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[Music]
hello and welcome to louisiana public
square i'm beth courtney president of
lpb
and joining me for tonight's discussion
on healthy living
is family physician and author dr ronnie
whitfield
welcome ronnie thank you so much beth
it's great to be here
you know obesity is a condition that i
see more and more in my practice
in fact the latest state of obesity
report by the robert wood johnson
foundation ranks louisiana first in the
country for adult obesity
unfortunately that's not a surprising in
a state where every social event becomes
a food event
and our cuisine attracts the tourists
from all around the world
well that's certainly true but you know
if living a healthier lifestyle is one
of your new year's
resolutions tonight we're here to help
ever wonder which diet is the most
effective for shedding extra pounds
what weight loss surgeries are available
and how safe are they
how much exercise do you need and how
can you eat healthily if you live in a
food desert well we've brought together
doctors
nutritionists researchers and weight
loss success stories to help you learn
how to have a healthy new year
my name is denisha thomas since
that last summer i've lost about 12
pounds and i've also lost about four
percent of my body fat
denisha thomas is a senior at lsu in the
pre-med kinesiology program
during the fall semester she
participated in a trial weight loss
program with pennington biomedical
research center
called healthy detours it was designed
by dr
valerie myers the summer before i
started using the app i was actually at
the heaviest weight that i
had ever been in my entire life that
came with back
problems that came with problems with
self-esteem
people in my family were noticing it was
overall a little embarrassing
through an app on her phone thomas was
prompted to eat healthier
sleep better and get more exercise
during the study
the app was centered around the
restaurants on and around campus
there were icons beside each
restaurant's name that showed you if
that restaurant had low fat options
if that restaurant had options with a
great amount of fiber
or a nice amount of vegetables on their
menu
she also learned to pre-plan her meals
for the week i would say before the
study i would say exercise was kind of
like a cramp in my schedule
the resources on the phone actually made
it very easy to
completely understand what type of
workout you were doing how much was
needed
so i realized if i go and jog around the
lake i only need to do that for 15
minutes or five days out of the week
which is completely and totally feasible
kate blumberg is a research dietitian at
pennington
she says this kind of education is key
to making a diet sustainable
and not just a short-term solution the
biggest problem people make when they
are planning a diet is they don't have a
maintenance plan
what are they going to do after they
lose the weight there are many diets to
choose from but most have the same
principle
almost any diet can work if
it is reducing the amount of calories
that people are
consuming you know if you were eating
whatever you wanted to begin with and
now you're following something
most of the time you are reducing the
amount of calories that you have
one trend is the low carb diet the
premise of low carb diet
is that if you focus more on eating
proteins and fats and less carbohydrates
your body is going to have to use your
fat in your protein stores
to burn energy but if too few carbs are
taken in
the body can go into something called
ketosis
which you know can help you burn
calories quicker but also can make you
irritable fatigued tired those type of
things
but carbs are not the enemy bloomberg
says a lot of diets they are
seem to be the enemy but i think it's
more the
quality of the carbs that you are having
so you know processed foods chips
and you know a lot of foods with sugar
in them and things like that
no we don't need those but our body does
need fruits
and vegetables and whole grains
bloomberg says there are pros and cons
to meal replacement diets like slim fast
or nutrisystem because a lot of times
when people want to go on a diet the
thing they say is well i just don't know
what to eat
and this just kind of eliminates that
the problem with
meal replacements is that again there's
no plan for afterwards
it doesn't teach people anything it
doesn't teach them portion sizes
or which food groups are healthy and
which ones they need to stay away from
pennington meal replacement studies
often include education
components that teach participants
valuable nutrition lessons
for after the study is over bloomberg
promotes the dash diet
developed in part by research at
pennington
the dash diet stands for the dietary
approach to stop hypertension
so it basically was designed to try to
see if they could reduce people's blood
pressures
but over the course of the studies that
they've done they have found that it not
only
reduced the blood pressures but it
reduced the risk of heart disease
diabetes
certain cancers and of course also help
people with weight loss
dash requires decreased sodium and
saturated fats
along with more fruits and vegetables
whole grains and low-fat dairy
if you're looking to start a diet
consult a dietitian for official advice
i truthfully believe that it is not one
size fits
all someone who loves to cook who likes
a lot of variety
in their food and things like that they
are going to do terrible at a meal
replacement type
diet where they have to eat the same
things over and over and they really
don't have much time you know they don't
really prepare them themselves
in louisiana a state where one in five
residents live in poverty it's not
always
easy for those of low socioeconomic
backgrounds
to get access to healthy options monica
mcdaniels is clinical services manager
of the state's wic program in areas
where
there are high incidence of food deserts
the accessibility to appropriate foods
can be quite the challenge
transportation to the grocery store a
full-line
grocery store may also be one of the
challenges that our participants
face the wic program or the special
supplemental nutrition program for women
infants and children helps mothers who
qualify
choose healthy foods the wic program
targets
