![\"\"](\"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/obesity-graphic-1024x1024.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\nThe Obesity Link to Covid-19<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\nToday, with the threat of coronavirus infection, there is yet another reason to be concerned about being overweight: As Americans reel from the shocking and devastating health, mental, emotional, economic, and social impact the coronavirus pandemic has wrought,\u00a0the virus continues to disproportionately harm those who are already struggling with obesity and other diet-related conditions <\/em>\u2014 from heart disease and diabetes to high blood pressure and a weakened immune system. This is an alarming situation given that (1) almost 45% of adults in the United States are obese \u2014 we rank #1 in obesity among international OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations, (2) and one in two Americans \u2014 over 133 million people \u2014 suffer from chronic health conditions, many of which are linked to poor food choices.<\/p>\nIn my opinion, the coronavirus pandemic is a wake-up call; a stunning event that is sounding the alarm we need to take action NOW to remedy the struggle that millions of overweight and obese people live with day-to-day. Clearly, we are being alerted to change \u2014 really, really change \u2014 what we eat and how we eat. Each day and every day. Starting now. For the rest of our lives. My vision is that we accomplish this by halting and turning around the obesity pandemic without dieting<\/em>; rather, by losing weight and keeping it off with what I call a\u00a0dietary lifestyle<\/em>, meaning, a way of eating that leads naturally to weight loss, health, and healing\u2026for life.<\/p>\nThe Whole Person Integrative Eating (WPIE) Weight Loss Rx<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\nWhat if\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026it were possible to overcome overeating and to lose weight and keep it off without traditional dieting? (Note: Almost 50% of Americans are \u201con a diet\u201d at any one time; and typical dieters will try between 55-130 diets in their lifetime!)<\/p>\n
\u2026you could nourish yourself physically each time you eat? But also emotionally, spiritually, and socially?<\/p>\n
\u2026your relationship to food, eating, and weight was based on a way of eating that leads to a pleasurable relationship to food and eating\u2014with weight loss as a natural \u201cside effect?\u201d<\/p>\n
What I am describing is the Whole Person Integrative Eating<\/a> (WPIE)\u00ae\u00a0<\/sup>dietary lifestyle, an evidence-based, scientifically sound model and program that treats the root causes of overeating, overweight, and obesity. It is also a way of eating that may prepare your immune system to fight viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens.1-3<\/sup>\u00a0And the WPIE dietary lifestyle can also help you prevent and reverse a plethora of other diet-related chronic conditions.<\/p>\nAfter 25 years of research by behavioral scientist Larry Scherwitz, PhD (transparent disclosure: Larry\u2019s my<\/p>\n
husband) and me, the well-documented message in Whole Person Integrative Eating is that it is possible to overcome overeating, overweight, and obesity by replacing the newly identified, new-normal overeating styles Larry and I have discovered with their antidotes: the ancient\/new, science-backed elements of our Whole Person Integrative Eating\u00ae<\/sup>\u00a0model and program.4-6<\/sup>\u00a0FYI\u2026WPIE is a \u201cwhole person\u201d program that address both\u00a0what<\/em>\u00a0you eat (your\u00a0food<\/em>\u00a0choices<\/em>) and\u00a0how\u00a0<\/em>you eat (your\u00a0eating behaviors<\/em>); and in turn, how your food choices and eating behaviors nourish you physically, but also emotionally, spiritually, and socially. As a first step, this article offers the WPIE what-to-eat guidelines for weight loss.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/fresh-fruit-1024x683.jpg\")
What-to-Eat Rx: Fresh, Whole, Inverse<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\nWhat Larry and I, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of other researchers have discovered, is that there\u2019s a simple way to eat that provides the antidote to the Fast Foodism overeating style our WPIE research identified that leads to overeating and obesity. It is a time- and science-tested what-to-eat guideline that has nourished humankind for millennia\u2014and it is how people who are naturally thin and healthier eat today: Eat fresh, whole food in its natural state as often as possible.<\/em>7\u00a0<\/sup>Please keep in mind the phrase \u201cas often as possible.\u201d This means making fresh, whole foods your most-of-the-time way of eating; it is not a rigid, regimented way of eating you start, then stop.<\/p>\nTo get you, and your waistline and immune system, started on the road to health and healing, here are the three words that describe the WPIE what-to-eat guidelines that lower odds of illness: Fresh. Whole. Inverse.7<\/sup>\u00a0This is what I mean.<\/p>\nFresh. Whole.