Discovering Ground Breaking Secrets to Weight Loss

Are you stressed out over diet and exercise? Chances are you answered “yes” to that question. Americans are spending billions of dollars to be thinner and healthier, yet we’re larger than ever before and we’re suffering from weight-related diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol at alarming rates. J’Adore Magazine had a sit-down with the talented and successful Dr. Mignon Marquina to find out about overweight, obesity, and what are the myths of weight loss.

Dr. Mignon Marquina

J’Adore: Dr. Mignon Marquina, the word is out. You have a better, more effective way to lose weight and remain healthy. Your specialty is Bariatric Medicine. What exactly is Bariatric Medicine?

Dr. Marquina: Bariatric Medicine is the study and management of overweight and obesity. Within the field of bariatric medicine you have the non-surgical treatment of obesity and overweight and then you also have the surgical treatment of overweight and obesity. Even when people choose the surgical intervention to treat their obesity that treatment has to be complemented with some lifestyle behavior changes. So, people aren’t even off the hook if they get surgery. They still have to do the work of changing their nutrition and changing their lifestyle. That’s the only way the surgery’s going to work.

J’Adore: It seems that Americans are more overweight, even obese than ever before. In your professional opinion, why is it that so many people struggle with overweight and obesity?

Dr. Marquina: You know it’s very interesting. What I believe from the research is a part of the problem is inadequate eating habits and the fact that people are so busy today. People have very tight schedules. We are running around and we don’t take time to prepare our meals. As a result, we don’t know what we’re going to eat. We’ve been out of the house since 8 o’clock in the morning. We know we’re not going to be back until 7:00. We have no food with us. We haven’t planned anything. At 3 o’clock we’re usually starving and what’s available? Typically, what’s available is fast food. Healthier items, like salad, on fast food restaurant menus, frequently have the same calories as the general items on the menu. For example, there’s a particular fast food restaurant that offers the luxury of a salad. That salad has 700 calories, 300 of which are from fat. That’s the same calorie breakdown, including fat calories that you’d get in that restaurant’s cheeseburger.

J’Adore: Your patients have gotten truly amazing results with your weight loss procedures. Who is the prime candidate for your method of weight loss?

Dr. Marquina: You know that’s surprising. I’d say the average person I see in my office with complaints of being overweight or obese are women from age 30 to their 60’s. I see men in their 40’s.

J’Adore: Are a lot of young people, particularly teenagers, asking about bariatric procedures?

Dr. Marquina: I believe the teenagers are. You know the rate of obesity is also growing at an alarming rate among children and teenagers. Overweight and obesity are tied to self-esteem and self-identity at a young age. Children are also interested in learning about how to lose weight. There just aren’t a lot of realistic venues or methods for them to use to be able to incorporate lifestyle changes into their daily routines. But I am seeing that. Yes. I actually see an increase in the number of children seeking surgical interventions as well as diet.

J’Adore: You talked a bit about inadequate eating habits. What are some other issues that contribute to inadequate eating habits and how do these affect a person’s lifestyle?

Dr. Marquina: So again, because our lifestyle is heavily invested in how much time we spend at work and how much time we spend with our families, the average mother, the typical client spends most of her time taking care of her home, husband, children, and working at her job. She probably only spends 30 minutes on herself. Out of that 30 minutes, it’s not really preparing for her nutrition. She’s trying to get dressed and plan for those she cares for. The fact of the matter is since women spend so little time on themselves their lifestyle, health and nutrition, take a backseat to everything else. If you ask any mom when she takes time for herself, she’ll tell you that that’s the last thing she does. It’s at the end of her busy day. And even then, it’s just minimal. She doesn’t really get replenished. As mothers and typically women are nurturers, they tend to give and give and give. They give until their cup is half empty. At the end of the day they have nothing left in their cup to give to themselves. They end up very stressed out.

In my program, one of the things I teach women is how to strategize their lives. They need to become the number one priority in their lives. Not in a selfish way, but in a way that they’re able to take care of their own basic needs. It’s just like on an airplane when they say, “if there’s a sudden drop in cabin pressure, make sure you put your mask on first so you can take care of the people around you.” Using that same analogy, if women take better care of themselves first, they are more effective in everything they do. Part of taking good care of yourself is planning what you’re going to eat, when you’re going to eat and how you’re going to eat. If you plan that out the whole day tends to go a lot better.

J’Adore: There are standard interventions for people who desire to have a healthy weight and lifestyle like following the Food Pyramid and counting calories. Why don’t these methods work for many people?

