In the realm of weight loss medications, few have captured attention quite like Ozempic. Promising not just significant weight loss but also sustainable results, Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs have garnered a reputation for effectiveness. However, beyond their intended purpose, a curious trend has emerged — the rise of what some term “Ozempic babies.” This phenomenon, where women report getting pregnant while on Ozempic, has sparked intrigue and concern alike. The internet is rife with women sharing their stories, and every platform — from Reddit to TikTok to mainstream news channels and heavy ..read more

A billion of anything is quite a landmark. A person might think it would warrant some kind of celebration. But no. The Lancet just went with a sober headline: “More than one billion people in the world are now living with obesity, global analysis suggests.” Here’s more: In total, an estimated nearly 880 million adults were living with obesity in 2022 (504 million women and 374 million men)… Combined with the 159 million children living with obesity in 2022, this is a total of over one billion people affected by obesity in 2022. The article talks about a study funded by a trio of venerable i ..read more

Here is an example of everyday craziness that we somehow manage to calmly assimilate and probably not even notice. A person may speak of raising funds for charity. Of course we know what that means. They want to collect some money from people who have it, to spend on helping people who don’t. But… a person may speak of raising funds for birth defects, or for COVID-19. Of course we know what that means. They hope to finance some needed research that can put a stop to deformed fetuses or coronavirus. But despite using the same operative word, “for,” the two ambitions are exactly opposite. In th ..read more

A few years back, an ultimatum was issued to former high school valedictorian Ryan Trahan. The Texas A&M student and star athlete was told that he must either give up running and promoting his water bottle business or quit school. But the youth was not enthralled with the idea of earning a degree only to score a corporate job, anyway. He left, to follow his own dream of creating something from nothing and building a meaningful life from the ground up. Now 26 years old, although technically labeled with the dreaded stigma of college dropout, Trahan has founded a few businesses and become a ..read more

In the past, Childhood Obesity News published a series of posts around the theme of “wider education,” a corny pun on the well-known phrase “higher education” which means going to college. That qualification alone can include different life situations. One kid stays with the family, or at least in the hometown, and commutes to school. Another travels to the opposite end of the country and takes up residence in a totally different environment, among mainly strangers. Generally, we tend to think of young adults as a pretty hardy species, which is borne out by their tendency to subject themselve ..read more

For over a decade, there has been a growing conviction that using BMI as the obesity measurement standard is unrealistic, especially where females are concerned. And people with a lot of lean body mass. And in field settings where accurate scales are not available. And among some ethnic groups. One study found that as many as one-quarter of the kids with excess body fat were not being identified in a timely and appropriate manner. So, for quite a while now, it has become increasingly apparent that waist-to-height ratio is the way to go. Recently, there has been a resurgence of this sentiment ..read more

This is an interesting topic because when parents think about protecting their children, they have a certain gallery of pictures in their minds, concerning the events and people that children need to be protected from. They tend to visualize a car accident, a fire, a kidnapper, or a rogue grizzly bear escaped from the zoo. But kids in a room, peacefully watching television? Not so much. And yet, an astonishing number of those parents absorbed monumental amounts of television advertising, and look where it brought them. In many cases, they are as big as two or three healthy-weight people. TV j ..read more

For decades, Oprah Winfrey has been an icon of empowerment and resilience, but behind her public persona lay a battle with weight stigma that was both personal and deeply pervasive. In a March 18 ABC special titled “An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution,” Oprah opened up about the relentless scrutiny she faced regarding her weight over the years and delivered a poignant message of self-acceptance and compassion for others, also underscoring the importance of displacement intervention. Decades-long body shaming took its toll Reflecting on the relentless criticism she en ..read more

We have computer professionals to thank for the term “hack.” It’s a quick and probably inelegant solution whose chief virtue is that it works. From there, the word grew to signify any strategy that gets the chores done fast. In more respectable language, it’s a time management technique; an efficiency aid fulfilling the criterion of “Work smart, not hard.” It used to go by a more genteel name, like “helpful hint,” but by now, most people are familiar with the term “life hack.” A life hack is a useful shortcut or fix, the sort of everyday remedy our parents might have passed on to us, if we ha ..read more

Although the corporate magnates exert pressure on us to eat worthless pseudo-food, parents do not have to surrender to that pressure. The easiest time to push back is in the first few years of a child’s life, when there are fewer influences at work, and those that do exist are easier for parents to control. “Give me a child until age 7 and I will have him for a lifetime.” Throughout history, leaders and organizations have proclaimed variations of that idea, and for a very good reason — because it is valid. The lessons that are taught to a child, and even more importantly, the behavior that is ..read more