iron nutrients vitamin a vitamin b
vitamin c and zinc calcium vitamin d
and we have food prescriptions
and with that though there are only
certain foods that
the participant will be able to purchase
no matter who you are
losing weight is about learning to make
healthy choices
because it is a lifestyle change if you
really want this to be long-term
you have to learn how to make changes
joining us to explore some of those
changes is our studio audience
it includes individuals who are at
different points in their healthy
lifestyle journey
we'll hear what diets have worked for
them what fitness regimens they follow
and why some of them chose weight loss
surgery we'll also hear from folks who
help
underserved communities eat healthier
thanks to everyone for being here
i want to toss out a few things before
we get started we created an online
survey about this month's topic
among the more than 125 respondents we
discovered the following
of those taking the survey 71 percent
consider themselves overweight
28 percent a normal weight and less than
one percent
underweight after using a body mass
index chart
43 fall under the overweight category 25
fall under the obese category and 15 in
the extremely obese category
17 come under the normal category when
it comes to carbohydrates 24 percent eat
four or more servings a day
34 of the respondents eat three servings
a day
33 percent eat two servings a day and
only nine percent
eat one serving of carbs daily for
vegetables 14
have them four or more times a day 26
percent consume vegetables three times a
day
most respondents about 34 percent eat
two servings a day while six percent of
respondings don't eat any
vegetables during the day at all forty
two percent of respondents haven't tried
dieting but twenty five percent tried
their own plan
the most popular diet is weight watchers
tried by twenty one percent of
respondents
followed by the atkins and sugar busters
diet at thirteen and nine 9
respectively some respondents have tried
multiple diets
so let's start here guys what have you
done to get in shape
and what motivated you to start we'll
start with monica
absolutely my motivating factor was
uh not uh working so much i chose the
field of nutrition i'm a registered
dietitian by trade
so i chose the field of nutrition to
keep me accountable
uh quite honestly and uh when life
happens uh
childbearing years start uh
you see the freshman 15 and i think you
see the the married 20.
so uh with with everything going on once
the children
were independent enough to you know
complete their own homework
having a supportive husband i was able
after several years of you know being a
nurturing mother and wife
to redirect my and rechannel my energy
back to exercise
great great yeah so and that that is
where my journey with
increasing my uh physical exercise
uh began very good point we're female
dominated on this panel but elmo i'd
like to ask you about your journey to to
weight loss and fitness how did you get
involved in this
well first of all i give a lot of credit
to uh the people at pennington
because they have educated me over the
years i've been on
a number of their studies probably
the one that's been the most beneficial
to me has been e-mechanic
which basically was exercise okay and
that helped a lot uh
it helped me to develop a routine for
working out
and even today a couple of years after
i've finished that study i'm still
working out in the gym three to four
times a week
in addition to that i'm a lifetime
weight watcher so i've been
very conscious of what i've eaten
although the struggle is still
before me so it definitely was a
lifestyle change for you yes
lindsay you you had a different path you
you were a little more
strategic or surgical might i say how
about your weight loss journey
um well being a new mother and gaining
weight of course i got to my
uncomfortable weight and i wasn't um
i guess you say confident anymore um
i tried several diets and they just
didn't agree with me
i don't know if i just didn't stay with
the plan or you know
how um my lifestyle was especially with
my husband's good cooking
i went to the aspen clinic i knew a few
people that went there
and they had very good success with it i
went
i had a good success with it the pounds
started dropping off immediately they
helped me with my diet plan
um my grocery list and everything i
needed to do and um
here i am great well from the surveys
and talking to you guys i know structure
is important
but i'd like to also know what are some
barriers david what do you think of some
barriers to weight loss what do people
talk about i always
hear time is the is the biggest barrier
but what berries might some folks face
uh i'd have to say food number one
louisiana cooking
that's right but uh i i
had lost about 25 pounds myself
i i have a hard time i i admire and
respect
so many of these folks that you know uh
count calories and carbs and
i just uh to be honest with you i'm
that's kind of a barrier to me i i
i'm able to um uh to control my
my diet just by cutting down on uh
the amount of food that i eat in uh less
alcohol
uh you know we're kind of a party state
i guess those empty calories
and a wonderful uh way of life here but
uh i can cut down on calories by doing
that
and uh my family's pretty supportive we
don't eat a lot of processed foods
but but anyway i i think
i think those alcohol food uh
those things are sort of barriers uh
yeah you hear that more calories you
know in and less calories out and that's
how people continue to gain weight nurse
row
uh we have some nurses in the building
and we have a different
experiences we are battling with these
patients constantly
what do you think the motivation for the
patient would be as a healthcare
provider what can you do to motivate the
patient
well i actually you know started my
journey you know because
i was listening to you tell patients say
hey look you know you could do this
that you can decrease your carb increase
your activity increase your water intake
and i thought okay one day i went home
and i said well i can listen to what dr
whitfield said and do the same thing
and it started to come off and patients
started to notice i didn't notice
but patients started notice and then i
walked into the office one day