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>The optimal way to eat for weight loss, health, and healing is to consume mostly unrefined, unprocessed, real food that has all its constituents (such as the fiber and germ in grains) intact. This means choosing lots of\u00a0fresh<\/strong>\u00a0fruits, vegetables,\u00a0whole<\/strong>\u00a0grains, legumes (beans and peas), and nuts and seeds, with lesser\u2014or no\u2014amounts of free-range, grass-fed, and\/or wild dairy, poultry, meat, and fish that is free of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, and additives and chemicals (you often can\u2019t pronounce).<\/p>\nInverse eating.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Along with \u201cfresh\u201d and \u201cwhole,\u201d the third WPIE \u201cingredient\u201d for optimal eating is to\u00a0eat inversely<\/strong>. What do I mean by \u201cinverse eating?\u201d Whether you\u2019re looking at the traditional diets of Mediterranean, Asian, South American, African, Indian, or Native American cultures, they all have one way of eating in common: meals are mostly plant-based foods (fruits, veggies, grains, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds), with lesser amounts of animal-based foods (dairy, fish, poultry, and meat). In other words, the diets of most cultures worldwide are\u2014and have been for thousands of years\u2014mostly plant-based foods as the\u00a0centerpiece\u00a0<\/em>of the meal, and animal-based foods as a\u00a0condiment\u00a0<\/em>or side dish.<\/p>\nClearly, this is the\u00a0inverse\u00a0<\/em>of the almost 40 percent\u2014approximately 84.8 million Americans\u2014who eat fast food every day and the 91 percent\u2014at least 290 million Americans\u2014who completely miss the mark of meeting the U.S. dietary guidelines of a half to two cups of vegetables per day. Same with fruit: only 12 percent of Americans consume one-and-a-half to two servings per day. In other words, most Americans eat the standard American diet (SAD) of mostly processed animal-based foods with few, or no plant-based foods.<\/p>\nWith SAD as a starting point, I use the term\u00a0inverse eating\u00a0<\/em>to describe the\u00a0antithesis<\/em>, or inverse, of the standard American diet: the opposite way of eating that evolved naturally over thousands of years and includes mostly fresh, whole, plant-based foods supplemented with small, occasional servings of fresh, whole, chemical-free animal-based foods.<\/p>\nThe WPIE Dietary Lifestyle: If Not Now, When?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\nI know. Change isn\u2019t easy. Especially when it comes to food and eating. I understand; truly. Since the social-isolation policy that has gone into effect for most of us, I\u2019ve talked with people who are turning to high-carb, high-sugar, high-fat \u201ccomfort foods\u201d to cope. And they are gaining weight. And weakening their immune system. And making themselves vulnerable to a plethora of diet-related conditions.<\/p>\n
The antidote? Commit to, and adopt a dietary lifestyle that empowers you to eat to prevent, even reverse, a multitude of food-related ailments and increase odds of boosting immunity, which in turn may decrease your risk of becoming ill from the coronavirus. And it lowers odds of being overweight and obese. Or developing diabetes. And heart disease. And some cancers. And depression and anxiety. And other mind-body, diet-related chronic conditions.<\/p>\n
In other words, we know that the WPIE\u00a0fresh,<\/strong>\u00a0whole<\/strong>,\u00a0inverse<\/strong>\u00a0way of eating ups the odds of helping you lose weight and keep it off, lessens the risk of Covid-19 symptoms, and can prevent and reverse food-related chronic conditions; that the Whole Person Integrative Eating\u00ae<\/sup>\u00a0dietary lifestyle holds the key to transforming your relationship with food and eating so you can reclaim your health\u2026for life. If not now, when?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Article originally printed on\u00a0integrativeeating.com<\/a>. Reprinted with permission from Deborah Kesten.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\nDeborah Kesten, M.P.H<\/a>., is an award-winning author, specializing in preventing and reversing obesity and heart disease. Her expertise includes the influence of epigenetics and diet on health, Lifestyle Medicine, and research on the Whole Person Integrative Eating dietary lifestyle to treat overeating, overweight, and obesity. She and her husband, behavioral scientist Larry Scherwitz, Ph.D., collaborate on research and writing projects.\u00a0<\/em>Her latest book, \u201cWhole Person Integrative Eating<\/a>\u201d was named the \u201cWinner\u201d in the Health category by the 2020 Book Excellence Awards.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During a recent interview on a talk radio show, a caller told me she had gained seven pounds since living in lockdown; her friends also had gained weight, she said. A few days later, a colleague who has been conducting what she calls \u201ctelephone clinics\u201d with her obese patients wrote: \u201cAll were telling me how lockdown is causing further weight gain and how they feel unable to do anything about it.\u201d She continued: \u201cI think that the lockdown affects disproportionately people who were already struggling with obesity and unhealthy eating\u00a0habits.\u201d As most of you know, it is not just select \u201cobese patients\u201d who are struggling with overeating and ensuing weight gain. This is because overweight and obese people are not a small subset of the population. Rather, almost 70% of Americans are overweight or obese; indeed, by 2030 the percentage is expected to be closer to 100%. This means that the lockdown may be speeding up our obesity stats, but it is not the cause of our overweight pandemic: The fat-track train left the station decades ago. The Obesity Link to Covid-19 Today, with the threat of coronavirus infection, there is yet another reason to be concerned about being overweight: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":27019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[139,286],"class_list":["post-27018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-mfn","tag-nutrition","tag-obesity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
