Fat
I see a lot of obese patient in my clinic. As you probably know obesity is an epidemic in the United States and disadvantaged populations are hit harder than the rest. In many of my encounters with my obese patients, I observed the following:
- Most of my patients do not know what a calorie is! I will not define it here but most people will understand that a 200 pound person jogging for 10 minutes will burn 150 calories, one can of soda.
- What also shocks me is the amount of soda and other sugar rich drinks these patients consume. Some of my "soda drinkers" consume 2 liters of regular soda per day. A few actually consume 6 liters of soda per day. And guess what happened, they could not sleep!
- The next problem many of my patient suffer from is the wrong impression that exercise will solve their problems. No, no, no. It is caloric restriction that will do it.
- Some also think that diet modification will work. For some, it will, but for most of my patients, it will not. The results will be the same if one eats 4000 calories per day of junk food or of good food. At some point I advised one of my patients to stop drinking soda. Three months later he came back and complained that he gained more weight. When I asked him how much soda he was drinking, he said that he stopped drinking it completely. "Now, I drink juice" he said, with some pride. Two cartons of Florida's orange juice!!!
- Plate size: this is a cultural issue. In the US the plates are very big while in most eastern cultures the plate is small. I think plate size gives certain feed back to the eater!
- Most of my obese patients do not have a scale. This is killer if one claims to be on a diet and not have a scale!
- Lastly, most of my obese patients do not know what their weight should be and their best guess is more than 20% above their ideal body weight.
posted by Aiman Tulaimat at 2:37 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Aiman;
I came across your Blog a while ago, and I found it quite intriguing, so I decided that I would write to you once the agonizing events in Lebanon stop.
I must thank you for posting your observations about obesity, however, I have always heard different theories about the correlation between depression and obesity:
Does the way we eat have anything to do with how we feel, or is it the other way around?
Do we burn more calories when we're worried?
Thank you for taking the time to post, keep up the good work....
Dear dubai jazz, the most rigorous clinical studies suggest that (1). children and adolescents with major depressive disorder may be at increased risk for developing overweight; (2). patients with bipolar disorder may have elevated rates of overweight, obesity, and abdominal obesity; and (3). obese persons seeking weight-loss treatment may have elevated rates of depressive and bipolar disorders. The most rigorous community studies suggest that (1). depression with atypical symptoms in females is significantly more likely to be associated with overweight than depression with typical symptoms; (2). obesity is associated with major depressive disorder in females; and (3). abdominal obesity may be associated with depressive symptoms in females and males; but (4). most overweight and obese persons in the community do not have mood disorders. Studies of phenomenology, comorbidity, family history, biology, and pharmacologic treatment response of mood disorders and obesity show that both conditions share many similarities along all of these indices.J Clin Psychiatry. 2004 May;65(5):634. I hope you find this helpful..
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