Why are women losing the battle of the bulge

By ALT IF SHAH • [email protected]

Frances Traphagan has been battling weight issues her whole life.       .

For years, the south Minneapolis mom struggled to balance work demands and motherhood. After every

pregnancy, her weight problem grew. Her habit of eating on the run also tipped the scales in the wrong direction.

Finally, at 240 pounds, the 5-foot-3 Traphagan chose to have bariatric surgery at the Hennepin Bariatric Cen­ter and Obesity Program at Hennepin^. County Medical Center in downtown Minneapolis.

“It was my very last effort to try to lose weight,” she said.

She’d tried everything before that — from Weight Watchers to the Atkins diet to the grapefruit diet.

“I did have some success, but nothing was ever per­manent,” she said.

After a national report this summer -s-howat that women have surpassed men in obesity rates, doctors and obesity researchers are searching for answers to why women are struggling more tha.n men.

For the first time, more than 40 percent of U.S. women are obese, according to the latest numbers from the Cen­ters for Disease Control and Prevention.

The nation as a whole continues to struggle with obe­sity, with 35 percent of men considered obese. But while men’s obesity rates appear to have stabilized, women’s are still rising, the CDC report shows.

Dr. Maria Collazo-Clavell, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic who works with overweight and obese patients, has been working in the obesity research field for 20 years. She said the recent findings .give her pause about whether public health officials are taking the right approach to tackling obesity.

“All of that makes you question: Are you on the right track?” she said. “The data would say no.”

That so many women are obese is cause for alarm not only because of the increased health risks for them but also for those around them, Col­lazo-Clavell said.

“That’s kind of the tip of the iceberg,” she said. Women are often the primary caregivers in a family, and their eating and activity habits can influence their children and others in their family.

An example of that ripple effect: Collazo-Clavell is start­ing to see some of her previous patients’ children and is work­ing with them to help manage their obesity

It’s difficult to pinp oint what is causing women to struggle more with obesity than men, but doctors say there likely are many factors at play.

Women typically have two times in their lives when they are at risk of gaining sig­nificant amounts of weight: childbearing (during preg­nancy and after giving birth) and menopause.

Collazo-Clavell hears from many new mothers that they fmd meal plarming and prepa­ration tough after giving birth. Also of concern, she notes that women as a group are going into pregnancy heavier than they were 20 years ago.

It makes it harder to manage a healthy pregnancy weight if they’re already overweight, she said.

An epidemic

One of the country’s leading health problems, obesity can le ad to serious diseases, includ­ing diabetes and heart disease.

Body mass index (BMI) is calculated by dividing weight (in kilograms) by height squared (in centimeters). Any­one with a BMI 025 or more is considered overweight, while those with a BMI of 30 or more are obese. (Find a calculator at tinyurl.com/o2df8n1.)

For example, a woman of average height in the U.S. (5 feet 4) would be classified as obese ifshe weighs at least175pounds. An average height American man (5 feet 9) who weighs 203 pounds or more would be con­sidered obese,

Dr. Guilford Hartley is med­ical director of the Hennepin Bariatric Center and Obesity Program, where 100 surgeries for weight management are performed each year.

He sees many more female patients than men. Part of the reason, he said, is that women are more likely to seek medi­cal tre atment for a weight issue than men.

“In our culture, when a man’s overweight, nobody pays too much attention,”_i he said. “But we have such^,‘ an emphasis on being thin for women that we’re culturally forcing women to be more concerned about their weight than men. The social pres­age if you’re overweight and a woman is higher.”

Those seeking surgery often have struggled with a weight problem for a long time.

“Usually by the time I see them, most of them get here saying, ‘I’ve done this all my life. This is my sixth yo-yo,” he said.

He found the recent CDC report on obesity rates con­cerning. “Up until these reports, it was looking as if the so-called obesity epidemic wa.s kind of plateauing.”

In analyzing the new data, Hartley and Collazo-Clavell point to societal changes that have led people to become more sedentary.

“If you were a clerical per­son, 20 years ago you’d have to get up and put the piece of paper in the file ca.binet. Now you never have to get up off your chair,” Hartley said. “We have engineered … physical activity out of our ^–workplace and out of our home place.”

The pres cription of “eat less and exercise more does not address the kind of vigorous activity needed to tip the scales.

“When we tell them to exer­cise more, we mean get on a treadmill for an hour, three da.ys aweek,” he said. “And the kind of exercise that it takes to have a significant impact on weight is more like if you’re a hardscrabble farmer and you’re working up a sweat for eight hours a day just to put food on the table.”

Constant fight

It’s, been 10 years since Traphaganh a d a surgic al band wrapped around her stomach to make it smaller. The band makes it possible to consume only 1.5 cups of food at a time But it’s still possible to overeat, she said, which is why she had to learn how to eat healthfully to control her weight.

Today, she has poached eggs instead of douglmuts for breakfast and drinks plenty of ice water throughout the day She has maintained a healthy weight

“It’s b een re al hard, though. It’s not easy,” she said

“I got down to 155 pounds. My goal weight is 124. I’m still working on that, and I hope to achieve that this year.”

The AsSociated Press contributed to this report.

Mlle Shah • 612-673-4488 • @allieshah