Medical Weight Loss Program

When it comes to weight loss, safety is the biggest concern. At our center, you are examined and monitored by a highly trained physician during every visit. Decisions made regarding your care and progress is done so with the expert knowledge of a medical professional. We are dedicated to your safety and long term success.

WeightLossNYC™ is not your typical weight loss center: You will soon come to realize there are many attributes that differentiate us from other weight loss programs. We don’t believe in a cookie-cutter approach.

We Care for Patients, not Customers.

Each patient is examined by a bariatric (weight loss) physician. Each visit you will work directly with Dr Aron, a medical specialist extensively trained in obesity management. Providing individual treatment sets our program apart from advertised commercial weight loss group programs. Additionally, as a medical weight loss program, we do ongoing evaluations of your health status and decrease your medications for weight-related diseases as your health improves. We can also prescribe weight control medications, such as appetite suppressants and others, to assist with your weight loss efforts.

There is no exact answer for this question since every individual’s circumstances are unique and therefore so will be their program. Everyone has different reasons why they seek our assistance, the factors that contributed to their weight gain, the effects the excess weight has had on their medical and emotional health and the type of assistance they are seeking to help lose weight. We also realize that the easiest program to follow is the one that has been created especially for you. Therefore there is no single weight loss structure that defines our treatment protocol.

Dr Aron uses evidence based up-to-date medical interventions to help you gain control of your weight. Dr. Aron will also discuss an exercise program with you. There are a variety of dietary programs; some of the diets use grocery store foods, others use food supplements purchased at the center, and some use a combination of the two. All programs have been designed by leading experts in the field of obesity treatments, are clinically proven to be effective and are modified to suit each patient’s individual needs.

The only common element in all our weight loss programs is building a foundation of behavioral modification that will ultimately translate into lifestyle changes to ensure long-term weight control. If you intend on maintaining your weight loss, the first step is to understand that weight control is much more than going on a diet. All things considered, mastering weight control depends on embracing and implementing just basic principles for behavior change. From the very first day of treatment, we begin working on strategies to empower you and help you own these basic principles for behavior change in order to achieve lifelong success with weight management.

The methods we use are clinically proven and recommended by the Obesity Medicine Association, whose guidelines we follow:

“Women generally lose 3 to 3½ pounds per week and men lose 4 to 5 pounds per week … These average losses are 2-3 times greater than those resulting from conventional calorie-reducing diets used for the same time period.” ^[1,2,3]

1. American Society of Bariatric Physicians™, Use of VLCDs in the Treatment of Obesity, ASBP Approved Position Statement, Nov 2010
2. Very low-calorie diets. National Task Force on the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity, National Institutes of Health. JAMA. Aug 25 1993;270(8):967-974.
3. Wadden TA. Treatment of obesity by moderate and severe caloric restriction. Results of clinical research trials. Ann Intern Med. Oct 1 1993;119(7 Pt 2):688-693.

Very rapid weight loss can be achieved when doing a physician-supervised weight loss programs, called a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) or Low Calorie Diet (LCD). Our program offers such aggressive weight loss programs. These programs are easy to follow and safe when medically supervised. Each program can obtain different results and individual weight loss results vary.

For other less aggressive weight loss programs offered through our clinic, each individual’s weight loss progress is different. Since every person’s needs and preferences are unique, programs are set up with the patient that best fits his/her lifestyle and dietary needs. There are a variety of dietary programs; some of the diets use grocery store foods, others use food supplements in combination with grocery store foods.

This is due to the basic thoroughness of the initial medical examination in diagnosing the underlying factors of the patient’s weight problem. The guidelines in nutrition and exercise that the patient receives bring more conscious thought to bear on good health and proper eating habits. As the program progresses, you will feel so much better in every way that you will have less inclination to relapse into your old eating habits.

