How to Lose Weight: Benefits and Warning

Dr. Mona explains how weight loss can positively affect your health. She also provides a warning for people about to start a diet.

So you say you are interested in losing weight and adapting a healthy diet. Now what you need to know is even though your motivation to lose weight maybe to look better, you will also feel better and you will be healthier. How, you ask? How will I be healthier? Well, your body will respond in the vast majority of cases, very positively to weight loss, particularly if you are overweight and obese. The first thing is your cholesterol profile will get better. Now as you know cholesterol is made up of total cholesterol, LDL or the bad cholesterol, HDL or the good cholesterol and VLDL, which is very low density lipoprotein and that is another version of bad cholesterol. What you find in most cases is once you change your diet, total cholesterol will go down. Your bad cholesterol will go down and your good cholesterol will either stay the same of go up and that is all good news. You will have more energy. Your body will have a better metabolism and will react better to the changes that you are making. You will be able to sleep better. Now there are some medical conditions that are definitively associated with overweight and being obese and those conditions can be either eliminated or they can get a lot better. For example, you will be less prone to develop heart disease, less prone to have a stroke, less prone to have joint problems. Less prone to have a condition we call sleep apnea which disturbs your sleep. Less prone to have cavities and you will see why when you we talk about how healthier diet is made up of healthier foods, less prone to have skin eruptions or acne. You will have a lesser risk of developing diabetes and of course, if you lose weight, you will have a lesser risk of being obese or overweight. Now one of the things that you have to remember especially if you’re over the age of 40 or if you have chronic medical condition disease. Before you start any diet program, see your doctor first and get clearance from your doctor just in case you have to worry about certain things that are associated with those medical conditions. For example, if you have high blood pressure or diabetes, you may have kidney damage. Now when a person has kidney damage that may limit the amount of protein he or she can eat because your kidneys help metabolize that protein. And last of all, diets, in and of themselves are not isolated when it comes to developing a healthier lifestyle. Exercise is an integral part of changing that lifestyle and being healthier, feeling healthier and looking better. And last of all, the single most important thing you can do to prevent disease in the future is to quit smoking if you smoke.