| Weight anxiety a heavy burden
I RECEIVED SOME interesting feedback from the last column about teenagers and their focus on weight. It certainly shows that it's a topic that requires a lot of discussion, both in public venues as well as on the home front. Here are some of the highlights. Dear Joan: I have been reading your diet column on and off for a couple years now, with mixed feelings about it, but I especially appreciated what you said today about how dieting should be mainly about health. I'm 17, and spent the greater part of the last year recovering from anorexia, which I had had since about the age of 15 (long, long, long story). If I got anything good out of that experience it was that I realized that there are a lot more important things than numbers on a scale.
Nutrition and superstition
They say you are what you eat and when a Super Bowl championship hangs in the balance, those words carry even more weight.Here's what the American Dietetic Association says.Fueling a football game* The number of calories a football player needs depends on the position he plays and his training.* During two-a-day practices, football players need to eat about 5,000 calories per day. Some players need as much as 9,000 calories per day.* Per day, football players need more than 2.7 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight. During hard training, they may need 3.6 to 4.5 grams per pound of body weight per day. Good carbohydrate choices include whole-grain breads and cereals, fruits and vegetables.* Football players need 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. Good sources of protein are fish, chicken, turkey, beef, lowfat milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, nuts and soy.* Fat has its place.
Health Advocate Slams Approval Of Over-The-Counter Diet Pill
(February 8, 2007)--A health research advocate is calling the government's decision to approve an over-the-counter version of a diet pill the "height of recklessness." Dr. Sidney Wolfe says studies have linked the prescription version of the drug, called Xenical, with pre-cancerous lesions of the colon. The director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group says the plans to market a non-prescription version are a "dangerous mistake" in light of what he calls the product's "marginal benefits." He also says the diet pill can have "bothersome adverse reactions." The Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it had approved sales of a lower-dose version of Xenical. The non-prescription version is called "alli." Officials stress that it needs to be used in combination with a diet and exercise program and that using the pill alone isn't likely to do any good.
Breaking down fitness myths
Most fitness professionals have seen or heard it all. Miracle diets, perfect workouts, promises of flat abs in two minutes a day. Fitness professional Chris Hoover says he constantly sees people acting on misinformation."I don't know what it is," he says. "They see a big muscle guy come in with his muscle magazine, and he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, so before you know it ... word of mouth, it's on someone's Web site, and suddenly everyone has this (wrong) information."Exercise specialist Jeremy Koerber agrees. "You've got this quasi-expert who has worked out for years, and maybe he did something and it worked, but maybe he just has the genetic potential. So these theories tend to get perpetuated, and they are nothing more than just gym talk."For whatever reason, it seems there is a lot of misinformation out there about what it takes to get in a good workout.
New diet pill may have unpleasant side effects
COLLIER COUNTY: There is now a new weapon to fight the battle of the bulge. You can now get an FDA approved diet pill over the counter. But the medicine's side effects may have you fighting another battle. Until now, you needed a doctor's prescription to get the approved diet pill "Orlistat." The FDA gave the OK for a lower dosage of the pill called "Alli" to be sold over the counter. But doctors are warning people that abusing the medicine can do more harm than good. A few years ago, Jill Hefti-Breed felt the bulge taking over and started taking a prescription diet pill. She lost four pounds in three weeks then stopped taking it. "Did I lose weight because of what I was eating or was it because of the medicine?" said Hefti-Breed. The prescription weight loss drug Orlistat has been on the market since 1999.
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