Tips for Maintaining Weight Loss

Baptist Health Richmond: Tips for Maintaining Weight Loss

Bariatric surgeon and patient Paige Quintero, MD at Baptist Health Richmond, outlines nine practical ways to lose weight and keep it off, providing tips for eating healthier and exercising.

Tips for Maintaining Weight Loss Health Talks Transcript

Paige Quintero, MD, Bariatric Surgery
There are several ways to lose weight and keep it off:

Protein — a high protein diet is important to make sure that your body does not feel like it is starving when you lose weight. We recommend 70 to 100 grams of protein per day.

Carbs — decreasing the carbs in our diet also helps us lose weight. Instead of having carbs, I recommend that patients try more vegetables or more protein.

High-fructose corn syrup — this is an additive that is in many of our foods, including soft drinks. I recommend that all patients look at the labels to make sure that they are not adding this harmful thing to their diet, because it turns into fat. Exercise has two components. Cardio exercise, which means getting your heart rate up, and also strength exercises. Both components are very important to losing weight, and we recommend 150 minutes per week of cardio exercise.

Portion sizes — if you are a weight-loss surgery patient, that may mean 6 or so ounces per meal. If you are not a weight-loss surgery patient, maybe that means just not going back for seconds.

Fast food — it’s cheap, it’s easy, but it has a lot of calories and is causing a lot of weight gain.

Skipping meals is the worst thing you can do to lose weight. For best weight-loss results, eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Water is extremely important. Water has no calories. It gives your body plenty of hydration, and we recommend water instead of other drinks.

And lastly, for most people, we would recommend that they eat around 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for weight loss.

Now, how do I know all of these things? I’m not only a bariatric surgeon, but I’m also a bariatric patient.