Treatment for obesity will be most successful if you create a long-term plan with your doctor. A reasonable goal might be to begin making lifestyle changes by increasing physical activity and limiting calories.

Your initial goal should be to improve your health, not to achieve an ideal weight. Although the "formula" for weight loss-to burn more calories than you take in-is not complicated, it is often hard to achieve and maintain. Along with lifestyle changes, medicines and surgery may be options for some people. The treatment you need depends on your level of obesity, your overall health, and your motivation to lose weight.

Health guidelines suggest that people should make lifestyle changes for at least 6 months before trying medicines or surgery. Your doctor may suggest medicines and surgery earlier if you also have conditions such as coronary artery disease or type 2 diabetes.²

Medicines for obesity work in different ways. Depending on the medicine, they make you feel full sooner, limit your body's ability to absorb fat, or control binge eating. Surgery is used to reduce the size of the stomach and limit how many calories are absorbed by the intestines.

Your doctor may also suggest counseling. If you use food to cope with depression, loneliness, anxiety, or boredom, you need to learn new skills to deal with those feelings.

Initial treatment

Before beginning treatment, it is important to decide if you are ready to make the lifestyle changes needed to lose weight. Losing weight and maintaining weight loss can be hard, and it may be difficult to find the motivation if you have lost and regained weight several times. Think about successes that you had before and how you were able to achieve them.

If you are not ready to make the changes to lose weight, your doctor may suggest that you set a goal to not gain any more weight or set a date in the future to reconsider your decision.

If you are ready, your doctor may suggest losing 10% of your weight at a rate of 1lb to 2lb per week as your first target. Research shows that a 10% weight loss can improve your health.² It is better that you maintain a small amount of loss rather than lose a lot of weight fast and gain it back.

Changing eating habits: Eating fewer calories while increasing activity is the best way to lose weight. For most adults, a low-calorie diet of 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day for women and 1,500 to 1,800 calories per day for men is recommended for weight loss.

Research shows that limiting calories-not the types of foods you eat- causes more weight loss. For example, cutting only carbohydrate or fat will not cause any more weight loss than a healthful and balanced low-calorie diet.^{4, 3}