English: Boardwalk to Keeping Marsh birdwatching hide, Beaulieu River Beyond this gate the boardwalk leads to Keeping Marsh birdwatching hide – as the sign on the gate says. The boardwalk and hide here are fairly recent (within the past year). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The insightful Meghann Douglas has once again posted a gem on her wonderful blog Meghanns Meltdown.

A short excerpt:

“That is indeed the path I’m following.  I see my cane in the storage closet several times a week: I ain’t going back to it again.  Figuring it out for myself.  I won’t follow any diet with a name or a marketing budget.  Learning about nutrition all over again.  Which brings up another  tangent……  I’ve been kicking myself for not figuring this out before, considering all the fancy certiffikats I can legally hang on the wall.  It didn’t occur to me to question.  I accepted on faith that the mainstream health information would be grounded in scientific fact and not politics.  Now I know better.  Wisdom.  It comes from experience, which is a fancy word for doing it wrong in the first place!  LOL”

For the full post: http://meghannsmeltdown.squarespace.com/blog/2013/2/9/the-hard-way-every-time.html

About finding for yourself the changes that work for you and then keeping at it. Requires motivation – yeah, but then discipline is what gets you the goal outcome.

I really enjoy visiting her blog on a regular basis. There is a lot to be learned there.

Unfortunately, despite his enthusiasm, this approach will not provide a full answer for all people who are wanting to improve their weight health. There are some people who could follow these recommendations and still find that they have a level of hunger that prompts a food intake amount that does not allow for achieving their weight goals.

Many of the basic concepts he reviews, though, are important parts of the individualized journey of self-exploration that is crucial to long-term success.

If chronically feeling hungry didn’t matter, then, yes, it wouldn’t matter what calories you ate less of – if you ate less enough, you would lose weight. Going chronically hungry is not a tolerable or enjoyable way to live one’s life, so telling someone to eat less, without a strategy that avoids extra hunger, … misses … the … point … entirely.

No proposed intervention should fail to take into consideration the problems reported by these kids.

Much thanks to the kids who shared their information and first-hand experience.

Asking kids what they need — who would have thunk it.

This presentation was by pediatrician and obesity expert Dr. Robert A. Pretlow, from his blog Childhood Obesity News

It was presented at the 2011 International Conference on Childhood Obesity in Lisbon, Portugal.

Addiction to Highly Pleasurable Food as a Cause of the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Sounds like the biggest resource these kids need is help with cravings and knowledge of how to put in place abstinence from their food triggers. Sounds like, for many of the kids he included in his survey, their lives could be changed by knowledge that abstinence from their food triggers can be done in a safe, viable, enjoyable and fulfilling way.

The trouble with loosing such an artistic talent – no, no we can’t imagine it at all. There is an empty void where what she could have brought to us could have been.