and it was like wow i got on the scale
and i said just those simple things of
just saying hey look you can do it i'm
gonna do it with you right
so if if i could do it they could do it
too you know
so that was my attitude yeah and a lot
of times patients
being someone who went through my
personal journey hired a nutrition coach
and lost those pounds
i sometimes expect the same thing for my
patients didn't always get that
i want to shift tracks for a minute lisa
there are some folks and i think in this
room we're all okay but there are some
folks who just don't have
access to healthy foods what are the
options how can we how can we help those
individuals well
i think mainly the fact that you know i
do i am with the red stick farmers
market and we provide markets
in north and south baton rouge areas
the ones that have been mostly
challenging are the ones in the food
desert areas
so i think education is is key
to getting the word out about the the
food travels less miles then it's more
nutritious than
if it's coming from you know across seas
or other countries
or things like that but access has been
one of our
major issues in the north baton rouge
and the south baton rouge community
with the mayor's healthy city initiative
there was a
quite a few programs that came out with
that and that was break on the go to
increase the
physical fitness in the school systems
and also we came with the mobile farmers
market and the mobile food pantry
just so we could provide food in those
low income areas or the low food access
areas
so there have been different things put
into place it's just that
you know the community buy-in is the
most important thing like once they
adopt that
idea that hey we need to change our
diets and think about their family
members
who suffer from diabetes and high blood
pressure then that's
how we kind of tackle that situation
great great so we do have some options
out there by show of hands does anybody
use
anything unique a fitbit calculator a
higher personal trainer to help them in
their process other than surgical
procedures by show of hands
okay not as many as i thought mona what
what what approach did you use to lose
weight
um that was a good answer i've actually
had the gastric sleeve
okay um what prompted me to have the
surgery is i have
11 year old and a 17 year old and i've
watched
my mother die from diabetes at the age
of 62
and it was very difficult and i didn't
want to do that to my kids
so i decided after being diagnosed with
insulin resistance
and also being diagnosed with some other
health issues
and i ended up being 40 bmi
i said i had to do something and you
took something
all my family and friends were like oh
you you look great
you look great and i guess the way i
carried my weight and stuff i
was evenly distributed over my body
however
i was breathing very
hard i was very wheezy
i couldn't do physical exercise like i
used to
and i always been a gym rat and i mean i
was
in dance team for 18 years i was a
cheerleader
growing up i mean i was always very
active but once i started having kids
back to monica's you know use that child
bearing and everything
and you get complacent in life yeah life
so i decided to do this and it's been
the best decision i've lost over 60
pounds in just a few months
and um i highly recommend
it if those individuals can do it if the
other options don't work
well congratulations weight loss sorry
about your mother's loss but when we
when we address obesity we can reduce
our or increase our life span
by by reducing our risk of diabetes and
heart disease so it's very important
that
we use natural approaches as well but
sometimes those salvage procedures
are necessary that's kind of all the
time we have for that section and i
really appreciate you guys we're coming
back with some more questions
when we return we'll be joined by our
panel to further explore how to have a
healthy
new year we'll be right back
welcome back to louisiana public square
tonight we're discussing how we can live
healthier in the new year
joining us now is our panel of experts
dr drake bellinger is a bariatric
surgeon with the weight loss surgery
centers of louisiana
since 1997 he has performed over two
thousand weight loss surgical procedures
including gastric bypass and gastric
banding
dr catherine champagne is a registered
dietitian
and professor at the pennington
biomedical research center
she helped to develop the dash diet
which has been ranked number one
by u.s news and world report for seven
consecutive years wow
rudy macklin is the director of the
governor's council on physical fitness
and sports
for the past 23 years rudy has served as
an advisor on health policy issues
affecting underserved immigrants
refugees and ethnic populations
and stephanie m elwood is an extension
associate with the community
and school garden programs at southern
university ag center
her current work includes building
nutrition education sites across the
state
and working to eradicate food deserts
before we go to our audience
i'd like to ask you each briefly if you
could give louisiana a leather grade on
its health
dr bellinger i'd give us uh c-plus c
plus a little higher than i thought
dr champagne i'd give us a c-minus
c-minus okay
rudy and f and f and
miss l wood i would give us a c because
we have lots of potential
lots of potential lots of potential to
grow uh if you ask dr whitfield i'd
probably give us a d
a d plus and i think that's dealing
mostly with the obesity
epidemic that we have in our state i
want to talk some questions out to the
audience now so
you guys help me out a little bit bianca
you had a question about
the resources uh could you could you
could you tell us a little bit about
what you
were asking um well i work with
lsu ag center with the healthy
communities project
in rural st helena parish
and sometimes we find that there may not
be enough resources
because it's not necessarily a food
desert but there's
lack of access to different fresh foods
fruits and vegetables for the community
there okay
so just wondering what type of resources
are offered by
the governor's initiative um
specifically with nutrition and physical
activity
correct anyone in the panel would like
to take that question oh
i guess it was directed toward me with
the governor's council on physical
