Regular readers may recall previous posts on the widespread reporting of weight loss in surgical studies as ‘excess weight loss’ – a meaningless number based on outdated concepts of ‘ideal weight’. In fact, not only is there is little correlation between the amount of weight lost and improvements in post-surgical morbidity and mortality but there [...]

This past week has been hellish, if you’ve been reading my blog you know why. I won’t relive what has happened, and talk more about what is going to happen as I keep trekking along this journey to better health. Taking the Good With the Bad 1.) I didn’t get chosen for mamavation – Okay [...]

Earlier this week, the influential healthcare information firm Close Concerns published a rather lengthy interview regarding my take on a wide range of issues related to the future of obesity management. The interviews were conducted by Joseph Shivers, Vincent Wu, Lisa Vance, and Kelly Close, who certainly challenged and stimulated my thinking with their well-informed [...]

This past week I’ve began a new health ritual on my way to eating better, living better, feeling better for myself.  I joined the #mamavation boot camp to be a mamavation mom.  Oh yeah if you love me send Leah a message:  @bookieboo I vote for @rantsnrascasls to be a #mamavation mom.  I’ll love you [...]

Green tea is made from Camellia Sinensis leaves and is one of the most beneficial drinks for our health. It doesn’t involve a hard oxidation procedure and therefore retains its healthy properties. It has multiple benefits like protecting our heart against malfunctioning, eliminates the risk of few types of cancer and raising the metabolic rate [...]

Low calorie diets, usually consisting of a variable period of formula diets, followed by variable periods and intensities of follow-up, have been around for decades.
While there is little doubt that such diets can help patients lose large amounts of weight in a short period of time (rivalling or even exceeding what is seen with bariatric [...]

Cut the calories–and the crap

Yesterday, on the first day of the 1st Caribbean Obesity Forum, I presented various talks on obesity – its economic implications, its assessment and the need for firmly anchoring obesity treatment in primary care.
Interestingly, several family doctors in the audience raised the interesting issue that here on Barbados (as probably on other islands) many patients [...]

As regular readers will be well aware, our recent publications on the Edmonton Obesity Staging System clearly show that BMI alone is a rather poor measure of mortality risk associated with excess weight.
Thus, according to our analyses of the NHANES population, 20-30% of obese individuals (Stage 0/1) had virtually no increased mortality risk even over [...]

Earlier this week, I posted on an analysis of the SCOUT trial, in which we found a clear and significant ‘dose-response’ relationship between moderate weight loss (3-10 Kg) and reduced cardiovascular outcomes (including death) in the over 10,000 high-risk participants in this trial.
So far, the only data showing a reduction in overall mortality with weight [...]

Faithful readers will recall previous posts on the results of the SCOUT trial, in which we studied 10,744 overweight or obese subjects (≥55 years) with pre-existing cardiovascular disease and/or type 2 diabetes mellitus, who received the anti-obesity drug sibutramine plus weight management during a 6-week lead-in Period, before randomisation to continue on sibutramine (N=4906) or [...]

You’ve been through some tough times with me here these past few years. My mother’s illness and death, the breakdown of my marriage, my return to full-time work and moving to a new home with my girls. I would say…

One of the brochures that was freely distributed at the recent Journées annuelles de santé publique (Québec) meeting I spoke at yesterday in Montreal, is a pamphlet produced by the Québec Public Health Agency (with funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada) on the potential risks of dieting.
The pamphlet notes that:
• 1 woman out [...]

By Heather Scoffield, The Canadian Press OTTAWA – Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq will be announcing new rules for so-called energy drinks this morning. She is concerned about teenagers and tweens consuming too much caffeine by downing drinks such as Monster and Red Bull. The drinks were the subject of a panel of experts who [...]

Technology can make losing weight easier and more enjoyable – here’s how.

My kid’s back-to-school night was this week. I was in a bright room of forty adults sitting on little weenie chairs, looking like the little lost five-year olds we sent into the unknown two weeks ago. The teacher stood at the front of the class and talked to us.
We went over the new-new-new grading system [...]

Believe it or not, occasionally I talk about exercise as well as diet in this column. I know it’s kind of the elephant in the room as far as American health goes, and it’d be nice to say that a good diet alone can solve any problem, but that’s simply not the case. I abhor [...]

I never expected to meet the man I was going to marry at age 20. Marriage is something we think we’ll contemplate when we’re older and wiser, like 25. After dating my husband Joe for a month or two, I pretty much knew this was the guy I wanted to be around for the rest [...]

One of the basic tenants of behaviour change is goal setting. A popular framework for this is S.M.A.R.T., which stands for Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.
But does goal setting in behaviour change actually work?
This question was addressed by CON-Bootcamper Erin Pearson from the University of Western Ontario (London, ON), in a paper just published [...]

One of the intriguing (some would say frustrating) aspects of analysing large datasets is that this often raises more questions than it answers.
This is certainly the case with one of the studies on the Edmonton Obesity Staging System, published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism this week.
The paper looked at data from the Aerobics Center [...]