Morbid Obesity â€" Getting The Help You Need

For many people putting on weight seems to be just a normal part of life and is not something they worry about until either other people start to pass comment or it begins to affect their ability to go about their normal day to day life. By the time this happens however a surprisingly high percentage of people have passed through the stages of being overweight and obese and have reached the point of morbid obesity.

Morbid obesity is generally measured in terms of your Body Mass Index (BMI) which is calculated by taking your weight in kilograms and dividing it by the square of your height in meters. If the result of this calculation is greater than 40 then you are said to be suffering from morbid obesity. As a very general guide a man would be classed as morbidly obese if he were about 100 lbs overweight and a woman would reach this point when carrying approximately 80 lbs of excess weight.

So, having reached the point of morbid obesity where do you turn for help?

For a growing number of people the obvious solution would seem to be weight loss surgery however, as far as your doctor is concerned, this is not your first port of call but is very much the option of last resort. So where else can you look for a solution?

Your starting point has to be the traditional route of diet and exercise. Indeed, to qualify as a candidate for weight loss surgery, should this turn out to be your only workable option, you will need to satisfy your surgeon that you have tried everything else, including dieting, without success.

Despite the craze for diet and exercise that has been sweeping much of the Western world in recent years the sad fact is that the vast majority of people simple don't lose weight through dieting. They may well lose weight while they are on a diet but as soon as they come off it their weight bounces back up again and, in most cases, ends up above the weight at which they started the diet.

For people who are greatly overweight, and certainly for those who have reached the point of morbid obesity, there is also the added complication that their high weight is being sustained by a lifestyle and a pattern of eating which may be extremely difficult to break.

At this point you need professional help. A do-it-yourself diet or membership of your local slimming club or an organization like Weight Watchers is simply not going to work so don't waste your time even trying it. Sit down and talk to your doctor and get yourself onto a long-term (at least six months) medically supervised weight loss program under the care of your own or a specialist doctor and with the support of trained dietitians and counselors.

A medically supervised diet conducted over a reasonably long period of time with professional help and assistance to not only lose weight but to make the necessary changes to your lifestyle and eating habits stands a reasonable chance of success and, if it doesn't work, then you are at least part of the way down the road to qualifying for weight loss surgery.

Morbid obesity is, as its name suggests, a life-threatening condition and, having reached this point, you need to take positive action to reverse you weight gain before you start to run into one or more of the many complications that being morbidly obese will inevitably bring in its wake. This is not however a condition for which a simple "self-help" remedy will do the trick and you should not hesitate to seek professional medical advice and assistance right from the start.