Weight Loss That Lasts Action Steps (11/15/2007)
(...) Successful weight loss requires understanding the big picture, not just knowing pieces of information. However, knowing about weight management behaviors, making wise choices, eating healthfully, enjoying food, and doing physical activities that you enjoy can be a powerful set of tools for taking control of your weight for good. Learn Flexible Restraint Let’s define one aspect of willpower as the ability to hold yourself back from eating or overeating when you’re around food. (...)

Willpower Is Only One Part of the Answer (11/15/2007)
(...) You can’t lose weight without knowing what to do. Rebecca Hill was slim when she started working as a postproduction coordinator on the first American Idol show. Work-related stress caused her to change her eating habits and eat virtually nonstop. (...)

Weight Gain Is Also Due to Overeating (11/15/2007)
(...) “My weight was always high and I never was happy or confident with the way I looked, but I figured that I was meant to be big. In my freshman year of college, I stopped exercising. Within a few months, I had reached my highest weight ever. (...)

Inequalities in health A social work issue (04/27/2007)
(...) We now introduce each of these main themes in turn. SOCIAL WORK: COMPOUNDING HEALTH INEQUALITIES Inequality in physical health requires attention from social workers because of the gravity of the damage it inflicts on people’s welfare and because of its socially constructed nature. It also demands attention because social work is itself implicated in the processes which produce and maintain such inequalities. (...)

Unequal health chances (04/27/2007)
(...) However, whether relying on classification by occupation or by measures of deprivation, the evidence of substantial differences in mortality between those who are relatively well-off and those who are poor remains consistent across a range of data sources (Davey Smith et al. 1990; Drever and Whitehead 1997). For example, there is no main cause of death for which children in Social Classes IV and V have lower rates than those in Classes I and II (Woodrofe et al. (...)

Health creation and Maintenance A new direction for social work (04/27/2007)
(...) In recent years the perception has been that social work mainly becomes involved in health issues after illness has led to difficulties in daily living, rather than playing a primary role in preventing sickness and promoting good health. We argue that this view reflects a lack of awareness and analysis in social work itself of the interaction between lay efforts, inequitable material and social circumstances in the creation of good health, and that it fails to recognise the actual and potential impact of social work and social work organisations on health creation. Leaving care: A threat to health One brief example serves to underline the point. (...)

Health Promotion into the Twenty first Century (04/27/2007)
(...) At the other end of the age range, the Health and Lifestyle survey reported in Sidell (1995) found that as many people over 65 claimed that they made positive attempts to keep themselves healthy as did those in younger age groups, with over 60 per cent of both men and women acting positively to maintain their health. Graham’s work (1984, 1987 and 1993) has highlighted this duality – individual action taken within the context of unequal social relations – as characteristic of lay engagement with health creation and maintenance: ‘health-related behaviours are maintained within and against the constraining circumstances of everyday life’ (Graham 1996: 176–7). Informed choices? Within the confines of inequitable social conditions, what appear to be health-damaging attitudes and behaviours can make grim sense. (...)

Professional model of health promotion (04/27/2007)
(...) The impact of business was also obscured, with the reluctance of the last government to impose ‘unnecessary regulations’ (DoH 1992: 106) on tobacco, alcohol and other industries finding echoes in the Labour Government’s resistance to an early ban on tobacco sponsorship of Grand Prix motor races. A second way in which health promotion and prevention can unwittingly exacerbate differences in health chances is if interventions, such as immunisation uptake (Reading et al. 1994) or health checks provided by GPs (Gillam 1992), are not equally accessed, or if they produce greater gains for those who are relatively better off (Blaxter 1990; Nettleton and Bunton 1995). (...)