Jump Start – Restart!
It’s been more than 3 months since your last appointment. Maybe you have suffered a major life trauma like the sickness/death of a loved one and it took center stage. Or, it could be that too much work (or too little work) made it so that you couldn’t keep your health as a high priority. Perhaps you simply were doing well for a while and have gotten off track. Well, it’s time to get back on track! You’ve already done the most important step, which is getting back in here and making your health a priority in your life.
During today’s visit, Dr. Marlowe wants you to focus back on your health once again. He will ask you about medications that have worked in the past. If the medicine worked well, he will restart the pills. If you felt the medication wasn’t very effective, please speak up! There are other options. If you have seen your other physician(s) and are now taking new medications since your last appointment here, please tell Dr. Marlowe about those medications.
You don’t want to spend today’s appointment re-hashing all the things you have talked about at previous visits. That’s not a valuable use of your time. Dr. Marlowe has more than a decade of experience and he has seen just about every challenge someone has faced, so take advantage of the opportunity to ask him questions that aren’t simply answered in your handouts. You’ll want to learn new strategies for success and absorb information that isn’t printed in the handouts.
Depending on your situation, Dr. Marlowe may ask what you have been eating or he may not. He may go in-depth advising what foods would be best, or he may ask you to review all the printed material when you get home. You might be given a homework assignment. (Oh no.) It is very unlikely that the visit will focus on exercise, because for most people weight loss is diet and weight maintenance is exercise. Please don’t try to focus today’s visit on exercise, unless you know that exercise is a huge motivator for you to change your habits. (For some people, getting back to the gym helps them start eating better and valuing their health, for example.)
One of the most important steps for success now is consistency. Be certain you keep your appointments. Even if you are not doing a perfect job of diet and exercise, the appointments will be important in order for you to maintain accountability. Repeatedly, we see that a regular visit every 4 weeks results in greater weight loss than sporadic attendance.
And don’t worry if you had a temporary relapse. It’s really no big deal. The experts at the National Weight Control Registry have collected information on the people who have lost more than 100 lbs and kept it off more than 5 years … and the average super-success weight loser went through no fewer than seven relapses. (One person had twenty-one relapses before getting it right.) You’re not alone. We can succeed, together.