HOW TO START EXERCISING IF YOU'RE OVERWEIGHT
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Episode 219:
Show Notes
In this week’s episode of the Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast, Dr Lucy Burns is joined by Nadia Walton, a physiotherapist with extensive experience working with plus-size clients. They delve into practical and empathetic strategies for initiating an exercise routine when dealing with overweight or obesity. The discussion is aimed at helping listeners overcome common obstacles and develop a sustainable and enjoyable fitness plan.
Identifying Common Barriers:
- Fear of Judgment: Nadia and Dr Lucy discuss how fear of being judged in a gym setting or public spaces can deter individuals from starting an exercise routine.
- Physical Discomfort: They address the physical challenges and discomfort that might come with beginning a new exercise regime and how to manage them.
- Mental Blocks: The conversation highlights psychological barriers such as low self-esteem and lack of motivation, offering strategies to overcome these hurdles.
Setting Realistic and Achievable Goals:
- Nadia emphasises the importance of setting small, incremental goals to build confidence and track progress. She provides examples of how to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals.
- Creating a Personalised Plan: They discuss tailoring exercise plans to fit individual fitness levels and personal preferences.
Choosing Enjoyable Activities:
- Exploring Options: Nadia advises experimenting with different types of physical activities to find what is enjoyable and sustainable. This could include walking, swimming, dancing, or low-impact aerobics.
- Making It Fun: Tips are given on how to incorporate fun elements into workouts to maintain motivation and consistency.
Managing Physical Discomfort and Avoiding Injury:
- Listening to Your Body: The hosts talk about the importance of paying attention to your body’s signals and adjusting exercises as needed to avoid injury.
- Modification Techniques: Nadia shares strategies for modifying exercises to reduce impact and accommodate different fitness levels.
Maintaining a Positive and Realistic Mindset:
- Focus on Progress: The episode emphasises celebrating small victories and progress rather than striving for perfection.
- Building Resilience: Nadia and Dr Lucy discuss how to stay motivated and resilient through the ups and downs of starting and maintaining an exercise routine.
For more information about Nadia Walton and her work, visit the Laneways Rehab website at www.lanewaysrehab.com.au.
Connect with Nadia on Social Media:
Episode 219:
Transcript
Dr Mary Barson (0:04) Hello, my lovely friends. I am Dr Mary Barson.
Dr Lucy Burns (0:09) And I'm Dr Lucy Burns. We are doctors and weight management and metabolic health experts.
Both (0:16) And this is the Real Health and Weight Loss podcast!
Dr Lucy Burns (00:17) Good morning, gorgeous friend. How are you today on a beautiful Tuesday morning here in Melbourne, which is of course a surprise, huzzah! And another surprise is that I am with a spectacular guest. I'm super excited to be having this wonderful chat. Her name is Nadia Walton. She's a bariatric physiotherapist and passionate about movement and access to healthcare for everybody. And I think we're just going have a wonderful chit chat. So Nadia, welcome to the podcast.
Nadia Walton (00:45) Thanks so much for having me, I'm delighted Dr Lucy Burns.
Dr Lucy Burns (00:47) Oh you are welcome. So first thing I thought is that you could perhaps introduce yourself to our listeners and let them know a little bit about
Nadia Walton (00:55) Yeah, of course. So my name is Nadia and I am a physiotherapist who specialises in care of patients living with obesity or who are plus size. So what that means in practice is that I work with people who are in larger bodies to reach their goals. So sometimes that's around weight management and what we know is that exercise is a really great foundation for mental health and for feeling good and for having positive health sort of habits, but it's not a great weight loss solution. So often part of it for me is directing people to different services, amazing services like Real Life Medicine, but also guiding that support around let's get moving. Often my patients who have been in larger bodies, often their whole lives, come with aches and pains and dicky bits here and there and we're helping them to find some movement that we all know is good for us, that we all need to do for our heart health and for our brain and for our lungs, but often with lots of limitations because their knees hurt or because their hip hurts or because their back hurts. So part of it is that. And then the other part of my business, I work with healthcare providers and healthcare services to build their ability to provide good care to plus-size patients. So to the big healthcare services, this is around buying equipment, this is around training with staff. So this could be someone, this could be an intensive care unit. This could be all the way into a rehab facility or into aged care. And we will support services to be able to provide good care to plus-size patients.
