Weight Management

We all know that obesity is widespread and worsening. Worldwide, 51% (over 4 billion people) will be living with either overweight or obesity by 2035 if current trends prevail. And 1 in 4 people (nearly 2 billion) will have obesity. How to lose weight in a healthy way and keep it off is a challenging goal, especially for those who have been battling excess weight for a long time. While attention typically focuses on changing eating and exercise patterns, an often overlooked aspect of an effective weight loss strategy is coaching.

We’ve all heard the numbers: more than two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese (68%) and one out of three is obese (39.6%); 18.5% of children and adolescents are obese, with another 16% who are overweight, and youth are becoming overweight and obese at earlier ages. And as time passes, these numbers are worsening, not improving.

Virtually all of us have heard about the obesity “epidemic” (it’s not contagious, by the way), but what about metabolic syndrome? A lesser-known phenomenon, metabolic syndrome is a collection of conditions related to obesity that are typically treated separately with prescription drugs. Metabolic syndrome is almost as common in the US population as obesity: in 2016 it was reported to be around 35% for women and men, probably higher now. And just like obesity, rates have grown parallel with poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle.

More than 38 million Americans have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and an additional 97 million are prediabetic. It is estimated that more than 8 million others remain undiagnosed. How could this serious condition have gotten so out of hand and yet affect so many people? Partly because it has no symptoms, especially in the early stages.

Most of us experience food temptations or cravings from time to time, but it’s called emotional eating when it leads to mental and physical health problems such as obesity. In order to determine if eating habits cross into emotional eating territory, it’s helpful to first review the purposes of eating.

There are lots of one-size-fits all do-it-yourself ways to drop that excess weight quickly: paleo, keto, low-carb, etc.. As well as branded regimes that advertise heavily on television. Some are phone apps, others involve buying special supplements. Then there are more expensive programs that involve purchasing powders, patches or prepared meals that are sent to your home. Some people claim these regimes and programs hold the “secret formula” to sustained weight loss.

We all know obesity is a major health problem. It is the view of many of those who are not overweight that this problem is caused primarily by absence of willpower. If only those fat people would just eat less! Unfortunately, as with virtually all chronic health conditions, it’s not that simple. Turns out multiple factors contribute to inability to lose weight, eating too much is just one of those.

This 2-part series discusses what is involved with “lifestyle change”, which many of us have been advised by our doctors or other health care providers to do. In Part 1, we first reviewed the overall contributors to health and disease: genes, environmental (including social and economic) factors, epigenetic factors (if or when certain genes are turned off or on) and, of course, lifestyle. We then focused specifically on two aspects of lifestyle: stress management and physical exercise. Part 2 focuses on another important aspect of lifestyle change necessary for attaining better health: nutrition.

Those with chronic health conditions are frequently told by health care providers (and others) that they will see significant improvement in their health if they change their lifestyle. But which health conditions might these changes help? And what exactly does “lifestyle change” mean, what is involved, how easy is it, and how long does it take?

Prediabetes means that your blood sugar levels are not quite high enough yet for a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes. More than 1 in 3 Americans— about 88 million people-- have prediabetes, and of those, more than 84% don't know it. Even more alarming is that 1 in 5 adolescents and 1 in 4 young adults are now prediabetic. Almost all cases of Type 2 Diabetes are preceded by prediabetes. Despite these alarming numbers, the good news is that the progression from prediabetes to diabetes is not inevitable: you can take steps to reverse it.