A common question we hear from patients is, “What makes Wellspring different from other weight loss programs I’ve tried? How do I know this will work for me?”
It’s not a weight loss program
The answer is simple: Wellspring isn’t a “weight loss program,” it’s a medical clinic providing a legitimate and appropriate set of treatment options for obesity. Obesity is a chronic medical condition. It’s not a character flaw, or a problem with your strategy. A healthy diet and regular exercise are important for your overall health, but they’ve been shown over1 and over again2 not to work well3 for losing weight and keeping it off for the majority of people. And if you have underlying health issues affecting your weight, like hormonal issues or thyroid problems, we’ll take care of those, too.
Your willpower isn’t the problem
At Wellspring, we prescribe safe, FDA approved medications that work on hunger signaling and metabolic mechanisms in the body to help you lose weight and keep it off. We don’t rely on coaching or motivation to help you achieve a healthy weight, because the problem isn’t with your willpower or your technique. Obesity is a medical condition like any other, and it has to be managed as such.
New treatments show the cracks in “discipline” dogma
Because we haven’t had many good tools for obesity management until recently, historically medicine has tended to treat obesity as a lifestyle problem. Many medical providers have been taught to preach to patients about willpower and discipline regarding diet and exercise. New medications have “shown the cracks” in this philosophy: suddenly, patients who were never able to control their weight, despite working hard to be “disciplined,” are able to do so with appropriate medical treatment. At Wellspring, we follow the latest research to make sure we provide you with all the best options as new treatments come out.
References
- Fildes A, Charlton J, Rudisill C, Littlejohns P, Prevost AT, Gulliford MC. Probability of an Obese Person Attaining Normal Body Weight: Cohort Study Using Electronic Health Records. Am J Public Health. 2015 Sep;105(9):e54-9. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2015.302773. Epub 2015 Jul 16. PMID: 26180980; PMCID: PMC4539812. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4539812/ ↩︎
- Hall KD, Kahan S. Maintenance of Lost Weight and Long-Term Management of Obesity. Med Clin North Am. 2018 Jan;102(1):183-197. doi: 10.1016/j.mcna.2017.08.012. PMID: 29156185; PMCID: PMC5764193. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/ ↩︎
- McEvedy SM, Sullivan-Mort G, McLean SA, Pascoe MC, Paxton SJ. Ineffectiveness of commercial weight-loss programs for achieving modest but meaningful weight loss: Systematic review and meta-analysis. J Health Psychol. 2017 Oct;22(12):1614-1627. doi: 10.1177/1359105317705983. Epub 2017 May 10. PMID: 28810454. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28810454/ ↩︎
