Today I decided to watch the documentary "Killer at Large, Why Obesity is America's Greatest Threat" and write about it here. One of the biggest killers in America is obesity and health problems caused by it. It raises our healthcare costs and lowers our life expectancies.

The documentary opened with a TWELVE YEAR OLD GIRL getting liposuction. TWELVE. YEARS. OLD. How sick is that? I can't decide what's worse, the fact that her parents let her get it or the fact that she needed it so badly in the first place. At 12 years old she was 218 pounds. I am 22 years old and she weighed more than I do now.

She later gained back 40 pounds and went to get a lapband. Surgery is clearly not the answer, despite what the media and celebrities portray.

This generation is the heaviest in American history. It's entirely possible that our life expectancies are going to be lower than the generation before us, which hasn't happened before.

It goes back to what the last documentary I wrote about spoke to: in our past, we were hunter gatherers. The food that we ate naturally was low fat and low calories, such as fruits and veggies. When we found something that had a high caloric/fat content, we ate a lot of it because we didn't have a lot of calories available to us. We were heavily active and had to struggle to survive; everyday was about finding that day's food. We are programmed to eat calorie dense food because it's not abundant in nature.

That instinct is still in us. It's one of the causes of obesity. The cheapest and most heavily advertised foods are the highest in calories/fat and the lowest in nutrition. Our bodies are geared towards consuming as much fat and calories as we possibly can. Everyone makes a big deal about exercising more and being more active, but we can't get healthier or lose weight simply by moving more. We have to change the way that we eat. The country itself has to change to save us all.

Did you know that corn is in almost everything you eat? Even things that you wouldn't suspect. Corn itself is good for you; high fructose corn syrup is not. It's refined corn sugar that is highly addictive and causes you to gain weight. The sugar in pop causes your brain to release cortisol (stress does big time too, which is another cause of obesity) which causes you to maintain more fat. It tells your brain to eat more and your stomach to store more fat.

Some of the big causes of obesity are:

• Stress
  
• Genetics
• Social Factors- Junk food is cheaper, so the more poor you are, the higher the probablitly of you being obese.
• Lack of Sleep
• Depression
• Calorie Dense Foods
• Fast Foods
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Unregulated Food Marketing
• Food Additives
• Sedentary Lifestyles
• Food Addiction
• "Feel Good Factor"- people eat food to "feel good" (It's part of the addiction aspect. It takes more and more sugar to get the same high.)

We're an obese society that's obsessed with being thin, which can be just as unhealthy when taken to extremes. Anorexia and bulimia are extremely dangerous. You have to eat to lose weight. If you don't eat enough, your body stores even more fat and lowers your metabolism. That and you can die. These sorts of eating disorders are addressed far more than obesity.

Obesity can be described as a closeted epidemic. People don't want to face what they are: obese. Based on my BMI, I am obese. I am a part of the problem. I didn't choose the name CFC by accident- I am a fat chick. I am working right now to change my lifestyle so that I can be healthier and thinner and when I have children one day, I will try to provide that life for them- something I never got. The movie talked a lot about childhood obesity. It use to be that children were active and relatively disease free. Now they just sit there and develop diabetes.

I'm blogging about this because I think that it's very important to change our lifestyles. I love my curves, but I want to have curves AND be healthy. I want to be a part of the solution, not the problem. If we each just take the time and put forth the effort, we can make a better life for ourselves and for the next generation.

<3 - CFC

I've decided that I'm going to start watching some food/diet documentaries and summarizing them here. I'm learning things and then sharing them with you. Yesterday,  I watched "Hungry for Change" by John Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch. It was a very interesting documentary about food and diet in America.

DIETS
"68% of US adults are overweight or obese." -Journal of The American Medical Association

"1/3 women and 1/4 men in the US are on diets" (Colorado University) and 60 billion dollars a year is spent on diet and weight loss products.

The true definition of a diet is the food that a species habitually eats to survive. The way we see a diet is a way to deprive ourselves to lose weight and look better. We go on these diets to look better on the outside instead of getting healthier from the inside out.

Diets aren't usually very healthy and don't achieve lasting results very often. "Up to 2/3 of those on a diet regain more weight than when they started." -UCLA  You can burn off 10 pounds with sheer force, but your body will take that to mean that there's a famine and will want to gain the weight back. We as mammals are programmed to store fat. It goes back to when we were hunter/gatherers and could potentially have to go a long time without food. We're programmed to store fat and programmed to want to eat fats and sugars and high calorie foods; it's a survival instinct. Going on diets goes against our survival instincts because it just makes our bodies think that we're starving and so they try to hold on to more fat and make us even hungrier.

