Episode 3 — Children in Crisis — looks at what’s happening to the kids. And it ain’t pretty.

Episode 4 — Challenges — starts off weak with a rehashing of obesity’s link to America’s lifestyle diseases. But it takes a turn in a better direction with a long look at evolutionary biology and the role that our ancestral past plays in terms of our eating behavior. It then spends a chunk of time looking at the problem with our current agricultural policy and specifically the subsidies that make corn and soy such profitable crops.

On the whole though, Michele Simon gets it pretty much right. Weight of the Nation:

distracts us with the usual scare tactics, dances around the hard political issues, and leaves the viewer with the misguided impression that if we all just worked harder in our own communities, we could fix this mess.

Michele argues that the series’ focus on obesity distracts from the real problem: our totally whacked food system.

I agree. I think the concept of the tragedy of the commons is relevant here. Too many players are unable (or unwilling) to act in a way that benefits the community longer-term when it means acting against their self-interest in the short term.

Judy Guthman (author of Weighing In) suggests essentially that we have a political economy of bulimia:

We’re supposed to keep the economy afloat by consuming and not interfering with the business of the business, but we’re also supposed to exercise discipline and self-restraint in ways that are equally kind to capitalism.

Unfortunately, policy change is [pick your metaphor] a Herculean, Sisyphean, or Don Quixote-like ’tilting at windmills’ task. It may well happen (and maybe in my lifetime), but probably not before things have gotten a lot worse.

In the interim, local community projects (I like the one Robb Wolf is doing in Reno) may well be our best hope for making a dent in the health, not weight, of the nation.

The shows are slickly produced and they’ve assembled quite a plethora of experts to weigh in (pun intended). And there’s so much packed into each episode that I think it’s easy for people to pick out bits and pieces they like and don’t like.

Marsha Hudnall, who spent the night live-tweeting the show, summed it up this way:

my take overall: #weightofthenation had some good moments but #weightstigma was fostered. too bad

Word.

Re weight stigma, I found what Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat said today to really resonate:

Let’s be clear – they are pathologizing a body size. It doesn’t matter if they say that we need to seek solutions environmentally instead of at the individual level, or if they say that we should have “compassion” for fat people – they are still telling people that is is not ok to exist in fat bodies and that they should see fat bodies as a threat to America. There are tons of thin people who eat unhealthy foods and are sedentary (which is completely their right), but as far as the government is concerned, as long as you are thin you’re part of the “solution,” feel free to do whatever you want. They want people to look at me (and you, if you’re fat) and think “She is part of a catastrophe. She is threatening almost every aspect of our lives. The first step toward ending the damage is learning how to fight back against her.”

Yes, I am attempting to lose weight. But that does NOT mean I think it’s okay to use obesity as a proxy for sickness OR thinness for health. I think that’s a mistake (big mistake … huge).

The saddest moment for me? The part in the first 15 minutes of the first episode when Cindy Roach, the older, morbidly obese Bogalusa bus driver says to the camera:

I’ve got to learn to eat the right things at the right times. And I’m gonna try. I’m gonna give it a shot. And come back and y’all will see maybe a new me. (laughs)

I recognize that laugh.

The second episode — strangely named “Choices” — likewise irritated me. While the personal stories were compelling, the pablum offered up for weight loss was depressing.

All of this money and all of these experts and “make realistic goals” and “keep portions under control” is what HBO has to offer? Yikes. Like I didn’t read that in Seventeen magazine back in the 1970s. Yeesh.

I get that Weight of the Nation is well-meaning. But that’s not really enough. At the end of the day it’s definitely agenda-driven … and it’s likely destined for the fate of previous public health campaigns. Read: one big, epic FAIL.

Ultimately, I remain concerned that Weight of the Nation is more likely to fan the flames of obesity hysteria than drive any meaningful change towards a more healthy nation.

Update, 5/15: Yoni Freedhoff says what Weight of the Nation should have said (emphasis mine):

[W]e need to change the world. Because really it’s the world that’s the problem, not the kids. Kids are kids. There hasn’t been a pandemic loss of willpower in 6 year olds these days. Instead these days 6 year olds are growing up in an environment that is by its very nature obesogenic. Focusing on the kids treats the symptom. We need to treat the cause.

Whether it’s banning advertising targeting kids, ending the provision of no-name junk food at schools, bringing back home economics, launching public health campaigns to promote the home cooked around the table meal, changes to crop subsidies to make junk food less inexpensive to sell – there are no shortages of initiatives we could take.

Though it’s important to note, no one initiative is going to fix this problem and so folks who whinge about how, “soda taxes aren’t going to fix this problem”, are simultaneously both right, and ill informed. …

Clever marketing and misleading food / nutritional labels usually come down to corporate profits. Companies will always want to make money, so where does the fight against obesity go from here?

We need to create a world that nudges us in the right direction, and it’s going to take a huge amount of time and effort. It will require abandoning the notion that the food industry is a “partner” and accepting the fact that their sole job, by the very definition of industry, is to increase profits.

We’re not going to solve this problem with “food products”, but we might solve it with actual food. The sooner governments appreciate that fact, the sooner we’ll see actually evidence based food guides, true school food reforms, and public health campaigns that are actually helpful.

Making the kinds of changes Yoni lists ARE hard. And accusations of “nanny statism” and the deep pockets of food lobbyists lead me to believe that things are going to get worse before they get better.

