​Brought to you by HBO and the nation’s leading research institutions, this documentary series confronts the realities of living with obesity. Broken down into four parts, each segment addresses something different from the true scope of the obesity epidemic to the damage obesity is doing to our nation’s children.

Part 1: Consequences

Part 2: Choices

Part 3: Children in Crisis

Part 4: Challenges

A recent study conducted at The University of Pennsylvania points to potential dangers of weight bias internalization. While the results are mixed, there is new evidence to support the association between weight bias internalization and risk for metabolic syndrome.
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Weight bias includes (WBI) pervasive negative stereotypes and prejudice regarding an individual’s overweight, such as attributions of responsibility and/or incompetence. New research suggests that adults with obesity seeking weight-loss treatment, who scored higher on a WBI scale were more likely to have metabolic syndrome compared to those with lower scores.

Over the years, researchers have proven time after time that beige fat possesses both the qualities of white and brown fat. This “hybrid fat” can not only hoard energy, like white fat, but also burn energy, similar to brown fat.
In 2015, researchers discovered another interesting feature of beige fat: it has the ability to switch between storing and burning energy. Most recently, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found a way of keeping beige cells in the energy-burning state.
Why does this matter? By preventing beige fat cells from digesting their own mitochondria, researchers actually protected mice against obesity and symptoms of prediabetes. A graduate student who worked on the study, Svetlana Altshuler-Keylin, explains. “We knew that the color of brown and beige fat comes from the amount of pigmented mitochondria they contain, so we wondered whether something was going on with the mitochondria when beige fat turns white.”

The Joslin Diabetes Center released information from a recent study showing that weight loss and the cardiovascular benefits associated continue for at least five years into the future. This intense life-style intervention program, specifically designed for obese patients with diabetes, is referred to as the Why WAIT (Weight Achievement and Intensive Management) program.

​The study led by Dr. Osama Hamdy followed 129 Why WAIT participants with an average body-mass index (BMI) of 38. After the initial 12 week intervention, participants showed an average loss of body weight of 9.7% (about 24 pounds) and maintained an average loss of 6.4% (about 16 pounds at five years). Dr. Hamdy explains, “This weight loss was very impressive, since we know from previous research that if this population can maintain a 7% weight loss, they show a marked improvement in insulin sensitivity and many other cardiovascular risk factors.”

Despite years of extensive research, there is still much we do not understand about obesity. As a follow up to our blog post “Obesity Gene May Hold the Key to Eradicating Obesity,” we’ve been following the research of scientists in Germany that say they’ve discovered a genetic ‘switch’ that could essentially turn obesity on or off.

​The new study is founded on epigenetics research, the way the genes in our body change based on chemical and environmental factors. According to this line of thought, we are born with a set of genes that can be turned off or on, dialed up or down through processes inside the body. This usually explains why identical twins don’t always look identical.

For the first time, a direct link between a gene and fat production has been discovered. The results of recent research could reduce obesity altogether. The research was published in Nature Communications and brings an end to a four-year study and provides the perfect catalyst for further research.

​Did you know it is now estimated more than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese? Well, new genetic-based findings could help develop drug therapies that diminish the obesity percentage. While scientists already know that there are many reasons why two people with the same diets and exercise regimens can gain different amounts of weight and why fat becomes stored in different parts of their bodies there had been no significant evidence of genes playing a role in this. Recently, an international collaboration of scientists helped researchers hone in on genetic reasons for the crippling epidemic of obesity.

Recently published, the National Institutes of Health, led by the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute, organized a working group of experts to discuss the problem of weight regain after weight loss.
Experts included integrative physiologists and behavioral psychologists, all with the goal of merging their perspectives regarding the barriers to scientific progress and the development of novel ways to improve long-term outcomes in obesity therapeutics. The ultimate goals of this panel were to:
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1. Identify the challenges that make maintaining a reduced weight so difficult
2. Review strategies that have been used to improve success in previous studies
3. Recommend novel solutions that could be examined in future studies of long-term weight control