Gone are the days of obsessive calorie counting, fad diets, and exhaustive workout routines. These strategies for weight loss usually don’t create lasting positive results for you. Instead, you just experience a burnout that leaves you feeling discouraged and hopeless. That’s because those methods aren’t designed with you in mind.
At Dogwood Face & Body, we take a personalized approach to weight loss, because we understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
When you visit our weight loss clinic in Waxhaw, our programs include behavioral coaching, nutritional guidance, and weight loss injections like semaglutide. We can tailor each of these, and combine them as needed, to meet your specific needs.
Our team wants to help you succeed on your weight loss journey with a treatment plan designed with you in mind. Before we explain how we make that happen, let’s address 2 very important questions.
First Important Question: What is Medical Weight Loss?
Before we explain the process for losing weight at Dogwood Face & Body, let’s define medical weight loss. This is a supervised program designed to support lasting weight loss and results through tailored treatment plans.
That means you always have guidance and support throughout your weight loss journey, even once you reach your weight loss goals.
Second Important Question: Why Can’t I Lose Weight On My Own?
All too often, weight loss ends up as a solo journey filled with guesswork, restrictions, and perseverance.
Deciding to trust a dedicated team to offer nutritional support, exercise guidance, and prescribe weight loss injections is an incredibly personal choice. We don’t take it lightly, and neither should you.
One thing we teach patients at our weight loss clinic in Waxhaw is that struggling with weight loss does not mean that you lack the willpower. Many things contribute to your weight, some of which lie outside of your control. Here are a few examples.
Genetic Predispositions
Your genes define you. While most often recognized for determining your hair and eye color, genes also influence your appetite, metabolism (the process of breaking down food into energy), your cravings, and body-fat distribution.
With that in mind, losing weight gets far more difficult for patients with genetic predispositions for obesity.
Hormones
Insulin, glucagon, leptin, and ghrelin are all hormones that influence your appetite, blood sugar levels, and sense of fullness (satiety). Reproductive hormones, like estrogen and androgens, determine your body fat distribution.
Changes in any of these hormones may lead to obesity by impacting metabolism and appetite and promoting fat storage in areas like the abdomen and lower body. In addition to medical weight loss, we also offer hormone replacement therapy to restore and replenish your body’s estrogen and testosterone levels.
Mental Health
All of your body’s systems connect, so your physical health can impact your mental health, and vice versa. Stress, anxiety, depression, fear, even boredom can cause you to grab your favorite high-calorie, sweet, or fatty comfort snacks.
We recognize this as emotional eating, and it can lead to an unhealthy cycle: you feel stress, eat, regret your decision, feel bad, eat again—and it goes on.
This is one of the many reasons why we guide and support you throughout this journey at our weight loss clinic in Waxhaw. Trying so hard to accomplish your goals and not seeing any results can cause you to lean on emotional eating as a source of comfort or distraction. We encourage you to be patient, because weight loss results often take time to show. But in the meantime, you’re learning healthier habits and optimizing your overall health.
For some patients, we may recommend regular or semi-regular appointments of Exomind, a mental health treatment that improves neural connectivity and retrains your brain to process emotions and thoughts more constructively.
This can especially help with emotional eating because it targets areas of the brain linked to self-control and emotional regulation.
If Holistic and Traditional Methods of Weight Loss Don’t Work for Me, What Will?
So what should you do if your genetics and hormones encourage fat storage and make weight loss difficult? It seems like you only have 3 realistic options:
❌ Keep trying on your own
❌ Just give up
✅ Get the expert support that you need
At our weight loss clinic in Waxhaw, we offer 2 medical weight loss injections: semaglutide and tirzepatide.
Both of these FDA-approved medications work by suppressing your appetite to help you maintain a calorie deficit, when you burn more calories than you consume.
These medications started as treatments for type-2 diabetes by stimulating insulin production and regulating blood sugar levels. Now, we recognize them for their ability to help patients from all walks of life lose weight sustainably.
Semaglutide
Semaglutide works by mimicking the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) hormone produced in your pancreas and small intestine.
