Refuse To Regain

Our Healthcare Industry: NOT

by Barbara Berkeley, MD It's in the headlines. It's on your mind. It's health care. As of December, 2016 the United States was spending 17.8% of its gross domestic product on health care. That's 3.2 trillion dollars or about $9,990 per person each year. The imbroglio over Obamacare is the direct consequence of our enormous health care problem. Proper coverage is too expensive for many of us and beyond any reach for truly sick people unless there is a contribution... Read more →

Why I Hate the People "Half Their Size" Issue

by Barbara Berkeley, MD This is a bad week for me. I'm on a rant. In fact I feel (for those of you who are old enough to remember) like Howard Beale, the news anchor from the movie "Network", who went crazy and started screaming, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!!" OK, maybe I'm exaggerating. But just a little. This week brought a double whammy. First, the USDA released its new eating guidelines. Why... Read more →

Are You An Easy Keeper? Weight After Menopause (and Before)

by Barbara Berkeley, Do you feel like you can gain weight from eating air? Overweight individuals often feel that they gain weight just by looking at food, yet our culture disbelieves this. " No", it says, "the reason you are overfat is because you are weak and have no willpower. Look at that thin person over there, now there is a role model." This is utter nonsense as far as I'm concerned. While we debate about whether different people store... Read more →

Alcohol and Holiday Weight Gain

by Barbara Berkeley, MD It's a problem. All those parties. All that wine and beer. Like the carbs we eat, alcohol can co-opt our brain and starting talking for us. Who hasn't had that experience?? A few suggestions: Read more →

The Holidays: Videos to Keep You Thinking and (Maybe?) Away From the Cookies

by Barbara Berkeley, MD In our practice, we try to see our patients every week. It's a lot of personal contact, but we've found over the years that people who are working on healthy weight behaviors need an "island", a place where it's ok to see the world differently from the view of their friends, family and co-workers. And they need to have a moment on that island frequently. More so over the holidays. Our eating behaviors are directly related... Read more →

Holiday Weight Season: Let's Beat It This Year!

by Barbara Berkeley I notice that despite the unseasonably warm temperatures in Cleveland, our stores are suddenly trimmed in fake snow, silvery branches, and glittering ornaments. It happened overnight in the invisible seam that separates fall from winter and almost always seems premature....until the flakes start to swirl for real. What this means, of course, is that we are about to launch into that season that is supposed to be so wonderful, so giving and so warm but which often... Read more →

The Simple Life. The Simple Body

by Barbara Berkeley, MD I was intrigued by David Brooks' column in the New York Times today. It speaks to a renewed interest in an old idea: simplifying life. Living in a less complicated way is not a new concept (think Walden Pond), but it has gained a greater magnetism in the setting of the hugely complex and acquisitive world in which we now find ourselves. I personally have enjoyed and benefited from Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying... Read more →

Don't be a Lazy Jack. Use Your Own Yardstick.

by Barbara Berkeley, MD Are you driven crazy by the daily dietary directives that scroll beneath the news and pop up on the front pages of the papers? I am. The internet has given us the ability to learn of every speculation about diet and every study...whether small, large, well-constructed, or poorly run. Media reporting does not discriminate between these. Pretty much everything is offered with equal weight, which leaves it to us to figure out if the latest dietary... Read more →

The Bad Egg: How We Tell the USA What to Eat

by Barbara Berkeley, MD The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which convenes every five years, have come out with its latest recommendations. Sugar is out. Eggs are back in. Fat? Still unclear. While we are finally starting to move in the right direction---a little---these guidelines remain mostly in the mode of previous directives. Count teaspoons, eliminate or add back individual elements, dissect your diet into ever-changing parts. Keep your eyes peeled for the latest change. We might be wrong! As frequent... Read more →

Meditations on The Changing Shape of America

by Barbara Berkeley, MD If you are over the age of 60, you remember a time when most Americans were thin. Sure, there were some overweight and obese folks, but they were few and far between. Photos and films from the 50s and 60s will confirm the fact that the average weight of America has changed drastically, with the greatest escalation in size occuring since 1980. It is easy to blame our increasing fatness on cheap, available food, poor willpower,... Read more →