Where we've gone wrong nowadays is that EVERYTHING is full of fat and calories. We're not eating food anymore, we're eating food like products that are dressed up and formulated specifically to be delicious and addictive. We're overeating, yet starving to death at the same time because we aren't getting the nutrients that we need. We live in a world of abundance and we just don't know how to cut down.

If we were to eat food that is our species would have habitually eaten BEFORE all the processed foods, we wouldn't have to even think about our health. The directors heavily promote eating "clean" and only eating natural foods, which is very good for you.

If you look at modern day hunters/gatherers in other countries (those people that still eat what their ancestors did), they consume a high amount of nutrients and a low amount of calories. If you look at us, we eat a high amount of calories and a low amount of nutrition. We've also moved from being active to working indoors and sitting for hours in artificial lighting. We live in an unnatural state eating unnatural food.

When you aren't getting enough nutrients (such as by eating only bad for you foods), your body becomes hungry because it's trying to get you to eat the nutrients it needs. This could explain why I've been less hungry lately; I'm taking vitamins (because I just can't seem to eat enough veggies) and I'm eating lots of vegetables and way less junk food. Now I'm not as hungry because I'm getting what I need. I'm losing weight just by being less hungry.

Another issue with dieting is that depriving yourself only make you want something more. We should turn "I want this, but can't have it" into "I can have this, but I don't want it."

SUGAR, SWEETENERS, AND MSG
"The average American consumes more than 150 pounds of sugar and sweeteners each year." -USDA The average American consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar A DAY.

Sugar, as the movie put it, is the cocaine of the food world and they have a very valid point. The white sugar that we're use to seeing is just the highly refined form of sugar, just as cocaine is highly refined. Sugar can be very addictive as well. People can understand an addiction to alcohol and drugs, but not to food. Sugar can give you a high and, just like drugs, you get use to it and you need more to feel it.

When you buy fat free products, they usually pump the product with carbs which turn into sugar which makes you fat. Fat doesn't make you fat (unless you eat TONS of it, I suppose), sugar does. Sugar is in A LOT of foods, not just candy. It's in bread, pasta, tomato sauce, and potatoes.

"MSG and free glutamates are used to enhance flavor in about 80% of all processed foods." -Raymond Francis M.SC.MIT

MGS makes you want to eat more. It excites the part of your brain that controls fat production and increases it. In lab studies, where they need an obese mouse to test, they feed it MSG so that it will fatten up quickly. When you eat MSG, that's what it's doing to you.

When you drink soda pop, which contains the artificial sweetener aspartame and high fructose corn syrup, it makes you momentarily happy. When that feeling goes away, you need more. Artificial sweeteners cause you to lose bone density, can cause neurological issues, and corn syrup promotes diabetes. "Research studies suggest that artificial sweeteners contribute to weight gain." - Yale Journal of Biology. A lot of studies that have said artificial sweeteners have no negative side effects were funded by the industries that use them. Biased much?

Corn syrup is the number one source of calories in the US and is also highly addictive. It's like jet fuel for your body if your body were a car. You wouldn't put jet fuel in your car, would you?

VISUALIZATION
The movie talked about how visualization can help you improve your life. A doctor in the movie tells people to look at themselves in the mirror twice a day and say "I accept myself unconditionally right now." When you love yourself, you become more positive and you become healthier. Visualization is a way to communicate to your subconscious what you want.

JUICING
Totally not getting into this. Juicing vegetables and fruits delivers the nutrients better and can help you be healthier and lose weight. However, I can't afford a juicer or that many fruits and veggies. If you can, go for it.

MY TAKE AWAY
After watching this documentary, I really want to start eating more natural; they make a lot of good points about the benefits of eating naturally. However, it's also expensive. I think I'm on the right path now by starting to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into my everyday diet. I want to start including more meats as well, like fresh chicken, turkey, and fish. Also beef because I love beef.

I also like their advice of "when you're stressed, don't eat." Mental and emotional stress make you eat more and you can't tell that you're full or eating too much because you're upset.

I suggest watching this movie. It's very informative and I actually really liked it.

Remember people, you want a lifestyle change, not a diet. :)

<3 - CFC