Energy Up!

[JoyJoy]

On this morning's news, I saw a piece about this woman's program and was impressed. While the woman's personality is, to me, over the top, I love the approach she is using in her program. She is helping girls who typically eat mostly junk food, who have never even tasted certain foods, by teaching them how to shop for healthier foods, how to cook them, and how to reach beyond what they've always known in order to have healthier diets. She also emphasizes that exercise combined with the healthy diet will help them feel better. While the issue of weight is addressed...the piece on the news did show them weighing in and the website talks of weight loss and obesity...it doesn't seem to be with the same attitude as the myriad of other programs out there. The guilt factor doesn't seem to be in place here, and I don't sense the "you'd be so much more attractive if.." attitude...just a common sense approach, giving people a boost that they need to feel better. While it appears to me to be an excellent program for girls who needs lessons in taking care of their bodies, it seems like it would also be a good guide for anyone who is trying to be healthier...not just for those trying to lose weight. I'd love to read other's input on this.

http://www.energyup.com/about.html

The statistics are frightening. Everyday we see new programs and initiatives popping up to try and address this growing problem. What’s still broken? We’ll tell you…
The majority of obesity interventions are based in what is known as the health belief model, which states that people are unhealthy because they don’t know that certain behaviors are harmful—meaning, once they know something is bad they will stop. Most of these interventions teach kids about fattening foods and the importance of exercise. These programs never really examine why people engage in unhealthy behaviors. Very, very few of these programs demonstrate any significant results.

The Energy Up Program is novel in that it identifies why people engage in unhealthy behaviors, specifically overeating, and acknowledges that many people overeat even when they know it is bad for them. Energy Up looks at causes, as opposed to being reactionary. This is thinking completely outside the medical paradigm, which is completely fixated on calories. Energy Up frames overeating within the realm of food addiction—We have not found another American school-based program that does this. Binge-eating triggers the same neurological pathways as drug addiction, so Voltage’s theories that are behind the program are rooted in science. In addition, recent studies of carbohydrate consumption support that these foods affect satiety, and can trigger over-eating.

The corner stone of Energy Up is the self-esteem component. Almost all of the other programs look at low self-esteem as the result of obesity, rather than the cause. Energy Up connects poor-self esteem with over-eating, which is an entirely new concept in the medical literature.
Energy Up has documented results! Participants in the program lost a significant amount of weight. AND, even better, obese girls lost the most weight, while normal weight girls gained what was expected for their age.

I also like the line here about the fact that some of the girls actually gained weight....even though they did describe them as "normal weight" to begin with. I think some of their thought processes are still off, but definitely different.

The U.S. is facing an obesity epidemic:
If a faulty diet and inactivity are the main culprits causing Type 2 diabetes, then a change in lifestyle habits can delay and possibly prevent it.

This part of the website especially stood out to me. While it does use the tired line about the "obesity epidemic", it goes beyond that to point out that diabetes isn't necessarily directly caused by obesity itself, but by poor diet and sedentary lifestyle...of which obesity is often a result. It's refreshing to me to see someone in the spotlight actually step outside of the tired dogma we see elsewhere so often.

 

[James]

 

[Dr. Feelgood]

 

[lemmink]