How Can The Wellness Alliance Help Me With My Obese Patients?

The Wellness Alliance is a multi-disciplinary weight treatment program, serving obese patients through a holistic approach to weight loss and healthier living. We use long-term behavioral therapy combined with a medically-supervised diet. Our team of physicians, behaviorists, dieticians, therapists and exercise physiologists work to help obese patients lose and maintain their weight in a chronic conditions model. Patients understand that even if they lose weight, they will always be an obese person in a thinner body and at risk for regain. We work closely with our patients during times of relapse and offer the opportunity to adopt the skills they need to meet the challenge.


One of the first principles participants learn is that "weight loss is not the cure for obesity." Effective lifetime weight management requires absorbing new concepts of nutrition, activity and conflict-resolution, then using a new battery of problem-solving skills to implement and shape new behaviors.

Most commercial diet centers only focus on the diet providing some combination of products - special foods, supplements, lectures and so on. Few, if any, actually offer a program that identifies and changes the behaviors that contribute to the patient being overweight in the first place. Our program helps patients overcome the avoidance and denial that have made and kept them overweight. While patients lose weight they receive professional help and are held accountable for their actions. Clinical studies have shown that accountability and behavioral counseling are effective tools in weight loss and they are the cornerstone of our program.

After reaching goal weight, our aftercare program, known as “Skills” allows patients to practice weight management skills with support, guidance and accountability, which includes new challenges like adapting activity to the weather or the complex situations that tend to occur around food during the holidays, vacations and social events. Data from follow-up studies show that the most successful long-term maintainers of lower weight bodies complete a minimum of 12-18 months in Skills before reducing the frequency of their weekly contact. Over 90% of those patients who stick with the entire program are successful in avoiding regain long-term.