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In 1991, the National Institute of Health (NIH) reviewed 4,500 publications on weight loss and found that the maximum sustainable weight loss by any diet, exercise or behavioral modification program is 25 pounds.
Losing the weight is easy - keeping it off, however, is a whole other story. Today, many Americans view dieting as an extremely difficult and often-times frustrating way to achieve weight loss. The common perception of the traditional diet is that, in order to achieve successful weight loss, a person must count calories, limit food intake, limit food selection, and keep track of everything they digest.
Most diets advise overweight and obese individuals to follow their directives on exactly what and how much food to eat, regardless of personal preferences and individual relationships with satiety and hunger. While several diets provide initial weight loss, the effect is predominately short-lived and many times involves unnatural and unrealistic lifestyle changes that make life far more difficult and far less enjoyable.
Fifty years of research shows that dieting fails at providing significant long-term weight loss. Eventually, most people become weary of the complexity, ongoing hunger, inflexibility, and the feelings of deprivation. Many times dieters stop one diet program and move onto the next - gaining weight in the process. It's a cycle that many of our LAP-BAND patients have been through one too many times.
Researchers at the University of California examined 31 significant weight loss studies and found dieters generally lose only 5 to 10 percent of their excess weight and fail to keep it off for longer than six months. The study concludes that many people actually gain weight following periods of dieting.
The problem is not personal weakness or lack of will power - it's the diets themselves. When an individual goes on a restrictive low-calorie diet, the body can slip into a "starvation mode" that slows down metabolism and forces the body to become more efficient at storing fat. When the diet is stopped, the slowed metabolic rate makes it harder for a person to keep the weight off for good. Low-calorie diets also cause muscle and fat loss in equal amounts; once the diet is stopped, the majority of weight gain is more fat then muscle - causing metabolism to slow down even more.
| If you or someone you know is suffering from one of the obesity-related conditions above, the LAP-BAND System procedure may be able to help. To see if the Lap Band is right for you, give us a call at 1-800-324-2694, or attend a free local seminar. |
Diets require dismissing hunger in order to achieve successful weight loss. Food cravings develop if individual levels of satiety and satiation are not met. Since diets restrict food intake, they increase this innate need to consume food. While drugs are still used to treat obesity-related chemical imbalances in the brain, significant weight loss is rare. Many medications for weight-reduction have unpleasant - even serious - side effects.
Neither dieting nor weight loss medications offer the proven, long-term results of weight loss surgery.
 
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