FAQs

For adults, overweight and obesity ranges are determined by using weight and height to calculate a number called the "body mass index" (BMI). BMI is used because, for most people, it correlates with their amount of body fat.

-An adult who has a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight.

-An adult who has a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.

Click here to calculate your BMI.

What are the health risks associated with obesity?

The health problems associated with obesity are numerous. Obesity is not just a cosmetic problem. It's a health hazard. Someone who is 40% overweight is twice as likely to die prematurely as is an average-weight person. This is because obesity has been linked to several serious medical conditions, including:

-Heart disease and stroke

-High blood pressure

-Diabetes

-Cancer

-Gallbladder disease and gallstones

-Osteoarthritis

-Gout

-Breathing problems, such as sleep apnea (when a person stops breathing for a shorttime during sleep) and asthma

What should I expect when I start a weight loss program?

We offer a comprehensive medically managed program specially customized to your individual needs, personal medical history, and designed to meet your lifestyle requirements, thus making sure of your success.

After filling out the necessary paperwork and forms you see our qualified Provider to design and prescribe your program. Our INITIAL VISIT includes:

-Medical History

-Physical Exam

-Laboratory Tests

-Computerized Body Analysis

-Nutritional Counseling

-Personalized Food Plan

Medication and other products may also be prescribed at this visit and are part of your weekly program regimen.

Routine Follow-up visits are scheduled based on your personalized plan and monitored on an individual need basis - Weekly, Bi-Weekly or Monthly.

Counseling by our Medical Providers on nutrition and behavior modification for permanent life style changes and effective exercise suggestions are tailored to your personal need.

What appetite suppressants are available, are they FDA approved?

Phentermine, Phendimetrazine, and Tenuate, are FDA approved prescription medication used to control appetite and aid in weight loss. Meridia is FDA approved and works by enhancing a feeling of satiety helping you to control portion size.

What contributes to overweight and obesity?

Overall there are a variety of factors that play a role in obesity. This makes it a complex health issue to address. Research shows that behavior, environment, and genetic factors may have an effect in causing people to be overweight and obese.

-Overweight and obesity result from an energy imbalance. This involves eating too many calories and not getting enough physical activity.

-Body weight is the result of genes, metabolism, behavior, environment, culture, and socioeconomic status.

-Behavior and environment play a large role causing people to be overweight and obese. These are the greatest areas for prevention and

treatment actions.

People eat less when they have fewer food choices. OPTIFAST is a full meal replacement diet, restricting your food options for a limited time. This helps control your calorie intake and gives you time to focus on making healthy lifestyle changes.

The OPTIFAST products help you cut calories, not nutrients. They provide 100% of your daily vitamin and mineral needs in convenient, portion-controlled formulas and nutrition bars.

How does the OPTIFAST Program work?

Before you enter the OPTIFAST Program, you'll receive an initial evaluation to determine if OPTIFAST is right for you. Once you start the program, you'll progress through the three phases described below.

Why would I want to use a product like OPTIFAST without eating food? That sounds like some sort of weird, fad diet!

Have you tried losing weight by carefully measuring your food portions and noticed that the scale still doesn't move? Many people find it difficult to accurately determine portion sizes and eat consistent amounts of food day after day. In fact, studies show that most people actually consume about 50% more calories than they actually think they do this is mostly because they are in denial about what they eat. They simply so not have the skills to accurately track what they are eating.

Clinical studies also show that when people are given very few food choices. Or even no food choices, it easier to decrease the amount or calories they consume each day. By taking away the selection and preparation of foods and reducing the array of available foods, people lose weight. This is the concept called "stimuli narrowing" By using a portion-controlled formula diet such as OPTIFAST, all the nutrition needed each day is included. The benefits of this type of diet are in the reduced calories, complete nutrition, and perhaps mostly important, in the ability to stick with the diet because no food choices are made.

Imagine taking a break from food. While your body loses weight and your health improves, you will use the time to learn about good nutrition and healthy eating habits so that when you are again eating food, you are better equipped to manage it.

OPTIFAST weight management products offer:

* High quality, complete nutrition

* Pre-portioned and calorie-controlled servings

* Quick and simple preparation.

OPTIFAST has been used for over 25 years... hardly a fad diet.

I've read that liquid diets are dangerous and people gain all of their weight back once they start eating regular food. Is this true?

The OPTIFAST formula has all the nutrients that are required for good health. This is something that nearly all fad diets do not have. In fact, the initial liquid diets that are used in the 1970's were much different - they used low quality protein with few other essential nutrients. Today, liquid diets are medically supervised to ensure safety.

