What Is Medical Weight Loss?
Our customized medical weight loss programs are designed and monitored by a medical professional and include various techniques and treatment options to promote safe weight loss. We offer medical weight loss injections, prescription medications, nutrition advice, and supplements to help you lose weight and adopt a healthier lifestyle so you can maintain your healthy weight long after your program is complete.
Weight loss can feel difficult and, at times, seem impossible, but it doesn’t have to be that way. At Believe Image, we offer medical weight loss programs that combine the essential components of a weight management plan, including nutrition, exercise, lifestyle changes, and healthy habits with prescription medications to help patients safely and quickly reach their healthy goal weight, look better, have more confidence, and experience the benefits of improved health.
What Are the Benefits?
Reaching a healthy weight will make you look better, feel better, and improve your health. Being overweight or obese increases the risk of obesity-related diseases, which is why losing that extra weight will protect your health and lower your risk. Other treatment benefits of medical weight loss include the following:
- Medically monitored treatment plans
- Improved body composition
- Better sleep
- Improved overall health and wellness
- Reduced cravings for unhealthy foods
- The ability to adopt healthier lifestyle habits
- Accountability from our professionals.
- Guided exercise regimens
- Accelerated results
- A better relationship with food
- Faster metabolism
How Does the Treatment Work?
Before creating a treatment plan, we need to schedule an initial consultation to discuss your goals, evaluate your overall health, learn more about your habits and current nutrition, and then choose workup and medication therapy that meets your needs. At your consultation, we’ll discuss your nutrition habits and help you exchange unhealthy food choices for those that will support your goals and your health.
We’ll also discuss the importance of exercise and give you more details about what you can expect from the medical weight loss treatment process. Before designing your program, we’ll order the necessary labs to learn more about your current health so we can choose the right treatment options for you.
Dietary habits significantly affect progress on a weight management program. One of the main reasons people can’t lose weight is that they can’t get their diets under control. You cannot out-exercise a bad diet, no matter how hard you try, which is why caloric intake and meal planning matters, even while taking prescription medications designed to lower body weight.
While other vitamin supplements and prescription medications can promote quick weight loss, you must eat the right foods and consume fewer calories to help your body lose the extra weight. We can give you more details about which foods to eat, which to avoid, and how to create meal plans focusing on timing and portion control to ensure a quick metabolism while promoting overall health and maintaining energy levels.
Sleep directly impacts your ability to lose weight in a way you may not even realize. Inadequate or poor quality sleep can prevent weight loss, increase cortisol levels, and disrupt the hormonal system, impacting your health and body weight.
We can give you more information about how to achieve and maintain healthy sleep habits to ensure that you’re getting quality sleep because, in the end, the number of hours of your sleep matters; quality sleep is even more important.
Daily activity is an important part of a weight management program. Calorie expenditure is key to losing weight because the simple equation for weight loss comes down to more calories out than more calories in.
Not only should you be getting enough exercise to burn calories, but you also need to focus on building muscle and losing fat. Muscle weighs more than fat, but it also burns more calories than fat at rest. We can give you more information about exercise plans and how much activity you should get throughout the week.
Lab Testing
Labs provide valuable insight into your current health, hormones, and vitamin and lipid levels. This information creates the foundation on which we can build your treatment plan. We order specific labs for each patient from outside laboratories after an initial consultation, including the following:
- CBC
- CMP
- Lipid panel
- Hormone panel: estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol
- Vitamin panel: B12, folate, vitamin D
- Thyroid panel: TSH, free T4, free T3
Injectable Medications
Our injectable weight loss medications work by resetting the metabolism and increasing energy levels, which is helpful when following a low-calorie diet. They can also help you feel fuller for longer and reduce cravings for unhealthy foods. Once we determine which medications are right for you, we can send them to a local pharmacy or your home.
We offer semaglutide and tirzepatide, in both the brand names of Ozempic, Wegovy, and Monjaura, and in compounded form based on availability and shortages. Additionally, we offer the following injectable medications:
- Semaglutide (Wegovy, Ozempic, and compounded semaglutide, depending on drug availability)
- Tirzepatide (Mounjaro)
- In-office MIC injections with B12 (Methionine, inositol, choline, B12)
- Additional Peptides: AOD 9604, CJC 1295+, Ipamorelin, Sermorelin
The Injection Process
The injection process is quick and virtually painless. The injectable is administered into the subcutaneous or fatty tissue with a small and thin needle. It takes seconds to administer, and you’ll be free to resume your normal daily activities without any limitations. Semaglutide injections are self-administered at home, not at our office.
Oral Medications
We also offer oral medications and supplements that you’ll take as directed throughout the course of your treatment plan. Once we learn more about your health history and treatment goals, we can prescribe the right oral medication per your needs.
It’s important to note that, like our injectable medications, oral medications work best when paired with dietary changes and a regular exercise routine. They are designed to complement a weight management plan and work with other treatment methods and lifestyle changes to ensure the best results. Our oral medication options include the following:
- Metformin
- Phentermine +/- Topiramate
- Buproprion
- Naltrexone
- Peptide BPC-157
- Customized vitamin supplement recommendations
IV Supplements
We can also add IV therapy to your treatment plan to address specific health-related symptoms, promote weight loss, and improve skin health. This treatment is minimally invasive, quick, and relaxing. We will administer an IV into a vein in your arm and then slowly drip the right IV solution into your vein. Your body will immediately begin using all the nutrients and hydrating fluids, and none of them will be eliminated as waste.
Regular IV treatments will help you reach your goal weight, but they can also address specific health conditions, alleviate the symptoms of those conditions, and improve overall health. Our supplemental IV therapy treatment options include the following options:
- Myers Cocktail
- Vitamin C
- Glutathione
- Zinc
- Magnesium
- B complex vitamins
- Mineral blend: magnesium, zinc, manganese, copper, selenium
- Amino blend
- NAD+
Accountability
Accountability is another important part of a weight management program. When you begin this program at Believe Image, you’ll have built-in accountability from your interactions with our experienced team. Our goal is to help you begin and complete a program that will improve your health and change your life.
Without accountability, it can be easy to give up, but we’ll make sure that you have the tools, resources, and treatment options to stay the course and continue to lose the weight that’s been holding you back and preventing you from living the healthiest life possible.
Am I a Good Candidate?
If you’ve been trying to lose weight on your own, and haven’t been successful, and keep running into one roadblock after another, it may be time to seek the help of experienced professionals who can develop a medical weight loss program, through which you can finally achieve your goals.
Whether you want to lose 10 pounds, 50 pounds, or more, we can order the necessary lab testing, evaluate your medical history, and learn more about your experience with weight loss and dieting so we can custom-tailor a treatment plan that will finally help you achieve in maintain your goal weight.
Reach Your Weight Loss Goals With a Customized Weight Management Plan
A medical weight management and nutrition program is an investment in yourself, your appearance, your health, and your confidence. With the right diet, exercise regimen, lifestyle changes, and healthy habits, you can experience all the benefits of losing weight quickly and safely.