The arti­cle Clumsy kids more likely to become obese adults: study (CBC)…

- “The study was based on tests of about 11,000 peo­ple in Britain who were tested for hand con­trol, co-ordination and clum­si­ness at age seven and 11, and were then fol­lowed until age 33.”

- “Prof. Scott Mont­gomery of the Karolin­ska Insti­tutet in Stock­holm and his col­leagues at Impe­r­ial Col­lege Lon­don in Eng­land said they pur­posely chose mea­sure­ments of fine hand con­trol such as pick­ing up matches, rather than those likely to be influ­enced by par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports, such as catch­ing balls.”

- “While it is often assumed that the cog­ni­tive impair­ments seen in adult obe­sity are a con­se­quence of excess weight, that could be putting the chicken before the egg, the researchers say”

…reminds me of Judith Beck’s words on how to “Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person”

- “The main mes­sage of cog­ni­tive ther­apy over­all, and its appli­ca­tion in the diet world, is straight-forward: prob­lems los­ing weight are not one’s fault. Prob­lems sim­ply reflect lack of skills–skills that can be acquired and mas­tered through prac­tice. Dieters who read the book or work­book learn a new cog­ni­tive or behav­ioral skill every day for six weeks. They prac­tice some skills just once; they auto­mat­i­cally incor­po­rate oth­ers for their lifetime.”

- “That is exactly my goal: to show how every­one can learn some crit­i­cal skills. The key ones are:”

- “1) How to moti­vate one­self. The first task that dieters do is to write a list of the 15 of 20 rea­sons why they want to lose weight and read that list every sin­gle day.”

- “2) Plan in advance and self-monitor behav­ior. A typ­i­cal rea­son for diet fail­ure is a strong pref­er­ence for spon­tane­ity. I ask peo­ple to pre­pare a plan and then I teach them the skills to stick to it.”

- “3) Over­come sab­o­tag­ing thoughts. Dieters have hun­dreds and hun­dreds of thoughts that lead them to engage in unhelp­ful eat­ing behav­ior. I have dieters read cards that remind them of key points, e.g., that it isn’t worth the few moments of plea­sure they’ll get from eat­ing some­thing they hadn’t planned and that they’ll feel badly after­wards; that they can’t eat what­ever they want, when­ever they want, in what­ever quan­tity they want, and still be thin­ner; that the scale is not sup­posed to go down every sin­gle day; that they deserve credit for each help­ful eat­ing behav­ior they engage in, to name just a few.”

- “4) Tol­er­ate hunger and crav­ing. Over­weight peo­ple often con­fuse the two. You expe­ri­ence hunger when your stom­ach feels empty. Crav­ing is an urge to eat, usu­ally expe­ri­enced in the mouth or throat, even if your stom­ach is full.”

A prob­lem like the obe­sity epi­demic is, no doubt, a result of many fac­tors, where chicken and egg are often mixed. What mat­ters, though, is how to set up pub­lic health poli­cies and spe­cific plans that take into account the Cog­ni­tive dimen­sion: if peo­ple can­not reg­u­late their own eat­ing and exer­cise habits, half the bat­tle is lost.