Making permanent changes to your diet, physical activity and everyday habits is difficult. The presence of mental health disorders such as depression can make it even more challenging to develop that inner drive to lose weight and make healthy lifestyle changes. To put it into context, a quarter of patients with MASLD are affected by some level of depression and/or eating disorder.
As a result, helping patients engage in lifestyle modifying interventions to achieve weight loss requires identifying and managing any underlying mental health disorders in addition to considering strategies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT is designed to provide you with techniques and principles to modify your eating and physical activity habits.
Face-to-face counselling (minimum: 6 months or 12 sessions), telephone-based interventions (including follow-up telephone calls), and even mobile phone applications have been proven to help motivate individuals to lose weight and improve liver health.
Therapists will use techniques and concepts such as:
- motivational interviewing,
- collaborative therapy,
- acceptance and empathy,
- functional analysis of pros and cons,
- roll with resistance and
- support.
These have been shown to help individuals, particularly those who are obese, lose weight.
The goal is to be able to help you make permanent, positive diet and physical activity changes that you can maintain long-term.
