What is Medical Weight Loss?

Are you looking to lose weight, live a healthier lifestyle, and feel great? Consider medical weight loss. Medical weight loss is not the same as crash diets that often leave people feeling hungry and irritable. You will be able to eat delicious foods while still losing weight! Let’s learn more about how this process works.

What Is Medical Weight Loss?

Medical weight loss is a method of long-term treatment for obesity and lifestyle related diseases. The main goal of this type of intervention is to cure patients from disease caused by being overweight, such as diabetes, hypertension, arthritis or sleep apnea. In other words, medical weight loss helps people regain their health.

In the United States almost two-thirds of people are overweight or obese. Obesity has many major consequences for our health and life expectancy. Due to being overweight, we are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, cancer, and sleep apnea.

Medical weight loss is a complete treatment program that focuses on all aspects of the illness: food habits, physical activities, and mental conditioning. This program includes dietary change, physical exercise (exercise classes, swimming), and psychological counseling that will help to change the patient’s orientation towards food, his or her attitude towards their own body, and life in general.

The basis of medical weight loss is a healthy diet combined with regular exercise. Dietitians recommend portion control, low carbohydrate diets, and increased consumption of fruit and vegetables. There are some recommendations for people who have problems with losing weight or maintaining the lost pounds – they should increase daily average physical activity time to at least an hour a day.

Who Can Benefit from Medical Weight Loss?

Medical weight loss is a treatment that may help people lose weight. Besides weight loss there are many non-weight loss benefits of bariatric surgery. This type of intervention is appropriate for those who are severely overweight and have serious health conditions caused by being overweight and obese. People who could benefit from medical weight loss include:

• Those who want to stop being overweight
• People suffering from diabetes or high cholesterol that cannot be controlled with diet
• People who have been wanting to lose weight for a long time but cannot do it without proper guidance
• Those who are severely overweight and want to improve their health
• People who eat too much, feel guilty about their eating habits or lack of self-control when it comes to food.
• With the right treatment program medical weight loss may help you maintain a healthy lifestyle, eat better and feel great.

How does medical weight loss work?

Medical weight loss treats the whole person. It puts together a program that covers all aspects of being overweight: dietary changes, physical exercises, and psychological counseling. The treatment involves making healthy diet adjustments, increasing physical activity levels to at least an hour a day, and getting support from health professionals who will eventually help you make lifestyle changes for good.

Types of medical weight loss are:

1. Bariatric surgery: (e.g., gastric bypass, duodenal switch, sleeve gastrectomy) is the most effective treatment for morbid obesity and a useful tool in the prevention of type 2 diabetes in certain high-risk populations.

2. Bypass or restrictive surgeries (most notably banding procedures), which reduce the size of the stomach to limit food intake and cause aversion to eating.

3. Gastric electrical stimulation is an experimental treatment for morbid obesity that involves implanting a device in the abdominal wall that sends pulses of electricity into the stomach, agitating its contents and producing a feeling of fullness that suppresses appetite.

6. Hormone Therapy: (e.g., estrogen, testosterone) is used to treat hormonal imbalances that may result in excessive weight gain and fat accumulation (in women after menopause or in men due to hypogonadism)

7. Gastric balloon procedure: is a non-surgical method of weight loss. A saline filled balloon is inserted into the stomach thru the mouth, after which it can be inflated with a saline solution to fill and stretch out the stomach; gastric balloons are thought to act by increasing satiation or feelings of fullness and preventing the absorption of calories.

Hope this article could answer some basic questions on what weight loss is. To get more information search various medical weight loss centers in AZ or services like gastric sleeve surgeries in phoenix or elsewhere to know the best suited method for you.