fitness and sports you know
we concentrate on obesity instead of all
the other health issues because when we
deal with obesity
it cross walks with a lot of other
diseases and death
hypertension diabetes upper respiratory
problems even cancer
so if you can get a handle on obesity
you know you really
help reduce all the other diseases and
sicknesses around this
around around this state now i travel
the entire state
and the thing that really gives me a
great caution is the children
when i see children at 10 11 years old
with high blood pressure
when i see them with respiratory
ailments you know that tells me that
upcoming with our our youth coming up to
become adults they're really going to be
sick
when they become adults and so that
really
makes me really concentrated put a
microscopic microscopic view
on the rural areas in particular right
right
theresa i think you had a question that
dr bellinger could probably address
could you could you ask dr bellinger
that question yes as an hr professional
i'm always looking for opportunities
to allow people to have good work-life
balance
what if any programs does the state
offer
that might give businesses an incentive
a tax incentive to offer more
work-life balance programs in their work
establishments
well maybe that was for for rudy instead
of not developing okay
well we have uh what we call employee
wellness programs
uh sometimes uh with your employer if
you're involved in an employee wellness
program
they'll give you a break on your
premiums on your on your health
insurance
and we have a program called own your
own health where you can track your own
physical activity and nutrition programs
online as well as we have a city versus
city
uh challenges going on like we have
monroe versus alexandria
baxter versus tallulah and we're working
on new orleans versus shreveport
and to give people different ideas and
and
motivate them to be physically active
and
move more but from the employer's
standpoint studies will show you that
health employees are the better
employees it reduces absenteeism
it boosts morale and so when you have an
employee
wellness program in your workplace you
have better employees and profitable
employees as well
and so there are a lot of state
companies around now that are really
going to that
particular thing when it comes to
employee wellness and we do it at the
louisiana department of health as well
and so you can just call my office and
i'll help you get started
stephanie i think you now you're
familiar with resources as well what
other options are there
available um well
i can tell you about the programming
that we do at southern at the ag center
we work with different usda grants one
of them
was with dr tiffany franklin eradicating
food deserts through
the development of school gardens so
teaching
health consciousness also having gardens
on campus teaching the skill of how to
grow
you know from the seed to eating the
broccoli we've also worked
with incarcerated and adjudicated youth
teaching gardening skills as well
not only for eating healthy foods but
also landscaping and other
opportunities and we're also involved
with the healthy communities grant
in several parishes madison tencent st
helena
and um southern university um
focuses on the food desert neighborhoods
and um making more fresh produce
available through
gardening efforts great great dr
champaign you
you've done a lot of research were there
any programming or things that you may
have encountered during your research
that are resources that may be helpful
as well
well mostly we've done diet studies um
looking at different types of diets
comparing diets
comparing strategies and along with
many of our we we do know that people
can lose weight
the problem is maintaining the weight
loss
so any strategy that you can use
the one that i think is the most
effective
for people who don't want to have
surgery
is to record the food that you eat
because
and i will tell you based on our
participants in the past that's the most
hated strategy but the most
effective strategy it creates awareness
of what you're putting in your mouth and
i think the concept then is
that you actually can know how many
calories
is physically in there we did that with
a pounds loss study
where we gave participants menus and the
concept was
follow these menus but the the the more
long-term message
was that when you see how much of each
food group is on the plate then you
could
take that a step further and substitute
other foods to make a difference make a
difference
i want to shift gears a little bit dr
bellinger i do my best to keep my
patients from coming to see you
but i have been unsuccessful in that
obesity is truly an epidemic
could you elaborate on that patient that
comes in that you have to address in
many cases i have patients that i don't
think need to procedure but there are
many cases now that you're you're having
to do these surgical procedures they're
salvaged procedures
uh yeah i think one of the greatest
indications in one of the best
indications for weight loss surgery
is diabetes so diabetes not only
are we getting a person to lose weight
so
things like high blood pressure and
sleep apnea tend to go away as well
makes the overall health of the patient
better but there's an intrinsic
process within the operation that starts
the reversal process of diabetes so
not only does the weight loss help
lessen the impact of diabetes but
something within the surgery
well uh the operation reverses some of
those effects by the chemical changes
that it causes
wow so reversing diabetes uh reducing
blood pressure i've had patients that
have come off all their medications
after a salvage procedure and
it's done wonders um we have one of your
patients here
and i just tiffany i tell me i'd like
for you to share maybe a little bit of
what happened but uh you had a question
as well so
you you had surgery by dr bellinger what
led you to that and
and um how are you doing i did thank you
for having me here yes ma'am
uh um i had the gastric sleeve
uh three years ago this past august
and i guess my motivation was i was
tired of
comfort eating um
my child was called home coming up on
seven years
and um it just
it just it was just a a horrible
eating habit you know i was trying to
