Tag: Losing Weight

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Weight Loss Surgery Risks



Weight loss surgery risks always seem to be downplayed for people looking at losing weight. A couple years ago my wife was considering weight loss surgery as her years off dieting and exercise and the yoyo weight loss/gain nightmare had mad her tired of the whole weight loss industry. Using Weight Watchers and getting the exercise to a more moderate lvel have helped Michelle lose three pounds or so per week and she is quickly dropping the weight that was so stubborn just a couple of years back.

Yesterday Michelle got a call for the gastric bypass surgery consultation which here in Alberta Canada takes 19 months, I am happy to say that she turned it down because a healthy lifestyle has maed the difference for her. As you probably know there are a lot of instances where this surgery is really helpful for people but only in cases where there is a risk of imminent death by now doing something as drastic as this surgery is.

Is Weight Loss Surgery Dangerous?

I have found an article from Bloomberg that I think really shows the importance of this surgery and the possible weight loss surgery risks. Below are some exerpts from that article.

The surge in weight loss surgery in the U.S. may be putting obese people at higher risk for illness and death than is generally known, three studies report.

More than 100,000 Americans underwent bariatric surgery to reduce weight in 2003, an eight-fold increase in five years, researchers report in the Oct. 19 Journal of the American Medical Association. A separate analysis of Medicare patients published in the same issue found that 4.6 percent of patients undergoing the procedure died nationwide a year after, some from the weight loss surgery risks.

The researchers said the findings on weight loss surgery risks may help obese people gauge the weight loss surgery risks as compared to health problems caused by being overweight. The operations can help patients shed more than half their unwanted weight and can reverse diabetes, high blood pressure and sleep problems, researchers said.

This is not a vanity operation, it’s a high-risk operation,” said David R. Flum, associate professor of surgery and public health at the University of Washington in Seattle. “This at least allows people who are considering this surgery to go in a little bit more with their eyes open.

Small Stomach Pouch Surgery

Weight Loss Surgery Risks

Weight Loss Surgery Risks

Researchers said they expect 130,000 bariatric surgeries to be performed in the U.S. this year. The procedure is considered the only proven method to reduce extreme weight, the researchers said.

Gastric bypass was the most common procedure used in the studies. Surgeons make a small stomach pouch to restrict the amount of food that can be eaten and connect it to the lower part of the small intestine to limit digestion and absorption of calories. The operation can reduce weight in some cases by almost 100 pounds.

Medicare patients may be most vulnerable to the weight loss surgery risks. Death rates were highest for men older than 65, with more than one in 10 dying within a year of surgery. Dying within a month was twice as likely after obesity surgery than with heart surgery or hip replacement, found the study of all 16,155 Medicare beneficiaries who had the operation from 1997 to 2002.

“That is significantly higher than most people expect when they think of obesity surgery,” Flum said. “Patients are at higher risk for having bad things happen after surgery because of their advanced age or other conditions.”

Experienced Surgeons Helps

Death rates plunged even among the highest risk patients in the hands of experienced surgeons, the study found.

If we’re going to do this operation at all in patients 65 and older, it should really be done in places that can deliver the lowest risks to the patient,Flum said.

All patients should expect hospitalizations after surgery because of weight loss surgery risks, another study from the University of California at Los Angeles found. The number of hospital stays more than doubled in the year after surgery compared with the year earlier, scuttling hopes that better health after the operation would lessen health care needs, researchers said.

Almost 8 percent of patients were hospitalized, mostly for obesity-related problems like arthritis, in the year before surgery, a review of all 60,000 patients getting the operation from 1995 to 2004 in California found. In the following 12 months, almost 20 percent were hospitalized, often for surgical complications.

You May Go Back Under The Knife Again Later

With the number of surgeries increasing and the number of patients considering surgery, they should be truly informed about what they are undergoing,” said lead researcher David S. Zingmond, assistant professor of medicine at the UCLA’s School of Medicine. While many patients lose 60 to 100 pounds, “those pounds come at a price for some people, he said.

The rate declined to 14.9 percent three years after surgery, with most hospitalizations triggered by the need for plastic surgery to remove excess skin or elective procedures such as back and knee surgery that were postponed because of the excess weight.

The researchers originally anticipated that use of health care services would decline following surgery. Now, they say insurance companies and patients should be aware that hospitalization rates may be elevated for up to five years because of the weight loss surgery risks.