Dr Lucy Burns (03:01) I love that. I love that because it's so ridiculous, isn't it? That things like chairs with arms, for example, which again, you know, I'll be guilt. I will the first put my hand up at many of the clinics I've worked at just had standard chairs with standard arms. And you don't necessarily think about it unless somebody has mentioned it to you. And so it's not necessary that you know, people don't want to buy different chairs, they just haven't thought about it. Which is, you know, I could do a whole side topic on accessibility, because as a person living with a disability, I certainly know the barriers to accessibility, but something basic like the size of the chairs or whether there's arms on it can make a whole world of difference to how somebody feels.
Nadia Walton (03:53) That's exactly what I was gonna say. It's about how they feel when they enter. So not only is it about a chair that physically fits them, there's a lot of talk about setting up services for plus-size patients without arms. But if you've got a bad back or weak legs, actually you need arms to help you stand. you know, part of it is for healthcare providers thinking about who's coming in their door. And if you're going to plus-size patients, which we all are these days, what level of mobility they're gonna come in with? And so it actually might be worth not just having a chair without arms, but having a chair with extra width, with really good arms. And there's skills around that. I think it's also about recognising if a patient comes in to your service and all of the magazines are from Women's Weekly and they're images of women that are all in thinner bodies. What's that telling your patient about what you're, what's the messaging? What's that messaging telling them? So there's subtle things, there's very practical environmental design things, but there's also the subtle messaging that needs to come through as
Dr Lucy Burns (05:17) And what do you say to people who are perhaps not in favour of a body positive movement, who say things like, you're just glorifying obesity or you're just making it acceptable? You know, what's your response to those people?
Nadia Walton (05:38) Firstly, I do think it's a little bit about that bell curve of knowledge. I probably wouldn't spend a lot of time on someone who had fairly bigoted views. I think there's a lot more time to be spent with people who are willing and interested in providing size-inclusive care. So probably just from a time management point of view, I think we put a big red cross over those people and walk away. But in a less kind of, in a more philosophical way, I suppose, what I think and what we know is that two-thirds of our population are living with overweight and obesity. Every single one of those that I've come across knows that and so you sort of telling them is not a surprise to them and it comes with a whole lot of attached self-esteem and some people are proudly plus size and some people want to change and to reduce their size. And I think as a particular healthcare provider, you have an obligation to see value in both. And really we're pushing people along a health trajectory. And if the person doesn't want to lose weight, we still need to support a healthy trajectory, which is regular movement, which is getting out of the house for your mental health, which is, yeah, I probably don't get too stuck on that sort of negative kind of attitude. I just think, look, you just don't get it. Let's go and find people that do get it.
Dr Lucy Burns (07:21) Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's good advice. It's interesting, isn't it? There's, I mean, it still astounds me that there is discussion in public forums about these sorts of topics and that there are people who still, and in fact, lots of people, including people potentially who do live with obesity or overweight, who still blame and judge and shame themselves and other people for their size. And that I think is so harmful.
Nadia Walton (07:56) It's awful. And when we know that so much of people's size is predetermined by their genetics, and then we're sort of saying, you are this size, but you shouldn't be, but your body's kind of naturally gonna do this for the rest of your life. I think it puts people between a rock and a hard place and it makes them wanna run away. And I think for someone like me who wants people to engage in their health and genuinely that is not about weight loss that's around or weight management that is genuinely around engaging in your health for your future for your family for your children to be able to get to work. I think we need to be kind and we need to kind of understand that bodies do come in a range of sizes naturally and that's okay.
Dr Lucy Burns (08:52) Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. think I wrote a blog not that long ago. Well, I've revamped it a little bit and it was called something like Self Love and Whippets, which is not a very good name for a blog. But it was the idea being that like dogs, you know, we are all different sizes, but somehow humanity has decided that the only size that is valuable is that is the equivalent of a whippet. And really, we're all different and why shouldn't we be celebrating that? I don't know, at the end of the day, doesn't even matter. Like honestly, it does not matter.
