The Benefits of Medically-Supervised Weight Loss

Weight loss can be frustrating.  Have you have tried every conceivable fad for losing weight and had none work? There is a key reason most of them don’t work, so read on.

The concept of dieting isn’t new. Society sets a standard for beauty. Many try to emulate it. Society’s concept of beauty has affected many areas especially the cosmetic industry, food production and medicine to change your body.

Just thinking about the many dieting options, from Low Fat to South Beach to Paleo, is mind-boggling. While they might be repackaged and updated according to the changes in nutritional research and food product development, they are most often set up for broad, sweeping generalizations about health and weight loss.

So they neglect the most fundamental aspect of weight loss: the unique circumstance of each individual. The inventor of one of these mass market programs may or may not know basic nutritional truths but one thing is for sure: they don’t know YOU.

Physician-supervised weight loss to the rescue. A physician skilled in bariatric medicine can play an unparalleled role in your weight loss journey.

Bariatrics is the branch of medicine that focuses on weight loss, obesity, and related disorders. 

A proper physician-supervised program begins with assessment then flows to planning and management.

Assessment
This process begins with an initial assessment. In a medically-supervised weight management process, physicians explore you as a whole person.

The physician will want to know about your past: this might include things like your past medical conditions, your past mental states, your family medical conditions, your past attempts at weight management, and, particularly your weight and exercise history.

Many complicated medical problems are related to weight issues, such as sleep apnea, depression, anxiety, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. 

The physician will also want to know about you at that moment: It’s obviously important to know your current medical conditions and medications (some of which may contribute to weight gain), and this can also include assessing your current mental state, and your current motivation for weight management. A variety of measures and laboratory testing may play a role in establishing a baseline from which you will make progress.

Laboratory results may reveal previously undiagnosed medical concerns like pre-diabetes, low thyroid levels, fatty liver, cholesterol abnormalities and others.

Planning

Once all of this information has been compiled, the physician can create a weight management plan tailored specifically to you, your motivation, your lifestyle, and your weight management goals. Physicians may recommend any combination of the following:

• Behavior modifications, particularly focusing on diet (nutrition, meal planning, food label education) and exercise.
• Prepackaged meal replacements and/or supplements designed to meet your daily nutritional requirements. 
• Pharmacotherapy - a physician’s secret weapon, prescribing medications to help with weight loss that may be necessary due other medical conditions and/or difficulty achieving goals using other methods.

Management 
The third step of medically-supervised weight loss is the close monitoring of your progress as you physically and mentally adapt to your new weight management plan. Your physician will monitor these changes, your reaction to prescribed medications, and adjust your program accordingly. If you are taking medications for other health conditions, they may initiate a dialogue with your other healthcare providers accordingly.

Physicians may recommend additional activities that address the mental challenges of weight loss. Support from other patients/clients who are also undergoing similar weight loss journeys helps keep you focused and motivated to follow through with your weight loss and maintenance plan. Sharing your failures and triumphs binds you together.


Physicians know that weight loss is more than willpower and that there are many medical issues that are caused or compounded by extra weight. Medically supervised weight loss programs make individualized, customized programs with expert guidance and supervision possible, to empower you to become the healthiest possible version of yourself.