How Habit Tracking Can Help You Win at Weight Loss

Dieting solo and without a structured plan can make you lose everything but the pounds. And there are any number of fad diets and “quick fixes” out there that promise results, but never quite seem to deliver.

At Primecare Family Practice in Arlington, Texas, board-certified family practitioners Maryline Ongangi, APRN, FNP-C, and Lewis Nyantika, APRN, FNP-C, understand the challenges behind the battle of the bulge, especially when you do it yourself. That’s why we offer a medical weight loss program for our patients that arms you with all the tools you need to achieve your weight loss goals.

Here, the team talks about the advantages of medical weight loss and how habit tracking can be a big part of the win.

Overweight and obesity by the numbers

According to the National Institutes of Health’s 2017–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 30.7% of American adults are overweight, 42.4% are obese, and 9.2% are severely obese. These numbers were determined using body mass index (BMI) as a means of calculating body fat.

Being overweight or obese puts you at increased risk of several serious conditions, including heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes, some forms of cancer, obstructive sleep apnea, and fatty liver disease. These are all preventable conditions if you maintain a healthy weight.

What is medical weight loss?

When you try to lose weight on your own, you may not have all the tools you need to achieve your weight loss goals. You also don’t have anyone to hold you accountable to those goals, and so it’s easier to just give up.

With a medical weight loss program, a team of medical professionals, usually including your doctor, nurses, a dietician/nutritionist, and a psychologist, help you through the weight loss process.

They start by taking a detailed medical history to understand how your body works, asking you about your weight history and any previous dieting attempts, discussing your relationship with food, and discuss your weight loss goals, ensuring that they’re reasonable for you. They also talk to you about an exercise plan, one that you’ll stick with through the process.

In addition, they may take a blood sample to test for any underlying conditions that may thwart your dieting attempt and to see if you’re deficient in any micronutrients.

Then, they draw up an individualized treatment plan that takes all of these into account. The dietician can help you with meal planning, and the doctor can tailor an exercise regimen to meet your needs.

They can also offer medication, if necessary, to help you lose weight. A hot topic right now is the GLP-1 medications, repurposed diabetes drugs that can suppress hunger and better metabolize the food you eat into energy, not fat.

As you go through the program, you have regular weigh-ins, which means we hold you accountable for your part of the work. We also act as a cheerleading squad, congratulating you on each step you successfully achieve.

What is habit tracking, and how can it help?

We may ask you to keep what is essentially a diary of everything you eat each day, what exercise you get and for how long, and if you fell off the wagon at any point. There’s no shame in that; everybody has their bad days.

By keeping track of every part of the weight loss process, you can see on the page or in an app exactly where things went right and where they went wrong. That allows you to adjust your habits early on, before a bad habit becomes entrenched. Think of it as another accountability tool.

If you’re looking to shed the pounds or want to learn more about our weight loss program, call Primecare Family Practice at 817-873-3710, or book online with us today.