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Food is an essential source of nutrients that provides our bodies with the chemicals we need for growth, cell development, metabolism, and overall function. What we eat is also very important, as the wrong foods can lead to obesity, which affects your health and increases the risk of conditions like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.
If you live in the Henderson, Nevada, area and you’re struggling to lose weight, Dr. Evan Allen and his experienced medical team at Allen Wellness & Medical Center can get you the help you need.
Nutrition counseling can help you find the right diet to get healthy and shed the pounds you need to stay that way. If you’re obese, losing as little as ten pounds can benefit your health. Let’s examine what nutrition counseling can do for you by looking at weight-related conditions, the benefits of weight loss, and how nutrition counseling can help.
Conditions caused by weight problems
Several factors affect your weight, such as family history and hormones, but the most common denominator is a combination of lifestyle choices and dietary habits.
If you’re not very active and you maintain an unhealthy diet, you increase your risk of complications that can be fatal. These include type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, certain cancers, digestive issues, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, and severe COVID-19 symptoms.
Being overweight can affect your mental health, leading to problems with depression, shame, guilt, and social isolation.
Benefits of weight loss
Weight loss is a gradual and steady process, and often doctors recommend initially trying to lose as little as 5-10% of your body weight. Studies show that it reduces your amount of leptin, triglycerides, abdominal fat, and blood sugar.
Losing a small amount can help to ease the stress on your joints, lower bad cholesterol, reduce blood pressure, lower insulin resistance (which reduces the complications of diabetes), increase the quality of sleep, and improve your mood. Once you see the benefits of what losing a small amount of weight can do, it can bolster your efforts to lose more and get healthier.
How nutrition counseling helps
Despite getting bombarded with information on the latest diets and healthiest foods, we don’t always know which eating choices are best for us in the long run. Nutrition counseling provides individualized guidance to find a diet to help you prevent diseases and conditions from damaging your health.
Weight loss is a long-term goal. Fad diets and bad lifestyle choices won’t get you where you need to go. By examining your medical history, reviewing nutrition tips, and creating a long-term game plan, we help you lose weight, improving your health.
Combining increased physical activity and nutrition counseling can make all the difference, and we can help. If you’re ready to start the journey, make an appointment with Dr. Allen and Allen Wellness & Medical Center today to see the difference weight loss can make in your health.