In the Clinic Episode 59: Weight Loss

Okay.

We're seeing Tina Muscov, who is a 30-year-old mom in our practice.

She had gave birth to her beautiful baby, Svetlana, 10 months ago, and she breastfed until six months.

Both she and the baby have been healthy.

So we see her.

We're asking, how's Svetlana? How are things at home? And she says, well, I had my baby 10 months ago, and I still can't fit in my pre-baby pants, and I don't like the feeling.

I'd like to lose the extra 10 kilograms I've gained, and I was hoping you would have some tips.

and i say i'm sorry to hear that if she's been following me i've had

multiple babies in my

practice i don't know that anyone would be coming to me for tips but anyway sorry i'm sorry to hear that i get the feeling of wanting to regain control over your body you are not alone and she says so what should i do is it diet exercise i'd rather stay away from drugs so we kind of talk about a general concept in terms of weight loss.

And Jen, I've heard you, how you talk about with this, how you talk about this with your patients before.

Do you mind jumping in and kind of telling us how you explain that? Because you do a really good job.

There's what I say to my patients, and that's what we're saying on this podcast around evidence.

So when we look at, I'll mention both.

So the comprehensive weight loss treatment program so i didn't you know when i we're trying to just get through that idea of in and out and and calories in and calories out and in order to you know you have to eat less than you than your body needs so usually i you know we're trying to have about 500 kilocalories less per day than your body needs and you know and that's the equivalent of a sandwich um two pieces of bread and a bit of stuff in between as long as it's not like you know goopy with mayonnaise and there is always the latitude people give themselves when like a sandwich for some is like, whoa, that's a lot of calories.

But anyway, so it is that they need to find a calorie deficit.

And usually that comes through, well, mostly it comes through decreasing what you take in.

We'll get to more about that later.

Yes, the weight loss treatment programs that have been studied in randomized controlled trials are actually really comprehensive and probably hard to replicate in practice because we just don't have the same So, as Jen mentioned, you're talking about eating less calories, increasing physical activities, and usually those programs tested in RCTs also have a behavioral intervention to facilitate adherence, which is probably key.

So you're not on your own.

You're really closely followed to make sure you're able to eat less calories and do some more exercise.

And with those comprehensive lifestyle interventions, you can actually get some pretty meaningful weight loss.

So you're talking eight kilograms at six months.

But once again, those are heavy duty programs and they're not readily accessible.

And it's also important to mention that individual results are very different.