Medical Weight Loss Conference Updates

I had the pleasure of finally attending an in-person medical weight loss conference! As president of the Obesity Medicine Association, I enjoyed my role in offering comprehensive training to physicians, PA’s, and nurse practitioners regarding how to help patients lose weight and keep it off.

Here are a few tips I gleaned from this conference to help you succeed!

1. Teamwork is best. Combining a good nutritional, behavioral, physical activity, and weight loss medication will give better results than any single approach.
2. Food plans work, but there is not good evidence one approach is superior to others (with perhaps one exception). Lectures included Jason Fung discussion on intermittent fasting, lectures on very low calorie diets and very low carb diets. But the one approach that seems to demonstrate the best weight loss is the use of fixed calorie meal replacements.
3. Meal replacements are not the same thing as protein drinks sold in grocery stores. Dr. Angela Fitch discussed why medical meal replacements are a better tool, as they are designed to provide a full nutritional supplementation for patients on very low calorie food plans, therefore yielding better and safer weight loss. Over the counter protein drinks and powders are not indicated for this purpose.
4. A positive attitude is key.
5. Sleep is extremely important. There are new devices that can help treat sleep apnea besides CPAP machines.
6. For heart health, sustaining a healthy weight is important to lower the risk of heart disease and heart failure; however, once a person is diagnosed with one of these conditions, fitness becomes even more important for improving survival.
7. Watch out for kidney stones! One of the best strategies to prevent kidney stones during weight loss is to drink plenty of water!
8. I had the pleasure of presenting 3 times – a presidential address, overview of Nutrition (for obesity medicine board review course), and also presented with CNC RDN Erin Winchester on how to co-manage patients medically / nutritionally / behaviorally. Go Erin!!!