Nadia Walton (09:30) Yeah, that's right. And that's right. That's why we should be looking at metabolic health, you know, and why we should be looking at people's functional health. And from a physio point of view, I mean functional, can you do the things you want to be able to do? Can you get on public transport? Can you get on the floor with your grandkids? I'm interested in functional health. You're interested in metabolic health. And I'm not interested in weight. It really doesn't play a factor for me unless it's the patient's goal.
Dr Lucy Burns (10:03) Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love that. So what do you do then to help your patients? How does it work?
Nadia Walton (10:11) Yeah, so I do all the range of what we all think of as a normal physio. So some of that's around pain management, some of that's around scripting disability and mobility equipment, some of that's around I have a dicky back help. But really my focus in relation to patients who are living in larger bodies is around habit formation, positive movement habit formations. One of my favourite things to do is we offer a six-week program where we hold your hand as you start to create a habit of movement and that could be going to karate, that could be walking around the block, that could be badminton, you know a whole range of things and really what we're doing is supporting to work out what the barriers and challenges to regular movement might be, how you might overcome those moments when you fall apart. We all fall apart. We all have bad weeks, bad days, bad months. So how do we identify your triggers or your moments where you can see that this is going to get a bit wobbly? And so what we actually offer is that we talk to you every day, Monday to Friday. We've set the goals, we've made the plan. And then we talk to you every day, Monday to Friday saying, what was that plan again? And you say, I did say I'd go around the block, but it's raining a lot today. And I say this is a moment for a stick, as opposed to a carrot. You know, you told me you would do this. What are you going to do, how are you going to get it done? Or on a day of a carrot, I can see you're feeling really miserable. What about think of what could be a reward for when you've done it? So that might be an early bath or an early to bed to read a book in bed. But it's one of the most amazing things to watch someone at the start of sort of us this six week program with them saying, I can't do anything because I have this terrible back and this terrible knee and I've got no time. And within six weeks, they're going well, I now park as far in the car park of the supermarket as I can and I now do that full walk to the supermarket and I do the entire supermarket shopping and then carry all the bags the whole way back to the car park and it was in the back corner and I can do it and I feel really good. So the goals can be kind of humble. You know, it's not about saying I'm going to win six weeks, run a marathon. The goals can be, you know, I just want to be able to do the shopping.
Dr Lucy Burns (13:03) Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yep. And I love what you described there too, particularly at the bit where people go, can't do it because I've got a sore back and a sore knee. And they, you can kind of get into this learned helplessness trap where that's the story that your brain tells you. And so that's the story that you believe in. So you get stuck and what you're showing them is that small, the power of small steps. When they do that incremental small step change and build upon it, then suddenly, it's like that overnight success, except that's not overnight. But over time, over time slash suddenly, they can do it.
Nadia Walton (13:44) Yeah, that's right. And it's really about that. The starting and then someone keep picking and poking and prodding and going, come on, you can still do it. I know it's the weather's terrible. I know the kids didn't sleep last night, but I'm still here. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? And it is really interesting to watch people needing me or needing our team to kind of keep poking it sort of week one, week two, and then week six, they might have already preempted and already pretext me that morning to let me know what they've already done. So, and it happens quickly. It really is amazing.
Dr Lucy Burns (14:24) Yes. Yes. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And I think it's the concept of keeping promises to yourself is something that for people who, who haven't done it or make, particularly if they make enormous, you know, declarations or proclamations, I'm going to do this, this and this, and then they don't follow through. They start to lose confidence in themselves and lose self -trust and so they sort of stop trying.
Nadia Walton (14:55) That's right. And so that is part of the goal setting that we do. you know, people say, oh, I'd really like to run a marathon. And I say, that is a really great goal, but you are 68 and you've never run once in your life. So what would be the steps in between marathon running and today that we can break that down? And it's not to say that it's not valuable or doable but it is really interesting that we find things that are realistic and that we can bite off little chunks. And maybe by the end of that six weeks, someone like that might have run the block. What are now your short term and your medium-term and your long-term? And they say, actually, I don't really like running, but I do like feeling good and I do like exercising. maybe going to do badminton's a good trial. You know, and that's really interesting in itself and that sort of discovery, doing it together is really interesting.
