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Sending Your Fat Cells to Boot Camp

Obesity is a complex disease that involves excessive body fat.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a whopping 34.9 percent of the U.S. population (78.6 million people) are considered to be overweight or obese.

It may seem like society is obsessed with fat, including how much of it you have and how much you should be consuming.

But, how do you know if you have too much fat and how can sending your fat cells to boot camp help?

David Ludwig, MD, PhD, shares how you can take your fat cells to boot camp to jumpstart a healthy lifestyle.
Sending Your Fat Cells to Boot Camp
Featuring:
David Ludwig, MD, PhD
David LudwigDavid S. Ludwig, MD, PhD is a practicing endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children's Hospital. He holds the rank of Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr Ludwig is Founding Director of the Optimal Weight for Life (OWL) program at Children's Hospital, one of the country's oldest and largest multidisciplinary clinics for the care of overweight children.

He also directs the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Children's Hospital. His research focuses on the effects of diet on hormones, metabolism and body weight. In particular, he developed a novel "low glycemic load" diet (i.e., one that decreases the surge in blood sugar after meals) for the treatment of obesity and prevention of type-2 diabetes and heart disease.

In addition, he conducted some of the original studies linking sugar-sweetened beverages and fast food to obesity. Described as an "obesity warrior" by Time Magazine, Dr. Ludwig has fought for fundamental policy changes to restrict food advertising directed at young children, improve quality of school nutrition programs and increase insurance reimbursement for obesity prevention and treatment programs.

Dr. Ludwig is a fellow of The Obesity Society and recipient of the E.V. McCollum Award (2008) of the American Society for Nutrition. He is Principal Investigator on numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health, has published over 150 scientific articles, and serves as Contributing Writer for JAMA. Dr. Ludwig is author of a book on childhood obesity for parents, Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World (Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

His latest book, for a general audience, is entitled Always Hungry? Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently (Grand Central Publishing, January 2016). He appears frequently in national print and broadcast media.