<No.724> |
Global Obesity Battle: What You Eat and How You Think
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Los Angeles resident Kathleen Mulcahy has been fighting
with her weight
for 55 years.
"My parents had a baby,
a son,
and he died at birth.
I was 7,
and I think that was the time
I started gaining weight.
My mother died
when I was 12,
and then my weight just escalated."
She is not alone.
A growing number of people are overweight or obese
particularly in urban areas worldwide,
including developing countries.
"Fast foods, transnational corporations,
soft drink companies
going into these developing countries
are having a very huge influence
on the overweight and obesity epidemic,
because they are adding calories and processed foods,
salt and sugar
into the diet
that these people have not normally been eating."
People's lifestyles are also changing
in developing countries.
"As people urbanize
and make more money
and have more sedentary lives,
they're also putting on weight
and following the pattern of the United States."
While fad diets may help with quick weight loss,
keeping off the weight is more of a challenge.
"At sustaining that weight loss,
the studies overwhelmingly show that
plant-based diets are good
long term."
Instead of focusing on what you eat,
Solomon helps people maintain weight loss
by working with the mind
to change a person's eating behavior.
She helps her clients like Mulcahy
be more self-aware
by having them write down everything they eat,
before they eat.
"That awareness,
that sense of conscientiousness,
becomes more powerful
than the immediate gratification of food.
But you have to learn it.
It has to become a habit."
It worked for Mulcahy,
who has sustained her current weight
for almost three years.
Maintaining a healthy weight not only helps
for the positive self-image,
but it will also fend off health problems
such as heart disease, diabetes,
and even some forms of cancer.
Elizabeth Lee, VOA News, Los Angeles
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