My Confession

I love bread.

I eat bread.

I now make bread.

When my husband and I were first married we gained. We gained a new apartment, new jobs, new life, and new weight. I weighed more 4 months after we got married than I did full-term with my daughter.

What did it?

I blame Me. My weakness. My bread.

Hot Ham and Cheese Bagel for Breakfast,

Bagel with jelly for a Morning Snack,

Sandwich for Lunch,

Banana Bread for afternoon Pick-me Up,

And Chicken breasts with Bread Crumbs for Dinner.

Don't even ask about dessert....it wasn't pretty.....

Along my quest to be aware of what goes in my body, I found that buying bread was one of the hardest things to do. There was the healthy bread, but even that had HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) in it, and a whole bunch of other things that I don't recognize. I did find some natural stuff, but really.... $4 for a loaf of bread?

Yes, my bread addiction has been under control for 3 years now, but really, $4? It just wasn't in our budget. So...I began my search for a breadmaker! And FOUND ONE! (Brand-new Betty Crocker at Goodwill for $15)

I was hesitant that my addiction would come back. Reading in SuperSized Kids today, I found this quite fitting to my situation:

"Another patient...carefully preserved a picture of his grandma, a woman the size of the Titanic who had a great fondness for baking bread. He loved his grandma and he cherished that picture. Yet... [he said] time and again, "I just don't want to be like her." He love her, admired her, respected her- but he absolutely did not want to wind up morbidly obese, like her."

Meet more families studied by clicking here.

"Parents, the time to prevent or reverse SuperSizing in our kids is always now. Don't wait until the problem gets worse. Don't wait until serious physical problems appear. If your child has an apparent obesity problem, start today to deal with it. Why? An average-sized adult may have 20billion to 30billion fat cells; a moderately obese adult, however, can have 60billion to 100billion fat cells; and a morbidly obese person in excess of 300billion fat cells. Obese children can have five times more fat cells than children of normal weight!"

"Once formed, these fat cells can decrease in size, but they do not decrease in number....

"Today is the best day to start!"

Health Care on the Brain

However you feel about the Health Care Reform, I guarantee we can agree on one thing. People want to save money. Or do they? MSNBC reports that medical spending averages $1,400 more a year for a person who is obese compared to a person of normal weight.

"Overall obesity-related health spending reaches $147 billion, double what it
was nearly a decade ago, says the study published....by the journal of health
Affairs.

"Don't blame things like stomach-stapling for all those extra bills.
They instead reflect the costs of treating diabetes, heart disease and other
ailments far more common for the overweight, concluded the study by government
scientists and the nonprofit research group RTI International."

Sound convincing? Maybe. Maybe not. This was an article published in the Summer of 2009, so fairly recent, yet the study was done by government scientists and a nonprofit research group. Can we believe it? I believed it enough to keep looking, and you can too.

Imagine this: your grandparent is being treated for a relatively small handful of age-progressing ailments including adult-onset diabetes (which is now referred to as type 2 diabetes due the the increasing number of non-adults who are affected by it). Yet at the same time, your child is being treated for the same life-shortening ailments. How often does this happen? Enough to say that America has an obesity crisis and it affects EVERYONE.*

****This continues my topic of Health Care Monies, and brings up another- of children, which I will discuss more at a later date.

The NewYork Daily News in 2004 reported:

"It's dead wrong to write off weight problems as somebody else's personal
problem. We are all paying the epidemic's costs. More than 100,000
stomach-reduction operations take place annually, with insurance
companies-meaning all policyholders-under intense pressure to pick up the
tab."

And while I'm not going to walk up and blame someone for my continually increasing insurance premiums, I can take control and learn how to eat healthier, live healthier, and encourage others to do the same. We're all in this together aren't we?

18,16 and 3?

An article Good and Bad Health Habits was posted on WebMD about the health habits of Americans. They said that results from a study done 2005-2007 (which I'm sure things haven't gotten any better) regular drinkers (6 in 10) outnumber regular exercisers (3 in 10).

In 2004, the CDC announced that Obesity is approaching the top cause of preventable death!




In 2000 this is was preventable deaths in America looked like:

Tobacco -18.1%
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity -16.6%
Alcohol Consumption -3.5%

Do you see what I see?? Tobacco still kills. 6 in 10 people are regular drinkers. And Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity is quoted as the #2 KILLER. Not just on the list, but 16.6% of deaths that can be prevented are linked to unhealthy eating habits AND obesity compared to a mere 3.5% of Alcohol Consumption.

Which one will you be?
I choose None. Say "YES" to knowledge and let's change together.