Bucket lists, rude tweens and more

On raising a tween who has taken a turn for the rude: As difficult as you find those moments to be, you and your child are both practicing for higher-stakes separations in the future. One of the key elements that will make those conversations easier is skill — especially your child’s. Rather than responding to his affect in the moment, take an emotional step sideways. Don’t engage; observe. In a level voice, say, “I have no idea what you want right now, and you’re not going to get it by being rude to me. What do you want? Why? How much? When you figure those things out, let’s talk, but bring your best skills if you expect me to listen. You’re 10 now.”

What he really wants in that moment, by the way, is power, and he’s getting it by making his parent go off like a rocket whenever he wants. Please eliminate that reward and help him become more adept at finding his own power.

Half of U.S. adults will be obese by 2030, report says

Based on trends, half of the adults in the United States will be obese by 2030 unless the government makes changing the food environment a policy priority, according to a report released Thursday on the international obesity crisis in the British medical journal the Lancet.

Those changes include making healthful foods cheaper and less-healthful foods more expensive largely through tax strategies, the report said. Changes in the way foods are marketed would also be called for, among many other measures.

A team of international public health experts argued that the global obesity crisis will continue to grow worse and add substantial burdens to health-care systems and economies unless governments, international agencies and other major institutions take action to monitor, prevent and control the problem.

Changes over the past century in the way food is made and marketed have contributed to the creation of an “obesogenic” environment in which personal willpower and efforts to maintain a healthful weight are largely impossible, the report noted.

It also laid out a new way of calculating how many calories to cut to lose weight, giving what it said is a more accurate means of estimating projected weight loss over time.

The common weight-loss wisdom is that reducing calorie intake by about 500 calories a day “will result in slow and steady weight loss of about 0.5 kg (about a pound) per week.” That rule doesn’t take into account the way the body adapts to the change. In particular, as anyone who has actually lost weight can attest, the less you weigh, the fewer calories you can consume if you wish to lose more weight or maintain the loss.

The report said that weight loss should be viewed over a longer period of time and proposed a new “approximate rule of thumb” for an average overweight adult. It said that “every change of energy intake of [about 24 calories] per day will lead to an eventual bodyweight change of about 1 kg (just over two pounds) . . . with half of the weight change being achieved in about 1 year and 95 percent of the weight change in about 3 years.”

Though the report acknowledged that it’s ultimately up to individuals to decide what to eat and how to live their lives, it maintained that governments have largely abdicated the responsibility for addressing obesity to individuals, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations. Yet the obesity epidemic will not be reversed without government leadership, regulation, and investment in programs, monitoring, and research, it said.

The report, issued in a four-part series published in the Lancet, was released in advance of the first high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly focused on noncommunicable disease prevention and control, which will take place in New York next month.

Weight gain hits women after marriage, men after divorce

Tying or untying the knot seems to affect men's and women's waistlines differently: A new study shows that women are more apt to pile on excess pounds after marriage, while men add the weight after a divorce.

"Clearly, the effect of marital transitions on weight changes differs by gender," lead author Dmitry Tumin, a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University, said in a university news release.

His team looked at weight gain in the two years following a marriage or divorce among more than 10,000 people in the United States surveyed from 1986 to 2008.

Both men and women who divorced or married were more likely than never-married people to have a small weight gain in the two years following their marital transition, the team found.

In most cases, the weight gain was minor and not a serious health threat. But the risk of incurring a large weight gain was higher among men after a divorce and among women after getting married.

"Divorces for men and, to some extent, marriages for women promote weight gains that may be large enough to pose a health risk," Tumin concluded.

The study didn't examine the reasons why major weight gain is more likely for men after a divorce and for women after marriage, and the research did not go beyond the two-year marital transition period. But the findings fit with previous research.

"Married women often have a larger role around the house than men do, and they may have less time to exercise and stay fit than similar unmarried women," study co-author and sociology professor Zhenchao Qian theorized in the news release. "On the other hand, studies show that married men get a health benefit from marriage, and they lose that benefit once they get divorced, which may lead to their weight gain."

The researchers also found that people over age 30 were most likely to gain weight after marriage or divorce, and the risk grew stronger as people grew older.

This may be because they've settled into certain patterns of diet and physical activity, the researchers said.

"As you get older, having a sudden change in your life like a marriage or a divorce is a bigger shock than it would have been when you were younger, and that can really impact your weight," Tumin said.

The research was to be presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Las Vegas.

Suffer from grey hair?

We provide some home remedies to nourish your hair

Gooseberry is the best cure for hair fall and grey hair. Give your scalp a regular gooseberry paste massage to reverse the process of greying.

Soak 10 to 12 dried gooseberries in half a cup of water overnight and strain it the next day. Use this as a hair conditioner after your head bath. Leave it on for 10 minutes and rinse your hair with clean, warm water. This will make your hair smooth and shiny and also prevent premature greying.

A 15-minute, coconut oil and lemon massage is known to work wonders.

Soak about 10 to 12 rithas and three to four shikakai pods overnight in a pint of water. Boil for a few minutes the next day and strain. Use this liquid as a normal shampoo on your hair.

Apply a frothy mixture of castor oil and lemon juice evenly over your scalp and bathe after an hour with the shikakai and ritha shampoo mentioned above to reduce grey hair.

Take one cup of strong black tea mixed with a tablespoon of salt. Strain the tea once it's cool and massage on the roots of your hair. Leave it on for an hour and then rinse with cold water. Do not shampoo your hair after this.

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