Weight Loss In a Safe, Effective Way

By Alan S. Weiss, MD

Annapolis Integrative Medicine

. http://www.annapolisintegrativemedicine.com/

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Weight Loss In a Safe, Effective Way

Being overweight is perhaps the most common health concern that people bring to their physician and its effect on health is clear. What is overlooked is how this contributes to disease.

Abdominal (belly) fat creates insulin resistance and inflammation, which contribute to the development of heart disease, diabetes, chronic pain, and cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, Abdominal fat increases the risk of the following types of cancer esophagus, pancreas, colon and rectum, breast (after menopause), endometrial, kidney, thyroid, and gallbladder.

Essentially, being overweight or obese is a disorder of fat and energy storage, where rather than being utilized and burned by tissue as energy, we store the energy away in fat cells.

Obesity is defined as a body mass index of greater than 30, while greater than 25 is overweight. BMI is calculated by dividing a person's weight (in kilograms) by their height (in meters) squared.Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey show that 68 percent of U.S. adults age 20 years and older are overweight or obese.

For each person there is a safe way to lose weight permanently.

There are a few issues that must be addressed

1. Underlying medical issues may make it difficult to lose weight. Examples include sleep apnea, hypothyroidism, anemia, and nutritional deficiencies. Without a thorough evaluation to unconceal these issues, attempts to lose weight are almost guaranteed to fail.

2. Are you exercising? Muscle burns more calories than fat. For every extra pound of muscle, your body uses 50 extra calories a day. If you have lost muscle mass from not exercising or from medical reasons it may take very few calories to maintain your body weight.

3. What are you eating? Paying attention to the glycemic index of foods and increasing the amounts of vegetables and fruit can make an enormous difference for people. Alcoholic drinks add empty calories and slow the rate at which our bodies burn fat.

4. Certain medications including anti-depressants and beta blockers can produce weight gain and fatigue

5. It is critical to examine our relationship to food. People eat to make themselves happy, to get relief, to reward themselves, to distract themselves etc.

You can utilize a number of modalities to assist in losing weight, including detoxification, addressing insulin resistance, and reducing inflammation.

A protocol employing a hormone called HCG may be effective in weight loss where nothing else has worked.

When a person succeeds at weight loss it can be truly life-changing.