comfort myself with food and
i just wasn't getting anywhere and i
needed a major
jump start and um
i i was
back and forth yo-yo you know dieting
and it just wasn't helping at all
and i had uh encountered
several people who uh dr bellinger
himself uh
had performed weight loss surgery on
them and
um you know i just took a look at myself
my life you know and i said
you know god may have called one of my
uh children home one of my girls home
but i have two other girls to live for
and um i'm not i'm not going to live
very long
if i continue with this weight you know
and
then it was um you know high blood
pressure and the fear of going to the
doctor and say well congratulations miss
larry you
you're you you're successful on becoming
a diabetic so
i said you know i deserve it i need a
quick jump start
and um i saw dr uh met with dr ballinger
and um from there i've just i've just
taken off
i've done it i've maintained it i've
changed my eating habits i've even um
learned how to cook uh healthier for my
family
and um so you so you'd recommend dr
bellinger
i kind of got the feeling that you would
so it's just been a great it was it was
just a great
great decision i i am very glad that i
made that decision to do that because it
just wasn't working trying to do it on
my own you know i'd lose weight gain it
lose weight gain it and um it it just
you know i just wasn't living a healthy
life you know i
exercised 15 20 miles a week
and i watched my carbs you know
um so it just and dr bill and she said
she had a key point
it's not just a surgery after the
surgery there's life after surgery what
recommendations are you giving patients
what happens after the salvage
procedures
uh we like to follow our patients we
follow them very closely for the first
year while they're in
the weight loss phase right after
surgery and then we want to follow them
for an additional five years
wow and part of and most of the programs
here around the state have been
accredited as centers of excellence to
perform bariatric surgery and weight
loss surges
bariatric surgery and one of the things
that you
must show that you want to do or you
have to do is follow the patients for
five years because
that's when they hit the mark where you
know that chances are that weight loss
will be maintained for a very long time
if they make it through five years
awesome awesome robert i haven't heard
from you um you had some questions about
uh educational programs and eating
healthy and also we mentioned cooking
but before i get to robert how many
people cook
show pants lindsay
we gotta give her this fast food thing
so so mr robert
what was your question in regards to
healthy eating well i think it
like rudy alluded to it has to start at
a young age
with education educational programs
um in the times when i was growing up
you know we
just ate pretty much anything we wanted
to
my mother would always say you're eating
too many starches
to get off the starches and i'd say well
no
you know i was hard-headed and now i'm
paying for it because i'm diabetic
so we just need more education in this
state because we all love to eat
i mean we just it's just a happy
uh drinking eaten state and so we need
to
just with a new mayor
and the new governor we need to come up
with more programs pennington's been
great timmy i'm a project at pennington
so right right tiffany you you went a
little different right i think you tried
some exercise and died first and
could you could you share your story uh
yeah um i
back in 2010 was in an accident where i
broke my ankle
bilaterally and i was in a wheelchair
for a year we didn't know if i was gonna
walk
um and i got really depressed and i
gained a lot of weight my highest weight
was up to 367
pounds and after that i tried working
out i tried using
local parks local facilities that were
available to us
i work for breck so we have many
wonderful facilities around here that
you can utilize
and it just wasn't working because it
was a mindset that i had gotten into
and until i was able to correct my
mindset
i wasn't able to get to that but the
catalyst was when my husband got sick
he has had diabetes since he was two
and four years ago he was diagnosed with
kidney failure
and that kidney failure his doctor told
me he said ma'am
you are not going to be around long
enough to help take care of your husband
because we don't know if your husband's
going to make it to get a transplant he
needed a kidney and pancreas transplant
and
apparently that's rare so um
i did the surgery that was the route
that we decided to go because
i needed something that was and it's not
a quick fix but i needed something that
was permanent that was going to be more
lasting
something that i could wrap my mind
around instead of things that to me just
weren't working
and in the long run since then my
husband and i both have been successful
with that and he has since gotten
his pancreas and kidney transplant
wonderful due to himself having weight
loss surgery
um so together we've lost almost
400 pounds total together but because of
that
that's giving us a new lease on life
we've been able to be more active
together now
this past september for our anniversary
we hiked to the top of mount conti in
gatlinburg
wow and without that without the
um experience of
changing our mindset changing our
lifestyles realizing that we got to
those places because of things that we
have done
or not have done um that's why we're
here
that's why we're able to be here right i
mean motivation
seems to be key in everyone's
conversation dr champaign
any experience with individuals that
just can't get motivated can't get this
done
well we actually when we do a lifestyle
intervention motivation and
relapse prevention time management
stress management
all of those concepts are embedded into
the
the the intervention um
one thing that's important is that um
and and i know this is sort of off the
subject but you know when you talk about
diets
almost any diet will work if you follow
it
there's you can lose weight on low carb
diets
high carb diets low fat diets higher fat
diets
but the key is counting calories and
the unfortunate thing about some of the
low carb diets
is that if you restrict carbs you
restrict fiber
and so therefore you may be more prone
to
colon cancer so the american
