“I spent thousands and thousands of dollars on almost every diet known to mankind. I would always lose some of the weight, but then the pounds would come back and bring friends with them.”
Lois Goodstein, R.N. - Lost 57 pounds in 5 months
Behavioral factors, such as eating too many calories while not getting enough exercise, play major roles in promoting obesity. Genetic factors also influence how the body burns calories for energy or stores fat. Depending on your specific needs, programs and services such as Smarter Weigh, other community health and wellness programs, and individual nutrition counseling, will provide you with tools to help you shed pounds, including diet and exercise counseling, weekly educational lectures and exercise classes. Other non-surgical treatments for obesity include prescription weight loss medications hypnosis, counseling, psychotherapy and nutritional supplements. Several reports, however, have suggested a high incidence of failure for severely obese patients to sustain long-term weight loss with any form of non-surgical treatment.
For individuals who remain severely obese despite improvements in diet and exercise behavior, or for patients with obesity-related diseases, such as severe sleep apnea or obesity-related heart disease or diabetes, bariatric surgery may be the best next step.
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