The Future of Weight Loss: 10 Groundbreaking Advances Reshaping the Field

**Jim Hill:** Welcome to Weight Loss And, where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

**Holly Wyatt:** And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and live your best life while you're doing it.

**Jim Hill:** Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, the “And” allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

**Jim Hill:** Ready for the “And” factor?

**Holly Wyatt:** Let's dive in.

**Jim Hill:** Here we go. Holly, today we're going to have fun. We're going to talk about the future of weight loss. We're going to dive into 10 of what we think are the most thrilling areas that are poised to transform obesity treatment and enhance her approach to weight management.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, I think we're going to go into the advancements of things that we see on the horizon that have the greatest potential to make a real difference in the field. Not just in the field, I really want to highlight how these changes, these advancements, and things that are coming can help our listeners, and what they can expect from it.

**Jim Hill:** Yes, we're really excited about these 10 things we've chosen because we believe that all of them are going to lead to future research that's really going to make us more successful at weight management.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, I think our listeners are going to find this intriguing. So I'm ready.

**Jim Hill:** Are you ready to delve into it? Well, number one is probably no surprise to anyone. It's the weight loss medications. We've done a couple of podcasts about this, Holly, but this has revolutionized our thinking, our treatment of obesity, and the way we're approaching future research because, for the first time ever, we have medications that are really effective at weight loss. They can help many, many people actually reach the weight that they want to reach. They can reach their goals. And we've never been able to do that with very many people with previous medications or with lifestyle alone.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, so I think this advancements already here in some sense, right? We already have some of these medications. It's already affecting people and already something that people can tap into if it makes sense for them. But I also think where we're going in this area now that we have, I think it's taken us years to kind of figure out how to design medications that work at this level. Like you said, at a level that we've never been able to produce this much weight loss, we've had medications. But not medications that produce this degree of weight loss. What do you think is coming? What do you think? How is this going to continue to develop?

**Jim Hill:** Well, I think we're actually going to see even more effective drugs on the horizon. The success of these medications has empowered a lot of pharmaceutical companies to continue work in this area. And the fact that we can get such effective weight loss based on a hormone that has been identified that seems to be a signal for satiety has led a lot of other companies to look at other mechanisms that may play a role. So I think we're going to find over the next few years that we're going to have even more powerful medications.

**Holly Wyatt:** I think we'll start combining these different hormones into one drug, into one injection or into one pill, so that then you'll be able to hit multiple pathways. Because that seems to be a theme. We do that in two diabetes and we got better efficacy, and better treatment by combining. And I think the same thing is going to happen in weight loss. But it's interesting.

We've had the idea that weight loss medications can be effective, but we've never had weight loss medications that produce this much weight loss. So to me, that's the real push. And I think that will get better. What do you think the watch out or maybe the downside is for this advancement? Something we need to say, okay, but let's watch out for this or anything that might come about because of this?

**Jim Hill:** Well, a couple of things. I think one of the things that having more medications will do is give healthcare providers different options. So there are still people for which these medications might not work.

We don't really know why. But as we get more and more effective ones out there, I think there's going to be one that works for just about everybody. I think there are some watch-outs. We've talked before and we'll talk a little bit later in this program that these medications are really good for weight loss. Their role in weight loss maintenance is not yet clear. Some of the watch-outs are, you and I have talked about this before, appetite, Holly, that before people lose the weight, if they're overweight and out of shape and so forth, their appetite is not where it needs to be. But the medications may take it in another way. And so there are people that don't really care about eating anymore.

And I think there are some downsides in terms of nutritional deficiencies in making sure that people actually get enough in their diet to maintain their health. But overall, I mean, I think you and I both welcome these medications as wonderful new tools. They're going to get better.

I think we have to figure out how to use them more in the long term. They're really amazing at weight loss. Unclear yet what their role is in weight loss maintenance, but wonderful tools to have in our toolbox.

