Primary Care for Weight Loss Management

Help Managing Your Overall Health
Your body mass index (BMI) uses your height and weight to determine your weight category. A BMI between 18 and 25 indicates you are overweight. A BMI over 30 indicates obesity. Carrying excess weight can put you at increased risk for, or exacerbate the health problems associated with many chronic medical conditions including:

• Arthritis and joint problems
• Certain cancers
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Pre-diabetes
• Sleep apnea
• Stroke

Identifying Unknown Causes of Obesity
Your struggle to lose weight may be due to factors that cause weight gain. You may be unaware that they are standing in the way of your weight management success. Examples of these factors include:

• Certain medications such as steroids and diuretics
• Depression
• Insomnia
• Menopause
• Polycystic ovary syndrome
• Thyroid disease

Our Role in Your Weight Loss Journey
As primary care providers who specialize in weight management, we diagnose underlying factors causing your weight gain, work with you to treat them, or refer you to the right specialists for care. We help you adopt healthy lifestyle habits and offer obesity medication management.  In addition, we can help you determine if you are a candidate for bariatric surgery. In doing so, we help you decrease your risk for serious, chronic medical conditions. We are your partners in your weight loss journey.

Your First Appointment
Your first appointment will be spent gathering information. You’ll provide information on your diet, exercise, and lifestyle habits, whether you smoke, your alcohol intake, your experiences trying to lose weight in the past, and any weight-related behavioral issues. You will also undergo a comprehensive physical exam. Your answers and the exam will determine if tests will be performed to identify an underlying medical condition that may be causing weight gain. Once all the needed information is gathered, your provider will recommend a personalized treatment plan to help you work toward your goals.

Follow-Up Appointments
Regularly scheduled appointments will give you the opportunity to check in with your provider, ask questions, monitor your progress with weigh-ins, assess what’s working and adjust what isn’t, and ensure you are on a positive path.

Your doctor may recommend a variety of methods to help you lose weight as part of your personalized treatment plan. Options include:

Exercise and Nutrition Counseling
We recommend exercise plans to help you start moving more and nutritional counseling and dietary approaches to get you started on a pattern of eating healthy. If appropriate, we may refer you to an exercise physiologist or nutritionist for more in-depth advice on how to stick with a regular exercise program or follow a specific diet.

Weight Management Medication
If your doctor thinks you will benefit from weight management medication, they will discuss their recommendations with you and how they fit into your weight management plan.

Behavioral Health
We will evaluate you for behavioral health patterns that lead to weight gain and offer counseling to help you identify and overcome stressors and other factors that may be inhibiting your ability to manage your weight.

Bariatric Surgery
If we determine that you are a possible candidate for weight loss surgery, we can refer you to Duke’s team of bariatric specialists. Weight loss surgery is a safe, proven option for people who have been unable to maintain weight loss through diet, exercise, and/or medication. While it’s not a quick fix, it can help you achieve lasting benefits when accompanied by permanent lifestyle changes. If weight loss surgery is right for you, our weight management experts and bariatric surgeons help you through every step of this process.