Weight Loss In American Culture

Weight loss has been a constant struggle for me, and may be the original reason that I was drawn to this article. Of course I read both of the articles, and found Diabetes Self-Management very interesting. But since I personally know what its like to constantly struggle with this issue, I have chosen the Weight-Loss Intervention for Hispanic Population as my Cultural Identity for he remainder of the SLPs.
Even though I was first drawn to this article because of the title, I do realize that weight loss is not the main topic of discussion in this article. The article discussed the fact that even though Spanish speaking people all come from different countries, backgrounds and cultures, society tries to lump them altogether under one cultural

umbrella “Hispanic/Latino. The problem with this is that each group of spanish speaking culture is different and have completely different backgrounds and ways of life. This can effect how medical providers interact with their patients.

According to this article “there is no better way to learn about a culture then to observe their attitude towards food (Lindberg, Stevens, and Halperin, 2013)”. I also think that it is important to learn about a cultures dietary patterns when trying to teach them new nutritional goals. In this article a questionnaire was developed to learn more about the eating and dietary habits of Hispanic people. One stumbling block for the author of this questionnaire was the fact that his target group was composed of people from different background and countries. It was discovered that while an object was called something specific in one spanish dialect, in another a word may be nonexistent. Another culture difference that was discovered was that some cultures believe that it is healthy to eat sugar when stressed. It was also discovered that women in the Hispanic culture view overweight child as a sign of the child being healthy while children that thin are considered poor in health. It was interesting to read in this article that most Spanish speaking immigrants are healthier than those Hispanic born in America (Lindberg, Stevens, and Halperin, 2013). According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hispanic people make up the second largest group of

people that struggle with obesity. It is reported that 42.5if Hispanic’s in America are obese, and that it is most prevalent in adults between the ages of 40-59 (CDC, 2015). According to this article once Hispanic people migrate to America, they often stray from traditional diet practices and start to consume more “American Foods” because they are affordable now and cooler to consume (Lindberg, Stevens, and Halperin, 2013).
As stated earlier in this essay Hispanic/Latino is a very broad generalationzation.

This group of people is made up of a variation of ethinic ancestry. In this next section we will discuss how the PEN3 module applies to this particular group of people.
Person
A person can be motivated by a many of things to change unhealthy habits. Declining health or a diagnosis of Diabetic can cause a person to make life changing choices. When reading an article from the Mayo Clinic, I learned that they are 6 strategies to weight loss. One of the most important is “Finding Inner Motivation”. The article goes on to say the no one can make you lose weight, that the person is responsible for their own success in weight loss (Mayo Clinic Staff, N.D.). An individual must want to make changes in their life and adapt healthier eating habits when trying to loss weight.
Extended

Family/Neighborhood
Just like in African-American culture the extended family is very important in most hispanic cultures. Therefore I believe that changes in eating and dietary would not depend solely on the individuals strength and will power to do better, but their extended to family also plays a vital role in the weight loss plan. In the Diabetes Self-Management article said, family members, providers, and friends can be great sources of encouragement and support (Purcell and Cutchen, 2013). From my experiences with the Hispanic culture the neighborhood in most cases, is an extension of the family. They care for each other and share similar struggles. So just like in other cultures involving the entire community may help promote change. In this case, holding dietary classes or starting a community garden would be helpful.References