**Holly Wyatt:** I think you make a good point though, in terms of how it may change the field as physicians. I now think we may actually be looking for some nutrient deficiencies more often. Before we occasionally saw it, but it was really, it's really pretty rare unless someone has a true problem with absorption in their gut or other things.

We rarely see or they've had bariatric surgery. Then we do look for nutrient, and micronutrient insufficiencies or where people haven't been getting enough vitamins and nutrients. But this may change that where when you go in, you actually need to think about that as a physician. And then we may see more of that type of problem.

**Jim Hill:** You're going to need to monitor that if you have patients on these medications. But clearly weight loss medications, are a fantastic new area of treatment, a fantastic new area of research. All right. Number two. This one, I love Holly because it's the microbiome. Okay. We've known for a while now that the microbiome has been important for the last maybe five to seven years, maybe a little longer. People have begun to understand that all these microorganisms living in our intestine plays a role in our metabolism. And you and I did a podcast recently with Jack Gilbert who really, I think, laid it out in a way that was a really Eureka for me.

Here's why. You and I talk about metabolism being important. There's what you eat and there's your energy expenditure largely driven by your physical activity. But in between is your metabolism. And we know, for example, two people can eat the same diet and have different outcomes. The microbiome is helping us to understand that. And if you have an unhealthy microbiome, it's actually contributing to your weight gain. These bugs extract so much energy from your food and that goes into increasing your body fat, maintaining your overweight status. On the other hand, if you get your microbiome in a healthy state, it's part of a flexible metabolism. It helps you match your intake to your expenditure. So I'm really excited about where research in this area is going to go.

**Holly Wyatt:** Me too. When I listened to that episode with Jack, I was like, it really does have lots of light bulb moments. And suddenly I see one area, this microbiome, just these small bacteria, tiny bacteria, right? Viruses, are things you can't see that are living in your gut. They could be this missing link. That's that kind of communication on how things are hooking together. And they may explain, for instance, why fiber is so important. We know fiber is important, but exactly how having its satiety aspect, we don't know. But we can start to see maybe why.

**Jim Hill:** And exercise affects the microbiome positively. I love that when Jack said clearly that research shows that exercise can improve it. But here's what we don't know. And you and I tried to press Jack on, how do you know if you have a healthy microbiome? We still don't have a simple, easy test to know if your microbiome is working for you or against you as part of your metabolism.

And the best advice Jack gave us was to eat a very diet. A lot of different plants and fermented food are positive. I think where research is going to go is it's going to come up with a test that you can use to test your microbiome. And then we can actually help people with interventions that improve their microbiome.

**Holly Wyatt:** But I don't think we're there yet. And I think some companies or people may be saying we are. And I don't think we're there yet to really know for sure what the best combination or what's a good microbiome and a bad. And then that next step, if you change it exactly what happens. And the other thing he said that really was like, I was like, okay, wait a minute now, you can change your microbiome pretty quickly. So in other words, you're eating a good diet, what he considered a good diet that tends to promote healthy gut bacteria and a healthy microbiome. And you eat something that's less healthy, it changes pretty fast. So it's like, wait a minute, we kind of it sounded like a lot of the foods that we know are associated with good health are associated with the healthy biome. We still have trouble eating the foods that we know are associated with good health. So are we going to have trouble eating the foods that we know are associated with the healthy, you know, microbiome? We may still have the same problem.

**Jim Hill:** But it really helps us understand why a healthy diet and physical activity can contribute to metabolism that works with you rather than against you and maintaining your weight.

**Holly Wyatt:** I agree. I think it explains a lot and has the potential. We'll see.

**Jim Hill:** But research is going so quickly in this area that I think almost every month some new study comes out to help us understand this. So I think we're going to learn a lot more very quickly about the microbiome.

**Holly Wyatt:** It definitely got me thinking about about my microbiome. So if I'm thinking about it and when I'm eating, I'm thinking about it and I definitely think this is going to be a hot topic and I can't wait to see how this develops in the years to come. All right.

