Obesity Management in Family Practice

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Obesity as a Chronic Disease

   Pages 1-14

3. The Obesity Bias

   Pages 15-22

4. Dietary Tools

   Pages 23-36

5. Physical Activity

   Pages 37-47

6. Childhood and Adolescent Obesity

   Pages 48-67

7. Pharmacotherapy

   Pages 68-76

8. Bariatric Surgery

   Pages 77-86

9. The First Appointment: Explaining the Process

   Pages 87-100

10. The Second Appointment: Dietary Intervention

    Pages 101-112

11. The Third Appointment: Behavior Modification and Physical Activity

    Pages 113-122

12. Monthly Monitoring and Long-Term Maintenance

    Pages 123-133

13. Back Matter

    Pages 134-139

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The acknowledgment that obesity is a disease—a disease with enormous impact on both the public health and the economy and an incredible burden to its victims—has ?nally come. This ?nal recognition will hopefully free research dollars and will encourage third party payers to understand the need to cover services for treatment. Dr McKnight is an honored family medicine educator who combines his sense of academic rigor with the understanding of a compassionate family p- sician. Thus he approaches this clinical syndrome in the manner of a family physician: he aims to have an effect on the entire person and that person’s life, not just some disease entity. His broad-based approach draws on behavioral strategies, diet and exercise modi?cation, and limited use of pharmaceuticals in selected cases. The practical tools presented here will prove to be valuable ad- tions to the armamentarium of care teams that look to develop treatment plans for their patients with this disease. I myself have been obese as long as I can remember. I am the son of obese parents and my sister has shared this chronic problem. Over my lifetime I have dealt with almost all of the problems of obesity, and I have used all of the excuses. I have dealt with many obese patients during my years in practice, some who have said openly that they chose me as their physician because I really couldn’t tell them to lose weight, since I could not myself.

• care
• management
• obesity
• treatment

• Freeport Family and Preventive Medicine, Freeport, USA

  Thomas L. McKnight

Policies and ethics