How Your Doctor Can Help With Weight Loss

If you’ve tried and failed to lose weight in the past, and are sure you aren’t accidentally doing anything to self-sabotage your efforts, then this can be very frustrating. If you can’t see any reason why you aren’t managing to lose weight, then your doctor may be able to help you. Make an appointment in order to get some answers and support.

Your Doctor can:

  • Assess your overall health

  • Identify the cause of weight gain

  • Work out if any health issues are causing weight gain

  • Discuss a plan to help you lose weight

Assessing Your Weight

First, your doctor will assess whether your current weight is healthy or not. They will measure your weight and height, and use this in order to calculate your BMI, or body mass index. 

They may also measure your waist. By measuring your waist, they can check to see if you are carrying too much fat around your stomach. If you are, this can raise your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke.

Even if your BMI is healthy, you can still have excess fat around your stomach, putting you at risk of these diseases. 

Your GP can then take your blood pressure and carry out other tests, such as blood tests, in order to check for other health conditions connected to your weight. 

Diet And Exercise

If you are overweight, then you can make changes to your diet and levels of physical activity as your first steps to get you on your way. Your doctor can assess your current activity levels and set some personal goals for this and your diet. 

They may ask you to keep a food diary, where you write down everything that you eat, for a week or more. This can then be used to help you and your doctor to identify any habits, like adding sugar to tea, that might be sabotaging your goals. 

Your physical activity levels can be measured in the same way. They may suggest that you wear a pedometer for a week. This will measure the number of steps that you take and will give your doctor an idea of how active you are on a day to day level. 

Set Personal Goals

Once your doctor has a clearer picture of your diet and physical activity, they will be able to help you find some simple lifestyle changes that you can make. 

Together, you will be able to create a plan that will allow you to lose weight in a healthy way that will be sustainable. This plan should be tailored to you and your lifestyle. 

You should then be offered follow-up appointments, usually every two weeks to a month, in order to properly monitor your progress. 

Other Weight Loss Services

Your doctors may also refer you to other services, such as weight loss groups, therapy, or weight loss surgery.  These scenarios may be as a result of something serious like a thyroid problem or other alignments that make it difficult for you to lose weight.

If it would help, they may even refer you for exercise classes which will be under the supervision of a qualified trainer.

Nadia MurdockSponsored, weight loss goals, weight lossComment