Number three, this is a favorite for both of us. This is I think where I've been focusing most of my thoughts, I think is on this concept of precision nutrition matching people to what they need. And that's not one size fits all. We've talked a lot about this on this podcast and there isn't one answer. And what we really need to do is here's a bunch of things that could work or do work. Which one of these strategies, these diets, this exercise plan, whatever it may be works best for which individual?

**Jim Hill:** Yeah. I think this holds a lot of promise. On one hand, we've known for a long time that if you put 10 people on the same diet, some people are going to lose weight. Some people are going to gain weight, but we haven't really understood why. So the concept of precision nutrition is let's learn why people respond differently to different diets. The goal here is not to be able to individualize it. So every single person in the world gets their own diet.

I think what we're going to end up with are subgroups that respond differently. In the weight loss field, there are always some people who respond really well to a low-carb diet. Others respond to a low-fat diet. So the more we learn about the why, the more we're going to be able to tell them what the optimum diet is to maintain their weight and their health. Now, Holly, we still have to get them to follow it, right? So I can tell you, here's the diet that will work best for you, but it ain't going to work unless you follow it. So the behavioral stuff is still a critical point of all this.

**Holly Wyatt:** But where I do think this could help is when, you know, we, Jim, are writing a new book. So this is really coming out in this book when we're trying to really tailor and individualize it is if you're going to put your effort on certain behaviors or you're going to put your effort on eating a certain diet, then let's make it the one that's specifically for you. Right now, a lot of times we throw the kitchen sink at it. We say, do all these things. And that's hard, right? There are a lot of changes you could make. But if you could really tell someone this is the most important or these three things are really critical to your success. I think it might be easier for them to adhere to those three things instead of 20 things or instead of doing it and then seeing which ones have work and which ones don't.

Throwing it out there, seeing which sticks versus saying, no, here are three that we know work for you. Now let's work on helping you be able to do those behavioral changes or eat that diet or exercise in that way. But I think they're going to be motivated more when they know this really will work for me.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, I think it's really already driving a lot of research in the field of nutrition. The National Institutes of Health have prioritized that. You and I are part of a huge study to begin to understand why people respond differently to different diets. Other researchers and other funders have prioritized this. So I think it's going to be driving a lot of nutrition research for the foreseeable future.

**Holly Wyatt:** And I mean, I think that AI and new ways of looking at data are kind of helping us with that.

**Jim Hill:** We couldn't do this without that. I mean, this is a complex understanding of how all the components of food may impact an individual, and artificial intelligence machine learning has been a godsend in taking all that data and really helping us identify that. So the goal of the study you and I are working on is to develop an algorithm for each individual to say, here's the diet that's going to work best for you.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. And this new way of looking at data is really the only way we could get there.

**Jim Hill:** So AI is going, well, I think it's going to revolutionize everything. But it is so important and so useful for nutrition research because when we go in, there are so many things you have to change. And it's just hard to control for everything. And using AI, you don't have to do that. You can sort it out on the back end and it's just a wonderful new tool that's going to help nutrition research a lot.

**Holly Wyatt:** Agree. All right. Are we on number four?

**Jim Hill:** Timed eating. Okay.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. Timed eating, intermittent fasting. You can really say it either way.

**Jim Hill:** So meal pattern in general. So does it matter what pattern you use to take in your food? Does it help to fast every now and then? Does it help to limit the time you eat between 10 and 6 p.m? For example, are these things helpful over and above the diet you're on? So the research here, it's not totally consistent, but it's certainly fascinating that some of these meal patterns may be helpful for some people. And again, it sort of interacts with the precision nutrition holly. I don't think intermittent fasting, for example, is going to be effective for everybody, but for some people, it might be very effective. Timed eating might be effective for some people. But these are new tools that people are exploring about how the pattern in which you consume your calories may impact your weight over and above the diet you're on.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So we concentrate a lot on what to eat, but this is saying, okay, no matter what you're eating necessarily when you're eating it, the timing of it might influence what you eat even.

