Losing weight is easy…but keeping weight off has proven to be almost impossible….or is it? And who is to blame?
An article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has the proof that only 20% of those individuals who were obese and lost 10% of their body mass were successful in maintaining the loss for one year.
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/82/1/222S/4863393
The National Weight Control Registry provides information about the strategies used by successful weight loss maintainers to achieve and maintain long-term weight loss.
To maintain their weight loss, members report engaging in high levels of physical activity, eating a low-calorie, low-fat diet, eating breakfast regularly, self-monitoring weight, and maintaining a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends.
Lets compare this to a traditional weight loss program like “Jenny Craig” or “Nutrisystem” both of which are monthly prepay food delivery programs. There are also “Quick Weight Loss Centers” here in South Florida which primarily teach about food and calories but whose program requires “Quick Weight Loss brand of monthly pre paid bottles of various supplements, Essential Fatty Acids, appetite suppressants, drink mixes, soup packets etc..
There are also Physicians Weight Loss programs which use either HCG drops and injections Vitamin 8-12 or prescription doses of “Phetermine” or “Saxenda” along with low calorie diet planning.
My observations are that none of these programs really get to the root cause of the problem that being the nutritional and health education necessary to maintain and sustain activity, good health and a healthy weight. These programs only offer weight loss services without taking into account what happens when they leave the program and the challenges a person must confront to keep the weight off.
Clients who go to these weight loss centers are doomed to fail once they leave since their business model has very little emphasis on why and what you need to do to correct the cause of the obesity. In fact since their business models want you to look to them for food or drugs or pills or supplements there is very little incentive to teach you what it takes to maintain the weight loss.
It is a business model we all know to well. For example lets look at the pharmaceutical industry. When they develop medicines they do not look for cures. They look for drugs that treat the symptoms without affecting a cure. To develop a cure for a problem would be a poor business model for them. They would rather you have to buy the drug every day than to sell you something only one time.
It seems to me that obesity/weight loss is being treated like a symptom hence the programs offered only treat the symptom/fat gain vs fat loss without ever addressing the cause. This leads to the YO-YO dieting we all have become to expect following weight loss.
Something to think about the next time you go to one of these weight loss centers..they might not have your best interest at heart……
Dr Tred Rissacher owner, doctor and client at the Slim Body Laser Spa…where you can lose 3-9 inches of stubborn fat on only 9 sessions in 3 weeks
