noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646
DURHAM — When she was younger, Bedda D’Angelo didn’t have a weight problem.
“But as the years have gone on, I’ve had a hard time keeping my weight down,” said D’Angelo, who works in Durham. Now weighing around 200 pounds, “by my standards, I’m obese.”
Why has she gained weight? The reasons, said D’Angelo, who is a patient at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, are many.
“I believe primarily it’s the genetic code that I came with,” she said. “Then there’s stress, and with stress you produce hormones that cause you to put on the pounds. I’ve also had some health problems. All of that, put together, it’s been easy to gain weight. It’s a lot harder to lose it.”
That’s born out by two new studies published online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They found that despite prominent public campaigns about the health risks of too much weight, there has not been significant change in the prevalence of obesity in the U.S.
According to the studies, about one in three adults and one in six children and teens remain obese. The researchers found that over the past decade, in fact, there were significant increases in obesity overall for men and for non-Hispanic black women and Mexican-American women.
“Obesity prevalence shows little change over the past 12 years,” the authors of the papers wrote.
Reducing obesity in the country remains “a very tenacious problem,” acknowledged Howard Eisenson, the executive director of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center.
“While we have done a fair job, I think, as a society starting to educate folks about the problems of excess weight, we haven’t really tackled this with the kind of determination it’s going to take.”
What it will take, Eisenson said, is essentially a cultural shift.
“We’re battling intrinsic human behavior,” he said. “We’re physiologically well-engineered to defend our body weight, to avoid weight loss. We can’t go after an elephant of a problem with a pea shooter. It takes determination, planning and support to be successful.”
More important, he added, “it also takes creating a healthier landscape. Some of my colleagues talk of optimal defaults, where the natural thing to do is to eat more healthfully, have physical activity as part of our day, where the individual who walks or bikes is not considered eccentric.”
The cultural norm, Eisenson explained, isn’t “to order the salad with the dressing on the side. It’s to order the fries instead of the salad. We need to change the norm.”
But while the challenge remains significant, Eisenson said he remains optimistic that the country will take on the problem of obesity in “a coordinated, strategic way.”
D’Angelo is optimistic, too, although, she acknowledged, this is not the first time she’s been to Duke — which has recently opened its diet clinic to the Triangle community, so local residents can come even if they don't wish to be part of the longer in-house program. And Duke is also not the first weight-loss program she’s entered.
“It’s an ongoing challenge if you’re the kind of person who puts on weight,” she said. “I love good food but I can’t listen to my body at this point. I have to measure the calories and measure the plate size. You have to let a different part of your brain take over.”
She has a plan, she said, and “my plan is executable. I will do it this time.”
