Best Weight Loss Tips for Physical Therapists

Dec 21, 2020

The holidays are here and our clients are busy hanging decorations and eating lots of holiday food. Most of this holiday food is loaded with extra calories from added sugars, fat, and processed junk. After climbing their ladders, lifting the boxes, and the stress of traveling and seeing family, they come crawling into our clinics or gyms with extra weight and a sore back.

What can we do as Doctors of Physical Therapy (DPTs)? Aside from our traditional physical therapy treatments like manual therapy and exercise, we should be using patient education for weight loss. Here are some of our top tips for PTs and weight loss.

Journal Your Foods

Holidays bring big emotions and lots of junk food. Many of this junk food is eaten without our clients' being aware they are eating hundreds, if not thousands, of extra calories. These calories add up quickly promoting weight gain, reducing glycemic control, and stimulating inflammation.

To improve your PT outcomes and shed some pounds, data...

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Top 3 Tips for Weight Loss During Physical Therapy

Oct 19, 2020

By Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, CNPT, Cert-DN

The Holidays Are Coming!

We have Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas/Passover/Kwanza, and New Years coming. Data show that most Americans will on average gain about 0.4% of body fat during this time, most coming just after Christmas. While 0.4% does not seem like much fat, consider some quick math: a 175 lb man would essentially gain 3/4ths of a pound during the holidays. This small weight gain seems insignificant unless you add this weight gain with other gaining periods in the year, and compound the weight gain every holiday season. In other words, consider if this 175 lb 20 year old gained 0.4% every year for the next 20 years. This would equate to an extra 7 lbs of fat just gained in a few months over 20 years!

How does any of this matter for physical therapy practice? Time and time again my team and I are asked, how can we as physical therapists (PTs) educate our clients to lose weight?...

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Physical Therapy, Weight Loss, and Arthritis

Aug 07, 2020

By Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, CNPT, Cert-DN

Weight Loss and Physical Therapy

Traditional physical therapy (PT) does an amazing job at treating dysfunction, pain, and problems. Preventative care and wellness, such as weight loss, was once taboo and often ignored by many physical therapists. However, today's Doctors of Physical Therapy (DPTs) are truly embracing more holistic treatments like nutrition, mindfulness, and sleep habits. Having physical therapy patients lose weight can help reduce inflammation, prevent health issues, and may improve PT outcomes. But what about stopping the weight gain in the first place? Weight gain prevention is vitally important, as it is much more difficult to lose the weight than it is to gain it. Given such interest in these topics, our team found it relevant to consider a recent study looking at weight gain and arthritis -- let's make the case for more PTs to start talking about patients preventing weight.

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Arthritis, PT, and Weight Loss

Jun 05, 2020

Last week, I slammed the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports PT (JOSPT) for not including nutrition in their CPGs regarding concussions. This week, I want to laud them for including a great meta-analysis on knee, hip, and spine osteoarthritis (OA) in relation to weight loss in this month's journal.

As physical therapists (PTs), we know that musculoskeletal disorders like knee, hip, and back OA account for a huge portion of healthcare spending. We also know that OA of these joints greatly impacts quality of life, function, and ultimately long-term disability. Physical therapists do their best to offer cutting-edge treatment like exercise and patient education.

Current research shows that people with arthritis can greatly reduce their pain, improve their movement, and restore their strength with physical therapy. Often the best treatments are active exercises, education, activity progression, and manual therapy to initially help to reduce pain. Dry needling has been shown to...

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Physical Therapists Should Be Promoting Weight Loss

Feb 21, 2020
Image: Obesity by Jesper Sehested using Creative Commons - (CC BY 2.0) 

Physical Therapists Should Be Promoting Weight Loss

By Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC, CSCS, CNPT, Cert-DN

Physical therapists (PTs) specialize in movement, exercise, and rehabilitation. Our role as healthcare providers extends into many facets  of life and wellness. From stress reduction to nutrition, PTs ought to consider interventions beyond the basic modalities.  Diet can have a substantial impact on weight loss and its commiserate reductions in pain and inflammation, and improvements in function. Regardless of what setting (e.g. outpatient, nursing home, acute care), PTs can educate patients on the benefits of weight loss and even provide simple steps to reducing weight. 

What are the best nutrition methods PTs can provide patients to reduce or even prevent obesity in the first place? A simple answer can be found in the literature centered on the Whole Food Plant-based Diet...

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PTs: Stop Telling Clients to Only Exercise to Lose Weight!

Apr 09, 2019

By: Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, CNPT, NSCA-CPT, Cert-DN

I know, I said it. And you are wondering why in the heck a physical therapist, personal trainer, and strength coach would ever say such a thing?!

A few years ago a group of researchers published a wonderful editorial piece in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Titled It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet, the article stirred the pot and highlighted important data on weight loss.

The literature highlighted how many sports medicine, physio, and personal training professional are biased to exercise as the main mode for weight loss. Furthermore, the authors came out and boldly stated that physical activity does not promote weight loss. That's right, physical activity does not promote weight loss.

If these researchers are right, then why is the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) hanging their professional "hat" on PTs...

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