ANTA Member Article Summer 2023
Danielle Svensson
ANTA Member BHSc (Nutritional Medicine)
Beyond the Conventional Weight Loss Approach
Entering just two words “how to” into your Google search bar, reveals “how to lose weight fast” as one of the top searched questions.
In a nation where weight loss industry services are worth close to $500 million in 2023, and two in three adults are overweight or obese, it asks a different question – why are conventional weight loss efforts failing? Being one of the greatest public health issues to date, excessive unhealthy weight gain has markedly increased in many parts of the world and has been attributed to the explosion and availability of ultraprocessed, inexpensive, and energy-dense foods, alongside a lack of daily physical activity1. We might simply correlate this with the age-old ‘calories-in-vscalories-out’ equation when it comes to weight loss.
The abundance of competitors that make up the weight loss sector, including dietary meal provision companies, diet shakes and meal replacements and online weight loss programs, have created an overwhelming landscape of solutions to essentially the same problem across the last few decades. Whilst there is no question that the environment that informs the energy in vs energy out equation for an individual is a critical factor in their weight loss and weight maintenance journey, there are many other factors influencing body weight that must be considered. These include infection, epigenetics, endocrine disruptors, sleep debt, pharmaceutical iatrogenesis2 as well as other key biological factors including resting energy expenditure (REE), body composition, meal-induced thermogenesis, appetite control and
PAGE 52 | SUMMER 2023 | THE NATURAL THERAPIST VOL 38 NO. 2
