Your Health

Mastering The Energy Gap

A steady increase in body weight across our entire population has resulted in one in four Australian adults becoming obese[1]. At the heart of this health issue is the energy gap - that is the imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure.

Join us for this webinar, when Associate Professor Nuala Byrne, immediate past President of the Australia and New Zealand Obesity Society (ANZOS) and Co-Director of the Energy Metabolism Group in the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology, provides an overview of the energy gap concept in the context of the global obesity problem and the implications for health professionals in prevention and management of the condition through nutrition and physical activity.

Associate Professor Byrne will also look at weight gain in individuals as well as populations and explain how the energy gap concept can be used to better understand the eating and activity behaviours required to prevent weight gain and maintain weight loss.

[1] ABS Australian Social Trends, Smoking, Risky Drinking and Obesity, Australian Bureau of Statistics: Canberra, Australia, 2009, p5.

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About the Speakers

Dr Nuala Byrne

Dr Nuala Byrne is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Energy Metabolism Group in the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology. Associate Professor Byrne is the immediate past President of the Australia and New Zealand Obesity Society, and has considerable clinical experience in designing effective dietary and exercise interventions for weight management. With funding from the NHMRC, Associate Professor Byrne has investigated issues such as whether metabolism or behaviour is more important during and after weight loss, if different dieting and exercise regimes have different effects, whether we can overcome the body's inbuilt "famine reaction", which acts to slow weight loss during dieting and the size of the energy gap