Which diet works best? Which diets don’t work?
Keeping up with diets can be overwhelming. You’ve heard of the keto diet, Atkins diet, fasting, Paleo, Weight Watchers, Noom, and everything in between. Most of us have fallen victim to one of these diets or spent loads of money on these food plans. Unfortunately, the word “diet” typically indicates a short term plan to follow for better health. Some may lose the weight fast and then stop following the plan once they have lost the weight that they want, only to gain back more weight than where they started. Others try these diets and don’t lose a single pound. Why don’t most people see success with diets?
Diets do not get to the root cause of the issue. They don’t tackle food noise, cravings, or impact the amount of food that your stomach can handle at one time. In stressful situations, such as starvation or heavy dieting, your stomach produces higher amounts of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, to signal the brain to try to find fuel. Therefore, appetite increases and it is normal to consume larger portions when levels of hunger are elevated.
With bariatric surgery, you can feel the long lasting impact of physical restriction of intakes, much beyond what any fad diet will provide. Through physical alteration of the GI tract with the sleeve gastrectomy or gastric bypass procedures, there is an anatomical change to the body that decreases the amount of food that a person is able to consume. There is also a hormonal change with bariatric surgery that largely decreases the production of ghrelin, leading to less hunger and cravings. Less hunger and diminished cravings means that it is easier to stay on track with your new lifestyle after bariatric surgery. No other method of weight loss offers hormonal and anatomical changes outside of bariatric surgery.
If you are interested in changing your life with bariatric surgery with Dr. Christopher Hart or Dr. William Johnson at Atlanta Bariatrics, please call 770-232-1871.
