November 7, 2012
To Your Health
May, 2008 (Vol. 02, Issue 05)
Lose It the Safe Way
By Dr. Donald L. Hayes
Undergoing surgery to alter the way you digest your food in the hopes you’ll lose weight – not a decision to take lightly. The most common surgeries today for obesity are gastric bypass and a procedure known as adjustable gastric banding. But gastric bypass and banding procedures have many associated risks and long-term consequences. These procedures tend to work best if the patient also agrees to lifelong behavioral and dietary changes, including lifelong vitamin supplementation.
You might be thinking, “If I’m going to commit to lifelong dietary changes and vitamin therapy anyway, why should I add the pain, expense and risk of either having my stomach surgically divided into two parts using a stapler or an operation whereby a restrictive band goes around the top of my stomach?”
Good point.
Most “Diets” Don’t Work
A panel of weight-loss experts from the National Institutes of Health Nutrition Committee agreed that most diets don’t work, suggesting only 3 percent of those who lose weight on a diet keep it off for five years. They went on to say that the yo-yo pattern of going on a diet – losing some weight and then adding it back on – may be more harmful to a person’s health than losing weight in the first place. People who fail on diets tend to blame themselves for lack of willpower, when the problem clearly is insufficient scientific information to help them make better and more successful eating and lifestyle choices.
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