diet unfortunately is too low in fiber
and it needs to be
much higher probably double what normal
people what people normally would
consume
but you're right motivation um
just a case in point we had a study
going on at pennington right around
hurricane
katrina and a year after hurricane
katrina people were still
finding excuses not to be able to
stick to their diet because they had to
they had
people in their house and they couldn't
be
unkind and not let them cook bad food
for them
so it was it was it was an interesting
um
time but you know family pressures and a
lot of those
really factor in you know we know people
can make a change
but like i said sustaining the change
and carrying it forward are the key
things
well you came up doc with a wonderful
diet the dash diet which
i would like for you to define it for
our audience but many of my patients
battle with busy schedules children and
eating out
um every now and then dr whitfield eats
out but
we try to cook at home um i'm i'm newly
married so my
my wife enjoys cooking so i'm very
fortunate what are your thoughts on
eating out
preparing food we had a discussion about
that a little earlier we did have a
discussion about that um
you know we had a study where we told
people they could only eat out once or
twice a week and that was not a very
good message
but you know the reality is when you eat
out
you really need to know what you're
eating and there are strategies that you
can use
you know you can order food that doesn't
have added fat
you could have your salad dressing on
the side
you know there are many many other
strategies that can be used
but you know in terms of the dash diet
the dash diet was designed
to be a healthy diet and for the seventh
year in a row
it is still the healthiest diet by us
news and world reports
it is not the first diet for weight loss
although
if you count calories and you know about
the food groups
you can make very positive changes and
it could be a more nutrient dense as
opposed to an energy dense diet
um i'm gonna switch tracks we have
someone from breeda here i'd like uh i'd
like lisa to tell me a little bit about
breta
and just define what you guys are doing
to help our community stay healthy well
um bretta
is uh i'm sorry bretta right yeah
bretta's a non-profit
and we support small local farmers here
in louis in the state of louisiana
and they have opportunity to bring their
products to our markets so they can
reach the individuals
here in the baton rouge area and also
some of our producers go out to markets
in the crescent city area
it's not statewide though the is it
statewide the program
well bretta's part statewide we're just
here located here in baton rouge
north and south baton rouge and um
one of our main goals with the once we
receive
the the funding to do the mobile farmers
market which
were to target the food desert areas we
went out into those areas like
scotlandville
and um maybe it's glen oaks area south
baton rouge
uh even over near gush young star hill
church we
we provided a pop-up market there and uh
we targeted uh mostly you know seniors
who
because our markets come between times
between eight and two o'clock
so we would have a lot of seniors a lot
of retirees
some folks that were disabled but the
key to that is that if we had those who
work during those hours we have the
saturday market downtown okay
so it's an opportunity for everybody in
the state in in baton rouge area
to have access to local fresh produce
here and
that you know that comes from here in
louisiana so fresh is best and try to
eat seasonal
yeah yeah mainly that's my thing i'm a
seasonal person
all right uh it's a lot of times when i
it's if
things are not in season or either we'll
have a
bad weather conditions and our farmers
aren't growing a lot of vegetables
and we may have to go out to other
places to get our fresh vegetables but
for the most part if it's in season
that's what my family is going to have
that's going to eat that yeah what
you you work around the state can you
first of all i want to define to our
audience what food deserts are but what
are you doing around the state to
address
um well i work with our snap-ed and fnet
programs um teaching nutrition education
we have nutrition educators throughout
the state
southern new york ag center nutrition
educators and what i do is i go in
if it's a fitting site i help them build
a garden to have on their site maybe at
a council on aging maybe at a head start
where they can actually learn how to
grow
actually harvest and you know continue
it seasonally
we have a lot of presence in baton rouge
and infused food desert
areas as well are you surprised that we
don't know about this anymore that we
just become too urban people aren't
growing and
living as they should well um
i've taught maybe close to 2 000
students you know
maybe more and a lot of times i have a
lot of resistance to i don't want to get
my nails dirty i want to get my shoes
ready but
i am telling you right here right now
that once a student
or an adult touches the soil with their
hands
there's no going back they enjoy it they
love it and it's something that we all
have in common it's something that we
all have in our ancestry and it's
something that we all
should reconnect with if we haven't and
having that skill of knowing how to grow
your own food can go a long way you can
take it with
with you for the rest of your life but a
food desert according to the usda
a food desert in urban areas is
a neighborhood with low low access to
fresh produce
so you don't have a supermarket within
walking distance in an urban area that's
within
one mile okay and in a rural area it's
within 10 miles often times within food
deserts you have low
access to transportation so if you can't
walk to the supermarket within one mile
you're taking the bus
it's very very difficult to retrieve
fresh produce so
one one idea one creative way
to combat that is learning how to grow
your own food in your backyard
if you don't have to go to the store to
get those collard greens if you can have
them in your backyard and have a
continuous
flow throughout the fall then that's a
blessing my dad
had a farm a little mini guard in the
backyard and we'd shoot basketball
take those tomatoes rinse them off and
eat them eat them like apples
