How Should They Be Taken - Weight Loss Medications: Obesity

Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School

How should they be taken?

The NIH guidelines make clear that weight-loss drugs should be used only in combination with lifestyle modifications. To lose weight over the long term, you need to recognize and change the behaviors that led to the weight gain. Otherwise, any weight you lose is likely to return.

Drug therapy works better when it's paired with an overall program of lifestyle change. A study published in 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that after one year, Meridia users who participated in a comprehensive counseling program that promoted a low-calorie diet and 30-minute daily walks lost twice as much weight as subjects who received counseling alone or Meridia alone.

Among its most important benefits, counseling can help establish realistic goals. The idea behind using weight-loss medications is to improve health and reduce disease risk, not to achieve an ideal body weight. A 5%–10% reduction in weight over time is one common goal. But even more modest weight loss helps. One study of women with obesity demonstrated that those who intentionally lost any amount of weight experienced a 40%–50% decrease in death from obesity-related cancers and a 30%–40% decline in death from type 2 diabetes.

Last updated:	June 20, 2007