Alternatives to Surgery: Medical Weight Loss

If you can lose weight AND SUSTAIN your weight loss without surgery please do not have weight loss surgery. Weight loss surgery is not for everyone. But you are probably considering weight loss surgery because you have been on many diets that have ultimately failed.

Why diets do not work. Severely overweight people are some of the most successful dieters around. Many have had success in losing many dozens of pounds only to realize that the weight loss is impossible to sustain. Taking dietary histories on our patients reveals that most have been on 5, 10 or more successful diets. That success unfortunately is temporary. Why is this? It is because the body naturally resists starvation. This mechanism sustained humans when food was scarce and it was not known when the next meal was coming. In modern day America, food is easy to attain and always plentiful, so this body mechanism in those who are susceptible becomes pathologic, leading to morbid obesity.

When you restrict your calories, your body decreases your metabolism by nearly 30%. Dieters can sustain this for a period of time, but weight loss is limited due to this “starvation metabolic response”. The dieter finally gives up and returns to their usual eating habits and not only regains the weight lost during the diet, but gains additional weight contributing to the weight gain cycle that leads to obesity. This is often referred to as “YO-YO” dieting. Morbidly obese patients often tell us that they have stopped dieting, because it was making their obesity worse, and it was.


Obesity is a lifelong problem. The fact is that obesity is a lifelong disease, and any attempt to treat morbid obesity should be a lifelong solution. The world’s medical literature shows and we believe the only sustainable way to achieve weight loss in a morbidly obese patient is by providing the patient an effective tool, weight loss surgery, to make that lifelong difference. Surgery is the only way to obtain consistent, permanent weight loss for morbidly obese patients.

Medical weight loss. The best and most recent medical scientific evidence for how best to achieve medical weight loss (without weight loss surgery) is summarized in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in the United States. After this very careful study by worldwide experts, they advised that weight loss and maintenance therapy should use a combination of low-calorie diets, increased physical activity, and behavioral therapy.

Medical Weight Loss Therapy in the Morbidly Obese.

These scientifically sound and practical strategies form the foundation for lifestyle management across all body mass index (BMI) ranges, including individuals with body mass indexes over 35. However, because most of the clinical trials reviewed in this summary present outcome data for individuals within a BMI range of 30–40, these results cannot necessarily be assumed they apply to individuals with extreme obesity. The truth is that there are NO published studies demonstrating significant SUSTAINED weight loss in the MORBIDLY OBESE. But, insurance companies often require a trial of formal medical weight loss therapy despite the lack of evidence that it works in the long term. We think it helps them assure that the patient can follow the necessary diet and lifestyle changes after weight loss surgery.