What is Weight Loss?
Weight loss is the burning of excess calories from your body. It also ensures that the intake of calories is less than the number of calories burnt. Weight loss becomes highly necessary when your excessive weight causes hindrances to healthy living. Non-surgical methods of weight loss are the first line of treatment recommended for maintaining a healthy weight.
Obesity
When weight loss methods are not undertaken, obesity and overweight can lead to major health risks such as heart diseases, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer, and orthopedic and reproductive problems.
Treatment Options
Some of the non-surgical methods of weight loss include
- Lifestyle changes: Making changes in your lifestyle to involve a healthy diet and physical activity and maintaining a balance between your calorie intake and output.
- Healthy eating habits: Eating healthy foods such as fat-free or low-fat foods, lean meat, fish, nuts, whole grains, vegetables, and fresh fruits. Foods rich in saturated and trans fats, such as sausages, processed meat, added sugars, baked food, and fried food should be avoided. Cutting back on the quantity of food intake helps limit calorie intake.
Physical activity: Exercising and keeping yourself physically active will help you maintain a very healthy life. Physical activity also reduces the risk of heart diseases, diabetes and cancers, helps to strengthen your muscles, bone, and joints and improves the working of your heart and lungs. Being physically fit also relaxes the brain and reduces your stress levels.
Weight loss medications: Another option to lose weight non-surgically is through weight loss medicines. These medications are designed to aid weight loss by increasing insulin secretion, inhibiting glucagon release, slowing gastric emptying, and reducing appetite.. They can provide additional support for those struggling to lose weight through traditional methods alone. The various options offered are:
What are Weight Loss Injections?
Weight loss injections are injectable medications that can help you lose weight when taken in combination with an exercise and diet plan. These injections typically contain substances that can boost metabolism, suppress appetite, or enhance fat burning, thereby promoting weight loss.
How are Weight Loss Injections Administered?
Weight loss injections are typically administered via intramuscular (IM) or subcutaneous (under the skin) injection. The specific administration method can vary depending on the type of injection and your healthcare provider's recommendations.
Weight Loss Tips
Losing weight not only improves your appearance and boosts your confidence level, it can and also keep various chronic diseases at bay. Weight loss is a long-term commitment and cannot be achieved without discipline and persistence. Here are a few suggestions to help you lose those extra pounds and maintain those changes as a way of life.
Counting calories: Calories are units of energy present in food, which your body burns to perform activities. Some foods have more calories than others. Based on the activities that you perform, you may not require all those extra calories. To lose weight you must consume fewer calories than your body uses. This can be done by choosing the right foods, limiting the amount that you eat and increasing your activity level.
Drink plenty of water: You are advised to drink at least 8 glasses of water every day. Thirst can often be confused with hunger. Drinking a glass of water before a meal can also prevent you from overeating. Consuming more water has also been shown to increase metabolic rate and help you burn calories.
Avoid skipping meals: You may be tempted to skip meals to reduce your calorie intake, but this is a bad idea. Skipping meals usually makes you more hungry and increases your tendency to binge later in the day to make up for it. Besides this, certain studies reveal that skipping meals may increase abdominal fat and the risk of developing diabetes.
Those following a busy schedule most often skip breakfast, but this is the most important meal of the day. Studies have found that those eating a healthy breakfast get more nutrients and vitamins, tend to weigh less and are less likely to have cravings and eat healthier.
Your meals should be healthy and include a balanced diet of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean meat.
Finding the right exercise routine: To stay healthy, you are recommended to do 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week and to lose weight, you would require more. If you have never exercised before, it is better to start slow and gradually increase the length and intensity of your workouts. You could divide it into 2-3 short sessions spread out over the day. Increase your activity until you are working out at least 3 days a week. Your routine should include fat burning and muscle strengthening exercises such as walking, cycling, weight training, and aerobics to improve cardiovascular fitness. Try to vary your routine to keep it interesting and stay motivated to keep you on the right path.
