{"meta":{"status":200,"messages":[],"pagination":{"max":1,"offset":0,"count":1,"total":1,"pageNum":1,"totalPages":1,"sort":null,"currentUrl":"https://api.digitalmedia.hhs.gov/api/v2/resources/media.json?offset=0&max=1&ignoreHiddenMedia=1&format=json&id=16634&newUrlBase=https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/subscribe/","nextUrl":null,"previousUrl":null}},"results":[{"content":"
\nTreatment for overweight and obesity depends on the cause and severity of your condition. Possible treatments include healthy lifestyle changes, behavioral weight-loss treatment programs, medicines, and possibly surgery. You may need treatments for any complications that you have.
\nTo help you aim for and maintain a healthy weight, your doctor may recommend that you adopt lifelong healthy lifestyle changes.
\nMaking lifelong healthy lifestyle changes, such as heart-healthy eating and physical activity, can help you modify your energy balance to help you aim for and maintain a healthy weight. For example:
\nYour doctor may recommend you enroll in individual or group behavioral weight-loss programs to treat your overweight and obesity. In these programs, a trained healthcare professional will customize a weight-loss plan for you. This plan will include a moderately-reduced calorie diet, physical activity goals, and behavioral strategies to help you make and maintain these lifestyle changes. Read Living With for more information about required follow-up for these behavioral treatment programs.
\nDid you know your brain\u2019s pleasure and reward centers can be stimulated by food and the act of eating, making it harder to change eating patterns and lose weight?
\nResearchers know that our brains can become patterned so that we feel pleasure or reward from eating. This can make us unconsciously crave food so our bodies feel that sense of pleasure. It can also make it hard to change our eating patterns, lose weight, or maintain a healthy weight. Researchers are studying whether cognitive behavioral therapies can be an effective treatment for overweight and obesity by retraining the brain to not associate pleasure with food and the act of eating.
\nWhen healthy lifestyle changes are not enough, your doctor may treat your overweight and obesity with FDA-approved medicines. These medicines work in the following parts of your body.
\nWeight loss medicines are not recommended as a single treatment for weight loss. These medicines can help you lose weight but when combined with lifestyle changes may result in greater weight loss. Some of these medicines should not be used if you have certain conditions or are taking certain medicines. Also, these medicines have side effects. Talk to your doctor if you are pregnant, planning to get pregnant, breast feeding, or have a family history of cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure, heart attack, or stroke.
\nSome patients with obesity do not respond to healthy lifestyle changes and medicines. When these patients develop certain obesity-related complications, they may be eligible for the following surgeries.
\nTalk to your doctor to learn more about the benefits and risks of each type of surgery. Possible complications include bleeding, infection, internal rupture of sutures, or even death. Read gastric bypass surgery for more information.
\nInterested in learning why these surgeries lead to weight loss in some patients?
\nFirst, these surgeries reduce the amount of food stored in the stomach and the amount of calories your body can take in. This can help your body restore energy balance. Second, these surgeries change the levels of certain hormones and the way the brain responds to these hormones to control hunger urges. After surgery, some people are less interested in eating or they prefer to eat healthier foods. In some cases, genetic differences may affect how much weight loss patients experience after bariatric surgery.
\n