Effective Treatment For Obesity

People around the world are trying to figure out what would be the most effective treatment for obesity, and many fail in their endeavors. Why is a healthy weight so difficult to maintain? Many people with obesity fail because they underestimate its severity. But there are other reasons why this happens.

Treating obesity is one of the most challenging problems in health care. Obesity can perhaps be defined as a chronic disease, which is why we need to treat it in the same way as diabetes and other chronic diseases. Treatment should be long-term.

Fighting obesity

Thanks to research on this topic, we now know that some people are genetically predisposed to obesity. Their metabolism is less effective at burning fat and regulating the feeling of satiety than others.

On the other hand, changing harmful habits refers to the struggle against important socio-cultural influences. We are bombarded daily with messages urging us to consume more and exercise less. It is therefore difficult not to absorb this information.

Professionals regularly advise people to control their diet and exercise more. In today’s world, we tend to see only ads that encourage us to eat more unhealthy food. We are also encouraged to adopt a slightly mobile lifestyle.

So there is a challenge for professionals to treat obesity. The first challenge is to be able to change such innate tendencies. Another challenge is to be able to make new habits persist in the long run. Patients face quite strong resistance to their new habits, leading to a likely return to their old habits and unhealthy lifestyle.

What is obesity?

The definition of obesity is excessive body fat. Here are the normal body fat levels in a healthy person (Moreno, Monereo, & Alvarez, 2000):

• Women: 20-25% body fat.
• Men: 15-18% body fat.

Anything above these percentages is defined as “overweight”. Likewise, anything above the following chapters is defined as “obesity”.

• Women: more than 32% body fat.
• Men: more than 25% body fat.

What treatment is effective for obesity?

Society or most obese people did not previously believe that obesity was a problem. In addition, obesity was exceptional when food was difficult to obtain. Obesity meant wealth and abundance; values ​​that were considered socially desirable.

However, obesity is currently one of the leading health problems in Western countries (WHO, 2010). In addition, experts also found that obese people are more likely to develop health problems. These findings turned obesity into a phenomenon that needs to be “resolved”.

After decades spent treating obesity, health professionals have created some grounds for intervention from a cognitive behavior perspective.

The primary psychological interventions for obesity are as follows (Foster, Makris, & Bailer, 2005):

• Promoting self-control by keeping a food diary and looking at physical activity.
• Control of stimuli by identifying signs associated with eating.
• Nutrition training.
• Changes in eating habits.
• Increased physical activity.
• Using cognitive restructuring methods and problem solving.

As you can see, intervention is not included in diseases and risks associated with obesity (such as depression). This only happens when these symptoms occur and healthcare professionals use methods that have been shown to be effective in relation to that particular disease.

Changing habits

From a cognitive behavior perspective, we believe that obesity can be blamed on bad habits. The key to treating obesity, then, is to retrain people to change these habits.

When it comes to exercise, there are some studies that argue in some way against an intuitive backlash. They say that increasing exercise is not the best idea, at least at first. That’s because it has a low overall impact on the number of calories burned. However, exercise is a really important way to maintain a healthy weight when your initial weight changes.

As you can see, any treatment for obesity involves changing a bad lifestyle. Changing these habits can be difficult, but there are many health professionals who can help you achieve your goals.