Word: stunkard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...weight problem. But the conventional wisdom among experts that 95% of all dieters are doomed to regain their lost weight may be too pessimistic. One reason researchers have such a bleak view of dieting is a famous study of 100 people conducted in the late 1950s by Dr. Albert Stunkard, now a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. Only two of his subjects were able to maintain their weight loss for two years. "That was a period when we had no treatment for obesity," Stunkard says. "The medical profession thought it was either a psychiatric issue or a metabolic...
...were stunned," says Dr. Albert Stunkard, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading expert on what makes people put on pounds. "It runs counter to what we as a nation seem to be doing." In a sharply worded JAMA editorial, Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer of New York City's St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital sounded the medical alarm, pointing out that the extra baggage is not just unsightly but unhealthy as well. Pi-Sunyer says the plumping of America will put millions of people at an increased risk for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, gout, arthritis...
Exercise itself has come under attack. Penn's Stunkard suspects that the fitness movement was too narrowly focused, hitting mostly the upper and upper- middle classes and missing the rest of the population. Kathy Smith, a Hollywood fitness expert, thinks aerobics and weight lifting scared a lot of people away. "The exercise message of the 1980s was too strong, too high impact," says Smith. "We ended up with a select group of elite exercisers with hard bodies." The proper message, most health experts now agree, is to set aside time for regular, moderate exercise -- bicycling, climbing steps, walking briskly...
...Many employers contend that overweight workers drive up medical costs. Says U-Haul International spokesperson Melora Felts Foley: "The people who are responsible for the majority of skyrocketing health costs are those who use tobacco and those who have weight problems." But some health experts disagree. Says Dr. Albert Stunkard, an obesity specialist at the University of Pennsylvania: "The extent to which overweight people have difficulty in obtaining work goes far beyond what can be justified by medical data and must be due to discrimination." American's new standards may help tip the scales in favor of equal opportunities...
...body weights whether or not they are raised in different families, and that they are much more likely to grow up looking like their natural parents than their adoptive ones. "If both biologic parents are fat, about 80% of their kids are going to be fat," says Dr. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania...