Time To Change The Obesity Narrative
This week, I once again presented on the need for recognising obesity as a chronic disease at the annual European Society for the Study of Obesity Collaborating Centres for Obesity (EASO-COMs) in Leipzig, Germany. Coincidently, The Lancet this week also published a commentary (of which I am a co-author) on the urgent need to change the obesity “narrative”. So far, the prevailing obesity “narrative” is that this is a condition largely caused by people’s lifestyle “choices” primarily pertaining to eating too much and not moving enough, and that this condition can therefore be prevented and reversed simply by getting people to make better choices, or in other words, eating less and moving more. As pointed out in the commentary, this “narrative” flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence that obesity is a rather complex multi-factorial heterogenous disorder, where long-term success of individual or population-based “lifestyle” interventions can be characterised as rather modest (and that is being rather generous). This is not to say that public health measures targeting food intake and activity are not important – but these measures go well beyond “personal responsibility” ” The established narrative on obesity relies on a simplistic causal model with language that generally places blame on individuals who bear sole responsibility for their obesity. This approach disregards the complex interplay between factors not within individuals’ control (eg, epigenetic, biological, psychosocial) and powerful wider environmental factors and activity by industry (eg, food availability and price, the built environment, manufacturers’ marketing, policies, culture) that underpin obesity. A siloed focus on individual responsibility leads to a failure to address these wider factors for which government policy can and should take a leading role. Potential health-systems solutions are also held back by insufficient understanding of obesity as a chronic disease and of the necessary integration across specialties.“ It is also important to recognise that the prevailing “lifestyle” narrative plays a major role in the issue of weight-bias and discrimination: “Behind every obesity statistic are real people living with obesity. The prevailing narrative wrongly portrays people with obesity in negative terms as “guilty” of obesity through “weakness” and “lack of willpower”, succumbing to the siren call of fast and other poor food choices. This narrative leads to stigmatisation, discrimination—including in health services, employment, and education—and undermines individual agency.“ Thus, it is time to change this narrative: “If the narrative is instead reframed around individuals at risk of… Read More »
Why Weight-Loss Challenges Send the Wrong Message
I was recently, once again asked about my opinion on weight-loss challenges. So here is a repost of an article I wrote back in 2008 on this topic – apparently, it is still as relevant today, as it was almost a decade ago. There appears to be a rather widespread notion out there that introducing a bit of competition into the affair may spurn people on to try and lose those “extra” pounds. In fact, a quick google search on the term “weight-loss challenge” reveals an amazing array of challenges from voyeuristic and sadistic TV shows like the “Biggest Loser” to well-meant workplace wellness initiatives or fund raisers. I am sorry to admit that I recently even became aware of a weight-loss challenge within my own hospital – well intended, but useless in the fight against obesity. So what’s wrong with this idea? Isn’t competition a great motivator? Sure it is – and people will do anything to win a competition – including crazy stuff like starve themselves, exercise till they drop, or even (God forbid) pop diet pills, diuretics or laxatives just to win. All of this is in direct contradiction to a fundamental principle of obesity management: you do not do things to lose weight that you are unlikely to continue doing to keep the weight off. Most people seem to think that if only they could lose some weight, they will somehow be able maintain that lower body weight in the long-term with less effort. The reality unfortunately is (and most dieters have experienced this over and over again) that no matter what diet or exercise routine you chose, no matter how slow or fast you lose the weight, no matter how long you keep the weight off – the minute you relax your efforts, the weight simply comes back. As I have blogged before: obesity is a chronic disease for which we have no cure – only treatments! When you stop the treatment the weight (and any related problem) simply comes back. By now you will already have figured out the problem with these challenges – unless you are very modest and reasonable about your weight-loss target and are carefully making changes that you can reasonably sustain forever, you are simply setting yourself up for failure. If you are indeed modest and reasonable – you’ve already lost the competition to all the crazy folks who’ll do… Read More »
The Three Clinical Faces of Obesity
In my experience, patients presenting with obesity tend to fall into three categories, each of which requires a distinct management approach. They are 1) Active Gainers, 2) Weight Stable, and 3) Post-Weight Loss. Active Gainers are patients currently at their lifetime maximum and continuing to gain significant amounts of weight – i.e. more than the usual 0.5 to 1 lb/year. Patients in this category require immediate attention – if nothing happens, their weight will most likely just continue to increase. The good news is that in almost every patient in this category, there is an identifiable reason for the ongoing weight gain – this can be psychosocial (e.g. depression, binge-eating disorder, etc.), due to a medical comorbidity (arthritis, chronic pain, etc.) or medications (e.g. atypical antipsychotics, hypoglycemic agents, etc.). From a management perspective, the sooner we identify and address the underlying problem, the sooner we can slow or even halt the rate of weight gain – in this patient – gaining less weight than before is the first sign of success. There is really no point trying to embark on losing weight as long as the underlying problem driving the weight gain has not been addressed, as this is likely to make sustained weight loss even more unlikely that it already is.. Weight Stable patients are those that present with excess weight but are relatively weight stable. Even though they may be at their lifetime maximum, they have been pretty much the same weight (perhaps a few lbs up or down but nothing drastic) for several years (sometimes even decades). By definition, a patient who is weight stable is in caloric balance, and thus, by definition is not eating too much. In fact, these patients are eating the exact number of calories needed to sustain their bodies, which is why they are weight stable. (Remember, even if you are weight-stable eating 4000 Cal a day, you are technically not “overeating”.) These patients of course have experienced significant weight gain in the past (historical weight gain), but whatever it was that caused them to gain weight is no longer an active problem (e.g. pregnancy, past depression, etc) – and therefore, probably doesn’t need to addressed (although, I always find it of interest to find out what caused the weight gain in the first place). With these patients, we can determine whether or not their weight is affecting their health, and if… Read More »
Better Fat Than Unfit
The 2018 JAMA special issue on obesity also includes a brief paper by Ann Blair Kennedy and colleagues reviewing the debate (which really isn’t much of a debate to anyone who knows the data) on whether it is more important to be fit than to worry about being fat (it is). As the authors review, there is now ample data showing that cardio-respiratory fitness (CRF) is far more important for the prediction of cardiovascular mortality than the level of fatness (measured as BMI or otherwise). In fact, once you account for differences in “fitness”, actual BMI levels almost cease to matter in terms of predicting longevity. Unfortunately, as the authors point out, most studies linking obesity to cardiovascular outcomes (including studies on the so-called obesity “paradox”), fail to properly measure or account for cardiovascular fitness, thereby ignoring the most important confounder of this relationship. For clinicians (and anyone concerned about their excess weight), it is helpful to remember that while achieving and maintaining a significant weight loss is a difficult (and often futile) undertaking, achieving and maintaining a reasonable degree of cardiorespiratory fitness is possible at virtually any shape or size. Thus, as the authors point out, “…in current US society, many people progressively gain weight and lose CRF as they age. Conceivably, maintaining CRF may be more important than preventing the development of obesity. However, for people who are overweight or have mild to moderate obesity, there are effective ways to improve CRF, including exercise and lifestyle interventions and there is general agreement that having low levels of PA is unhealthy. Increasing PA to help keep individuals from becoming unfit can be achieved if patients meet current PA guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous PA per week.” Clearly, if your primary concern related to your patients’ excess body fat is about their cardiovascular health, you would probably be doing them a far greater service by getting them to improve their cardiorespiratory fitness rather than simply lose a few pounds (and no, exercise is not the best way to lose weight!). On the other hand, if there are other health issues that are of primary concern (e.g. sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, fatty liver disease, etc.) or the degree of excess fat significantly affects mobility or other aspects of quality of life, then perhaps a frank discussion about available and effective “weight-loss” treatments appears warranted. Let us not… Read More »
Alternate Day Fasting Is No Better Than Any Other Fad Diet
It seems that every year someone else comes up with a diet that can supposedly conquer obesity and all others health problems of civilization. In almost every case, the diet is based on some “new” insight into how our bodies function, or how our ancestors (read – hunters gatherers (never mind that they only lived to be 35) ate, or how modern foods are killing us (never mind that the average person has never lived longer than ever before), or how (insert remote population here) lives today with no chronic disease. Throw in some scientific terms like “ketogenic”, “guten”, “anti-oxidant”, “fructose”, or “insulin”, add some level of restriction and unusual foods, and (most importantly) get celebrity endorsement and “testemonials” and you have a best-seller (and a successful speaking career) ready to go. The problem is that, no matter what the “scientific” (sounding) theories suggest, there is little evidence that the enthusiastic promises of any of these hold up under the cold light of scientific study. Therefore, I am not the least surprised that the same holds true for the much hyped “alternative-day fasting diet”, which supposedly is best for us, because it mimics how our pre-historic ancestors apparently made it to the ripe age of 35 without obesity and heart attacks. Thus, a year-long randomised controlled study by John Trepanowski and colleagues, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows that alternate day fasting is evidently no better in producing superior adherence, weight loss, weight maintenance, or cardioprotection compared to good old daily calorie restriction (which also produces modest long-term results at best). In fact, the alternate day fasting group had significantly more dropouts than both the daily calorie restriction and control group (38% vs. 29% and 26% respectively). Mean weight loss was virtually identical between both intervention groups (~6 Kg). Purists of course will instantly critisize that the study did not actually test alternative-day fasting, as more people dropped out and most of the participants who stayed in that group actually ate more than prescribed on fast days, and less than prescribed on feast days – but that is exactly the point of this kind of study – to test whether the proposed diet works in “real life”, because no one in “real life” can ever be expected to be perfectly compliant with any diet. In fact, again, as this study shows, the more “restrictive” the diet (and, yes, starving yourself… Read More »
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