Dr Lucy Burns (16:05) Yep. Yeah, absolutely. So I love it. So your focus is on movement for health, not movement for weight loss or exercise for weight loss. I remember the first time I heard that exercise doesn't help weight loss. My brain just went up. That's rubbish. That is absolute rubbish. Of course it does. What are your thoughts on it?
Nadia Walton (16:29) Absolutely. Two elements, the first element, think that sort of, so when we say exercise doesn't affect weight loss, we're looking at population data and we know that there are amazing, unique people everywhere that do amazing transformations with exercise, but it's probably not the average. So if you are someone that is really going to turn your life around and go to the gym for three hours a day and you know, do 5,000 burpees. I think it probably is quite realistic that you lose, that you are likely to lose weight. I also think for most people, their bodies aren't going to tolerate that. So what's the risk of injury if you do that? So I suppose part of the commentary around that is for the average person doing an average amount of exercise within their capability, significant weight loss is not realistic. And the other element of it is, it's probably small numbers. So, sorry, small kilo numbers. So what we know is that, so when we're looking at sort of exercise change, we might lose somewhere between sort of two and four kilos. And if you're coming to me who specialises in plus-size care, my guys don't really want to lose two to four kilos. that's, so for me to sort of be saying to them, look, what else can we do to support weight loss? What other programs can we send you to? What other options are there? Is realistic. I think obviously for those living in thin bodies, short two to four kilos is a good goal. Do lots of walking, do lots of running. You'll probably achieve your goals with some diet changes, of course. But yeah, that's I think that commentary around exercise and weight loss.
Dr Lucy Burns (18:33) I think one of the biggest factors that people don't take into account is that exercise can make you hungry if you do a lot of cardio. So if you've done, you know, 60 minutes of cardio at the gym, you'll leave, you won't be hungry initially, but you will be later. And it's, it wasn't until somebody pointed out to me that this thing where people would say, Oh, send the kids outside to work up an appetite. I thought, right, of course. And so we then have this situation where, you know, people are going to gyms or trainers or whatever, and they're working really hard, but then they're being told you have to eat a lot less. So they're working really hard, they're very hungry, they're eating a lot less, and then they end up kind of caving, and then just feeling like it's their fault that they're not disciplined, that they should have tried harder. And yeah, I think that that's, that can be a real danger as well.
Nadia Walton (19:31) Absolutely, and I was just, as you were saying that, I was thinking about growing up doing swimming. Everyone says swimming makes you starving. And I remember that thing of, you'd swim and then you'd get out of the pool and need three potato cakes. And absolutely, we know you're burning energy. And that's why I think we need to be careful about using exercise and what are the goals around it and that our patients know what's achievable and what's realistic in the kind of their capability, functional capability, but also kind of related to their eating and relating to what other sort of weight loss strategies they're employing. I think exercise and regular movement are so good for feeling good about yourself and feeling like you are doing something positive for your health and then adding on other strategies for weight management.
Dr Lucy Burns (20:38) Yeah. Look, there is absolutely no doubt that a movement is good for health and, you know, in particular, strength is good to combat the fragility of old age and that, you know, more and more evidence now around exercise for mental health and, you know, the science behind it, it's fascinating around my icons and all of those things, which is actually now one of my little strategies when I'm swimming, because I swim and again, me, an exercise used to always be around getting thin, doing, you know, back to back aerobics classes so that either I could reward myself with some fancy food, you know, doughnut or something, or I could work off the doughnut that I'd eaten yesterday. Never around health. I didn't even realise it did that. And the thing that trips people up, think, is that if they're necessarily losing weight, well then they think what they're doing isn't working, so they stop the exercise.