In my opinion, the coronavirus pandemic is a wake-up call; a stunning event that is sounding the alarm we need to take action NOW to remedy the struggle that millions of overweight and obese people live with day-to-day. Clearly, we are being alerted to change \u2014 really, really change \u2014 what we eat and how we eat. Each day and every day. Starting now. For the rest of our lives. My vision is that we accomplish this by halting and turning around the obesity pandemic without dieting<\/em>; rather, by losing weight and keeping it off with what I call a\u00a0dietary lifestyle<\/em>, meaning, a way of eating that leads naturally to weight loss, health, and healing\u2026for life.<\/p>\n What if\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026it were possible to overcome overeating and to lose weight and keep it off without traditional dieting? (Note: Almost 50% of Americans are \u201con a diet\u201d at any one time; and typical dieters will try between 55-130 diets in their lifetime!)<\/p>\n \u2026you could nourish yourself physically each time you eat? But also emotionally, spiritually, and socially?<\/p>\n \u2026your relationship to food, eating, and weight was based on a way of eating that leads to a pleasurable relationship to food and eating\u2014with weight loss as a natural \u201cside effect?\u201d<\/p>\n What I am describing is the Whole Person Integrative Eating<\/a> (WPIE)\u00ae\u00a0<\/sup>dietary lifestyle, an evidence-based, scientifically sound model and program that treats the root causes of overeating, overweight, and obesity. It is also a way of eating that may prepare your immune system to fight viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens.1-3<\/sup>\u00a0And the WPIE dietary lifestyle can also help you prevent and reverse a plethora of other diet-related chronic conditions.<\/p>\n After 25 years of research by behavioral scientist Larry Scherwitz, PhD (transparent disclosure: Larry\u2019s my<\/p>\n husband) and me, the well-documented message in Whole Person Integrative Eating is that it is possible to overcome overeating, overweight, and obesity by replacing the newly identified, new-normal overeating styles Larry and I have discovered with their antidotes: the ancient\/new, science-backed elements of our Whole Person Integrative Eating\u00ae<\/sup>\u00a0model and program.4-6<\/sup>\u00a0FYI\u2026WPIE is a \u201cwhole person\u201d program that address both\u00a0what<\/em>\u00a0you eat (your\u00a0food<\/em>\u00a0choices<\/em>) and\u00a0how\u00a0<\/em>you eat (your\u00a0eating behaviors<\/em>); and in turn, how your food choices and eating behaviors nourish you physically, but also emotionally, spiritually, and socially. As a first step, this article offers the WPIE what-to-eat guidelines for weight loss.<\/p>\n What Larry and I, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of other researchers have discovered, is that there\u2019s a simple way to eat that provides the antidote to the Fast Foodism overeating style our WPIE research identified that leads to overeating and obesity. It is a time- and science-tested what-to-eat guideline that has nourished humankind for millennia\u2014and it is how people who are naturally thin and healthier eat today: Eat fresh, whole food in its natural state as often as possible.<\/em>7\u00a0<\/sup>Please keep in mind the phrase \u201cas often as possible.\u201d This means making fresh, whole foods your most-of-the-time way of eating; it is not a rigid, regimented way of eating you start, then stop.<\/p>\n To get you, and your waistline and immune system, started on the road to health and healing, here are the three words that describe the WPIE what-to-eat guidelines that lower odds of illness: Fresh. Whole. Inverse.7<\/sup>\u00a0This is what I mean.<\/p>\n Fresh. Whole.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>The optimal way to eat for weight loss, health, and healing is to consume mostly unrefined, unprocessed, real food that has all its constituents (such as the fiber and germ in grains) intact. This means choosing lots of\u00a0fresh<\/strong>\u00a0fruits, vegetables,\u00a0whole<\/strong>\u00a0grains, legumes (beans and peas), and nuts and seeds, with lesser\u2014or no\u2014amounts of free-range, grass-fed, and\/or wild dairy, poultry, meat, and fish that is free of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, and additives and chemicals (you often can\u2019t pronounce).<\/p>\n Inverse eating.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Along with \u201cfresh\u201d and \u201cwhole,\u201d the third WPIE \u201cingredient\u201d for optimal eating is to\u00a0eat inversely<\/strong>. What do I mean by \u201cinverse eating?