Word: overweight
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...hardest talks a doctor can have with a family: how to deal with an overweight kid. By all accounts, it's equally frustrating for pediatrician and parent - a battle that plays out in doctors' offices across the U.S. "My doctor, whom I love and have a lot of respect for, kept saying the same things," Cohn says. He would ask what on earth she had been feeding her daughter and suggest that Molly needed to exercise more and eat less. The Cohns never found that rote advice specific enough to be useful. (Read Laura Blue's Wellness blog on TIME.com...
...doctors say families as concerned as the Cohns are unusual. Most parents have a woeful lack of knowledge about basic nutrition. Doctors tell stories about patients who feed French fries and Cheetos to their children before their first birthday, for example. What's worse is that many families with overweight or obese children aren't even aware there is a problem...
That may be precisely the problem. Today roughly 17% of American kids and teens are obese, and parents cite obesity as a top concern for their children's health. Yet with so many other overweight kids in the class, it appears that parents can't recognize - or admit it to themselves - when their child is too heavy. When they do realize it, like Becky Cohn, parents often are upset or don't know how to implement pediatricians' vague orders about exercise and diet - much the way overweight adults are flummoxed by the same recommendations. (Read "Making Good Health Easy...
...NAAFA has grown larger in tandem with Americans. According to the Centers for Disease Control, two-thirds of adult Americans are now overweight and half of those qualify as obese. There's a burgeoning blog community, dubbed the Fatosphere, where bloggers rail against antiobesity messages in the media. Although a second group, the International Size Acceptance Association, started in 1997, NAAFA has emerged as the foremost defender in the press of overweight Americans, throwing its weight around on issues ranging from Simon Cowell's fat jokes on American Idol to airlines' making obese passengers pay for a second seat. (Read...
...message, however, has many doctors skeptical. "Virtually everyone who is overweight would be better off at a lower weight," Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at Harvard's School of Public Health, told the New York Times in early July. "There's been this misconception, fostered by the weight-is-beautiful groups, that weight doesn't matter. But the data are clear." NAAFA's public-relations director, Peggy Howell, says her group doesn't encourage anyone to lead an unhealthy lifestyle but recognizes that for some people weight loss isn't possible. "We don't encourage people...