Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Turned on the TV this morning and the breakfast host is extolling a vegetable soup recipe.
Apparently people have been desperately wanting to know more about this recipe that claims to help people lose weight between Christmas and New Year.
Yuk!
I have no problem with soup. I have a problem with the TV program promoting a yo-yo [...]
As I was cleaning out some of my old medical files I came across a couple of letters from 1998 about the weight loss drug phentermine.
Back in 1998 I was reading the material of a medical organisation called MaLAM, which monitors and lobbies pharmaceutical companies on their advertising.
Always a fascinating read, but this time they [...]
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
No, this is not my line.
“The LAP-BAND Solution: A Partnership in Weight Loss” is the title of a book by Australian surgeon Dr Paul O’Brien which I read with interest when one of my patients found it in a library and showed it to me.
Since the start of 2007 I have been doing public talks [...]
The problem with studying exercise for weight loss is that you can’t really disguise the exercise.
If exercise came in a pill you could do it.
You could get a big group of people and randomly give half the pill with exercise in it, and the other half a dummy, sugar pill that looks, smells, tastes etc [...]
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
There is so much misinformation around about the benefits of exercise, particularly in regard to weight loss.
But let’s use a bit of common sense, shall we?
When we get active ie exercise, we use up energy.
If you don’t eat more calories, then this energy has to come from your body stores ie from fat.
So exercising more [...]
Monday, September 15, 2008
Welcome Readers, old and new … it’s Spring in the Southern Hemisphere!
Time for that famous phrase “spring clean” – making sure things are not just tidied away or half-done, but thoroughly cleaned out ready for summer.
Do you want to lose weight, a little or lots?
Do you want to stop feeling guilty, or ‘out of control’ [...]
One of the most recurring health wisdoms is that you need to drink 8 glasses of water daily.
Also known as the 8×8 (8 glasses of 8 ounces each) or 2 Litres of water daily.
I seems to make sense to so many people, including bottled water sellers, that for many people it is pure common sense.
From [...]
The big splash last week about Australia being a gold-medal contender in the Obesity Olympics ain’t true.
The official stats from the OECD that came out at the start of 2008 (as pointed out to me by an observant patient of mine) show the US is 1st, Mexico 2nd, UK 3rd and Greece 4th.
Australia was a [...]
In the world Olympic event for obesity, apparently the US has been dethroned.
Turns out in the “Australia’s Future Fat Bomb” Report as splashed across The Age newspaper that Aussies have put in a gold medal winning performance. This report finds that 26% of Australians are obese (BMI >30 ie significantly overweight) just pipping the US [...]