Surgery and Weight Loss Pills Better Than Diet Reveal Obese and Overweight Americans

An Internet survey found that most obese and overweight Americans choose weight loss surgery and weight loss pills over diet and exercise.

Analysis of responses of around 39,000 respondents to the National Health and Wellness Survey found that obese and overweight Americans reported greater overall satisfaction with weight loss surgery and weight loss medication. According to the respondents, diet, exercise and other self-modification methods do not provide satisfactory results, indicating diet and exercise alone don't work well.

"Drug treatment and bariatric surgical procedures should be considered an integral part of weight management for eligible patients to achieve better treatment satisfaction, which may in turn help patients achieve and maintain better long-term weight loss," said Z. Jason Wang, PhD, the study's principal investigator and director of Health Economics and Outcomes Research at Eisai in Woodcliff Lake, N.J.

In this study the researchers analyzed survey responses of 22,927 obese adults. The survey also included 19,121 obese or overweight adults, of which 44 percent were women, who reported having at least one weight related health problem.

The researchers noticed that 58.4 percent of the obese adults were not taking any measures to reduce weight. The results highlight an urgent need to educate the public about the negative health consequences of obesity as well as the importance of discussing the problem with a health care specialist.

Among those who wanted to lose weight, 2.3 percent underwent a weight loss surgery like gastric bypass or laparoscopic gastric banding. Else they were taking some prescribed weight loss medication.  These people were put in a group called 'Surgery/Rx'. The remaining 39.3 percent of the obese respondents used other self-modification methods.

Nearly 39.3 percent of the people from the Surgery/Rx group reported being happy with their weight loss method and just 20.2 percent of those using self-modification methods said they were happy.

Among the overweight participants, 44.4 percent from the Surgery/Rx group said they were extremely satisfied with the treatment when compared to 19.7 percent of those using self-modification,

The results were presented Saturday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society in Chicago.