Achieving – and maintaining – a healthy weight can be challenging at times, but it’s essential for avoiding health issues, feeling good about yourself, and giving you extra energy. At the Aesthetic Skin Clinic, we want people to feel more comfortable in their own skin so, by offering medical weight management, we hope to help those seeking to lose weight in a healthy way.

What is Holistic Weight Loss?

With the average person trying 126 fad diets in their lifetime, it’s clear that whilst these crash diets help you lose weight initially, they just don’t work in the long term. They are also extremely unhealthy. The best way to not only lose weight but to also keep it off is to consider your physical, emotional, and mental health. This means thinking about weight loss in a more holistic way. This is because losing weight requires a change of perspective and lifestyle.

There are many reasons people put on weight, from pregnancy and emotional eating, to bad habits and a lack of information on nutrition.

Whether or not you see yourself in any of these, the takeaway is that, if weight has a mental or emotional component, addressing just the physical side of things won’t help you to remain at a healthy weight after your loss – and can even hinder the loss itself. Think about it; it’s very unlikely that someone who is depressed or anxious suddenly becomes happy, positive and calm after losing a few pounds.

In short, you want to get to the point where eating healthily, exercising, meditating or doing yoga, drinking plenty of water, etc., becomes your lifestyle, not a short-term solution.

This is why a more holistic nature can help.

Examples of Holistic Weight Loss

If you’re looking to lose weight, you may want to focus on:

What and How Much You Eat (Nutrition)

This means drinking plenty of water, avoiding unhealthy things like refined sugars and processed foods, making sure not to overeat (for example, not eating after you feel full), and staying away from untrustworthy supplements and ‘diet pills’, which can do more harm than good.

Anything that promises quick results (like losing 3kg in a week) should be avoided. While it’s important to eat well, this isn’t to say you’re not entitled to a cheat day or to eat unhealthily every now and then – as with anything, moderation is key. The problem only arises when a poor nutrition and diet become habit.

Your Current Lifestyle and Environment

Things like drinking alcohol in excess, smoking and not sleeping well can be detrimental to your physical and mental health. Revise your current lifestyle and the environment you’re in and try to make small changes at a time. Drink only socially and not in excess, for example, or reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke a day. This will help you to make impactful changes, instead of opting for drastic, unsustainable lifestyle changes.

Your Mind and How You Feel

Your state of mind and your emotions are critical in weight management. Stress, anxiety and depression create a hormonal imbalance in the body and can lead to binge eating as well. Having emotional support in place and focusing on improving your mental health will go a long way in helping you to feel better about yourself. Also, it’s important to have goals, as people who do tend to stick to a weight loss programme better than people without clear objectives. Think about why you want to lose weight. For instance, is it to fit into an outfit you love, or do you want to be healthier?

Exercising

Exercising is essential to become healthier and also assists with weight loss. Regular exercise boosts the metabolism and helps people to become more energetic, which improves mood as well. From walking and yoga to swimming and cycling, there are plenty of exercises to choose from, so pick something you enjoy doing.

Medical Weight Management

While you are taking care of your emotional and mental needs, medically assisted programmes can play a very important role. These refer to weight loss support treatments from a qualified professional that work alongside a balanced diet, emotional support, and exercise.

For example, certain treatments consist in a series of injections that work in a similar way to hormones naturally produced in the body – this specific treatment can regulate the appetite by activating areas of the brain that control this appetite. While the injections aim to make you feel less hungry and fuller (as well as fuller for longer), you end up consuming less calories, which leads to weight loss.

These injections are also prescribed medication and clinically approved, and people with a BMI of 27 or above are suitable for the treatment. So, treatments such as medical weight management can be easily included in your holistic approach to weight loss.

Medical weight management, when incorporated into a holistic weight loss approach, can provide great results. Not only are you able to lose weight, but you can also keep it off. Don’t hesitate to get in touch today if you’d like to learn more about our medical weight management treatment and how it can help – our friendly team will be happy to chat!