AP - A 2-year-old boy who died with a fractured skull may have been accidentally crushed by a morbidly obese relative, authorities say.

Reuters - TORONTO (Reuters) -- There is little debate that obesity presents a public health issue in North America -- obesity rates have more than doubled over a generation in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the causes of obesity -- and therefore, the solutions -- are not as obvious, according to research presented this week at a media workshop run by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

While watching TV last night, I was bombarded with the usual weight loss programs and weight loss product ads.  In each different commercial, during the parade of before and after photos, a common theme emerges: the disclaimer of 'results not typical.'

Three Little Words

There's a big message in those three little words, which are barely readable in its tiny print at the bottom of the screen:  odds are you won't lose weight! So how did those lucky few significantly reduced people do it?  Well, there's another hint in the fine print: "product should be used in conjunction with exercise and a healthy diet." 

There's No Getting Around It: Exercise and Healthy Eating

In a thought-provoking blog post from "Things I Learned the Hard Way," Sandra Dalka-Prysby writes:

When I embarked on my weight loss journey...I expected to lose all the weight in a year. No problem. After all, “real people” lost this amount of weight in this short period of time, according to the ads. I’m a “real” person. This would be fast and easy. Then I learned that this real person—me—was somehow different from all of those touting their success via their advertised stories. My weight loss was neither fast nor easy! It took hard work and consistent effort.

When I finally got smart and realized that the only “right way” to reduce weight is healthy eating and regular exercise (and you know this too!), I no longer needed those costly diet things. And when I realized that I didn’t need to go fast or wear a size 2, I stopped comparing my success to all those “untypical real people.”

Lessons Learned

All of us have either experienced failed fad diets, tried less than wonderful 'wonder' pills, or gimmicky exercise products. Yes, it may be a hard - and costly - lesson to learn, but the good news is that you're not at fault for not losing the weight.  Losing your faith in a weight loss product doesn't mean you have to lose all hope or faith in your ability to lose weight.  What it truly means is that you now have the opportunity to start empowering yourself for a real, lasting healthy lifestyle change.

Believe in yourself! 

Healthy eating never tasted so flavorful or looked so colorful! Brown rice adds a hearty touch to this healthy recipe from peas.org. A versatile and nutritious veggie, peas are a good source of vitamin A, vitamin C, folate, thiamine (B1), iron and phosphorus. Must have ingredients for paella for me are shrimp, mussels and scallops, but that's the great thing about this old Spanish recipe: flexibility!  Tailor it to your own tastes or personalize it for a special guest.

Makes 4 servings

1 tbsp olive oil
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 fennel, sliced thinly
1 leek, chopped
1-2 tbsp paprika to taste
4 large tomatoes, skinned and chopped
300g brown rice
A few strands of saffron soaked in 50ml warm water
750 ml vegetable stock
600g mixed fish (eg: squid, haddock, monkfish, hake)
1 courgette, diced
300g frozen garden peas
10 king or tiger prawns
24 mussels
1 tbsp flat leaf parsley
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Lemon wedges to serve

Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the garlic, fennel and leek and fry gently for 1 minute. Sprinkle in the paprika add the tomatoes and stir well. Add the rice, saffron liquid, stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for about 25 mins until the rice is nearly cooked then add the fish and courgette stirring into the rice and cooking for three minutes then add the peas, prawns, mussels and half of the parsley and a little more stock if necessary. Bubble gently until the liquid has been absorbed and all the fish is cooked. Serve with wedges of lemon and black pepper and garnish with the remaining parsley.

Today's a perfect day to post on this subject. We have a torrent of icy rain covering the snow that has been rained on previously, then followed by cold weather, so much so that it's now a nice pile of ice from which I can step onto my roof without much trouble. Needless to say, we're looking forward to Spring around these parts!

Also needless to say, my motivation to step outside for a refreshing walk (or to add to my daily steps)isn't too high at the moment. Still, I'll probably make it to the elliptical at some point today, just because it will help me feel better. After 30 years of pretty regular exercise, I'm very clear that I feel better after I do it, even though I may not want to do it some days.

The title of this post has to do with overcoming some of those motivation killers when it comes to physical activity. In this case, however, I want to talk about fears about exercise -- fears that people are watching us -- and laughing; fears that we're so out of shape we can't keep up in class or when out on a walk with friends; fears that we'll injure ourselves. These are frequent fears that we hear at our women's weight loss retreat Green Mountain at Fox Run, from the women who come to us for help in overcoming exercise obstacles like this. We address them regularly, but recently posted a new FitBriefing on our site that addresses these specific fears. Read this article "Overcoming Exercise Fears: Yes, You Can!" for tips that will help you get past these issues, and get on with taking good care of yourself. And in the coming wonderful outdoors months of summer in North America, you just might find yourself donning those sneakers and getting outside to enjoy. Or if you're facing winter in coming months in another part of the world, consider all the wonderful sports of winter that we've grown just a bit tired of at this point!