Right? That the two may interact or that it can be independently important, which I think is another layer to really consider. And it kind of makes sense, especially with us talking about appetite a lot. When I talk to people who are struggling, a lot of times I overeat for different reasons and appetite levels are different and different people.

And that's why the drugs are working on some individuals. But the idea is that maybe by not consuming calories for a certain amount of time. So eating over a certain amount of time and then fasting in terms of calories for a certain amount of time may kind of reset your metabolism or allow it to come back down to baseline or do something to it. And I don't think we know what it is, but do something that when you then start to eat again, it's working better. Your appetite is working. Your physiology is working. You don't get as hungry. That all makes sense to me. And I like that is an area to focus on moving forward.

**Jim Hill:** You know, I think of it sometimes as exercising your metabolism. So think about your fat stores. You have fat, stored in fat depots. And when you don't have other energy available, your body pulls that fat out. But if you're eating all day and you never get to a period where you need to pull that fat out, it's sort of like you don't do that very well.

And these periods of not eating allow you to do that. And it's almost like you're getting your fat metabolism more fit. So I think of it in a way as exercising your metabolism or a kind of momentum.

**Holly Wyatt:** It's like I think of it maybe like a big train and it's going in one direction, which is storing because you're eating, you're eating, you're eating. But now you actually want to burn fat and it takes a little bit of time to turn the train around and everything to get it actually burning the fat. And if you never give it any time to turn around, you can never really get the fat burners going or you can never get the train going in the opposite direction. So momentum might be important. That could be another way it works.

**Jim Hill:** So I think we're trying to understand the different patterns and how the different patterns work with different individuals to actually give you a benefit. And I know Holly, we did a nice podcast with her colleague Courtney Peterson and she's a big fan of timed eating. Remember what was the optimum time of eating that she told us she thought was…

**Holly Wyatt:** I think she likes eight hours of timed eating. So it could be eight to ten, but I think she prefers the eight. There's a little bit of a range.

**Jim Hill:** So that might be in until six, right? So you can start eating at 10 a.m. and stop eating at six and you don't eat between six at night and ten in the morning. I did that for a while. It wasn't that hard to do actually. So stay tuned because we're going to understand a lot more about these different patterns and how they affect people. But you know what? I think it's okay to try some of these. Explore timed eating, explore intermittent fasting, see if it works for you.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, always talk to your doctor and make sure if you're on medications or you need to have food because you're on insulin. Obviously, you need to talk to your doctor about it.

But I think it's good to try. But always so I say it's not you can drink non-caloric beverages. It's not don't get dehydrated during these fasting periods, which is important. Just no calories. Yeah, just no calories. The other thing is I think that the time-deating is going to be good for weight loss maintenance. I don't think it may do much for weight loss. I think it may be more about the balance.

**Jim Hill:** That's interesting because again, over and over we've contrasted weight loss and weight loss maintenance and the things that work for one don't necessarily work for the other. So I think you're right. I I basically during weight loss, you just want to eat less and there's so many ways to do that. But during weight loss maintenance, I agree. This is where meal patterning may make a difference. And again, there's so much research in this area going on right now. I think we're going to learn a lot more very quickly.

**Holly Wyatt:** Agree. All right. Number five, kind of the same pattern. What do we have down for number five?

**Jim Hill:** Sleep. And we did a really good podcast on sleep. We know sleep is important for many reasons, but it's also important for your weight and a lot of interventions to reduce weight are actually manipulating sleep. Evidently, sleep problems are rampant in the U.S. So many people have sleep problems, amount of sleep, quality of sleep, et cetera. And what we learned with Marie St. Onge was that if you can correct the sleep problems, you actually eat better. You're better able to exercise. You're better able to manage your weight. And so I've learned that sleep is one of those things that you have to address if you're serious about weight management.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. We know, for instance, if you have something like sleep apnea or even other disordered sleep that it can be much more difficult to lose weight, it can be more difficult to maintain your weight. We have good data about that. But I think this field is even going further to say optimal sleep, even if you don't have a diagnosis like sleep apnea, could be important. And we now have lots of devices that are trying to kind of measure our sleep patterns and whether we have good sleep or bad sleep.

