Wednesday, October 28, 2009
As a teenager,Walter DeNino was drawn into competitive running, eventually turning to triathlon after injuries.“My dream was to make the Olympics,” he says, recalling the time he spent living and training in Colorado Springs, Colo., in his early 20s, at the home of theOlympic Training Center.
DeNino says that when he realized being an Olympian wasn’t to be, he refocused his energies on the bigger picture, eventually going to medical school at the University of Vermont and, after joining forces with dietician Marcus Garand, launching trismarter.com, a unique coaching/nutrition business aimed primarily at two groups: triathletes wishing to improve through a scientific training/nutrition approach and sedentary nontriathletes
(including the clinically obese) wanting to supplant an unhealthy lifestyle with a healthy one.
DeNino has combined his medical background with his triathlon background to take up the cause of the obesity crisis in the United States. One of the programs trismarter.com offers is
aimed at using the focus of completing a sprint triathlon as the motivating structure to help an obese client lose weight, become fit and get turned on to the fun of being an athlete.
“People associate losing weight primarily with diet and drugs,” DeNino says. “Typically an obese individual is too selfconscious about their weight to go to the gym. And they’re limited
in what they can do in terms of exercise. An obese person simply may be too heavy to execute a training program out of Runner’s World. It will end in injury because of the stress on joints or other potential complications.”
DeNino also discusses how the average office visit to a physician is inadequate in regard to the needs an obese person has in their fight to get healthy. A quick talk simply won’t do it, and considering the magnitude of the problem, relatively few doctors have valuable, practical advice. The insufficiency, DeNino says, is in part due to a missing link in the medical education system. “There are no residential programs to train doctors on how to handle weight loss. There’s internal medicine, but it’s a very broad category.”
This is an alarming observation considering the obesity epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chart the rise of obesity cases from 1985 to 2006 with a PowerPoint
presentation. A color-coded map of the U.S. shows, year-to-year, the prevalence of obesity by percentage of state populations. In 1985, each state with statistics reported an obesity percentage of less than 10 percent. As the slides progress through the 21-year period, new colors flush across the map, indicating increases in obesity percentages to 10-14 percent, then 15-19 percent until we get to 2006, with two states ranging between 15-19 percent,
the bulk of the country between 20-30 percent and two states with the obesity percentage equal to or above 30 percent.
DeNino says dieting is an important part of helping an obese individual work his or her way down to a healthier weight, but research illuminates the limitations of such an approach. A
study published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that typical diets helped people lose an average of 6 percent of their weight, translating to around 10 to 15 pounds.
Unfortunately, most people will regain the weight in about five years or less. Another recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association comparing four diets—Atkins, Ornish, Zone and a low-fat, high-carb diet called LEARN—showed those following Atkins lost the most after a year—a rather paltry 4.6 kg. But as was pointed out by George L. Blackburn, MD, Ph.D., of the HarvardMedical School and Steven B.Heymsfield, MD, Global Director for Scientific Affairs for Obesity at Merck & Co., the participants in all of the groups were either gaining the weight back or stabilizing at a relatively low overall loss.
DeNino and his group of dieticians and coaches have designed their weight-loss program to solve this problem. The basic structure is this: A client will enlist in a two-phase program,
the first phase being intensive weight loss with focus on diet. An initial consultation is performed, along with a thorough analysis of the client’s diet, working one-on-one with a nutritionist. The initial training toward a triathlon is also started, but at a level easy enough to limit the potential for injury. When phase one is complete, the client segues into phase two, a weightmanagement program. Training for a sprint triathlon offers the client a goal-oriented situation, and within this approach, the competitive instincts of an individual and the joy of being in a sport are intended to produce a long-term solution.
Additionally, DeNino and his staff work with advanced triathletes, providing coaching and nutrition services for performance- enhancing weight management, fixing race-nutrition
errors and modifying pre-race diets. Whether working with a newbie triathlete trying to escape from being overweight or helping an experienced triathlete elevate their performance, the key value trismarter.com offers is rigorous examination of an individual’s needs, genetics and habits.
