The Role Of Habits, Stress And Sleep On Your Weight

Five-Part Weight Loss Treatment Plan 0:00

Dr. Francavilla here. And I want to talk about one of the important components of the care I give for my patients. And what it looks like in the real world, in the different components of it. So when I see patients in my clinic, I always come up with a treatment plan that involves five things. The first is underlying causes. Why does this person struggle with weight more than someone else? The second is nutrition. What nutrition plan is going to make sense and get results for the person? I'm seeing?

I come up with a specific exercise plan for this person as the third thing. The fourth is medications. And what medications or supplements may help someone reach their goals.

Behavior, Habits, and Mindset 0:52

And then finally is this big category called behavior. And behavior can include a lot of different things. This might include things like substance is cutting back on alcohol or other substances that are interfering with health and weight goals. A lot of this involves habits, habits, or something. I like to talk a lot about on my podcast, The Dr. Francavilla Show, and ways that you can sort of make things automatic in your life so that you're not constantly having to think about how all these health changes, whether it's taking a medication or eating a salad for lunch or sticking to your nutrition or exercise plan.

Habits are really key thing. And it's a big part of the coaching that I do, both on my podcast and when I'm working directly with patients. Another big component of behavior is mindset. So many of my patients struggle with internal bias about their weight, meaning they really beat themselves up about their weight. They blame a lot of the struggles they've had on themselves, instead of understanding that it's really the environment and biology that's driving their struggle with weight. And so a lot of mindset changes, whether it's working on black and white thinking, working on perfectionism, working on that internal bias, judgment against yourself are all things that I do with my patients and that you'll hear from from some of the coaches in this summit as well.

Another thing that you're going to hear quite a bit about in this summit is the effects that sleep and stress have on our health. Not getting enough sleep is a huge stressor to our body. It raises cortisol and other hormones in our body.

Sleep and Stress Effects on Health 2:29

It increases our appetite. It causes a lot of health problems and also makes it really hard to lose weight. So sleep is one of those behavior comment components that can be really, really important to reaching your weight goal. And then finally stress. Stress is very important to manage and can be one of the hardest things to tackle. Stress has a huge impact on our health, increasing the risk of many disease states and certainly weight again driving up cortisol and other stress hormone levels that affect our appetite and literally make us hang on to weight and not getting enough sleep is a stressor to our body, but so is living in the modern world.

Too much screen time, past traumas, PTSD, stress, and anxiety that are not being treated and may need medications, therapy or need stress reduction techniques are really key component of weight loss as well, and you're going to hear from several of our experts about that as well. One thing that I'd like to touch on as well is eating disorders. If you have a history of an eating disorder, or you currently have one that has a big impact on weight. While many people are familiar with eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia that are what we call restrictive eating disorders, and sometimes people with a history of those can go on to struggle and have

Eating Disorders and Safe Weight Loss 3:50

too much weight that they need to lose, which can be a really delicate balance. To walk, you need to work with an expert who understands those things. If you do have a history of an eating disorder, but actually the most common eating disorder in the United States is something called binge eating disorder. And binge eating disorder is a loss of control of eating. Not everyone who has binge eating disorder has overweight or obesity. But if someone does have an eating disorder, we really want to focus on treating that eating disorder first before we focus on weight loss.

So really important that you work with a expert who can make sure they've screened for disordered eating. As you're working on your weight loss plan and take that into account when they're helping you reach your weight goals. Because if you do not treat that eating disorder or recognize that, it can make that a lot worse. Increase stress, increase health risks, and really cause a lot more harm than good. So something that I'm very passionate about, I really like helping people who are struggling with disordered eating.

because there is a line you can walk where you can both have healthy weight loss and treat disordered eating at the same time. So that's a little bit about behavior, what it looks like in practice, behavior is often so individualized. But again you'll get some great tips from the guests we have in this summit. The Dr. Francavilla Show which is my podcast, is going to give you a lot of those too. And if you have any suspicion for disordered eating, please bring it up with your provider. And this summit, may be triggering for you.

Please be aware that you may need to talk to with a therapist or another expert. If you are struggling with disordered eating.