Staying active: If following a strict exercise program is difficult or boring for you, an easy alternative is to increase your activity in other ways such as doing more chores, using the stairs more often, walking when you can, or taking up a hobby that involves movement or playing a sport. All these activities add up to improving your fitness levels and overall health.
Weight Loss Counseling:
What is Weight Loss Counseling?
Weight loss counseling is a form of talk therapy where an individual affected with obesity or weight gain meets with a dietitian or a weight loss therapist to talk about issues and problems that they are facing in relation to weight loss. Weight loss counseling can provide individuals with the opportunity to share their views, be heard, and gain new perspectives on their situations and experiences. Counseling can assist individuals in gaining clarity surrounding weight loss issues. Together with their counselor, individuals identify and work towards achieving the desired outcomes and goals for counseling. Weight loss counseling helps you to make positive changes to your eating habits and behaviors, assists you with developing considerable emotional capacity, and is a space where you can build confidence and self-esteem as you develop a healthy relationship with food and your body.
Who is a Suitable Candidate for Weight Loss Counseling?
Anyone who is overweight/obese and has a high body mass index is a suitable candidate for weight loss counseling treatment. In some instances, diabetics or people with high blood pressure may also be suitable for this treatment.
How Does Counseling Help You Lose Weight?
Weight loss counseling is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is a method of psychotherapy employed to treat a host of issues. CBT helps individuals increase awareness of and challenge the negative thoughts (or cognitions) that often drive “unhealthy” behaviors. CBT can also assist individuals in getting to the fundamentals of the problem, as the relationship with food is often just the symptom of a deeper issue.
Of late, the medical and scientific communities have begun to credit weight loss counseling for weight loss benefits. Many studies have detailed the effectiveness of weight loss counseling as a supplement to a standard diet and exercise program. The studies have manifested that individuals utilizing weight loss counseling in addition to exercise and diet exhibited more substantial and long-lasting changes to their overall body composition than those that utilized just exercise and diet, or just weight loss counseling.
What are the Methods Involved in Weight Loss Counseling Treatment?
During your initial meeting with a weight loss therapist or dietitian, they will likely perform an assessment. An assessment is usually comprised of questions on your physical and mental health history, lifestyle choices, and relationship to food. Your physical measurements such as height, waist circumference, and weight will be considered. Once this is completed, the dietitian will ask questions about your lifestyle to assess your activity level. Depending on your activity level, your therapist will plan a diet regimen. The diet plan will include a list of recommended foods. You will also be informed about the meal timings and what to include in each of the meals.
Long-term objectives or goals for weight loss and exercise/food will also be established in the initial session. During subsequent meetings, the long-term objectives will be broken down into smaller steps to form a kind of action plan as to how the objectives will be accomplished. Through a series of lifestyle changes including meal planning (which is specifically tailored to the individuals and their specific goals), and following an exercise program, weight loss can be accomplished.
In addition to lifestyle changes, working with a weight loss therapist can help increase one’s understanding of their relationship to food and find out any underlying problems that may be contributing to overeating, weight gain, negative body image, etc. Although all weight loss therapists follow their own approach as part of weight loss counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy for weight loss usually involves one or many of the following strategies or approaches:
- Goal setting
- Self-monitoring
- Feedback and reinforcement
- Increasing personal motivation and belief in self
- Incentives
Upon accomplishing weight loss/body composition objectives, your weight loss therapist may continue to guide you on healthy lifestyle choices, and tools and skills to help with maintenance.
Benefits of Weight Loss Counseling
Some of the benefits of weight loss counseling include:
- Helps you identify and build strong, positive motivation
- Helps you put knowledge of weight management into practice
- Helps you find the blocks and obstacles you face
- Helps you recognize emotions that can set off overeating or emotional eating and manage them in healthy ways
- Helps you adopt positive eating habits
- Helps you find the pitfalls in thinking that can wreck your plan
- Helps to improve your self-image and body image
- Helps you negotiate other issues that may divert you from setting a weight-management plan into action
