According to the World Population Review 2019, Malaysia has the highest rate of obesity and overweight among Asian countries with 64% of male and 65% of female population being either obese or overweight. Sadly, these number will continue to increase if the population are not being made aware of properly educated.

Most people felt that obesity and its related diseases such as diabetes are irreversible. Upon experimenting various type of methods, many overweight patients tend to give up and claim that obesity is difficult to treat and maintaining long-term weight loss is almost impossible.

Actually, NO! Science shows obesity and diabetes are preventable and reversible with proper utilization of nutrition and lifestyle modifications. This is because food is medicine and when you take disease producing food out and put the right food in, the healing happens quickly.

So, what are the few things that we can practice to reverse obesity?

Cut the sugar.

Empty calories and refined carbohydrates which convert to sugar will create high insulin levels in human body. These high levels of insulins may increase the risk of getting diabetes, causing inflammation, high blood pressure or poor sex drive. One of the important tips on reversing obesity is to drastically reduce sugar intake.

Have enough exercise.

It could be an hour at the gym or even a 30-minute walk and effective exercise will be able to help balance blood sugar and lower insulin levels. Get your heart rate up to 70 – 80% of its maximum capacity for 60 minutes, up to six times a week.

Get enough sleep.

Poor sleeping patterns will damage metabolism and increase sugar and carbohydrates craving and when you eat more, health risk may increase. Study have also shown that poor sleeping patterns may also induce insulin resistance. Hence, it is important to get a solid 8 hours of sleep!

Manage Your Stress

Especially for us living in urban areas, we can’t entirely eliminate stress but we can learn how to control and manage it. In the face of chronic stress, our levels of insulin, cortisol, and inflammatory compounds called cytokines all increase. This drives the relentless metabolic dysfunction that leads to weight gain and insulin resistance. Meditation, deep breathing exercises, yoga, massage, laughing, and dancing are among the best ways to manage stress.

Consume the Right Nutrients and Diets

Supplements make your cells more sensitive to insulin and more effective at metabolizing sugar and fat. Combined with the right diet and lifestyle modifications, they can help you balance blood sugar. Apart from that, whole, unprocessed real foods balance your blood sugar, reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, and improve your liver detoxification to prevent or reverse insulin resistance and diabetes. Choose a rich variety of colourful fruits and vegetables, plenty of omega-3 fats, coconut butter and olive oil, legumes, nuts, and seeds.

Above are some of the more general tips on reversing obesity but patients who are on medication or with other symptoms should always check with their doctors beforehand. For more detailed information on obesity and tips on reversing obesity, kindly schedule an appointment with us via [email protected] or [email protected]