And we just were talking about the fasting aspect. When you sleep, what are you doing? You're not eating. You're fasting. So those two kind of hooked together or could hook together in terms of body weight regulation.

**Jim Hill:** And Holly, there are a lot of good resources out on the web that will help you actually take sort of tests to see how your sleep is. And they'll give you great tips for how to improve your sleep. Things like don't take screens in your bedroom, make your bedroom dark, get rid of your noise. There are lots of tips that you can try. So that if you feel like you're not getting quality of sleep, there are a lot of things you can do. And helping you sleep better is going to help you manage your weight better.

**Holly Wyatt:** Right. And that moves us actually into our next advance or thing that I'm excited about. And it's technology. And the reason why I think it moves us in there is I think there's a lot of people, and I'm one of them that said, I don't know if I'm getting good sleep or not. Like sometimes you may know, but I'm like, am I getting good sleep?

And I just bought a new garmin. There's lots of different ways, different ways to do this. That's going to be measuring my sleep quality. And maybe we'll be able to give me some feedback about that. So number six on our list is technology and the ability of that technology to monitor different things, sleeping one of them, but also things like your metabolic rate, your heart rate, so many things now. Technology has really set up these real time monitoring tools, your glucose levels, blood sugar levels. I don't think it's going to change things.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, I think it's technology and there are so many apps you can use to do this. One of the things I'm interested in you mentioned is continuous glucose monitoring. So there are now going to be devices that you're going to be able to buy to measure your continuous glucose. And for people with diabetes, you need them.

They're wonderful. They're going to be marketed to everybody. And I'm curious as to whether that's going to be useful for people or not.

I'm not sure. I'm open to the idea so that you know your glucose during the day. Can you go back and associate what you ate with higher glucose?

We're going to see. But nonetheless, there are so many tools that monitor your body state that are going to be helpful for your weight management. And I think we're going to see more and more of these coming online.

**Holly Wyatt:** I agree. And that used to be something you had to go to your doctor to get some of these things, to get these measurements. Now you're going to be able to do it at home. So it really is changing medicine in general not just the weight.

**Jim Hill:** You're going to go into your doctor with data rather than asking to collect that. You're going to go in and say, look, here's my glucose pattern. Here's my heart rate. Here's my activity patterns. And I think it's going to force our healthcare providers to be ready to deal with that and use it. And I think it's going to be a good thing.

**Holly Wyatt:** I do too. I think the doctor's going to have to keep up with that and are going to have to realize this is how we're moving. You know, for the longest time, it was like to get a test. You had to go in and get your doctor to do the test.

Now we're seeing that's changing too, right? You can go lots of places and get tests, these new technology, these new devices. And I think it will help with the individualization piece also too, because you're going to be able to get this data that's about you. And when we know what to do with it, that's going to be really helpful. I don't know that we know what to do with it all yet, but it's going to be helpful, I think.

**Jim Hill:** And it's going to continue. There are lots of people doing research in this area. New technology, new uses for existing technology. This is an area that's moving fast. And I think it's going to continue to have important implications for weight management.

**Holly Wyatt:** So I think it can help that the listener potentially in the future. But I also think it's really good for research, Jim, because so many times where we've gotten some wrong information, have made some wrong conclusions is when we've taken a single snapshot. People have come in and we've gotten just glucose or a resting metabolic rate or fat oxidation, how faster, how much fat they're burning at one time point. And it didn't tell the whole picture versus looking at the pattern or looking at it over days or weeks or even months really tells a different picture. I think back to when we used to look at exercise bouts and we would just look at when someone was exercising and not look before and after to get the whole picture, things like that. And so that may be helpful for the field to have access to better technology that can give us more data so we can see patterns over longer periods of time. And now we have this statistical machine learning that can take all that data and do stuff with it.

**Jim Hill:** I agree. So stay tuned. This area of research is moving very, very quickly. All right, Holly, number seven, devices for satiety. I new research year.