Nadia Walton (21:44) Yeah, that's right. And that's why it's really important to look for enjoyable exercise, truly enjoyable exercise. It's very hard to do sustainable exercise that you bloody hate. And you're definitely not gonna do it at 6 a.m. in the middle of winter in Melbourne. Whereas if you're going at 6 p .m. with your girlfriend for a and you're gonna yabber the whole way. That is exercise, that is movement, and that's likely to be sustainable. And then if you can add some strength training into that, that would be ideal. But what can you do that's enjoyable? Yeah, I think it's critical for most people who don't naturally kind of love exercise. What can we find that you're actually going to enjoy, not just tolerate?
Dr Lucy Burns (23:34) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And thinking again, you know, our mindset is so crucial in how we perceive what is enjoyable as well. So if you've already decided before you've even started that something's going to be horrible, are it's going to be horrible. Whereas if you can change your focus, change that lens a little bit. And as you said, you go with a friend. it's not so much about that, know, my God, we're slogging it up this enormous hill. It's more about, what are we chatting about today?
Nadia Walton (23:06) That's right. That's right. Or can you go somewhere where you can watch some telly and you and you make sure you've saved that special bit of telly for the week, you know, you're really looking forward to whatever. And so you're going to save that. So when you sit on the bike for half an hour that we've already agreed we don't want to do, but we are going to do it because that's something that your body will tolerate at this point. And we're working towards you starting karate, but first we need to get you started. Well, then you've that bit of tele for your half an hour it's going to get you through. I think those tools are valuable. I think that's okay.
Dr Lucy Burns (23:45) Yeah. Yeah, totally, totally. think, yeah, whatever. You know, this is what I love is that any can use that word tools is that this is what health is all about. It's about having lots of tools. One tool isn't enough. You know, it's not enough. We need lots of different strategies. We need little kind of hacks, which I know is a sort of a millennial word, but you know, whatever we can do to, we have a little phrase that we call to make the right thing easy, make the wrong thing hard. Or if we want to take even make it even little less judgmental, it's about making the helpful thing easy and the unhelpful thing hard. So the helpful thing is going to be going for a walk with your friend, the unhelpful thing is going to be lying on the couch eating, you know, a bucket of KFC. What can we do to make that hard? And what can we do to make the helpful thing easy?
Nadia Walton (24:36) That's right. And when we know that so much of our modern world makes those unhealthy things so easy, we do need to actually be quite cognisant about the fact that KFC can come to your door at midnight and that everything can be delivered to you. You don't need to go to the shops. You don't need to do walking. Our garage is in our remote, so you don't even have to do the strength training of lifting up and down the garage door. These are the little things we consider that we think, okay, how can we add a bit more movement or how can we sort of go against that easy lifestyle that makes you unhealthy or doesn't help you with your health choices?
Dr Lucy Burns (25:24) Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Our favourite thing is to say, how can you add some friction into the thing that is not good for you? Because sure as hell the companies out there, they're making it as frictionless as possible. They're getting, you know, in some ways my brain goes, they're almost at the point where if you think of it, it'll be there. It'll be arriving at your door. Yes.
Nadia Walton (25:43) Absolutely, absolutely. And it's just so damn easy to do things that are unhealthy for you. then that's all wrapped up in size guilt or guilt around your body size. And I think it's a really tricky thing to navigate.
Dr Lucy Burns (26:00) Absolutely. I thought we'd just wrap up with a little, it's not really a wrap-up, it's a whole nother topic, but I know that you're passionate about people having access to healthcare and being able to advocate for themselves if they feel like they're not getting that access or getting that respect that they deserve or that they're feeling judged by their healthcare practitioner. What is strategies that you've got around that for?