\u201d Whether you\u2019re looking at the traditional diets of Mediterranean, Asian, South American, African, Indian, or Native American cultures, they all have one way of eating in common: meals are mostly plant-based foods (fruits, veggies, grains, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds), with lesser amounts of animal-based foods (dairy, fish, poultry, and meat). In other words, the diets of most cultures worldwide are\u2014and have been for thousands of years\u2014mostly plant-based foods as the\u00a0centerpiece\u00a0<\/em>of the meal, and animal-based foods as a\u00a0condiment\u00a0<\/em>or side dish.<\/p>\n Clearly, this is the\u00a0inverse\u00a0<\/em>of the almost 40 percent\u2014approximately 84.8 million Americans\u2014who eat fast food every day and the 91 percent\u2014at least 290 million Americans\u2014who completely miss the mark of meeting the U.S. dietary guidelines of a half to two cups of vegetables per day. Same with fruit: only 12 percent of Americans consume one-and-a-half to two servings per day. In other words, most Americans eat the standard American diet (SAD) of mostly processed animal-based foods with few, or no plant-based foods.<\/p>\n With SAD as a starting point, I use the term\u00a0inverse eating\u00a0<\/em>to describe the\u00a0antithesis<\/em>, or inverse, of the standard American diet: the opposite way of eating that evolved naturally over thousands of years and includes mostly fresh, whole, plant-based foods supplemented with small, occasional servings of fresh, whole, chemical-free animal-based foods.<\/p>\n I know. Change isn\u2019t easy. Especially when it comes to food and eating. I understand; truly. Since the social-isolation policy that has gone into effect for most of us, I\u2019ve talked with people who are turning to high-carb, high-sugar, high-fat \u201ccomfort foods\u201d to cope. And they are gaining weight. And weakening their immune system. And making themselves vulnerable to a plethora of diet-related conditions.<\/p>\n The antidote? Commit to, and adopt a dietary lifestyle that empowers you to eat to prevent, even reverse, a multitude of food-related ailments and increase odds of boosting immunity, which in turn may decrease your risk of becoming ill from the coronavirus. And it lowers odds of being overweight and obese. Or developing diabetes. And heart disease. And some cancers. And depression and anxiety. And other mind-body, diet-related chronic conditions.<\/p>\n In other words, we know that the WPIE\u00a0fresh,<\/strong>\u00a0whole<\/strong>,\u00a0inverse<\/strong>\u00a0way of eating ups the odds of helping you lose weight and keep it off, lessens the risk of Covid-19 symptoms, and can prevent and reverse food-related chronic conditions; that the Whole Person Integrative Eating\u00ae<\/sup>\u00a0dietary lifestyle holds the key to transforming your relationship with food and eating so you can reclaim your health\u2026for life. If not now, when?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Article originally printed on\u00a0integrativeeating.com<\/a>. Reprinted with permission from Deborah Kesten.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Deborah Kesten, M.P.H<\/a>., is an award-winning author, specializing in preventing and reversing obesity and heart disease. Her expertise includes the influence of epigenetics and diet on health, Lifestyle Medicine, and research on the Whole Person Integrative Eating dietary lifestyle to treat overeating, overweight, and obesity. She and her husband, behavioral scientist Larry Scherwitz, Ph.D., collaborate on research and writing projects.\u00a0<\/em>Her latest book, \u201cWhole Person Integrative Eating<\/a>\u201d was named the \u201cWinner\u201d in the Health category by the 2020 Book Excellence Awards.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During a recent interview on a talk radio show, a caller told me she had gained seven pounds since living in lockdown; her friends also had gained weight, she said. A few days later, a colleague who has been conducting what she calls \u201ctelephone clinics\u201d with her obese patients wrote: \u201cAll were telling me how lockdown is causing further weight gain and how they feel unable to do anything about it.\u201d She continued: \u201cI think that the lockdown affects disproportionately people who were already struggling with obesity and unhealthy eating\u00a0habits.\u201d As most of you know, it is not just select \u201cobese patients\u201d who are struggling with overeating and ensuing weight gain. This is because overweight and obese people are not a small subset of the population. Rather, almost 70% of Americans are overweight or obese; indeed, by 2030 the percentage is expected to be closer to 100%. This means that the lockdown may be speeding up our obesity stats, but it is not the cause of our overweight pandemic: The fat-track train left the station decades ago. The Obesity Link to Covid-19 Today, with the threat of coronavirus infection, there is yet another reason to be concerned about being overweight: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":27019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[139,286],"class_list":["post-27018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-mfn","tag-nutrition","tag-obesity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Whole Person Integrative Eating (WPIE) Weight Loss Rx<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
What-to-Eat Rx: Fresh, Whole, Inverse<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\nThe WPIE Dietary Lifestyle: If Not Now, When?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
\n