Behavior Therapy for Obesity
If struggling with obesity, you know how difficult it is to lose weight. However, obesity is a severe medical condition that often requires medical help to succeed in weight loss and prevention.
Behavior therapy
Behavior therapy is based on the concept that people have learned unhealthy behaviors such as poor eating habits and inactivity that contribute to weight gain, and behavioral therapy focuses on changing those behaviors.
Behavior therapy usually has several components to help:
Improve the diet and increase the physical activity
• Set realistic goals
Monitor yourself with tools such as pedometers and food diaries
Identify the weight loss challenges
• Develop problem-solving techniques to overcome these challenges
• Control or eliminate the factors that cause unhealthy nutrition
Create strategies to maintain the weight over time
Types of behavioral therapy interventions
Behavioral therapy interventions come in many forms. They can be a group or individual meetings that are held one to four times a month. Interventions can also be done through operating systems such as smartphone apps, telephone counseling, or self-monitoring on the web. The number of sessions and the duration of the programs vary.
Evaluation of success in behavior therapy
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force cannot determine whether one form of behavioral therapy is better than others because of the wide range of interventions and whether all patients respond to treatment in the same way. The panel suggests that the most beneficial weight loss treatments include 14 sessions or more (group or individual) over six months.
The average weight loss in people who used behavioral therapy in studies evaluated by the U.S. Preventive Services Group was between 0.5 and 9 kg, while those who did not receive behavioral therapy lost between 1.6 and 5.4 kg. Participants in behavioral therapy were also less likely than others to develop diabetes and were less likely to lose their initial weight a year later.
Improve results with behavior therapy
Despite providing skillsets for obese people, more strategies have been developed to improve the lifestyle and habits of obese people, some of which are discussed below.
• Food preparation
Patients who received their food with the standard package lost more weight than those who received the standard package alone.
• Replacing meals
When patients replaced one or two meals with a liquid or solid meal replacement, they tended to lose more weight.
• Medication
Combines appetite suppressants or food absorbers by simultaneously modifying the external and internal environment.
Behavior therapy tricks in weight loss clinics
As physicians, we can improve outcomes by managing obese patients by setting some simple rules:
Encourage a positive attitude towards obese and overweight patients among yourself and the support staff at the clinic, including nutritionists and nurses.
Suppose obese patients know they are obese.
Assess the patient's interest and motivation to lose weight with non-judgmental questions such as "What do you think about your weight?"
Empathize with patients by saying that weight control is difficult and that they may fail even in the best programs.
• Listen carefully to the problem, regardless of weight.
• Establish friendly and stress-free clinics with a scale that can support all patients' weight, have a chair without armrest suitable for obese patients, and more significant blood pressure cuffs.
