O.N.E.Weigh Medical Weight Loss Programs

Louisiana’s O.N.E.Weigh System approach to weight loss and weight management includes medical monitoring, personalized and group counseling, behavior change and ongoing support. It is significantly different from programs advocated in self-help diet books and by commercial weight loss programs. Understanding the reasons behind the O.N.E.Weigh system will help you decide if our method is right for you. Once you decide to follow a O.N.E.Weigh weight loss path, understanding the science behind the program will make it easier for you to adopt our proven approach.

Medical Monitoring for Safe and Effective Weight Loss

There are two key reasons for medical monitoring during a weight loss program: to ensure your body is adjusting to the physiological changes that accompany weight loss and to adjust the doses of any medication you take to treat weight-related diseases.

Medical weight loss programs such as OPTIFAST^® help people to lose weight as quickly as is possible without damaging body tissues because they help you cut calories while still getting enough nutrients. Use of OPTIFAST enables you to cut calories to a lower level than can be safely achieved with a low-calorie foods diet. Quick weight loss, more than two pounds per week, puts a strain on your body’s metabolic and physiological processes. However, as long as your body is still receiving enough nutrients, it can usually handle this strain, and in many cases, it is offset by the improvements in metabolic and physiological functioning (like decreased blood pressure and blood sugar) that occur with weight loss.

Medical monitoring allows the bariatric physician to be sure that you are losing weight as quickly and safely as possible and, if necessary, to adjust how fast you are losing weight. Medical monitoring also allows the physician to quickly change the dose of medications for weight-related disease as your body weight drops. For example, many overweight people take medication to treat type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure, but as their weight drops and their metabolism normalizes, they may no longer need these medications or they may need a smaller dosage.  If they continue to take the same dose of these drugs they took when they were at their heaviest weight, they can suffer serious side effects.

What Will I Learn During the Personal and Group Counseling Sessions?

The goal of the O.N.E.Weigh personal and group counseling sessions is to help you create the type of lifestyle that promotes weight management and overall good health. The behavior change portion of the O.N.E. Weigh program includes three essential elements: Wellness Education, Nutrition Counseling, and Ongoing Support.

Education

Wellness education covers nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle behaviors and belief systems that can make or break your weight loss efforts. Every day, Americans are bombarded with health and weight management information, much of which is misleading. During individual and group counseling sessions, our team of health experts will set the record straight about nutrition, exercise, and other behaviors related to weight management. When you know the facts, weight management is less challenging.

Nutrition Counseling

Our experts will provide you with personalized nutrition counseling, during which they will develop a maintenance diet for you that meets your calorie, nutrient, and health needs while considering your food preferences, lifestyle, work schedule, and family obligations.

Ongoing Support

Weight loss research continues to demonstrate that people who receive support during the weight loss process and who are connected to a supportive weight maintenance program once they near their goal weight are more likely to achieve long-term weight management success than those who try to go it alone.

Support builds success because changing behavior is tough. Our habits, both good and bad, are the paths we are most familiar with and the ones we lapse back into when life’s stresses increase. Joining a support group is a proven way to maintain motivation for your lifestyle change goal-whether it is to lose weight or give up cigarettes.

To make sure that you stay on your new path, the O.N.E. Weigh team will help you identify and overcome your personal weight management challenges while you are losing weight as well as once you have reached your goal.

Positive Environment

Some medical weight management programs focus on the negative aspects of being overweight and express disappointment in you when you stray from the healthy path. These programs see these as the best ways to encourage you to lose weight and keep it off. At O.N.E.Weigh, we believe that intimidating you into weight loss will not work in the long-term. In fact, we believe that instilling food and exercise guilt can backfire and trigger emotional overeating.

The O.N.E.Weigh team of health experts including Dr. Ronald Leo and Dr. Mahes Rao, focuses on creating a positive environment in our clinic and encourages patients to create positive environments that foster change in their home and work places. A positive environment is the emotional fertilizer for growth and change.