Vulnerable Patients – weight loss surgery risks

None of the studies examined the effectiveness of surgery, which the researchers agreed is the best weight loss method for obese people. Even with rising surgery rates, less than 1 percent of people who qualify undergo it, wrote surgeons Bruce M. Wolfe, from Oregon Health Science University in Portland and John M. Morton, of Stanford University in California, in an editorial.

“There are vulnerable patient populations and potential additional costs associated with surgery,” they wrote. “Bariatric surgery may be a potentially life-saving intervention in the right patients and in the right surgeons’ hands.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
Michelle Fay Cortez in Minneapolis at mcortez@bloomberg.net

So what are your experiences? I know that there are lots of supporters of this surgery as well as many people that are opposed almost completely to it. Are the weight loss surgery risks worth it?

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on 19 Months
  • Related Blogs on Alberta Canada
Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Why Most Diets Suck




I get tired of watching the latest and greatest crazy diet fads come and go. You have probably heard that the whole diet industry makes their money by taking advantage of fat people.

It is true

The reason that the diet industry is screwing over fat people is because almost every diet out there has some magic bullet in it. Eat this and lose weight, avoid that and lose weight. Lose weight eating cookies, lose weight drinking sweetened lemon juice.

Most of it is crap and we all have to realize that. Every time I go to the bookstore I get intrigued and then leave shaking my head.

The trouble is there is no magic bullet. Losing weight always comes down to bringing in less calories than are going out. The trouble is there are lots of variables and the diet makers are always looking to exploit people that are having trouble losing weight by depressing people, confusing them, and then offering the newest magic to lose weight.

Don’t fall for it.

Only Three Things Matter for Losing Weight

What you really need to lose weight is to get your eating under control, your metabolism high, and your exercise up. Lets just looks at these three pieces in isolation

Get you Eating Under Control – almost everyone gets portion control wrong. Your body is a machine and whatever food you can not use your body will just eliminate or store. If you have a burger, fries, and soft drink then no matter what crazy diet you would use you will still have to burn off that 1100 calories or so and it is just not possible, so you eliminate some and store the rest. Now if you eat a normal meal which would be about 400 calories or so you would not be hungry but not full either.

Now again if you eat just the hamburger for a meal you may drop the calorie count but you are not getting the nutrients and vitamins that you need and also you are getting a lot of those calories from artery clogging fat. So if you just had fruit and veggies and lean meat in your diet then that 400 calories would go a lot further and keep you healthier.

Is Running Healthy

Is Running Healthy

Get a Higher Metabolism – This is a bit stranger to look at. Your body really just runs like it should. Your body burns calories to keep everything going, your muscles healed, maintaining your organs and giving you the energy to run or not or whatever you need to do as you have over the last little while.

When you look at your metabolism this way then it is obvious that your metabolism is naturally going to be faster when you are working out a lot (your body is prepping for your lifestyle) and your metabolism will be slower if your are in an office and then living on the couch all evening (the most your body needs to do is get you to the fridge) so your exercise history over the last little while will make a difference to how many calories you burn at rest. Still this is only going to make a smaller difference then eating or exercise.

Get Your Exercise Up – The third piece of the calorie in/calorie out equation is your exercise. If you were to walk well and burn 350 calories in an hour or run hard and burn 1500 calories in the same hour you are doing three things that are helping you. You are raising your resting metabolism, your are making your body work better an more efficiently, and of course you are burning up those calories.

So exercise is going to make a big difference not just for that one workout a day but also the other extraneous exercise. Walking to work, biking with the kids, doing laundry. An active lifestyle means that you are letting it all add up and burning more and more calories as you get stronger and better. Just think, how long would it take for you to going from walking for an hour to running fast for an hour and burning 5 times the calories in an hour.

What About Diet Plans

So bearing in mind these three critical points to losing weight where does everything else fall? Did you know that there are over 37,000 diet books on Amazon.com?

Well if we look at the GI Diet, the Atkins diet, the Mediterranean Diet, in fact any kind of Carb restricting or Fat restricting diets is that the diet itslef is based on moving around your carbs, fat, and protein and these can be important but not as important as eating and exercising right.

The other diets that we see are centred around a food or pill. Eating Acai berrys, or PGX pills are only going to have a small factor on increasing metabolism and do all their work in reducing your hunger.

