Every new year, many people make resolutions to lose weight or eat better, but every year many find themselves struggling. During a recent episode of "Conversations Live," WPSU spoke with two experts to get ideas about staying on track.
Bill Wagner, a doctor of family medicine at Mount Nittany Health, said when it comes to weight or healthy eating, it’s important to look at lifestyle changes, not short-term fad diets.
“A key thing being to find something that you can do that's sustainable, and something that you incorporate into your daily life over the course of the rest of your life," he said.
Wagner said that could include getting help from a website like eatingwell.com or working with your primary care doctor.
Taraneh Soleymani, director of Obesity Medicine at Penn State Health, said doctors' understanding of how to treat obesity has changed greatly in the past 10 years.
“Now we see reducing weight and keeping the weight down really requires engaging an individual from a lifestyle standpoint long term, as Dr. Wagner mentions giving them small sustainable goals that they can do long term related to their diet and their physical activity and their behavioral changes,” Soleymani said.
But, she says, the physiology of the disease has to be treated as well. That is where effective medications that are now available can help.
Soleymani said lifestyle changes can mean weight loss of 5-10%. But sometimes that’s not enough.
“When the patient does lose that 5-10% weight loss, the body’s physiology, as part of this disease, will try to push back, to get the weight back up to right where the patient had started," she said. "I think this too really highlights the importance of why medication has to be a part of obesity treatment if we are serious about treating this disease completely.”
Soleymani said the first step is to talk with your health care provider about what’s appropriate for you.
To learn about weight loss medication and health, watch or listen to the full episode of "Conversations Live: Ozempic, Weight Loss and Health."