Physiologically, no two human bodies are alike. What is proper diet and exercise for one person is not necessarily so for another. The Bariatric Weight Loss Program concentrates on the specific need for each individual patient. The Bariatric physician, unlike most other medical doctors, has received special training in nutrition as it relates to problems of the overweight. It is in these ways that the bariatric weight loss program differs from most weight control programs and insures our high success rate.

Our weight loss programs are not simply for people who are extremely overweight, but are for anyone who is unhappy or feels unhealthy due to their weight. We will tell you if you shouldn’t, or don’t need to lose weight, or if you are not the right candidate for one of our weight loss programs for any reason. Our goal is your overall health.

You can check now in seconds — Am I Overweight?

Bariatrics is a branch of medicine that deals specifically with problems of obesity, or being overweight. It is a very specialized field and only about 1% of the medical doctors in this country are qualified members of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians. Since obesity is a disease, it makes sense to treat it as one. In 1985, the National Institutes of Health, at its Health Consensus Development Conference on the Health Implications of Obesity, stated that obesity is a specific disease entity that should be treated and monitored medically by a trained physician

Bariatric physicians, or bariatricians, are medical doctors who specialize in the treatment of overweight and obese patients and related medical conditions. These licensed physicians have received special training in Bariatric Medicine: the art and science of medical weight management. Bariatricians treat overweight and obese patients with a comprehensive program of diet and nutrition, exercise, behavioral therapy and, when necessary, the prescription of appetite suppressants and other appropriate medications. The word bariatric stems from the Greek root baro meaning heavy or large.

Body composition is the amount of water, lean body mass and fat in the human body. The true definition of obesity is based on the percentage of body fat. Standard height and weight charts are inadequate in assessing a patient’s percent body fat. BCA can determine how much of your body weight is fat mass, and therefore what your percent body fat is. Our highly innovative scale figures this number using bioelectrical impedance, which measures the conductivity of different body compartments using very small electrical currents. Differences in water content within fat tissue compared to lean body tissue affects the how the current is conducted. Our goal is to help you have good quality weight loss, which means, loss of body fat mass only. Rapid weight loss can result is sacrificing too much lean body mass (which may ultimately slow down your metabolism making the weight loss harder to sustain long-term). We want to help you lose weight rapidly, but not at the expense of losing lean body mass. This is why we measure your body composition at each and every visit, so we can monitor the quality of your weight loss.

If you were trying to lose weight on your own and are just using a conventional scale, you may start to lose motivation if you aren’t seeing the scale move fast enough. Weight loss progress, as measured on a conventional scale, can sometimes be erratic and unpredictable due to water fluctuations (especially in women who still are menstruating). This phenomenon can be unsettling if it were unexpected and especially if you have been following a program religiously and don’t see the anticipated loss of pounds on the scale. The benefit of having your body composition analyzed at each visit is you will know when your scale isn’t moving simply due to water retention. In actuality, you may still be losing fat mass, which means you are still improving your body composition and making progress with your weight loss.

The method that we use to obtain this information is called electrical bioimpedence. It is a non-invasive and accurate test. It does require the following preparation instructions: no alcohol consumption within 24 hours prior to your first visit, no exercise, caffeine or food within 4 hours prior to taking the test, and drink 2 to 4 glasses of water 2 hours prior to taking the test.

There are many diet scams out there that claim quick and easy weight loss, yet most of them don’t work, and in addition can contain harmful chemicals and mixtures of substances that could put you at serious health risks. In addition to OTC diet pills there are countless other pills which claims to have an weight loss effect that are total hype. Don’t be fooled by products claiming to be "All Natural": Herbal formulas and medicines are not regulated by the FDA and may not even contain what the labels say they do. They can also have too much of a vitamin, mineral or herb, or a dangerous combination of all three (that can be toxic to your system). More often they claim to work miracles that are just flat out not true.

There are no magical weight loss pills that will make you lose weight. Even if you lose weight initially you will gain it back, and even more because sustained weight loss requires complex approach and expert knowledge of obesity and weight loss.

You can read many more such warnings on our blog, via FDA tag.