Significance On The Patient’s Motivation In Weight Loss Therapy And A General Overview On Health Promotion

When assessing the patient’s motivation to enter weight loss therapy, the following factors should be evaluated:

Reasons and motivation for weight reduction:

• Previous history of successful and unsuccessful weight loss attempts
• Family, friends and work-site support
• The patient’s understanding of the causes of obesity and how obesity contributes to several disease attitude toward physical activity.
• Capacity to engage in physical activity
• Time availability for weight loss intervention
• Financial considerations.

In addition to considering these issues, the health care practitioner need to heighten a patient’s motivation for weight loss and prepare the patient for treatment. This can be done by enumerating the dangers accompanying persistent obesity and by describing the strategy for clinically assisted weight reduction. Reviewing the patient’s past attempts at weight loss and explaining how the new treatment plan will be different, can encourage patients and provide hope for successful weight loss.

Evaluation and Treatment: The general goals of weight loss and management are:

1. At a minimum, to prevent further weight gain
2. To reduce body weight
3. To maintain a lower body weight over a long period of time.

Weight loss maintenance: After successful weight loss, the weight loss maintenance consisting of dietary therapy, physical activity and behavioural therapy should be continued indefinitely.

Health promotion is the science and art of helping people change their lifestyle to move toward a state of optional health. Optimal health is defined as a balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual health. Lifestyle change can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, change relations and create environments that support good health practices.

Physical health concerns fitness, nutrition, medical self-care, control of substance abuse. Emotional health takes care of emotional crisis and stress management. Social health relates to communities, families and friends. Intellectual health addresses educational achievements and career development, spiritual heat explores love, hope and charity.

Health promotion is the first step in the hierarchy of preventive health care, the other steps being specific protection, early diagnosis and prompt treatment, limitation of disability and finally, rehabilitation. Health promotion involves educating and encouraging people to view health as desirable, to value it as a worthwhile asset and for them to know what they can do as individuals, to improve their own health.

At the personal level, the individual will be prepared to make the effort on such matters as compliance with medications, exercise, diet and discipline with regards to such habits as use of tobacco and alcohol. Corporate bodies and communities will be more prepared to allocate resources to matters relating to the health of its members while at the national level, policies will be instituted to make the desired changes in the health behaviour of the people highly motivating.

Goals Of Health Promotion

1. Adoption of healthy lifestyles and thus a healthier population;
2. Increased productivity as a result of healthier population;
3. Improved economy; and
4. Improved quality of life in terms of education, job opportunities and other social services.

For any health promotion strategy to be effective, it has to be aggressive, persuasive and convincing. Health promotion concerns activities and efforts, which are geared towards maintaining good health and promoting a healthy living. It involves enhancing those activites that are conducive to good health, avoiding those that are detrimental to health and reducing risk factors to health.