Dr. Marquina: Now that’s an excellent question. What happens is we tend to hear from doctors, including nutritionists “follow the food pyramid” and “how many servings of this and that that we’re suppose to have on a given day”. There are several reasons why people aren’t able to set a goal when it comes to nutrition and maintain that goal. Here’s an example; if you decided to cut pizza out of your diet or chocolate cake out of your diet, if that’s your favorite thing to eat, you’re setting yourself up to be deprived. Anytime you deprive yourself, there’s going to be a day that your guard is down and you are going to binge. That’s just the way it happens. The same thing happens when the average smoker decides he’s going to quit. He sets a deadline to quit, but he’s not quite ready to stop smoking. On that very day he goes out and buys a pack of cigarettes.

This happens because in our mind we’re already beginning to feel deprived of something we enjoy. So we go and binge on it. Another reason is we have a complex relationship with food. People don’t eat purely because they’re hungry. People eat because they have an emotional need, they have stress, they’re unhappy, they’re lonely, and they’re bored, they’re sad, they’re frustrated. People eat for all of these very good reasons because from a really young age we learn that food feels good when it goes down. It looks good. It smells good. It appeals to almost all of our senses. It’s something we’re familiar with. It’s within our comfort zone. Generally, it’s within our zone of access. All of the foods that tend to be addictive (fast food, fatty foods, salty foods, French fries, fried foods, etc.) are quite accessible. It’s easy to grab something and sit in front of the TV and just eat it. Somehow it makes us feel better in the moment, while we’re eating. However, afterwards we have these negative feelings and associations. We say things like, “why’d I eat that?” or “I’m so stuffed I can’t even move,” but not at the moment that it’s going down. These feeling are usually not strong enough to deter us from doing it again. We can overstuff ourselves to the point that we feel bad or even horrible, but the food is so appealing that the next time we are presented with an opportunity to overeat like Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, we tend to overeat even though we know we’re going to sabotage our goals. There’s only one other situation that people do that. They’ll participate in something that makes them feel bad, derails them from achieving their goals, that deteriorates their health and maybe even prevent them from having relationships. It causes them to be isolated or it can result in them not being promoted or not performing well on the job. That situation is when someone is addicted to another substance like drug or alcohol abuse. The correlation between overeating and the behaviors associated with overeating are very similar to the behaviors seen in substance abusers. Sometimes people will stop abusing alcohol, tobacco, or drugs and go from that to overeating. It becomes just another thing in a chain of things that can satisfy us to a point, but it doesn’t quite fill us up. People will have a void in their lives, maybe sadness or a void and they’ll eat when they’re alone. It makes them feel better, but only for the moment. When they finish eating, they are now even more overweight than they were before and more socially isolated. It kind of feeds into a vicious cycle of overeating.

J’Adore: Please talk some more about our country’s Food Pyramid. Is the Food Pyramid is a tool that most people misuse and misunderstand or is it rather simple and effective to use?

Dr. Marquina: The Food Pyramid doesn’t work for many people. One reason is a person who is addicted to certain foods would continue to have that addiction if she followed the Food Pyramid. For example, a person addicted to carbohydrates is allowed like anyone else using the method, to have between 6 and 11 servings of bread, rice, or pasta per day. These are not the correct proportions for a person with a carb addiction. This would not be helpful or healthy for that particular person.

J’Adore: What segment of the population here in the United States is considered to be overweight or obese?

Dr. Marquina: Looking at data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2006, 32.4% of Americans 20 years old and older are overweight, 34.3% are obese, and 5.9% are extremely obese. According to that survey, these percentages were up from 33.4/13.9/0.9% respectively in 1960.

These are the facts, although Americans are spending over $30 billion per year on efforts to lose weight. According to a study of national costs attributed to both overweight (BMI 25-29.9) and obesity (BMI greater than 30), medical expenses accounted for 9.1 percent of total US medical expenditures in 1998 and may have reached as high as $78.5 million – $12.8 billion out of pocket (92.6 billion in 2002). Healthy weight individuals with diabetes, dyslipidemia, or hypertension had significantly greater medical expenditures than those without the respective condition (by $2000 – $3000) and obesity significantly exacerbated this effect (by $2000 – $3000 per year).

J’Adore: You are a pioneer in your specific method of weight loss management. What makes you different from you colleagues?

Dr. Marquina: The average doctors say, “eat less, exercise more.” The truth is, unless the patient has learned to eat differently and has changed her behavior about food, and sometimes it even requires that the patient think differently about herself, she’ll fall back into her comfort zone. Her comfort zone being the old habits, fast food, not bothering to cook or shop for the right things.

Back in the 1950’s, when people were slimmer, what was the average household doing? They were eating at home. Mom prepared breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The family sat at the table and talked to each other. The family related to each other and was connected over food. That’s what other people do around the world in a family setting. Today, we eat in the car and in front of the television. We don’t eat at the table. Half of the time when we’re eating there’s no connection. We’re trying to get people to be quiet so we can hear the TV, instead of re-connecting. We’re in the car or we’re on the phone.

