This post is meant for all the folks who have decided to take charge of their health and hoping to achieve their weight loss goals, but just do not know where to start since there is so much confusing information out there. Here are a few pointers that are evidence-based and have worked for me personally and for many of my patients!
Please remember that these things alone may be enough for many people, but there is a significant number of patients out there who would still not fully get the results they want. That’s where medications are helpful because even medications alone would not be helpful and have to be used as a part of a comprehensive approach, including optimising nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress levels, and behavioral changes
Let’s call obesity for what it is, a chronic disease, just like high blood pressure, diabetes, or heart disease. Ironically, there is no stigma around having high BP and diabetes or taking medication to help treat them. On the other hand, negativity around taking meds to improve your excess weight—the most important contributing factor for a constellation of these conditions – high BP, ischemic heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, high cholesterol, fatty liver, cancers, osteoarthritis of knees, hips, and spine problems—is unbelievable.
We would start by discussing each of these important factors one by one.
NUTRITION:
To lose weight, you would need a nutritional plan. There is no clearcut scientific evidence that one kind of diet works better than the other. The diet I recommend to my patients is the one that is most pleasant to you, and you could do it for ‘the rest of your life.’ Yes! rest of your life… …which many times means changing the way you shop, changing the way you cook, or even changing the way you unwind at the end of a stressful day or socialise.
Caloric deficit: The core principle of any effective weight loss diet plan is to create a caloric deficit. Physiologically, it is not possible to lose weight if you are eating more calories than you are spending, no matter what someone claims.
Fortunately, there are quite a few options in diets available to choose from. Again, it comes down to what you could actually do in real life and stay on as a long-term lifestyle change.
Few popular ones are: Healthy flexible eating (and the one I like best), Mediterranean, plant -based, paleo, keto. Each one has its own strengths and downsides, but eventually it comes down to personal preference and ability to stick with it long-term.
Ideally, your plate should look something like this: Half of it should be vegetables, a quarter of it protein, and the rest could be a mix of fat and carbohydrates.
Logging food: As humans, we are inherently terrible at guessing. So the key to long-term success is logging everything you eat every time, no matter what. It’s hard to change what we can’t see. In addition, logging inherently brings an additional layer of mindfulness to what we eat by having to pay attention to portion size and the content of our meals. Few popular apps are – Myfitnesspal, Lose it, SparkPeople, and Chronometer.
Preparing meals at home: It’s easy to drive through a fast food restaurant or even order a home delivery at the end of a stressful day. Restaurant foods are notorious for sneaking in extra fat, salt, sugar, and refined carbs to make food tastier. So if you’re making a serious effort to lose those extra pounds and be generally healthier, it would be a better choice to cook at home more often and order out less.
Prioritizing protein and fiber:
Protein releases chemical signals to the brain to indicate satiety. Fiber achieves the same goal by mechanically creating a feeling of fullness with less calorie-dense foods. Both protein and fiber work together to create the feeling of fullness without ingesting too many calories.
When you work with us, we help you each step of the way to help you make these choices by not only educating you about it, but by real-life troubleshooting to help you accomplish your goals. We at AllWell Clinic are committed to your weight loss success with evidence-based recommendations and an Obesity Medicine board-certified physician’s advice.