Losing weight is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. But many people find themselves weighing more at the end of the year than before they made their resolutions. Why? Most people don’t keep their resolutions for very long, if at all. Or they realize that they just can’t make changes alone without an adequate support system or buddy.

Another reason most people fail is that they don’t have a plan. One survey revealed that nearly 80% of people who make resolutions have no plan whatsoever to help them accomplish their goals. It’s hard to get where you’re going if you have no idea how you’ll get there.

And if there is a plan? When it comes to weight loss, many people are attracted to plans that promise little effort and minimal changes—but ultimately deliver very few results.

But the greatest fault with a resolution for weight loss is that it isn’t a very good resolution at all.

Making a Better Resolution–
What’s wrong with a resolution to lose weight? It won’t help anyone make the long-term goal of getting healthier. Because losing weight isn’t the way to better heath—losing FAT is. The composition of your body—the ratio of unhealthy fat versus the ratio of lean tissue (such as muscle)—is a much better indicator of your state of health. It’s possible, especially as a person ages and gradually begins to lose muscle, to be a “healthy” weight and still be “overfat” and unhealthy.

Most dietary programs are focused on losing weight only, which may require an extreme reduction in food intake—not eating fat, not eating carbohydrates, or just plain not eating much of anything at all. With these diets, success is based primarily on will power. And they can cause the body to go into starvation mode and store fat, resulting in weight loss from muscle. Losing weight? Yes. Getting healthier? Probably not.

A Better Plan & Support System
FirstLine Therapy isn’t just a weight loss program. It’s an effective, clinically tested “theraputic lifestyle change” program that helps patients lose fat and reach their goal of better health. FirstLine Therapy incorporates a clinically designed dietary plan and simple exercise recommendations, along with personalized medical foods and nutritional supplements, to help patients reach better health without medication.

Most importantly, FirstLine Therapy teaches healthy habits that are easy to integrate into any lifestyle. So people can be working towards better health every day—not just thinking about it as each New Year begins.

Eating for Life
The FirstLine Therapy eating program teaches patients they need to eat—and to eat frequently. But the focus is on eating the right kind of foods, the right kind of fat, and the right kind of carbohydrates. The diet is designed to maintain stable blood sugar and energy levels.

Patients report less hunger, more energy and higher compliance with the FirstLine Therapy eating plan than with commonly recommended lowfat diets. FirstLine Therapy uses a low-glycemic diet, which has been demonstrated more effective than lowfat diets in treating obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Addressing Health Conditions
FirstLine Therapy is a therapeutic lifestyle change (TLC) program that is best used as a first line treatment for conditions like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, metabolic syndrome, and many others. It addresses the underlying causes of these common chronic disorders—not just the symptoms the program also addresses stress management—a vital component missing from many plans. Stress activates the fight-or-flight response, the body's involuntary response to a threat or heightened emotional situations, or just trying to do too many things for too many people in too little time. The stress response releases cortisol (among other hormones) that can increase appetite or cause “stress eating” with a craving for sweets, simple carbohydrates, and high calorie and high fat foods that make insulin levels spike and then dramatically drop—leaving one tired and hungry again. Cortisol also causes the storage of fat around the abdomen in preparation for the next high stress situation. This “stress fat” can even happen with a healthy diet—increasing the risk to heart disease and diabetes. Managing stress is, therefore, an important component of a healthy lifestyle

Many national health organizations, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recommend TLC as a first line treatment for chronic conditions associated with unhealthy lifestyles. And FirstLine Therapy has been demonstrated to be effective in controlled clinical trials and investigational case management studies.

Planning for Success
This year don’t just make a resolution for better health—make it happen with a little TLC and FirstLine Therapy!