The FastDay Forum

VIDEO IS UP NOW. Four Corners always a great documentary.

" Poor Diet kills more people than tabacco.. in Australia"
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/ ... 103496.htm

Called Fat chance

"66.6% of women and 60.3% of men have a "grabbable gut", a sure sign of too much fat around the vital organs, which can lead to heart disease, type 2 diabetes and several cancers" (via Live Lighter)

Next on Four Corners, how to stop Australia's obesity epidemic.

bump for tonight

Thanks @Juliana.Rivers I shall watch this with interest. Be great to see if Ararat has been successful in getting healthier. I think a lot if people don't know where to start and would join a community group if the incentives were there

Many thanks @Juliana.Rivers - locked in.

cheers Maggie.

30 years ago 1/3 of Australians Overweight or Obese in Australia

today... 2/3rds of Australians Overweight or Obese in Australia
Video of doco here.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/ ... 103496.htm

[Debs]

I only saw the first 20 minutes of this last night as it was my bedtime but I doubt that there will anything new come out of it unfortunately. It amazed me that there was so much focus on exercise over diet, when exercise is only a tiny part of the answer. I don't know whether the good people of Ararat managed to keep fit and healthy but I wouldn't be optimistic.
Nor am I optimistic that a way forward will be agreed on when we waver between differences in government over whether or not we intervene. All we can do is influence those around us into making better choices based on good science.
Sorry to sound like a wet blanket but I am a glass half empty person sometimes!

I only saw the first 20 minutes of this last night as it was my bedtime but I doubt that there will anything new come out of it unfortunately. It amazed me that there was so much focus on exercise over diet, when exercise is only a tiny part of the answer. I don't know whether the good people of Ararat managed to keep fit and healthy but I wouldn't be optimistic.
Nor am I optimistic that a way forward will be agreed on when we waver between differences in government over whether or not we intervene. All we can do is influence those around us into making better choices based on good science.
Sorry to sound like a wet blanket but I am a glass half empty person sometimes!

Not sure if this showed a good side of Australia's rural population and its a shame that so many "let themselves go" into their 50's and 60's.

and yes, will they maintain? the skeptic in me says the majority wont..

So many people think exercise will do the trick, however later on in the program there was one interviewee that said weight loss is 80% nutrition (or something like that) .. i guess in my words.. if you exercise and still dont change what you put in your mouth you aint gonna lose weight. they did say that exercise is good for health which i agree with. with the light now later in the evenings, im tempted to start walking again. its bad i cant do it in winter but i guess any is better than none. just waiting for it to still be light at 8pm as i have difficulty managing dinner before 7pm.

is it true that its light till 10pm in Europe in summer?

I read something recently that makes a lot of sense: weight loss happens in the kitchen; health happens in the gym.

Exercise may only be a small part of weight loss, but it's a big part of healthy living. So while it is true that too much is made of exercise as a way to lose weight, it is also true that it is something you should be doing if you want to be healthy.

[Debs]

Hi there,
Yes, depending on where you are the sun sets late. Where I lived in England it would be going down about 10pm, nice long summer days, whereas up here, it is dark by 6.25 as we are on Perth time!
From the brief section of the program I saw, the problems had started a lot earlier than late Middle age, there were a lot of very obese people in their 20s.
A very neat way of putting it MaryAnne!
I don't know which would be harder, convincing people to exercise or to eat well.

I also read recently (perhaps in that link peebles put up about an old out-of-print weight maintenance book) that people who had lost weight actually had an increased desire to do exercise.

For me it happened the opposite way: I love running and I knew I would do better at it (and my poor knees) would thank me if I lost weight.

I recorded it and will watch. I am an absolute believer that until you change your mind you will never change your weight. In NLP terms there must be leverage ie you need a compelling reason and for most people health isn't as compelling as bingeing on food to feed their emotions. Look at smoking. I watched the program on e cigarettes. What an eye opener, get them in now and while u r at it make one for other drugs like marijuana! Let those people have their addictions so long as it's done in a healthy way. No stinking smoke for me to breathe, no filthy buts everywhere, no lung cancer, no lung, heart disease. But less taxes for the govt

[carorees]

Regarding the role of exercise in weight management, there was an interesting study that found people who believe obesity is due to lack of exercise are more likely to be overweight than people who believe obesity is due to poor diet.(http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/8/1428.abstract)

I thought it was a great Doco. From a public health perspective it showed that communities can make a change. They did say that they focussed on getting everyone moving first, which has been reasonably susccessful. They acknowledged that nutrition is very important and future public health initiatives will focus more on that.

There was lots of talk on and by the food industry and the issues that self regulation bring. I thought Rosemary Stanton was a bit defeatist saying ,I think, that individual effort is not enough to change things. While we do need public health initiatives to support individual effort, I think that taking the responsibility away from the individual (saying that obesity is caused by the food industry and the media) is almost as bad as saying obesity is a disease, and people just come to the conclusion that they can't do anything.

Ok... I'll get off my public health soap box for now

Yes, I liked it too. I did fall asleep half way through it and missed a bit but I thought it was inspiring that a whole town had managed to take on doing something about obesity and the community was talking about it and taking collective action. Of course diet is the key and they acknowledged that, but like MaryAnne said, exercise makes us healthy. It was great to see those groups of middle aged people getting out walking in the early morning together. May they find 5:2 as well.

Yeah i kept thinking.. if only the whole town could join this forum the problem would be solved for at least 80% of them!
We all have the

.... intelligence
.... motivation
...... group comraderie and support
...... access to all the scientific data (thanks @carorees, @peebles, et al)
----- and a great plan (IF, 5:2, Fast-Five, windows etc)
.. and plenty of opportunity to smile.

simple!