**Holly Wyatt:** So devices are things, there's lots of things that are being tested and we've done some clinical trials with some of them that we consider devices, but they're almost like pill you swallow, but it's a device that can go in and kind of make a shape in your stomach or fill up your stomach. And then when the pH of your stomach changes, it goes away, things like that, that can be important for satiety. So they're a little bit like medication, but they're not a medication. They're a device and man, there are so many of them being developed, different things, they don't get into your bloodstream. So you don't necessarily have the side effects from some of the medications that get into your bloodstream.

But just by going into the stomach, a certain device can cause you to feel full or have greater satiety and then it can go away and just you'll, it's like it was never there. So I think there's lots of new things. In addition to the medication, we're going to see more devices and that will just give us more tools.

**Jim Hill:** Wow. That's exciting. So stay tuned. Some good things coming in that area. Okay, Holly, number eight, this is when you and I talk a lot about our of the mind. I think if there's one thing that we have learned lately that was new and exciting for us, this is it. We've spent our careers looking at what you eat, your physical activity, your weight regulation, your energy balance. And I think what we're learning now is the mind and the mindset is so critical for long-term weight management.

**Holly Wyatt:** I think we're now seeing we need to add it in. You know, we still can use all the things we've used before, but why were we not really harnessing the power of the mind? And when we add that, I think that's when we get the synergy.

**Jim Hill:** Give us some examples of how the power of the mind or mindset may impact weight management.

**Holly Wyatt:** Well, there's so many of them, but one of the easy ones I talk about is just, I just call this expectation. I see this so many times and people who are trying to lose weight, there'll be a group of individuals who don't expect for it to work or they don't expect for it to be easy. They expect it to be hard. They expect it not to work. And you know what?

It is. It's harder for them and it doesn't work as much versus coming in saying, you know what? This is going to work. I expect it to work. I believe it to work. Then the outcome, what they see is usually they're more successful or they're easier. It's not it alone. I always tell people, it's not like I want you to sit on the couch and just, oh, I believe I'm going to be successful.

It's not that at all. It's that belief plus the actions that you're taking, the strategic evidence-based action. So it's definitely both of them, but there's something about the mindset of believing you're going to succeed, that expectation, that changes and changes outcome. It produces a different reality for you.

**Jim Hill:** So another one that I like is resiliency. So bad things are going to happen. If you're on a weight management journey, there are going to be challenges. There are going to be times when it's just really hard. And a lot of times they lose it. They go back and they say things are tough.

I'm not going to do this, boom, regain all my weight. And I think what we've learned is people that are resilient expect those and they know that they're going to deal with it. It's still going to be hard.

It's still going to be a challenge, but they have the mindset of I'm ready for these things. I know the unexpected is going to come. And when they come, I'm confident I'm going to do what I need to do, to not get derailed by these things. I'm going to get through them and go on and continue on my journey.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. They have skills and strategies to be more emotionally resilient, but part of it is they believe and know that they have those. And so they go into it with a different feeling.

And when one comes, they're like, oh yeah, I know. I don't like it. I didn't want this to happen.

It doesn't feel good, but I know what to do. And I'm not going to let it derail me, because that's what I see. It just pushes people off and their plan and they just give up and versus people with high emotional resiliency say, okay, I'm going to deal with this, and I'm going to keep moving forward. And the really good ones use it to move forward. They actually can use a setback or use a curveball, use something that they don't want, they don't like. They actually see it as learning. And it actually sometimes even pushes them forward. So so much in this area that I think is important, not just around weight. It's really around life.

Well, we just did a podcast with Bonnie Taub-Dix about mindfulness and mindful eating. And that's another way of doing it. The typical is you're eating in front of the computer or TV, and you don't even remember anything about your meal. And what you do is you end up, A, not enjoying it as much and B, overeating. So simple things like paying attention to your food and enjoying your food are little things that can make a big difference in the long run.