As you eat, your body releases the GLP-1 hormone to signal to the brain you’re full and should stop eating. As the mimicking effect essentially “tricks” your brain into feeling satisfied with less food, you can maintain a calorie deficit more easily than if you try on your own with traditional methods.
In addition to regulating blood sugar levels and increasing your feeling of fullness, weight loss injections also slow the digestion process, keeping food in your stomach longer. Because of this function, you feel less compelled to snack between meals.
Tirzepatide
Tirzepatide works similarly to semaglutide, only it also mimics the glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP) hormone. Tirzepatide stimulates insulin to manage blood sugar and slows stomach acid to digest food more slowly. By mimicking both the GLP-1 and GIP hormones, it further stabilizes your blood sugar while also reducing hunger.
What to Expect From Semaglutide and Tirzepatide
Semaglutide and tirzepatide require weekly injections on the same day each week in one of the following areas:
- Abdomen
- Thigh
- Upper arm
We teach you how to self-administer these medications at our weight loss clinic in Waxhaw. You can expect to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week from these medications and our other lifestyle and behavioral coaching.
What to Expect From Our Weight Loss Clinic
Whether or not we decide that weight loss injections would help you, you can expect these steps from visiting our weight loss clinic.
Consultation
The road to a healthier you doesn’t start with a diet—it starts with a conversation. Our team takes the time to get to know you; reviewing your medical history; understanding your past attempts at weight loss; and discussing your current diet, physical activity, and other aspects of your lifestyle.
We also introduce ourselves to you. We explain the full process, our past successes in supporting weight loss, and how we will personalize and tailor a plan for you.
Behavioral Coaching
We offer behavioral coaching to take the guesswork out of weight loss. Every patient receives this service, making it easier to navigate new, healthy habits and lose weight.
Our guidance includes nutritional support, which teaches you the importance of replacement rather than restricting. Certain food groups, like fats and carbohydrates, get a bad reputation, and many so-called “experts” tell you to cut them from your diet.
At our weight loss clinic in Waxhaw, we teach you which fats (like avocado, nuts, and olive oils) and carbs (like whole grains, fruits, and legumes) can benefit your overall health, reduce your risk of heart disease, and give you energy to fuel your exercises.
We also give tips for starting and sustaining an exercise routine. Unlike ineffective “get fit quick” programs, we teach you to start with light aerobic exercises and gradually work your way up to high-intensity interval training and strength-training to help you lose weight and develop lean muscles.
Ongoing Care
We don’t just supply you with your weight loss injections and a list of tips and tricks to lose weight and then leave you to fend for yourself. We take this journey together, so we support you every step of the way.
Body Contouring
Along with our weight loss services, we also offer body contouring treatments like Emsculpt NEO. Weight loss doesn’t solely mean fat loss. When you lose weight, you often lose muscle and water along with it.
While our exercise recommendations can help you maintain and build muscle mass while targeting fat, our body contouring treatments help expedite the results. When you approach or reach your goals at our weight loss clinic in Waxhaw, Emsculpt NEO enhances those improvements.
This technology simultaneously builds muscle and reduces stubborn fat in the treatment area, giving you a more sculpted and toned appearance. Emsculpt NEO uses radiofrequency energy to damage and destroy fat cells while boosting collagen to firm skin.
At the same time, high-intensity focused electromagnetic (HIFEM) energy induces up to 20,000 muscle contractions in a single 30-minute session—exercising and building your muscles far more intensely and rapidly than you could in a gym.
After a series of 4 to 6 sessions, you’ll notice improved muscle tone, tighter skin, and reduced fat.
Maintaining Your Results
While we give you the guidance and support to lose weight, the duration of your results hinges on your lifestyle.
If you continue to make healthy choices regarding diet and exercise, you can expect to maintain your new weight. When patients using weight loss injections wish to discontinue their treatment, we can discuss a dosage reduction plan and offer them tips to adapt their diet to their new appetite.
Find Success With Support
You don’t have to go on this journey alone. When you trust our team, we make weight loss feel attainable through our guidance and support.
To start your tailored plan at our weight loss clinic in Waxhaw, request an appointment to meet with one of our providers.
You can also get started from the comfort of your own home with our treatment planning tool. Once we receive your submission, a member of our team will reach out with available appointment times.
