More than Meets the Eye: Why Obesity Treatment Isn’t Just Weight Loss

Wegovy, Ozempic, and Mounjaro have become household names as the demand for the medications soar. With celebrity spotlights and trending hashtags, these treatments for obesity have become the new weight loss craze promising a quick and dramatic transformation. Dubbed as the obesity gold rush, an avalanche of companies are looking to capitalize by offering prescription based weight loss and body programs. As an obesity physician, I was initially excited by the attention the medication was receiving as a way to destigmatize obesity and shed education on just how complex it was to treat. Instead, I am witnessing a disconcerting trend blurring the line between obesity treatment and weight loss. Weight loss is a far cry from proper obesity treatment and it’s time we recognize that. Obesity treatment delves deeper, looking beyond the aesthetic changes to focus on the metabolic pathways that play an instrumental role in your health. So let’s take a moment to separate the wheat from the chaff and give you a no-nonsense guide to tell apart weight loss programs from real-deal obesity medicine.

1. Success Ain’t Skinny: Weight loss doctors love their before-and-after pictures, trading in your insecurities and a narrow definition of beauty. Obesity medicine isn’t in the business of selling looks. It’s about reducing cardio-metabolic and mechanical risk, celebrating you for slashing those nasty health risks and improving your quality of life. Obesity specialists employ tools such as body composition machines or DEXA scans to track progress, with a particular focus on visceral fat reduction.
2. One-size-fits-all Diets are So Outdated: Ever felt like every other person is evangelizing their new diet plan as a cure-all? Weight loss physicians often tout specific diets, like keto, vegan, or paleo, as a one-size-fits-all solution, sometimes even mandating meal replacements as part of their programs. Yeah, obesity specialists aren’t fans. They’re about personalizing your food choices to your unique cardiometabolic profile. There’s no magic diet, folks. It’s about what works for your body and your life (Pagoto et. al., 2013). Obesity specialists recognize the fallacy of a perfect diet and instead focus on incorporating evidence-based foods suited to a patient’s preferences and risk profile.
3. Placebo Shots? No, Thank You: Despite decades of research demonstrating their limited efficacy, weight loss doctors continue to prescribe B12 and HCG shots to all patients, branding them with fancy names like lipo fat burning shots. Obesity Doctors aren’t wasting time on these old wives’ tales.
4. No One is Too High Risk: Weight loss doctors and programs might tell you that you’re too high-risk for their programs. Did you notice that Noom Med does not enroll people over 65? But to an obesity specialist, you’re exactly why they chose this profession. They’re in this to help high-risk individuals reverse disease and reclaim their health.
5. Weight Gaining Medications, We’ve Got Them Handled: Got a cocktail of meds? Obesity medicine physicians often collaborate with other doctors to optimize patients’ medication regimens, aiming to reduce or eliminate drugs contributing to weight gain. In contrast, weight loss physicians and programs might just shrug.
6. Healthy Weight Isn’t a Number: Here’s the mic drop moment. A healthy weight isn’t a set number. It’s a state of balance, embracing your weight, metabolic health, and lifestyle. Obesity specialists are hyper-focused on changes in inflammation, cholesterol, and sugars with weight loss because that is how you can really tell when someone has lost the right type of fat and is achieving a healthy state.

If there is one thing that the weight loss industry has proven time and again is that all fads wane. If we continue to evangelize Wegovy and Mounjaro as the new weight loss fad then we risk the opportunity to develop a more comprehensive and sustainable approach toward tackling our chronic disease epidemic. In the right setting, these medications may be able to vastly reduce heart, stroke, kidney, liver, and cancer risk across the country. We need to change the conversation about obesity, moving away from mere weight loss to holistic health improvement. It’s time to celebrate health victories, not just weight loss milestones.