What really happens in countries where the people are slimmer, even though they eat food that’s just as fatty or unhealthy is they eat for socialization. The food is just kind of an aside. When they finish eating, they walk home. American just sit and then we lay flat. That’s what is going to make us fat. We don’t burn enough calories.

What makes me different is I really take the time to find out what each patient’s issues are. If a person understands why she’s motivated to do what she does, she has a chance of restructuring how she thinks about food in a more productive way that doesn’t sabotage her personal goals. Everyone is an individual with individual reasons why his or her weight is what it is.

J’Adore: Let’s talk some about the physical and mental deterioration connected with people who are overweight and obese.

Dr. Marquina: Actually, it’s interesting you know, because there is a societal burden to being overweight and obese. Studies show that people who are overweight and obese don’t have the same opportunities for employment. They don’t get hired at the same rate or promoted at the same rate as people who are not overweight. They don’t even get raises as frequently as people who are not overweight or obese. There really is a bias. Overweight and obese people understand that the environment relates to overweight and obese people in a certain way.

J’Adore: You have a variety of weight loss programs. In addition to providing the right program to the patient, you also give crucial coaching to the individual. How does the aspect of coaching affect your patients’ health?

Dr. Marquina: The coaching is essential. Patients are able to make major life changes in 3 hours. We do this quickly. I give my patients things to do. It is a very honest inventory of where are you and what you need to do? I do this in a very positive way. In my process the patients look and feel great. It’s a great process to be a part of. They can reach their goal from 1 to 3 months depending on the program their on.

Coaching helps the patients who come to my office to take the time to see what it is that they want to happen in their lives and address parts of their life that may have been neglected. One major problem that overweight and obese people have is social isolation. Some of this starts when they are young and comes from their parents. These children just continue to get larger over time. There’s a greater rate of depression in people who are overweight. The mental burden is huge on these people. Coaching each patient is a crucial part of my process. I help people lose 10 to 30 pounds per month while eating real food.

J’Adore: There are chronic illnesses that are the result of obesity and being overweight. What are some of these diseases and how do they impinge on a person’s wellness and good health?

Dr. Marquina: Chronic illness is a very large mental and physical burden on overweight and obese people. Some of the associated conditions are: Hypertension, Type 2 DM, Coronary Artery Disease, Stroke, Heart Disease, Cancer (esophagus, kidney, endometrium, breast, colon/rectum), Sudden Death, High Cholesterol, Liver and Gallbladder Disease, Sleep Apnea, and Breathing Problems, Osteoarthritis (sometimes requiring total joint replacement), Wound Healing difficulties, Gynecological Problems (abnormal menstrual cycles, infertility), Depressed Mood, Hernias (and surgery to repair them), Carpal Tunnel Syndrome/Surgery (increased risk) Increased surgical risk when any type of intervention is required. Overweight and obesity break the body down. How many obese people live to be 75 or older?

J’Adore: I read somewhere that you “adjust a person’s taste buds to a healthier palate.” Would you explain a little about how this relates to long-term success with your weight loss programs?

Dr. Marquina: Essentially, if you’re used to having sugar or salty foods, your palate has to be re-set. These sugary and salty foods are addictive. I try to get people to a point where they understand the proper balance in life for themselves. Once the weight has been lost, I am able to switch them into a point of view where they can maintain their health and weight goals.

J’Adore: You have a fine reputation, Dr. Marquina, having been trained by the forerunners in their specialties at some of the world’s most prestigious medical schools.

Dr. Marquina: Stamford University School of Medicine and University of Southern California, department of Family Medicine.

J’Adore: Besides traditional Western cures, are there any alternative treatments that you use?

Dr. Marquina: Traditional Western doctors treat symptoms. Eastern medicines are not easily understood by Westerners. I use a blend of both Western and Eastern treatments. I spend an hour or an hour and a half with each patient. I approach weight loss from the level of where it’s the true problem. Mine is a two-prong approach. A patient has to change calorie intake and absolutely must have behavioral and thinking changes, as well.

J’Adore: Beverly Hills is fortunate to have you and your successful weight loss programs. You have changed the lives of thousands of patients by helping them attain their weight loss goals. What about people in other parts of the country and even the world? How can people who live on the East coast or Middle America get the help they need?

Dr. Marquina: Lots of people have found out about my weight loss programs and the techniques and strategies that I use. At this time, my offices are in Los Angeles. I have gotten calls from New York and all around the United States about the programs I employ. People are even calling from as far away as India. My goal is to train people around the world to do what I do. I have a lot of speaking engagements, seminars, and workshops set up. This is the easiest and fastest way for me to deliver at this time. As I go around the country people can connect with me.