So is green tea really the panacea of all things healthy? Depends on who you talk to. I've been drinking a lot of tea lately because I am far away from home and there are no Starbucks to be found. The horror! Anyway, believers in the healing and healthy effects of green tea claim it protects our hearts while diminishing the risk of some fatal illnesses like liver disease and even some cancers. It also has shown to assist in weight loss and provides hope to Alzheimer's victims.

That’s quite a list. Unfortunately, there are as many naysayers as there are proponents for the benefits of green tea. Some nutritionist’s claim that drinking more than four cups of black or green tea each day offers significant health benefits. Both types of tea contain antioxidants, which destroy free radicals and help protect blood vessels and just out today, there is evidence that green tea might prevent HIV infection by slowing down the spread of the virus in people who are already infected.

One thing we do know, tea is also a good source of fluid. I feel such pressure everyday to drink 8 glasses of water and rarely, if ever, do. It’s not necessary to get all your fluids from water by the way – soups, tea and even fruit provide necessary fluids too. Also, there’s been confusion around whether tea dehydrates like coffee, but it’s very low in caffeine compared to coffee.

To find out more about varieties tea, visit Tazo their tea is excellent and the site is just plain fun.

HealthDay - MONDAY, March 17 (HealthDay News) -- Two obesity-related genetic variations may be associated with higher body mass index (BMI) among severely obese patients (BMI of 40 or higher) who have bariatric surgery to help them lose weight, say American researchers.

Reuters - Obese and overweight individuals are less likely to die in the 5 years after suffering a stroke than are their normal-weight peers, a new study shows.

Last night, many people (myself included) tuned into 60 minutes to watch the interview with Dennis Quaid and his wife about the hospital error that almost killed their newborn twins last year. It's another segment, however, on sleep deprivation which caught my eye and is also getting a lot of buzz today on internet message boards.

In the recent 60 minutes episode called The Science of Sleep, Part 2 (link to video), correspondent Lesley Stahl opens by announcing an interesting statistic - Americans report receiving an average of 6.7 hours of sleep, down from 8 hours in less than a generation. Stahl interviewed Eve Van Cauter, an endocrinologist at the University of Chicago School of Medicine, who studies the effect of sleep on the body (excerpt from CBSnews.com):

At [Cauter's] lab, healthy, young volunteers...are paid to come one at a time and have virtually every system in their bodies monitored while their sleep is interfered with.

"We did a study where we restricted sleep to four hours per night for six nights," Van Cauter explains. "And we noticed that they were already in a pre-diabetic state. And so, that was a big finding."

The study's subjects were on the road to type 2 diabetes in just six days, and that’s not all - they were also hungry. Van Cauter has made a radical discovery: that lack of sleep may be contributing to the epidemic of obesity in this country through the work of a hormone called leptin that tells your brain when you’re full.

"We observed that the volunteers, they actually had a drop in leptin levels," Van Cauter explains. "Leptin was telling the brain, 'Time to eat. We need more food.'"

Van Cauter's research is new in that it demonstrates a correlation between the lack of deep sleep - to be distinguished from REM or light sleep - and health issues.  In fact, says Cauter, as we age naturally, we automatically spend less and less time in deep sleep.  This raises an interesting question about the diseases - such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol - that we normally associate with aging.  It also sheds light on a possible cause of type 2 diabetes and obesity in younger adults, teens and children, all of whom, Cauter says, are receiving less and less sleep. 

Cauter agreed with Stahl that health experts should add 'sleep' to their normal mantra of 'diet and exercise.' When asked about napping, Cauter says there is debate on whether not getting 8 consecutive hours of deep sleep or napping to increase the cumulative time spent sleeping is more important for preventing health problems.

We've posted several blogs on the importance of sleep, weight loss, and a healthy lifestyle as well as the connection of sleep deprivation and type 2 diabetes.  Some of our posts include: A Weight Lifted: Sleep Like a Baby and Lose Weight?, A Weight Lifted: When Getting Your ZZZ’s Seems like Mission Impossible, and Diabetes: Short, Long Sleep Duration Raises The Risk For Diabetes.

Reuters - Overeating disrupts entire networks of genes in the body, causing not only obesity, but diabetes and heart disease, in ways that may be possible to predict, researchers reported on Sunday.