so i think we need to get back to that
monica you you
you are very resourceful and uh what i
would just want you to mention some
things about the wic program and what
you have going on
we partner and collaborate with a lot of
the
the panelists are here we work with
the snap ed and the snap educators
coming to the wic clinics
and provide services and teach
our wic participants from time to time
across the state of louisiana we also
work with bretta
with the farmers markets where we and
highly encourage
our wic participants to
come and participate and purchase fresh
fruits and vegetables
there's a matching program that we have
with
the market umbrella in the greater new
orleans area
and we're also expanded into alexandria
lake charles
as well as shreveport at this point with
assisting our wick participants in
securing and purchasing fresh fruits and
vegetables
in 2009 the usda approved
the wic program to serve or provide
whole grains so whole grains are added
to the food package
as well as the fresh choice of fruits
and vegetables the state of louisiana
opted to provide fresh only
wow fruits and vegetables because we are
agricultural state
and we you know from the from infancy
to adulthood with our childbearing age
women we want them to have the
opportunity to be able to
purchase fresh and prepare fresh for
their families to introduce
to the children because like rudy said
it starts
very young with regard to introducing
uh new food ideas and getting our
children
acclimated to healthy exercise as well
as
healthy eating right right we had a very
interesting uh dialogue prior to the
show
and i just wanted david to to share a
little bit of his
his story uh it was pretty amazing and
we're just glad that you're doing well
that was a great journey um having my
wife has stated
at two years old i was diagnosed with
type 1 diabetes which is
juvenile juvenile right learned how to
take
my own insulin shots so
supposed to learn how to eat like i was
supposed to never did want to do that
because going through the teenage years
i rebelled family issues i didn't have
my mom around my dad worked so i just
did whatever it took to get by
okay and 2013
i got diagnosed with end-stage renal
disease what so
i had kidney failure how old were you
then dude i was
32 years old and it was in november
of 2013 and one of the vascular surgeons
she had performed what's called the av
fistula so they can
connect the major artery and a vein
together to do dialysis in my arm
when i started that high blood pressure
um sleep apnea
um and then i got told by the doctor
you can you're not allowed you're not
able to get a transplant unless we do a
kidney and a pancreas because just a
kidney my diabetes would tear
my kidney up automatically but you had
to lose weight and
i was at 289 pounds and they said
i need to be down to at least 170. wow
i've tried different diets and the
problem i had was being
a diabetic on a diabetic diet i didn't
necessarily need
being on dialysis due to high phosphorus
levels
calcium different foods that i would eat
would contradict to the other diet and
that diet would contradict that one and
i ended up getting sick more than i did
losing weight and i've
spoken with a doctor out of hammond
louisiana
who agreed to do a gastric sleeve
he done the gastric sleeve kept extra
watch on me called
he personally called every month just to
check on me see how i was going see how
the healing was going
the nutritionist worked with me on the
shakes to see which would work good with
me
i ended up going from 289 pounds down to
167 pounds
awesome and i received a kidney pancreas
transplant
december of 2015. you look great david
i feel great since then um
the road recovery is hard but i find
that
eating right having to live for my
sister to watch her graduate high school
in college raising her
motivation my wife yeah um
i mean i have a service dog she keeps me
yeah who's who you have with you there
you go
exercise this is pc right
yeah right p-i-s-c-h-o-u-e-t-t dr
bellinger how common
is is this story how common is the
scenario and how safe are these
procedures
and maybe even share some of the
different type of procedures that you
guys are doing for weight loss
uh well for weight loss uh the surgical
procedures we have are the gastric
banding which is
fallen out of favor okay so you won't
see it as much but the main two are
gastric bypass and the vertical sleeve
okay
uh in david's uh particular situation
the gastric
sleeve is probably the best because the
medications that you're going to need
for a transplant patient right
have to be monitored very closely and
have to be absorbed more reliably
and the vertical sleeve is the the
procedure of choice for that because it
doesn't alter
the absorption of medications wow so
this is something that's commonplace
this is not unusual his situation at all
no it's not
wow wow
dr champagne yes from pennington a
question um
i said my main problem i tried to die
renal diet
diabetic diet doesn't necessarily go
together
has i'm not familiar with penton because
i'm originally from texas
do y'all have anything i guess
researched and specific maybe in files i
can look at
or anybody going through my same
situation can try before having to
ultimately forego a gastric sleeve which
is
that would be a bonus well you know in
terms of your particular
situation i think that relying on a
dietitian
who can compare the two diets
and that you need to be on
like the diabetic diet versus a renal
diet
could give you a lot of advice in terms
of
you know what foods would be best for
you to consume versus which ones
perhaps to avoid but
we um it's too bad that we don't have
the resources for
to cure everyone's you know
needs because you know a lot of people
who are just a little bit overweight
are wanting to make changes and come to
see us but
sometimes they don't qualify because
they're not fat enough
which is you know and i i really think
that's sort of
difficult because you know sometimes
people are a little bit overweight and
they just want to lose a little bit of
weight
to make a difference and get to a point
where they don't ever have to worry
about becoming obese
are there any ongoing studies doctors
you could reference us to
well we have done some studies with