**Holly Wyatt:** And then another area of a lot of research being published, we're starting to see this, we're starting to understand it is the power of meditation, meditating and actually how it changes some things in your body. Now, I don't think we understand the exact mechanism yet, but more and more, we're starting to say people who are meditating and then we measure certain outcomes and those outcomes are better, even things like aging and just all kinds of things. So I think we're going to see more and more data around the power of meditation. And that fits right in with the power of the mind.

**Jim Hill:** So lots of good stuff coming in this area. All right, Holly, we've got two more to go through the next one, number nine, food is medicine. This is an interesting one. And there are a lot of people in the nutrition field pushing this. And the idea is pretty simple. It's like we know that you can use diet to help prevent and manage chronic disease. So rather than your physician giving you a medication, that physician could give you a prescription for a diet. And food is medicine goes even farther and say rather than giving a prescription for that diet, actually gets give them the food, get them on a meal delivery system, a grocery delivery system, etc.

With the idea of let's not just tell them what they should eat, let's hook them up with a way that they're going to get that food. So it's an interesting idea. And it's one that I'm curious on where it's going to go.

There's a lot of research in this area, but I'm not sure totally where it's going to go. I was talking with some physicians at a meeting and they basically said, no, no, we don't want to see food as medicine. We see medicine as medicine and food is not medicine. It's something different. So there's some different points of view out there, but I will tell you this is an area you're going to see a lot more research on.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, I can see maybe delivering meals as medicine maybe, but to me, the power in this is to start thinking about food being as powerful as medicine. You know, we think of these little pills and if they would do something, we think, oh my gosh, they're magic. Well, there's ways that we can eat. There's ways we can combine food. There's things that we can consume that are maybe just as powerful as those medications. Now, like we always say, eating that way is the hard part. How do you continue to eat that way?

**Jim Hill:** And again, I think we've made a lot of, you know, you can deliver meals to people, but you can't do it forever. So is there a way that you can get started? So you got meals to your door. All you got to do is eat them, no barrier, whatever. But then, how do we go from that to a more sustainable situation? I think this is where we need a lot of research to figure this out.

**Holly Wyatt:** But if you told me that I could eat this certain type of meal, and this would help me with my appetite all day long, or this would do something else for my health that I was taking a medication for, oh, if you could make it simple and you could really, it's not like I eat this, have to eat it all day long, but if I could make some strategic changes, I think I might be willing to do that.

**Jim Hill:** I hope a lot of people are. I'm skeptical. I think it's been really hard to get people to make those changes. But if we could, there are so many situations where diet can even be more impactful than a pill for preventing or managing a chronic condition.

**Holly Wyatt:** I just think this concept of food as medicine, activity as medicine.

**Jim Hill:** Right. There's also exercise as medicine.

**Holly Wyatt:** Well, that's what I'm saying by activity, activity and exercise.

**Jim Hill:** And you and I think of those three things, what you eat, how you move and your mindset. And I think those are the big three for weight management.

**Holly Wyatt:** But I think it's a shakabuku or kind of an aha moment when you suddenly start to think about that as powerful and can do as much as medicine. Then it, to me, makes me think differently about it. I don't know.

I don't know how it will with other people. But to me, that's a new concept. And I know it's been out there, but to really think of it that way and to see it that way, I would much rather make some strategic changes to some behaviors than take a bunch of pills. So I hope that we can really work on that and get really specific and help people.

**Jim Hill:** I think a lot of people pushing this want to actually change the healthcare system. So it's business as usual to prescribe diets. It becomes a part of what we do. It's not that way right now. But can we change it so that your physician's first thought is to prescribe a lifestyle, a diet exercise, rather than go right to a medication?

**Holly Wyatt:** Well, here's where I have a problem with this, because I can already see what's going to happen. And I'm a doctor, so I can say this and they can get mad at me, but that's fine. We're notorious. We'll tell you what to do, but we won't really tell you how to do it. We're going to say, and we talk about this all the time, this is how much exercise you should have. Well, how do you get there? How do you do that? Or you should eat this type of diet, but how do you really do that?

