Many people have problems with their weight and body shape. These are very common problems and can result in a lifelong battle. Furthermore, being overweight inevitably leads to poor physical health and sometimes, low self-esteem with unhappiness also result.

Conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol frequently develop and can lead on to more serious illnesses such as heart disease and strokes. Depression and personal or relationship difficulties can also arise from the psychological toll of excessive weight and such problems can sometimes conversely fuel a ‘comforting’ vicious circle of excessive eating.

In our experience, there have been no very satisfactory solutions offered to people with weight problems. With general dietary advice and by the usual methods of dieting, we can all lose a few pounds. However, such weight loss is often a slow and difficult struggle and the slow speed of any such weight loss can be very de-motivating. Few of us have the will power and stamina to follow such a dietary regime for as long as necessary to achieve a truly healthy weight with worthwhile results and significant health benefits.

As trying to lose weight is generally a difficult struggle, no matter whose ‘diet’ we try and follow, sometimes we try and take things to more of an extreme. We may reduce our food and calorie intake further, but the more we do this, the more that this then forces our body to behave in a similar way to the way it would naturally behave during starvation.

Starvation is a survival mechanism and the body adapts to starvation by reducing the rate of its resting metabolism which is exactly the opposite of what we want to happen when we are trying to lose weight.

This means that weight loss starts to progressively become more difficult as we reduce our food intake further and for a longer period of time. Also, during starvation, the body starts to rapidly break down its own muscle tissue as a further survival mechanism to try and obtain sufficient protein which it needs for many essential functions. This may result in a weight loss on the scales, but a weight loss of muscle tissue rather than fat tissue.

When we allow the body to break down its muscle tissue in this way, the body gets into a progressively more unhealthy state, almost as occurs during an illness. The loss of muscle tissue causes us to become weak, to look gaunt and it causes the body’s metabolism to fall even lower. Weight loss often slows down and becomes more and more of an effort to try and achieve. Blood sugar levels fall too low and this results in severe hunger, cravings, particularly for sugary foods, and profound lack of energy. The low blood sugar levels during strict dieting can also result in light-headedness, dizziness, difficulties with work and concentration, feeling shaky or anxious and being unable to function properly.

As a result of all these difficulties, we usually break our diet, either when we lose willpower with the speed of any weight loss if it is frustratingly slow, or when we find the unpleasantness of any attempt to lose weight more effectively too difficult to tolerate.

If we have lost a significant amount of muscle tissue during our attempted weight loss, then as soon as we begin to eat normally again the body will rebuild all the muscle tissue lost at the earliest opportunity and this will manifest as a rapid weight re-gain. Furthermore, if the body’s metabolic rate has become significantly suppressed during the dieting, we will also regain body fat, resulting in further weight re-gain, even if our food intake after the dieting is not excessive.

To many people, this constant struggle and so called ‘yo-yo’ type pattern of dieting and fluctuating weight is all too familiar. We seem never to be able to achieve our ultimate goal of having a slim, well-contoured body and being stable at a healthy weight long-term. We often become resigned to a vicious circle of ‘yo-yo’ dieting and progressive weight re-gain.

There are other important problems associated with weight loss that must be also considered. The cosmetic consequences of weight loss are often entirely overlooked. No one bothers to consider what our appearance and body shape will be like when we have lost a significant amount of weight.
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In fact, thick fat stores under the skin are frequently very resistant to being broken down by dieting due to their fibrous and calcified nature and poor blood supply; therefore, even when we have lost weight, the body’s shape and contours are usually far from satisfactory and clothes may still not fit properly.

Some fat stores under the skin in various body areas will have been resistant to the dieting and will remain. These will distort our body shape and may convince us that we need to try to lose even more weight, to the detriment of our face and our slimmer body areas, to try and reduce them or else resort to surgery to have them removed.

Previously stretched skin will often become slack, baggy and unsightly when a significant amount of weight has been lost. Once it has been stretched by weight gain, skin is not so elastic that it will automatically spring back into place and unfortunately exercise does not help this as there are no muscles in skin that we can exercise.
If we are successful with significant weight loss, we may physically look and as a result feel psychologically worse than when we were overweight. It is therefore hard to have motivation to maintain our weight loss if we actually think that we looked better before the weight was lost.

Very drastic and expensive surgery is often promoted as a solution to these problems and many people feel that they have no choice but to resort to these treatments.

Liposuction, abdominal wall re-shaping (abdominoplasty), gastric banding, ballooning, stapling and gastric by-pass surgery have all become commonplace and have recently become widely promoted, but such surgical procedures involve serious risks to the patient. They are also very costly, unpleasant, invasive and not always effective with many patients regaining weight after such procedures.

In fact, gastric banding, ballooning and gastric by-pass surgery can cause unpleasant symptoms for the patient, such as bloating, nausea, bowel upset and abdominal cramps or abdominal pain, especially after eating.

Furthermore, they often force a state of inadequate nutrition and semi-starvation on the patient, which as we have discussed already is not at all desirable and which has unwanted consequences resulting in both muscle loss and suppression of the body’s metabolic rate.