weight on weight watchers and the new
weight watchers program
is changing as a result of a
study that was joined between pennington
and several other four or five other
centers throughout the state
so you know pennington is
you know trying to be on the forefront
of helping to decide what might be best
for people in terms of
a a diet we actually did a bariatric
study called heads up dr bellinger here
was one of our
weight loss surgeons
and it was it was really a terrific
study and
i wish it could have gone on for more
years but we are able to follow some of
the people
up to five years and are looking for
funding
to actually try to continue following
those people who had
bariatric surgery yes we're kind of
we're coming close
uh we're going to ask you one real quick
and i want some closing thoughts from
each of you
an obese child makes an obese adult how
true is that statement and how important
is exercise
uh in our young people well the thing is
uh
parents have to be really cognizant of
the fact that
there's a time when you have to say no
no to certain foods and
and sugary uh candy and things like that
uh
springtime that's true but the biggest
problem
with childhood obesity to me not only
you have to have
a good physical education in schools but
after school
i've always noticed that there are kids
who
uh travel basketball teams or football
teams the kids that don't make it
the kids don't are not the best athletes
what happens to them
okay we have so many specialized sports
uh sports are very expensive you know
like soccer costs hundreds of dollars
baseball costs hundreds of dollars and
in low-income
communities those kids can't afford to
play those sports
and so what we do with the governor's
council fitness we go in and create
sports
and tournaments in those areas where
they can't afford it because if not
then it's going to wander the streets
and have nothing to do and eat all the
wrong things
so we have to make sure that though to
keep our kids busy and to find those
programs
that will allow their kids to have
something to do after school and in the
summertime
which is really when they're vulnerable
but we have a lot of programs
with the governor's council on fitness
with our elementary fitness competition
and the governor's game where we address
all those things at the same time
well i'll tell you guys i worked with
rudy for over seven years and he's done
some great work and made some changes
and he's very old um i would like to
close
uh missel with any closing words for our
panelists and
and the group today the audience i i
would like to leave everyone with
um just a simple sentence and that is if
a kid
grows kale a kid will eat kale okay
mr mackle well i would just like to say
let's
try to when you start any type of
new diet or exercise program do not do
it by yourself
always have a partner because our
partners the more partners you have
because there's going to be some days
we're not going to be feel like working
out or eating right
sometimes we fall off the wagon but when
you have partners like these two
that are working together your diet and
your exercise are going to last a long
time
without champagne to add to that social
support is very important
in all of our weight loss studies and we
are doing some work with child nutrition
in the state but i want to
stress that a child is at school
for a short part of the day so the
example set by the parents is key to
good child nutrition habits and we have
at pennington we have at the farmer's
market
on thursday awesome very good eight to
twelve
eight to 12. all right all right dr
bellinger um
i would say that when you have a big
goal of losing weight
it's best to achieve it by setting
multiple small goals
so that you can achieve those goals much
more easily in your
ultimate goal of losing a lot of weight
you recommend journaling
yes definitely definitely keeping track
and dr whitfield gave you his five
points to healthy living know your
doctor
know your numbers know your family
history eat healthy and exercise and we
try to emphasize that to our patients
but more importantly
you got to go to the doctor we can't
make we can't diagnose the problem if
you don't see the doctor
many patients come in with diabetes and
high blood pressure and haven't been
seen for years after katrina we would
see folks
five and six years going without their
medications and it's very scary when
someone walks in
david you've had to deal with that and
you see what can happen when things go
untreated for long periods of time
i just want to thank the panelists and
the audience you guys were awesome this
was a great
session hopefully we can do something
like this again and keep everyone
motivated to eat healthy this year
we run out of time for our questions and
answer segment
we'd like to again to thank our
panelists dr bellinger dr champaign mr
macklin and miss l wood for their
insight on this month's topic
when we come back we'll have a few
closing moments
[Music]
well i'm inspired i'm going to go out
and try and eat a healthier diet
okay i can't i don't promise that i'm
going to cook more oh no you got to do
it
you got to cook my husband's a good cook
okay well we'll take that just low cat
low low
low calorie low fat low calorie low fat
but you know it is hard in louisiana
because we have such tasty food and as
you said you know all of our social
activities
from tailgating to holidays around that
parties bar mitzvahs whatever whatever
we're eating whatever we're eating
and so consequently we really have to
just keep that in mind i think portion
control
is perhaps one of the biggest things
we've been talking about as well don't
want to deprive anyone of healthy or
good eating but we got to limit those
things and and make healthier choices
well fresh is best go to those fresh
markets on the weekend
i buy them i don't necessarily cook it
that's my problem
although well that's all the time we
have for this edition of louisiana
public square
we encourage you to visit our website at
lpb.org
public square while you're there comment
on tonight's show and
we would love to hear from all of you
thank you for joining us this evening
and thanks for being our guest host it
was great awesome
good night everyone good night
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