According to the U.S. Department of Health, nearly 1 in 3 Americans are considered to be overweight. Societal conditions make it hard to maintain good health while dealing with daily stresses, busy work schedules, and imbalanced sleep schedules.
With more focus being placed on fast foods and sedentary lifestyles, the weight loss problem continues to escalate.
Thankfully, there are new advances in handling weight loss that can help you to turn around your health and rethink how you lose weight.
Contrary to popular belief, there is more to weight loss than simple quick-fix diets. A real solution takes sustainable changes and long-term lifestyle adjustments.
This is why considering weight loss as a medical condition and getting professional assistance can help you to understand your body’s unique needs better and to design a custom health plan that treats you like an individual.
Before we get into the best ways to handle weight loss, let’s go over the causes and common symptoms of being overweight.
Risk Factors and Common Causes
Being overweight happens due to a combination of many different factors. Some people are more genetically predisposed to becoming overweight, while others may not have been taught a proper lifestyle that supports good health. Some of the most common risk factors and causes of obesity include:
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Genetics
Your genes can cause your body to either store more fat or burn it. Some people are born with slower metabolisms that store fat much more readily than others. These genetic patterns determine how efficiently your body uses food for energy.
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Medications
Certain medications can slow your metabolism and make you a lot more susceptible to weight gain. These medications require extra precaution through a steady diet routine and exercise plan to make up for the side effects of these medications.
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Lack of Sleep
Not getting enough sleep can lead to changes in hormonal activity. These changes can cause appetite increases and cravings for high-carb and fat foods.
Other risk factors include smoking, age, and inactivity. These risk factors do not determine whether or not you will be overweight, and they are just signs that can help you and your doctor determine a better health and fitness plan to reduce your risk and keep you at a healthy weight.
Health Risks
There is more at risk than simply cosmetic concerns when it comes to being overweight. When your BMI, or body mass index, exceeds the threshold for a healthy weight, many health risks become apparent.
These include:
- Diabetes
- Stroke
- Heart disease
- Arthritis
- Sexual health issues
Rethinking Weight Loss
As you can tell, being overweight is a very common problem that is triggered by many unhealthy habits and lifestyles that are popularized in modern culture. While being overweight is becoming more commonplace, this does not mean that you have to be just another statistic.
Treating weight loss effectively requires more than just a simple one-size-fits-all diet plan. If you are serious about losing weight, you may want to reconsider how you approach this problem.
You might be surprised to see the difference when you begin to treat your weight loss as an actual medical condition. You will better pinpoint the areas of your lifestyle that could use improving and also identify any underlying medical conditions and unique traits that may be putting a halt to your progress while practicing these popularized diet plans.
The Importance of a Customized Weight Loss Plan
When you come to our medical weight loss clinic, we will help you design the perfect plan of action based on your specific health criteria and medical conditions.
After a physical and medical examination, your weight loss doctor will be able to help you decide which foods work best with your body, what fitness plans could help you shed more weight, and will even help you understand why each step and action is being made in the process.
This is the problem of most popular diet plans – what works for one person may be useless to the next.
Not all diets are compatible with everyone. Your metabolism is unique and requires its own diet plan to maximize your health.
This is why treating your weight loss as a medical condition is so smart – it removes all of the guesswork and gossip from dieting and takes you directly to the right choice for your body.
So no matter what your risk factors are or how many different diets you have tried, working together with a professional can help you get a deeper understanding of how your body works and find the best ways to maximize your health and longevity. Once you are educated, you can make lifelong changes and always be confident that you are doing what is best for you.