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Dieting vs. Bypass

By Medstar

A new study helps people find the best route to weight loss. Dieting vs. Bypass

Published: Mon, November 05, 2007 - 11:16 am Last Updated: Mon, November 05, 2007 - 11:50 am

Is extreme weight loss possible, and long-lasting, without surgery? The News Five Medical Team reports on a study that's helping severely obese people lose weight while bypassing bypass surgery.
Ray Lehner is looking lean these days, but he used to look like a different person.
"I was unhappy about my weight, I mean it was impeding me in my job and running around after the kids."
At his highest, Ray weighed over 300 pounds. While diet plans initially worked, results didn't last.
"You can't continue to diet your whole life, there's no, you know there was nothing afterwards."
Ray enrolled in a pilot study at the University at Buffalo looking at alternatives to gastric bypass surgery.
"Individuals will not only learn more about themselves, but also how to live in the very difficult and toxic food environment in, in which we all live."
Limiting calories and boosting activity levels were essential to the program. but most important were changes in behavior.
"An opportunity to participate in a prolonged and aggressive behavioral change program, which is really, along with diet, at the center of our interventions."
Weekly meetings gave participants information and support.
"To learn more about themselves, their decision-making behaviors, how to cope with, with the environment, and not only in the initial weight-loss phase, but also during an extended period."
For Ray, the program vaulted him over a goal.
"The first time that I was able to get under 300 pounds, it was just like, great, okay, then i'm successful. and then all of a sudden it's like another ten pounds, and then another 20 and another ten."
A transformation that changed Ray's body, and his life.
Since his involvement in the pilot study, Ray has lost 152 pounds, dropping him from 337 pounds to 185. And he wasn't alone in weight loss success - Two others lost more than one-hundred pounds, with the average weight loss of participants at just over 50 pounds.

Fast Facts:
More than 64 percent of adults in the u.s. are overweight or obese. Up to five percent of Americans are morbidly obese.
At any given time, up to 40 percent of women and 24 percent of men report they are trying to lose weight.
More than 205,000 Americans will have bariatric surgery this year.
Researchers are testing the effectiveness of a long-term, non-surgical treatment program for weight loss in those who are morbidly obese.