Reducing food intake and exercising more are essential for weight loss, but those steps alone are not always effective. For people living in and around Newport Beach, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Irvine, and Fountain Valley, California, board-certified internal medicine physician Wasim H. Raja, MD, at Orange County Healthcare Center provides weight-loss injections to help you reach your weight goals. The practice uses prescription medications like Ozempic® and Wegovy® to help people struggling to lose weight with diet and exercise alone. Call the office or book an appointment online to learn more about weight-loss injections.
If diets don’t work for you, weight-loss injections might provide the extra support you need to reach your goals.
To lose weight, you need to create a calorie deficit by reducing the amount of food you eat and increasing your physical activity. That sounds simple enough, but your body may not cooperate.
When you eat less, your body goes into survival mode, slowing your metabolism so you burn fewer calories and releasing hunger hormones so you want to eat more. Your body’s physiological response to your diet makes it difficult to follow long-term, which is why you (and so many others) struggle to lose weight and keep it off.
Dr. Raja understands the many obstacles people face when they try to lose weight and offers medical weight loss and weight-loss injections to support their efforts. He uses Wegovy, which is the brand name for a diabetes medication called semaglutide.
Wegovy is an FDA-approved weight-loss injection for adults with obesity — a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher — and overweight adults (BMI greater than 27) with weight-related medical challenges like diabetes or high blood pressure.
The weight-loss injections work by helping control your appetite.
Semaglutides, like Ozempic and Wegovy are weekly injections that act like the hunger hormone in your brain responsible for regulating your appetite, making you feel less hungry. The injection also slows digestion, so you feel full longer after eating.
You need to follow a reduced-calorie diet and exercise program when using Wegovy.
Weight loss results using weight-loss injections vary. However, you may lose up to 15% of your current body weight, which is about 38 pounds if you start at 250 pounds. How quickly you lose weight varies, but Dr. Raja recommends a steady rate of 1-2 pounds a week for long-term results.
Reaching your goal weight is difficult when you do it all on your own. Call Orange County Healthcare Center or book an appointment online today for professional help with weight loss and learn more about weight-loss injections.