As you get older, there are so many health advantages to achieving and maintaining your ideal body weight. You can avoid or control the effects of diabetes. Heart and lung health improve with less tissue to nourish and oxygenate, and even your joints perform better, free from the extra strain those excess pounds represent.

Though you may not have been aware, it took time and unconscious effort to gain extra weight, so it’s not a surprise that it takes time — and much conscious thought — to lose those pounds. It’s difficult to make changes to ingrained habits that result in effective and sustainable loss.

Winnie King, MD, and her team are experts in assisting you with medically supervised weight loss, an effective way to break the cycle of fad diets and the yo-yo effects that home efforts often create. Here are five ways a medically supervised program can help you.

Personal knowledge of you and your lifestyle

Basing your expectations around the headlines generated by a fad diet is a recipe for disaster. The truth is that no two people respond to a diet in the same way. The assurances that you’ll lose this much weight in that much time simply aren’t possible, coming from a source without any personal knowledge of your health and lifestyle.

If you’re already Dr. King’s patient, she has your history, likely with specifics such as blood chemistry and health conditions that can affect your weight-loss goals. New patients receive medical exams that create this history. You don’t get that from an internet diet plan.

Creating realistic goals

That personal knowledge helps Dr. King assist you with managing your expectations. A weight-loss plan isn’t effective if you’re not aiming for achievable milestones. Much of your progress is behavioral and mental. If you’re changing eating habits without demonstrable results, it’s harder to stay on track.

Maintaining motivation

Sometimes there are plateaus along the weight-loss trail. This is particularly true when activity and exercise start to generate new muscle tissue, which is denser than fat. Yes, you’ll likely gain weight at stages.

A medically supervised plan can help you understand what’s going on in your body during the weight-loss process, so your progress isn’t only established between you and your bathroom scale.

Access to weight-loss medications

There are drugs that can help control appetite and assist your weight-loss efforts in other ways. Many of these require prescriptions, and without close monitoring, they may do more harm than good. Having a medical team on hand as you work through these solutions keeps your condition on track. Our staff can catch and manage potential nutritional deficiencies. Medically supervised weight loss is simply safer than going it alone.

Medically supervised weight loss works

In a study of patients in medically assisted weight-loss plans involving more than 10,000 people over a five-year period showed significant sustained weight loss. The result? Medically assisted weight loss works, and that’s before the advantages gained from your personalized weight management plan.

Contact Dr. King and her team today by phone at either office to schedule your own weight-loss assessment and consultation.