Nadia Walton (26:31) Yeah, sure. So first I just wanted to go back and just highlight that healthcare providers in the vast majority mean well, and they work really hard and they have this oath around helping patients. Where the friction can lie, I think, is around sometimes they see that your health can be vastly different or they perceive that your health can be vastly different if you just X, why don't you just Y? And I think they're lacking the understanding and the true empathy of understanding, particularly in relation to weight, it's just not that simple. It never is that simple. And so there's that. And I think the other bit is around if you've lived a life being a plus-size person, you have a whole gamut of experiences that make you fairly protective and rightly so of yourself and your self-esteem. so potentially heading into a healthcare experience with a history of having yucky experiences, you might be fairly heightened to any words, any commentary. And, and, and sort of, can be a little bit of a lack of, I suppose, overall, when I look at it, it's sort of a communication breakdown between the practitioner who's not recognising that this person's come to see you about their toenail infection. And actually today they do not want another conversation around their body size. And the other person is turning up, assuming that this, this healthcare provider wants to make a call, you know, does think that they should make some changes. So I suppose what I see in these scenarios, and we run workshops with healthcare providers around this, we use people with lived experience to come and simulate these experiences. And what we see is that the more overt we can communicate about how we're feeling on both sides, the better it is. So for example, If you don't think the care that's being provided to you or the language that's being used or the welcome that happened at reception, you need to let people know and you can do that with a complaints form or you can do that verbally. But I think it's really important that we as patients hold up a standard that's acceptable to you. And I think for the health care provider to be really skilled at recognising that someone is ready and willing to talk about weight or is definitely not, or if not checking in. And before just launching into, “I think today we should talk about your weight, even though you're here for a toe infection.” I think saying,--” Have you got any concerns about your weight or are there any, or is there a certain thing that you would like to address in relation to your weight? Things like that. And then being very happy to sort of step back and the person saying, I'm not willing to talk about this and you to go, okay, great, let's move forward”. I think oftentimes the communication and the patient and the clinician relationship can be developed over time and over that dance of a little bit of back and a little bit of forth. So I think it's okay that someone tried or someone said too much and then you say, actually, I didn't like the way you spoke about that. That's okay. Often I think patients think clinicians are gods, particularly doctors. And that the person, you know, that is a bit of a relationship. There's a bit of a power imbalance. Absolutely. And I think it's totally okay to say, I feel like you could get some additional training on that. Or I don't think you should be talking about that in this way or, you know, providing some feedback that I didn't really appreciate. And a good clinician should be able to go, –I hear you. Do you have any suggestions for me? Or do you have any suggestions for my waiting room that you know, if the waiting room doesn't have a chair that fits you, provide some feedback, sure.
Dr Lucy Burns (31:30) Yeah. And you know what I loved that you said there too is that, and again, this is probably for clinicians is it's, you don't have to leap in with that first thing. If you've never met somebody before, you don't lead with that. It's triggering. They've traumatised and you're thinking what you're asking them to do is open up this whole decades of trauma for somebody they've just met. And the story in your head is that, just wanted to, you know, help them with their health. And maybe if they lost a bit of weight, their blood pressure would get better. So that's what you're thinking. And they're thinking, oh my God, this is like when I was 13 and I wasn't picked for the netball team because my legs were too fat or something like that.
Nadia Walton (32:11) And I've been trying to lose weight for the last 30 years and you know, you know, I'm going to pull my hair out. How do I do this? They're telling me to lose weight or they're making reference to the fact that I should lose weight, but I don't know how. That's one group and or I don't want to. And that's one group too that we need to respect.
Dr Lucy Burns (32:42) Hmm, totally, totally. And I think you're right. So many people have come to our programs who've said, Oh, you know, my orthopedic surgeon said I need to lose 20 kilos before my hip operation. But that's all he said. Yeah. And you're thinking I've been doing, yeah, I've tried. And this is the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I love it. So again, I guess then you're what you're saying in summary is it's all right to say no, I don't want to talk about it on this occasion or ever. If it's up to you, you're the boss of you. And for health practitioners to be really mindful that people when you think you're just giving them advice on how to manage blood pressure or how to improve diabetes, they're not hearing that. They're hearing, you don't think I'm good enough. You would like me thinner. They're hearing a different story.
Nadia Walton (33:29) Absolutely. And just for the clinicians that the patient knows their body size. It's not a surprise to anyone that when you say to them, you're overweight, you know, they know that and so and knowing that is a very different way to frame any conversation you're going to have. This is an expert in their body that you're going to say to you– Do you think you need to lose 20 kilos? They already have an opinion, they already have experience, and they already know how it feels. And so you're not giving them a light bulb moment. That's absolutely not what you're doing if you're talking to a patient with lived experience of being of plus size.
