My friend, an intelligent and thoroughly sensible woman in every regard, has nonetheless adopted some rather unusual eating habits. Bucking current wisdom, she eats butter without a guilty second thought. She eats eggs with equal abandon and chooses meat that is generously larded with fat. She cooks with coconut oil. She soaks nuts in a sea-salt brine then dries them in a warm oven before eating them. She preserves raw vegetables -- using whey. She is disconcertingly, defiantly healthy.

The image of farming as a healthy lifestyle, centered around a lot of body-toning outdoors work and exercise and home-cooked meals of fresh vegetables/fruits and farm-produced meats, is changing — and not for the better.

A growing body of evidence is showing that while rural residents were once better off than their city cousins in terms of physical activity, nutrition, and weight, they now generally fare worse with regard to obesity.

In a paper, “Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity in Rural America,? examining the effect of rural lifestyles on the health of rural Americans, The Center for Rural Affairs, in collaboration with Dr. Joe Blankenau, professor of politics at Wayne State College, Wayne, Neb., is evaluating crucial health care issues in rural America.

 A bad economy can take its toll on the heart with increased stress, poor eating and forgoing healthful activities like going to the gym when money is tight. UCLA cardiologists suggest the following tips to help protect the heart during this time of financial uncertainty.

"We've seen an increase in patients complaining about heart palpitations, anxiety and stress over the past months," said Dr. Karol Watson, associate professor of cardiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Much of heart disease can be prevented, that's why it is so important to follow a healthy lifestyle and to control your cardiovascular risk factors."

Week 48 Weigh In:

Change this week:  -.5 lbs
Change overall:  -63.5 lbs

I'm very happy to have lost weight this week.  Only a half of a pound, but going in the right direction!  And this is the first time in about a month that I've lost two weeks in a row so I'm encouraged by that trend.

A study done at Georgetown University using mice found that a high fat diet did not provoke obesity. However, a high-fat diet combined with chronic stress, did.  Another study, recently published in Circulation, found that mice exposed to air pollution were more likely to develop insulin resistance and abdominal obesity compared with mice who ate the same high-fat diet but enjoyed cleaner air.

We've known for a while that stress and heart disease are linked. Although these are rodent studies, I think its becoming clear that stress and environment may play a role in obesity and Type 2 diabetes, as well--and that we're going to need to think more holistically about tackling these problems.

Those were the words of a defeated sounding Jeff Zeidman, when CityNews first introduced the morbidly obese man to viewers. 

At the time, Jeff, who weighs over 700 pounds, felt he had few options, and little to live for. 

That all changed when he met Tom Saridis, owner of Canadian Institute for Bariatric Options.

Together they forged a plan to save Jeff's life. 

If you are among the one in seven Americans who will face surgery this year, take a cue from the teams about to play in the Super Bowl: practice, prepare and put on your game face.

You wouldn't go into a big game expecting to do well without getting ready for it. Same goes for your big day in the O.R. By "getting in shape" for surgery, you can dramatically improve your chances of a big win.