**Jim Hill:** And that's the whole concept of food as medicine. Let's plug in something where, the analogy I use is you give someone a medication, they go to this place called a pharmacy and they get it. So you give someone a prescription for a diet. Where's the food pharmacy? And I think that's what food as medicine is trying to say. Well, here are meal delivery, here are grocery delivery, here are ways to easily fill that prescription.

**Holly Wyatt:** Okay, we'll have to see about that, because we eat food for so many reasons, but interesting.

**Jim Hill:** It is moving forward. I'm not sure where it will go, but this is going to be driving a lot of nutrition research. So stay tuned.

**Holly Wyatt:** All right, last one, and it's my favorite. Go for it. Weight loss maintenance. Oh, yeah. Finally on the list, Jim. How many years have we waited for people to be ready to talk about weight loss maintenance and to advance the field in weight loss maintenance? How many years?

**Jim Hill:** Many years. Everybody wants to focus on weight loss. Nobody wants to focus on weight loss maintenance. So they lose weight, they regain it, they lose it, they never think about maintenance, but that's changed, Holly.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. I mean, I used to always, I always said I would give people what they want, which is weight loss, and I would sneak in weight loss maintenance, because no one wanted to talk about it. So the only way I could really get people thinking about weight loss maintenance was to kind of sneak it in. And now, by the very first time, we can actually say weight loss maintenance and people are interested.

**Jim Hill:** It's because a lot of people are hitting their goal weights with the new medications.

**Holly Wyatt:** I believe that's true, but I'm going to take it, because I think now we're really going to be able to focus on the differences between weight loss and weight loss maintenance. We're going to be able to focus on the strategies that work for weight loss maintenance. We're going to be able to advance them, and people are going to really start to get that. And I think that's really going to move the field forward. The fact that I do this for weight loss, and this is what I need to do for weight loss maintenance. And finally, people will want to think about it, do it, talk about it, and we can advance it.

**Jim Hill:** I love it. I think this is where we should have been doing a lot of research for years, and we haven't. And I think now that lots of people are reaching their weight loss goals, there's going to be a lot of research to say, how do you help people keep it off? Whether or not they stay on the drugs, you still have to use different strategies to keep weight off.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. So it's kind of like, finally, all the research that we've done, finally people want to talk about it. I finally feel like it's coming full circle, and this is the time.

**Jim Hill:** Wow. This was fun. I've got to tell you, I feel so excited about these 10 areas. I think there's going to be continued research in each area that we're going to be able to apply in real life very quickly.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. Feels good. Feels good to move forward, doesn't it?

**Jim Hill:** Okay. Well, this was a fun episode. We need to do some more of these, but I hope people enjoyed this, and I hope you can use some of their practical information.

**Holly Wyatt:** Well, let's ask them. I would love to know which one they're most excited about. We're excited about them for different reasons, but which one of these 10 advances in the future of weight loss do you find the most exciting and why? And then we might do a deep dive on that one, if there's one that comes out that's really exciting.

**Jim Hill:** I love that. So, contact us, reach out to us, and tell us which of these you think is useful. How do they reach out, Holly?

**Holly Wyatt:** So, they can email us with any questions or to tell us what they thought was the most important one or the most exciting one. They can do that at hello at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/). Or go to the website, www.weightlossand .com, and there's a way to contact us there, too.

**Jim Hill:** So, we want to hear from you. We want to know which of these resonated and why.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. All right. This was great.

**Jim Hill:** This was a good one. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time on Weight Loss And.

**Holly Wyatt:** Bye, everybody.

**Jim Hill:** Bye. And that's a wrap for today's episode of Weight Loss And. We hope you enjoy diving into the world of weight loss with us.

**Holly Wyatt:** If you want to stay connected and continue exploring the “Ands” of weight loss, be sure to follow our podcast on your favorite platform.

**Jim Hill:** We'd also love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions by reaching out at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/). Your feedback helps us tailor future episodes to your needs.

**Holly Wyatt:** And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the “And” in your own weight loss journey.