Leading with Science When Supporting Lifestyle Change in Patients Taking Obesity Medications [Podcast Series]
[:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guests, Dr. Renee Rogers and Dr. Michael Hosking
Dr. Renee Rogers is Senior Scientist, University of Kansas Medical Center.
Dr. Michael Hosking is Creator of Revocycle Mind and Body Cycling.
[1:16] Convening a group of experts for obesity medications in fitness
“[I] saw that there was a potential clash of cultures from obesity care and fitness, and I thought that we could, in some fashion, facilitate the meeting of these two worlds, healthcare and fitness, which has been trying to speak to each other effectively for decades at this point.”
[2:57] The role of lifestyle with the use of obesity medications
“Let's really remember that obesity is a multi-faceted metabolic disease, and just because a really awesome resistance training program maybe works over here with a person that doesn't have obesity, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to work in this new landscape of these highly effective pharmacotherapy agents. It may. I'm hopeful that it will, but I, it just is a reminder for us to lead with science.”
[7:14] Guiding the health & fitness industry into a new era
“And it is my belief that by putting this group together and leading with science, as Renee was saying, that we can guide the industry into a new era, one that is less about the extrinsic rewards of exercise, body-based changes, building particular body types and more towards holistic health and well being.”
[8:57] Building trusted, collaborative comprehensive care networks
“And so each member of this care network needs to be credentialed, needs to have the education, the expertise, the ability to communicate with other members of the network. And so really thinking about comprehensive care and the infrastructure that supports that comprehensive care.”
[13:10] Putting the patient with obesity first
“So that trust aspect that you talk about is critically important. Because if we don't have the trust of the human that we're serving, long-term trust, not just short-term programmatic trust, right, but long-term trust, we also will not engage in the larger trust network of the dietitian that we must refer to for the metabolic disease and the medication needs of patients on these meds or the provider that you're speaking to.”
[15:15] Building trust with providers and patients
“[I]f we can build trust, and I think for both those paths, credential degreed experts speaking for the industry, and speaking to the healthcare industry and speaking to the patients, I think, can help build that trust, which will, as I said earlier, give us the opportunity to really change the lives of many, many millions of people.”
[16:28] Recognizing the importance of lifestyle change
“So one is identifying what we know and what we don't know and why lifestyle is important. And then I think the second is really important in that we can start to lay out what a comprehensive care network might look like and how it might function.”
[18:39] Leading with science
“The one thing, though, that hasn't changed is they’re still humans that live with obesity and maybe have internalized weight bias and stigma that we can continue to learn from. So I think our big tone of all of this is, is while the science keeps going forward, and it can feel overwhelming, we can feel like we don't have a place, or we don't have an answer sometimes. If we step back and go back to the human and meet them where they're at, rather than trying to fix something or have a solution, I think we can make a really great impact.”
[23:17] Health benefits of exercise independent of weight loss
“Even people who are obese can build cardiorespiratory fitness, and their mortality is decreased in the absence of weight loss, which I just think is so profoundly important for the industry to understand, that we don't have to constantly be changing people's bodies in order to do them a service and help them with their health.”
[26:47] Addressing weight bias and stigma in the health & fitness sector
“So how we make an impact on weight bias and stigma and all of that, I think, is, is so, so important and not and realize that it's, it's not just beyond this one client that I sell a personal training package to, right? It's so much bigger to make an impact in this space.”
[28:47] Calls to action to health & fitness professionals
“If you don't know the answer to something, it's okay to say you don't know the answer to something and that you'll look into it. And I think that's a really important space for building trust with your patients.”
“I would say to the boots on the ground fitness professional, if they could learn to shed their pre-existing biases and their thinking about why people exercise, why someone might be coming to the gym, and especially why a person in a larger body, a person who might be obese might be coming to the gym, if they can learn to understand that fitness is a culture with certain shared beliefs, practices, recognize what those are, and learn to see the patient, the person coming in as as a whole human being…”
