Michael Dempsey was in Del Taco mode. He would drive to fast-food chains every day for lunch and dinner.
The 62-year-old had high blood pressure and was starting to show signs of pre-diabetes, but the last thing he cared about was his diet. Dempsey's ex-wife died in a car accident, and even though they weren’t together any more, it destroyed him. He then suffered a mild stroke that made it difficult to play guitar – one of the only things he still enjoyed.
“He was really just depressed. Nothing was going well in his life,” recalls his daughter Darya Rose.
As a neuroscientist and founder of the nutrition website Summer Tomato, Rose knew the greasy burritos were not helping her father’s health and mood. So she’d stop by farmers markets in San Francisco and pick up fresh scallops or Padron peppers, and cook for him whenever she visited.
“I was just pushing this method for years: cooking good food,” she says. “My main thing is don’t eat processed food – just eat real food, and then you don’t have to worry about calories or fat or carbs.”
Her dad still stuck with the takeout.
Darya Rose hugs her father, Michael Dempsey.
But then, one day it clicked. Rose posted a video on her website describing the amount of salt in processed food, and Dempsey saw it. He was tired of feeling depressed and realized something – perhaps his sodium intake – had to change. During a phone call a few weeks later, Rose couldn’t believe the words coming out of her dad’s mouth: “There’s salt in the processed food,” he said. “So I just stopped eating it.” Instead, he started cooking vegetable stir-fries with a side of fish every night for dinner.
In two weeks he lost 20 pounds. Over the next few months he dropped another 20. Three years later, he's down to 180 pounds, and hasn’t gone near a drive-thru. The best part is, his depression has dissipated. “He wants to live again,” Rose says. “He has more friends than he’s had since I’ve known him. He has a girlfriend he’s totally in love with, and he’s happy about life.”
Rose’s experience with her father’s diet and weight may sound familiar, considering about 2 in 3 Americans are overweight or obese. Last year, the American Medical Association proclaimed obesity to be a disease – but this disease doesn't have a panacea. As Caroline Apovian, director of Boston Medical Center’s Nutrition & Weight Management program puts it, weight loss is “not a matter of willpower.”
“There is a reason why people find it difficult to lose weight and keep it off,” she says.
So what can you do if you’re concerned dad’s diet is the root of his high blood pressure or mom’s weight is putting her at risk of diabetes? We turned to weight-loss and nutrition experts to see how you can help your parent lose weight and achieve a healthy lifestyle.
How to Approach the Subject
There’s a lot of shame and embarrassment around being overweight. “We tend to think weight is our fault. So if somebody is heavy, they don’t want to talk about it because they’re ashamed,” says David Katz, director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center. “One of the things we need to accept is in the modern world, the majority of people are heavy. So you’re a little bit abnormal if you aren’t heavy.”
When sitting down with mom or dad, the most important thing is to be respectful by first asking permission to talk about his or her weight. This is how physicians often broach the topic, according to Robert Kushner, director of the Northwestern Comprehensive Center on Obesity. “You’re giving them an opportunity to decide if this is something they want to talk to you about or not,” he says. “The majority of the time an individual will say ‘Sure, what do you want to talk about?’”
If you’re worried about their reaction, Katz, a U.S. News blogger, suggests focusing the conversation on love. Tell your parent: “I want you to live long and prosper. Anything that’s a threat to that, that’s something I want to confront,” he says. “Maybe they want the help, maybe they don’t, but certainly nobody is going to be terribly offended by: ‘I love you, and I thought this might be a threat to you. So if I can be helpful, I want to be helpful.’"
But make sure you’re truly concerned about your parent’s health – and not his or her image. “You might like it if they were thinner, but if there’s no real compelling reason why anybody needs to worry about their weight, well then frankly, mind your own business,” Katz says.
However, “if you’ve got a parent who’s heavy and on medication for high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes or is increasingly at risk of that ... it’s actually irresponsible not to talk about it.”
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from U.S. News - Health http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2014/10/21/how-to-help-your-parents-eat-healthy-and-exercise-more
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