5 Pearls From The Obesity Medicine Conference
I had the pleasure of attending the Obesity Medicine Conference 2023 in NYC this past weekend.
The thing that I loved the most is that as a group, we accept that obesity is a disease complicated by many factors. There is a multilevel approach to teach obesity, and these principles also apply to preventing obesity. Most of us are at risk.
Here are the pearls that I want to share with you.
It’s not about our weight, it’s about our health. Discussing weight has to be handled very carefully. And, weight is just a number… a measure of gravitational pull on the earth. We have HEALTH, not WEIGHT. In other words, we may be living at a BMI that is considered elevated by standard charts, however, we can still uplevel our health by adopting healthy lifestyle interventions. These interventions include things like: limiting sugar, getting our steps, strength training, and surrounding ourselves with others who desire the same.
Exercise is incredibly powerful to decrease the risk of MANY chronic illnesses. And, exercise is available without even having a formal routine. Exercise, particularly HIIT (high intensity interval training) is the most powerful tool to decrease visceral fat. HIIT doesn’t mean you have to join a Crossfit gym. HIIT can be 10 seconds of moving your walk to a power walk. Little interventions are what will carry us long term.
Sleep is extremely important for our glucose control. Getting less than 6 hours of sleep consistently can take us from a normal glycemic range to a high glycemic range. This means that even with doing everything else right, we could develop impaired glucose metabolism just by not sleeping enough. Our sleep is non negotiable.
At the age of 30, we start losing muscle mass just by being a human. This is going to lower our basal metabolic rate significantly. There are simple ways to prevent this. Getting adequate protein and strength training are going to be two of our most powerful factors. Strength training does not have to be complicated, either. Start low and go slow.
Weight regain is inevitable, even if we are doing everything right. In fact, gaining up to 20% of lost weight back is the standard. We can do things to mitigate this, but what we know is that a nutrition plan with high protein and low glycemic load will be most helpful to prevent weight regain.
In my upcoming series which begins this Monday, 5-Strategies to Optimize Body Composition, I will be diving into the science of how to do this. Replays are available. You can join HERE.
Have a great week and remember… just make the next best decision.
Talk soon!
Ali