Finally we have specialized diets like Paleo Diet, Vegan Diet, non-wheat diets, and carb cycling diets. These have their place and the thing that I really like about these diets is that they use science as well as a very passionate group of people teaching others about the benefits of their particular diet.

This gets back to the two diets that I support here on the blog.

Fat Loss for Idiots – Based on what you like or don’t like this diet uses carb cycling to make an exact menu for you to eat. This diet tends to be very successful because you eat what is right and don’t have to become a dietitian to use it. I have more comments on the review for this diet than almost any other post and mostly because people are surprised and excited about the success.

Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle – This is a one book based diet and exercise program that a former bodybuilder teaches us how to eat and exercise to make sure that you lose weight and know how to do it. Tom Venuto is a guy with a track record and a best selling book for years teaching you how to lose the weight and keep it off.

 


Why Most Diets Suck, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Bookstore
Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

How to Lose 10 Pounds

How to lose 10 Pounds? Often people are not really overweight but instead are just looking at how to lose 10 pounds that have been hanging around for a few weeks or even a few years that they do not know how to get rid of. Well I have a few ideas on how to lose 10 pounds now and fast that should get you on the right track.

How to Lose 10 Pounds

how to lose 10 pounds1. When trying to lose weight it comes down to energy in and energy out. There is no real way around this. To lose 10 pounds you need to burn 35000 calories more than you take in. The math doesn’t lie and you can’t lie to a scale either.

2. Most of our body is water and because of this there is water retention. Your body combats what is throwing off electrolytes or stress or other factors and it will naturally retain water.

3. Fat is high in calories. High water foods are low in calories. In order to change that input output ratio you need to raise the amount of low calorie density foods and lower the amount of high caloric density foods. so eat less red meat and fatty deep fried food and eat more fruits and veggies which are high in water content and nutrients.

4. All weight loss comes with a reason. What is the reason that you want to lose the weight? When you are hungry and drive by a McDonalds or KFC and just want to do drive thru what is going to stop you? Certainly not losing weight.

How to Lose 10 Pounds – Pulling this all together

So how do you pull all of this together? how to lose 10 pounds?

When you want to know how to lose weight it comes down to planning. Plan to drink a lot more water, it will make you pee more often but will also clean you out and give you move energy. You also have to get more exercise and by exercise I mean try to get one hour of exercise of any kind in a day. This needs to be exercise that you like and not exercise that just feels like work as that will not be sustainable.

As far as eating goes you will need to get back to those core eating habits of eating fruit and vegetables and reducing the amount of heavy carbs like rice and potatoes and make sure to eat often. Eating smaller meals more often will keep that metabolism up for you.

How to Lose 10 Pounds – Here are more Lose 10 pounds tips

  1. Eat all your food in 5 or 6 meals a day instead of three
  2. Cut back on your White carbs (rice, potatoes, pasta) and substitute with vegetables, which are higher in water and nutrients anyway
  3. Exercise first thing in the morning by walking or light jogging or even biking for 30 to 45 minutes
  4. Drink water from morning until night to stave off those urges to eat more food and to keep your metabolism up
  5. Eat all your food in those 5 or 6 meals before 7:30 at night so that you are not going to sleep on a full stomach

Finally if you want to know the real secret of how to lose 10 pounds you need to worry about why you are trying to lose weight. On those days where it is really tough to diet or exercise or make good decisions then you need to be very clear what the heck this weight loss sacrifice is for.

  • Is it going to make you more healthy, losing 10 pounds will make you a lot healthier.
  • Or do you want to fit into smaller clothes?
  • Or is it a goal to prove that you are in control of yourself?

All of these reasons and more are important. Write you reasons down and post them up everywhere. Make sure that you never forget the WHY of how to lose 10 pounds.

So now you know what I know about how to lose 10 pounds the rest is up to you to plan, eat, drink, exercise and follow through on your goal.

How to Lose 10 Pounds, 4.2 out of 5 based on 155 ratings

Recent Tags: how to lose 10 pounds, lose 10 pounds, how to lose ten pounds, losing 10 pounds, How to lose 10 lbs, how to lose 10 pounds fast, lose 10 lbs, lose 10 pounds fast, how to loose 10 pounds, i need to lose 10 pounds, need to lose 10 pounds, i want to lose 10 pounds, lose ten pounds, how can i lose 10 pounds, loose 10 pounds

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Body Combats
  • Related Blogs on Burn Calories