Alternative Treatments for Obesity

Obesity refers to the accumulation of extra body fat than the normal body requirement. If your body mass index (BMI) is above 30, then you are considered as obese. The factors that influence obesity include age, body build, sex, and height.

Obesity can be treated without involving medication or surgery. Important lifestyle modifications such as doing regular exercises and eating a healthy diet can help for the prevention of obesity.

1. Nutritional Therapy for Obesity

Food consumption is closely associated with obesity. Generally, this type of therapy consists of eating differently as opposed to eating less. People undergoing nutritional therapies should enjoy and sustain their eating transition. The number of our daily consumed calories should be derived from carbohydrates. A quarter should come from fats and proteins and should supplement the rest of the calories. Carbohydrates and proteins contain 4 calories per gram while fat can provide up to 9 calories per gram. The recommended foods include:

• Whole grains - comprise of unrefined complex carbohydrates and have higher fiber content. Small portions of whole grains can fill the stomach fast and promote a slow digestion.  

• Eating raw or lightly cooked vegetables - is a good way to get more nutrition from fresh vegetables.

• Beans, fish, and dry peas- are proteins with little saturated fat content.

Nutritional therapy practitioners suggest on minimizing the consumption of animal-sourced foods to egg white and dairy products that are nonfat. Some practitioners are against animal products. Reducing one's sugar intake is also important.

Drinking enough purified water, doing regular exercises, and changing one's eating habits are included in the treatment program. Some useful nutritional supplements can be prescribed, i.e. chromium, zinc supplements, and vitamin B-complex.     

A food diary is also recommended for the treatment program. The information below will help your nutritional therapist to come up with a treatment program for you:

• The amount of your daily food consumption, including every snack?
• The time and the place you eat?
• Do you eat alone or with a company?
• Your stress levels and general mood while eating?
• Your bowel routine after eating?

2. Detoxification, Fasting, and Colon Therapy 

People who are obese usually have a toxin buildup in their bodies, especially in their fat cells. These toxins can be very destructive. They affect the entire body from the normal functioning of the bowel, blood, and cells. Detoxification not only helps in weight reduction but it also helps you mentally and emotionally.

Fasting helps initiate cleansing. When you fast, you restrict the calories that cause your body to hunt for stored fats. Toxins will be released into your bloodstream, which the body consumes and then releases in the form of urine and sweat. 

An obesity treatment program includes an exercise regimen and diet restrictions to cleanse your body from harmful toxins. Herbs like dandelion root and burdock can be used alongside with fasting and detoxification to help the liver get rid of the toxins. Green vegetables or carrot juices are good detoxifying agents. The extracts from green vegetables and carrot juice may be used through an equal dilution with water. These drinks can be taken one quart every day. However, before having any detox drinks, it is better to consult first with your health care practitioner to avoid possible contraindications.

Other detoxification methods will help in preventing obesity from reoccurring. Treatments might include colonic irrigation and fasting. 

3. Other Therapies for Obesity 

• Ayurvedic Medicine - this type of treatment involves the use of herbal therapy and certain dietary changes. A study revealed that using three ayurvedic herbal therapies show an impressive weight reduction in patients compared with placebo. 

• Creative Visualization and Guided Imagery – these methods enable people who are obese to visualize an attainable weight reduction as well as visualizing their ideal look.

• Herbal Medicine – some examples of herbal treatments include plantains, Garcinia, and dandelion root.

• Hypnotherapy – helps in identifying true hunger and dealing with eating norms combined with an exercise program as well as a dietary program as parts of its treatment.

• Traditional Chinese Medicine – Chinese herbal therapies, acupuncture, hydrotherapy, and acupressure are the methods used for weight reduction.

Obesity Risk Factors

If you eat more calories than your body burns, then you are likely to become obese. Genetics and hormonal changes due to age can be difficult to control. By changing the risk factors below, you will be in a better position to control obesity:

• stress management
• unhealthy lifestyle and diet
• medical condition
• certain medications
• no physical activity
• inadequate sleep

The Importance of Obesity Prevention

An overall well-being is what everyone aspires to achieve. When you prevent obesity, you will be free from the following health problems:

• type 2 diabetes
• high blood pressure
• stroke
• heart disease
• arthritis
• gallbladder inflammation
• irregular blood fats
• breast and colon cancer
• endometrial cancer
• cancer of the uterus, gallbladder, kidney, and esophagus

Obesity Prevention Strategies

Healthy eating alongside regular exercises is one of the best-known obesity prevention strategies.

Changes in family settings, early childcare, schools, workplaces, healthcare institutions, and overall community-wide alterations in activity environments and diet will make it easier for someone to decide on healthy choices such as:

• Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables.
• Consuming dairy products that are low-fat instead of full-fat.
• Eating whole grains and staying away from refined-grain, i.e., white bread.
• Eating beans, seeds, nuts, poultry, fish, and lean meat.
• Minimizing one's salt and saturated fat intake.

Perform simple workouts like brisk walking for 2 1/2 hours or 75 minutes of serious exercises, e.g., fast cycling or jogging. In addition, a strength training workout can be done twice a week.

Updating your food diary, having an adequate amount of sleep, and an effective stress management will assist you in controlling a healthy weight.

Holistic Techniques for Losing Weight

A holistic treatment looks for the main causes of the problem as opposed to just treating it. This method assists in achieving a long-term weight reduction. Where other methods fail, a holistic program will assist you in reducing weight by addressing the root causes and effects of weight gain or loss.     

Why Choose a Holistic Weight Loss Treatment?

Weight gain is not an ailment but can result in some health problems such as stroke, heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, and several types of cancer. Controlling your weight will give you a better life. Getting answers to the following questions will contribute positively to your workout program, which will pave the way for a long-term weight reduction:

• The reasons behind your overeating problems?
• What are the ways of healthier eating?
• The reasons why you don’t exercise enough?
• How to step up your game during a workout?
• What are the physical, social, and psychological reasons for your exercise routine and diet urges?

Once you get to accept and know the causes of your weight problem and other underlying causes, there is a big chance to achieve the goal of a successful weight reduction.

Holistic Weight Loss

Here is a list of methods for applying holistic techniques for your weight reduction program:

1. Positive Messages

The most difficult decision to make is turning food into your enemy. Environmental and childhood relationships give us problems to our food choices and use diet as a tool for self-control. Many times, these issues promote weight gain, making it very difficult to deal with. Parents that use food in instilling a particular discipline or as a way of control can cause the child to become obese when they grow up. Positive messages can help break this pattern by using phrases such as “I am in control of my eating habits." Positive messages like “I like being healthy” or “I am proud to have eaten responsibly this evening” will help strengthen your diet modification.   

2. Meditation

Meditation is an important technique that assists practitioners to understand the individual's thoughts and feelings to a great extent. Through meditation, people fighting obesity will become more aware of their emotions that were not noticeable before. Meditation will assist binge eaters to be mindful of how they manipulate their diet to overcome problematic emotions. It will also support them by acknowledging when they experience hunger or when they get full. These two work on addressing various root causes that result to overeating.

3. Self-monitoring

Update your food diary and engage in various self-monitoring methods to create awareness within yourself on your eating habits. Seeing what you consume will help stop you from going to the kitchen. When you reflect on your hunger drives, emotions, and weight loss results that are linked to your diet and workout, you will be in a better position to understand the unmanageable struggle. There is a different reinforcing association between self-monitoring with other techniques like meditation, positive messages, and Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).