly 1500 calories per order. The group pushes for healthier dining to be available for consumers by doing things like doing away with trans fats, and mandating labels on restaurant menus just like packaged foods must have by law.

Here is a video telling you more about them and how you can subscribe to their newsletter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEk0Be_to8I

Watch for them in the news and listen up for the best information from these pros who are looking out for your best interest!