When was the last time you were on a diet and were being closely followed by a physician who was trained specifically to help you, and to ensure the safety of your treatment?

As far as gaining back the weight. This could happen IF a person just did the liquid formula diet and made no other changes, like the latest fad diets. Our team of professionals, including behaviorists, dietitians, and exercise specialists, provide very intensive education and support. This is necessary to help individuals to successfully discover their own issues related to weight management and help guide their habits. Plus our maintenance program provides the on-going support needed to help make these long-term changes in your lifestyle.

Will I be hungry if I'm not eating regular foods?

The feeling of hunger and the impulsive desire to eat are real concerns. The causes of hunger, whether physical or emotional are difficult to determine to increase success in sticking with the diet program, controlling hunger is primary objective. This control involves both preventing and managing hunger sensations. The program staff will suggest various techniques to accomplish this goal. The good news is that, for most participants, hunger sensations fade within a few days to two weeks after starting the program.

What can I do if I'm invited out to eat while I'm on the program?

Dealing with social eating events is one of the topics that the staff in the OPTIFAST program will help you work through. There are a number of options to consider and strategies that people have successfully used to help them enjoy these social events and still stick to the program. Although initially apprehensive, many patients find that not eating is actually the easiest part of the program. Being successful long-term involves improving your eating habits and choices and including regular physical activity.

After I'm done using the OPTIFAST products, what makes this program different from any other diet?

Our program is not merely a "diet." This word refers to the way we feed our bodies. But the word "diet" to many people means something like this, "DIE-ett: a painful, unrewarding form of punishment involving reduced food intake." This is why we refer to the way we eat with our program as "lifestyle nutrition." Trivial semantics? Not really.

The Etcetera Medical Group Staff has discovered that one of the biggest challenges people face when they attempt to lose unwanted body fat and improve their health is to allow themselves to believe they can and will succeed - to begin with an open and optimistic mind. However when they think they are starting a "diet," their minds begin to send negative, self-defeating messages such as, "diets don't work... I'm going to be so hungry... I'm going to miss out on the fun at parties, weddings and celebrations... other people can diet but I just can't do it... after all diets don't work." The result? They create their own reality. They fail because they decide (unconsciously) to fail.

Our program is based on scientific research as well as what works and what doesn't work in the real world. Therefore we have to except the fact that people (including us) love food. We want to eat. We need to eat. The good news? Our program teaches you how to eat and helps you build the necessary skills for developing healthy eating habits.

Also, participants in our programs can continue to use limited amounts of OPTIFAST products on an ongoing basis - for convenience or to reduce the number of food choices.

I'm an emotional eater, is there a program for me?

Yes! Eating for comfort or anxiety is one of the biggest challenges facing America today. Many physicians and psychiatrists often refer to food as "America's most popular and widely abused anti-anxiety medication." When you think of it this way, you can understand more accurately the detrimental effects eating for the wrong reasons has on our bodies and lives.

Eating for emotional reasons may be a behavior learned at a very young age, even as an infant. These patterns to be changed before anyone can achieve the long-term success they are looking for with the OPTIFAST program. One of the keys is to changing behaviors is not to just focus on eliminating the "Bad Ones" but to incorporate new ones into our daily habits.

For example, people who often eat late at night, especially carbohydrates, need to commit themselves to changing this behavior. We've found that one of the things that work for many participants (who just like you, eat for comfort too) is whenever they feel like heading to the kitchen (the refrigerator) they stop and ask themselves if they're eating to fuel their body or to feed their emotions. Then they write the answer to that question down on a notepad kept next to the refrigerator. If they find out what they were about to do was eat for comfort, they immediately go to another room (i.e. home office), and write. They write about how they feel, what they're planning to achieve the next day, and they just keep writing (sometimes even cards to friends) until they feel they've released the negative energy that was trying to "come out" by eating.

How do the OPTIFAST products taste?

Most individuals find them tasty and satisfying. Some may prefer one flavor over another. OPTIFAST shakes come in french vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Also, chicken, and tomato soups that can be heated, as well as chocolate, peanut butter - chocolate and berry bars. Remember that these products are designed to replace food entirely for a limited duration of time. This makes them much different than some commercially available nutritional formulas and products, both in taste and nutritional quality.

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Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Having just one of these conditions - increased blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, excess body fat around the waist or abnormal cholesterol levels - isn't diagnosed as metabolic syndrome, but it does contribute to your risk of serious disease. If more than one of these conditions occur in combination, your risk is even greater.

