With America’s large number of obese and overweight individuals, researchers, scientists, and just people in general have had plenty of time to learn about the many issues related to being overweight. Specifically, some of the worst problems that excess stomach fat has been connected to is increased risks of heart disease, diabetes, and strokes. Excess belly fat might also be a sign of metabolic syndrome.
Not only can stomach fat be unhealthy and dangerous, but it can also be ugly. So, it is no secret why people want to lose their stomach fat. Unfortunately for those people, belly fat can be one of the most daunting areas of the body to enhance the shape of and just trim some weight off. And, when it comes to the stomach, the extra weight might just seem to be completely unfazed by diet and exercise.
Luckily, however, there are medical solutions for losing stubborn stomach fat, so let’s look at some of the FDA-approved weight loss medicines and some of the medical surgeries that might help:
Weight Loss Drugs:
While there are plenty of medicines out there that claim to help you cut fat, especially hard-to-lose stomach fat, we’ll discuss some of the most common and effective prescription medicines that do so and how they help individuals lose weight.
Meridia: This drug helps individual lose weight by increasing brain chemicals such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine so people will feel fuller more quickly as they eat, causing them to eat significantly less throughout the day and burn off more weight.
Phentermine: This drugs acts as an appetite suppressant by affecting your central nervous system. Phentermine can be used in combination with dieting and exercise to treat obesity in people with high risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
Xenical: This drug helps with losing stomach fat by binding to fat cells in gastrointestinal tract to prevent absorption. So, while using this medication, your body eliminates up to 30% of all the fat you consume.
Some other drugs have been known to help lose weight, such as amphetamines and stimulants as they also suppress your appetite and help you reach a calorie deficit consistently enough to lose weight.
Weight Loss Surgeries:
The only real weight loss surgery that is actually effective and for the purposes of losing weight not reshaping or enhancing your body’s image, is bariatric weight loss surgery. Bariatric weight loss surgery, or gastric bypass, surgically shrinks your stomach’s volume.
This causes people to feel fuller more quickly, and it also reduces your body’s absorption rate of certain nutrients, which results in further weight loss. In addition to reducing the stomach’s volume, quickening feelings of being full, and reducing your body’s absorption rates, gastric bypass also has a dramatic impact on your body’s hormones that drive hunger, so it essentially suppresses your appetite as well.
At the end of the day, each individual will have a specific course of action that best helps their body remove the excess stomach fat.
Of course, however, there is a catch to weight loss medicines and weight loss surgery... They might only be available to those who are severely overweight. Most FDA-approved weight loss drugs and bariatric surgeries are only prescribed to those who have a BMI over 30 or a BMI of over 27 as well as other obesity conditions.
But, for those that fit the bill, weight loss drugs and weight loss surgery could be the perfect solution you’ve been “weighting” for, so don’t hesitate to set up an appointment with your doctor and see what’s right for you! Just remember, effective weight loss is not a sprinting race – weight loss is a long distance marathon that requires lifestyle changes in order to reach your ideal weight.