Dr Lucy Burns (33:49) Absolutely. Yeah, totally. Absolutely. I love that you're not giving them a light bulb and it's like, really? No shit, Sherlock. Yeah.
Nadia Walton (34:07) Exactly, exactly. some, some, you know, our patients will tell us that they went to someone they said, did you know you're overweight? And the person's going, Are you serious? Like, you know, this is what I'm living.
Dr Lucy Burns (34:22) Yeah. And even the line, have you thought about losing weight? That, that in itself can be tricky because most people go, yeah, every single waking moment of my life for the last 50 years. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, you're so far away from understanding how I work. Yeah.
Nadia Walton (34:40) Yeah, that's right. And so how can we bring it up gently and offer genuine options? So something like, would you like to discuss your weight today? And the person says, yes, please. Great. Or absolutely not. And you go, no problem. How can I help you today?
Dr Lucy Burns (35:24) Yeah, absolutely. And again, I think only bringing it up if you've got some options for them. If they go, yes, please. You go, that's nice. Lose 20 kilos. Don't do that. Yeah. Have a plan for them in your mind or have some options, some suggestions that don't eat less and move more because that's rubbish. Some genuine ones. Oh, I love this. I love Nadia that you are, you know, you are so kind and compassionate to your patients you can see you genuinely want them to succeed and improve their lives and improve like we're now referring to in particular as the glory years, which is that, you know, for that post-retirement or often for women, the post menopausal period where know, that last third of your life where we've worked hard all our lives, we've raised children, we've worked with contributed to the community and now we should be, you know, kind of resting on our laurels and instead we're trotting around to healthcare people all the time. So yeah, I think improving the glory years is absolutely wonderful.
Nadia Walton (36:35) Yeah, that's right think that's a great goal and you can do that at any size. That's the bit that I really message. If your goal is to do that at a lighter weight, here are some options. But if your goal is to do it at this weight, but to be stronger, but to be able to swim, but to be able to get on the floor with the grandkids, that's also a valuable goal.
Dr Lucy Burns (36:59) Yeah, absolutely. And I love that thing before you said, you know, you're training for life. You're training to lift your shopping. You're training to be able to chop your food in your kitchen. You're just training for life to live.
Nadia Walton (37:10)Yeah, yeah, to be able to stand at the bench for 20 minutes for some of our patients, that's the goal.
Dr Lucy Burns (37:18) Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And we do it with the power of small steps with someone holding your hand for that little bit of accountability, that firm, but fair. And then as you build confidence and trust with yourself, you get your momentum, you get your, your, you know, your own inner knowing so that you know what you're going to do and you know, you're going to follow through with it. but I love So Nadia, if people would like to connect with you, how do they do
Nadia Walton (37:47) Yeah, so I've got a whole range of the usual socials which are it's at Laneways Rehab or slash Laneways Rehab. For clinicians, we'll be running a conference jointly with Alfred Health on the 4th of October. So all of my details are on the website. So this will be really targeting health care clinicians and practical skills and services about how we provide good practice to our plus size patients. But everything's on our website. www.lanewaysrehab.com.au
Dr Lucy Burns (38:22) Excellent. Perfect and we will have all those links in the show notes, lovely. So if you're driving and listening to this and you want to look Nadia up afterwards, just go to the show notes for the podcast and you'll find all those links there. This has been delightful. Thank you so much for your time, Nadia. Really appreciate
Nadia Walton (38:37) Thank you, I really appreciate it too.
Dr Lucy Burns (38:39) All right, gorgeous listeners. Hopefully, you've got lots of takeaways from there. Remember the power of small steps and what I would love you to do this week is have a think about what is one small thing that you can change in your life and then add to it as we go on. Have a beautiful week, darlings. Bye for now.
Dr Lucy Burns (38:57) The information shared on the Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast, including show notes and links, provides general information only. It is not a substitute, nor is it intended to provide individualised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor can it be construed as such. Please consult your doctor for any medical concerns.