What are the symptoms?

Having metabolic syndrome means you have several disorders related to your metabolism at the same time, including:

Having one component of metabolic syndrome means you're more likely to have others. And the more components you have, the greater are the risks to your health.

If you have metabolic syndrome or any of the components of metabolic syndrome, you have the opportunity to make aggressive lifestyle changes. Making these changes can delay or derail the development of serious diseases that may result from metabolic syndrome.

Click here to calculate your BMI.

What are the causes?

Research into the complex underlying process linking the group of conditions involved in metabolic syndrome is ongoing. As the name suggests, metabolic syndrome is tied to your body's metabolism, possibly to a condition called insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone made by your pancreas that helps control the amount of sugar in your bloodstream.

Normally, your digestive system breaks down some of the foods you eat into sugar (glucose). Your blood carries the glucose to your body's tissues, where the cells use it as fuel. Glucose enters your cells with the help of insulin. In people with insulin resistance, cells don't respond normally to insulin, and glucose can't enter the cells as easily. Your body reacts by churning out more and more insulin to help glucose get into your cells. The result is higher than normal levels of both insulin and glucose in your blood.

Although perhaps not high enough to qualify as diabetes, an elevated glucose level still interferes with your body processes. Increased insulin raises your triglyceride level and other blood fat levels. It also interferes with how your kidneys work, leading to higher blood pressure. These combined effects of insulin resistance put you at risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and other conditions.

Combination of factors

Researchers are still learning what causes insulin resistance. It probably involves a variety of genetic and environmental factors. They think some people are genetically prone to insulin resistance, inheriting the tendency from their parents. But being overweight and inactive are major contributors.

Disagreement among experts

Not all experts agree on the definition of metabolic syndrome or whether it even exists as a distinct medical condition. Doctors have talked about this constellation of risk factors for years and have called it many names, including syndrome X and insulin resistance syndrome. Whatever it's called, and however it's precisely defined, this collection of risk factors is apparently becoming more prevalent.

What are the risk factors?

The following factors increase your chances of having metabolic syndrome:

When to seek medical advice?

If you know you have at least one aspect of metabolic syndrome - such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, over weight, or an apple-shaped body - you may have the others and not know it. It's worth checking with Etcetera Medical Group specializing in weight loss and lifestyle changes. Ask our doctor whether you need testing for other components of the syndrome and what you can do to avoid serious disease.

What are the tests and diagnosis?

Although your doctor is not typically looking for "metabolic syndrome," the label may apply if you have three or more of the traits associated with this condition.

Several organizations have criteria for diagnosing metabolic syndrome. The National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) created these guidelines with modifications by the American Heart Association. According to these guidelines, you have metabolic syndrome if you have three or more of these traits:

What are the treatments used?

Tackling one of the risk factors of metabolic syndrome is tough; taking on all of them might seem overwhelming. Contacting Etcetera Medical's professional staff, who are experienced in weight loss and can prescribe appropriate medication when warranted - and lifestyle changes - can improve all of the metabolic syndrome components. Losing weight, getting more physical activity, and quitting smoking help reduce blood pressure and improve cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

These changes are key to reducing your risk.

Etcetera Medical works with you to monitor your weight, blood glucose, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels to ensure that your diet and lifestyle modifications are working. Our doctor may also prescribe medications to help control your appetite and to help your body use insulin more effectively.

How to help prevent and combat Metabolic Syndrome?

Whether you have any of the components of metabolic syndrome, the following lifestyle changes will help you control your weight, reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke:

The Diet Shot is an injection that will help keep your energy up and lose inches at the same time.

What does the Diet Shot do?

The Diet Shot helps increase energy and helps fat cells release their stored fat to be burned as energy thus aiding in inch loss.

What does the Diet Shot contain?

The Diet shot contains our special formulas of B12, B6, and Adenosine-5-Monophosphate.

What is Adenosine- 5- Monophosphate?

It is a substance that occurs naturally in your body. It is currently being used in the treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. While treating people for these conditions researchers discovered that there was a side effect of using the adenosine. The patients had a noticeable reduction in their waistlines and other areas. Further research led to the discovery that the adenosine actually has a cellular level effect on the body, causing fat cells to release their stored fat to be burned as energy.

Why can't I just take a pill?

The medication in the shot is absorbed better when taken orally, especially B12.

How often can I get a Shot?

You can have 3 regular size shots or 2 large shots per week. Having regular shots help keep the level of medication at it%u2019s peak, however, having only one shot per week can still be of benefit.