Santa Barbara Regional Health Authority Has a New Name!

Santa Barbara Regional Health Authority is a plan that is available through Healthy Families. Santa Barbara Regional Health Authority has a new name. The new name is "CenCal Health."

If you have questions about CenCal Health, please call 1-877-814-1861. The call is free!

Global AIDS crisis overblown? Some say so

Critics argue that anti-HIV budgets take funding away from other diseases

	A social worker displays earrings and pendants made using the AIDS awareness symbol at a counseling center in Chennai, India. View related photos
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Healthy Families is low cost insurance for children and teens. It provides health, dental and vision coverage to children who do not have insurance and do not qualify for free Medi-Cal.

How Do You Maintain Weight Loss?

Get your head working and the middle will take care of itself!

The key to losing weight and keeping it off is to understand what really motivates you. Once you’ve felt the initial excitement of losing the first few pounds, you must find a way to turn that enthusiasm into the willpower to stick with your eating plan. You will encounter both ups and downs as you learn to maintain your weight. To help you through the downs, you need coping strategies. Think about what you really want to achieve. That desire will help you turn your eating and exercise strategies into a lifestyle that leads to lifelong weight control.

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Why Lose Weight?

The main reason to lose weight is for health, not appearance.

• Nearly 112,000 deaths per year may be attributable to obesity.
• The risk of death rises with increasing weight.
• Even moderate weight excess (10 to 20 pounds for a person of average height) increases the risk of death, particularly among adults ages 30 to 64.
• People who are obese (defined as having a body mass index [BMI] greater than 30) have a higher risk of excess death (they are more likely to die) from all causes, compared to people at a healthy weight.

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How Did Americans Get So Heavy?

Today, 65 percent of American adults over age 20 are overweight or obese.

That's a pretty scary statistic. Just look around and you’ll realize you’re not alone in needing to learn weight management. How did so many people get so heavy? The answer is simple: Most of us are eating more calories than we are burning.

The problem of an overweight population comes from a combination of factors:

• Increasing portion sizes,
• More processed foods with fewer nutrients and
• A more sedentary lifestyle.

We're eating more food. Portions have increased dramatically in the last 20 years. The average daily intake of adults rose by about 300 calories between 1985 and 2000. That means we have to work a lot harder to burn the extra calories that those larger portions add.

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