Update, 5/16: Here’s my take on episodes 3 & 4.

Adjusting for snacking while watching TV did not change the associations, leading the researchers to suggest that broadcast advertising influences eating choices even when children are away from the television.

Color me surprised … not. And makes me suspect that food marketing on TV (especially to kids) is more porn like than we know.

A 27/9/3 “a way of putting complex thoughts into short form.” The pol explained to them that:

you have about 27 seconds of their attention. In this time span, you’ve got to have 9 words that express 3 key concepts. Any more and you’ve lost them. And your 27/9/3 has to be standardized. Every member of the group has to have the same mantra.

Barbara then shared her 27/9/3 for weight maintenance:

1. Primarian 95% [Primarian is Barbara's label for essentially a paleo diet]
2. No grains, minimal sugar.
3. Exercise daily.

Okay, I’ll play! Here’s my 27/9/3 for achieving a healthy weight:

1. Eat real food.
2. Embrace physical activity.
3. Practice slowing down.

Not perfect, but it’s a start!

For every diet philosophy there is a counter philosophy and in the end all this arguing over whether carbohydrates are going to kill me or if red meat is going to give me cancer is really divisive and actually weakens our goal to fix our food system. The energy we spend arguing against people with pretty much the same goal of achieving sovereign health is foiled by our egos and rigidness in diet mentality. …

Coming together to create a better world for future generations is much more important then arguing about what amount of carbohydrates causes “insidious” weight gain or how much saturated fat is in the artery clogging milk.

Timely considering the debate is gonna be heating up (thanks HBO!).

So true!

I expect obesity will be like alcoholism. People who know the problem intimately find their way out, then lead a few others. The few become millions.

And while I originally planned on doing it for Lent (~46 days), I wound up extending it until April 21st when my next blood work was scheduled at my weight loss doc’s.

Well, I got my blood work back today, and all I can say is: shut the eff up!!

My fasting insulin is 4.

That’s right, 4. Pardon me while I do a little happy dance!

Frankly, I did not think I would get to this level. Blah, blah, metabolic syndrome or metabolic derangement, blah blah. I’ve done decades worth of SAD damage to myself, as evidenced (IMO) by my fasting insulin in September of 2009, which was 24.

Later that year, Stephan Guyenet wrote a post about the ideal fasting insulin level, and stated:

My current feeling is that we can consider anything between 2 and 6 uIU/mL within our evolutionary template, although the lower half of that range may be preferable.

My thought then was: yikes. And when I restarted my weight loss efforts in the fall of 2010, I had my fasting insulin checked the following February after about losing 50 lbs: 12.

That was clearly an improvement, but it wasn’t the single digit level I wanted. I started thinking about insulin resistance and decided that resistance training would help restore insulin sensitivity and thus reduce fasting insulin levels. So I started BBS, lost another 50 lbs and retested in September: 14. WTF?!

Conveniently for me, Stephan did another post on insulin sensitivity and obesity, and wrote:

High circulating insulin is probably an adaptive response to insulin resistance in the body, which develops as fat cells enlarge and become less effective at trapping fatty acids and keeping them where they should be (there may also be a contribution from inflammation that may or may not be independent of the changes in fatty acid handling). Elevated insulin is probably the body’s way of trying to compensate for this defect and keep fat in fat cells, but it does not fully compensate for the insulin resistance in fat tissue that progressively develops as fat cells enlarge. … This defect can be largely reversed by fat loss, as demonstrated by the fact that a number of fat loss diets, including low-carbohydrate, low-fat and calorie restriction diets lead to improved insulin action as long as sufficient fat is lost.

Okay, so I figured my fasting insulin would be higher as long as my fat mass was higher. Fast forward to last month. I’ve lost an additional 30 lbs (would have been more had I not gained 20lbs after Xmas), have been walking more, and did MMLAFL. And now my fasting insulin is 4. Yippee!!

Hard to say for sure what’s at play here. It may well be that this is a reflection of not having my cheat meals. Staffan Lindeberg has an interesting study showing glucose and insulin improvements of a paleo diet. Maybe it’s the weight loss (tho I’m still not close to goal). Maybe it’s the physical activity which is certainly increased (thanks Egoscue!).

I don’t know, but I’ll take it. And to say it’s an encouragement to me is a big understatement ;).

Other lab results include 85 for fasting glucose (has ranged between a low of 80 and a high of 96) and a direct LDL of 165 (that’s the high, low was 140). This latter has my doc concerned. After reading part 3 of Chris Masterjohn’s and Chris Kresser’s podcast on cholesterol and heart disease, I’m glad my doc wants to retest my thyroid. It’s possible that despite the dulse I was eating I was a little under on the iodine department.

But like Chris M. said, I’m also inclined to wait and see what the LDL does when my weight stabilizes since all other measures, including blood pressure (today was 96/68) seem to be in a good place.

All in all, color me one happy camper!

Can’t pass this one up!

Just be smart, and use your head, except when your head is trying to talk you out of exercising for no good reason.

And here’s NYTimes’ columnist Gretchen Reynolds, author of the recently published “The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer.”

What is lost in that is that fitness is almost certainly more important than fatness. … If you have to choose, choose to be fit, whether you lose weight or not.

Read both posts for more goodness.

I do very little “formal” exercise, but am trying to be as active as possible all the time.