Do you want to lose weight and keep it off?
Are you gaining weight even though you have not changed your diet?
Do you want to increase energy, balance hormones and feel like “you” again?
Whether you are overweight or of normal weight you should be aware of the impact bodycomposition has on your health. An unhealthy body composition refers to carrying too much fat in comparison to lean (muscle) tissue. As this ratio increases so do the health risks, and this often leads to obesity, inflammation, heart disease, high blood pressure & cholesterol, diabetes, hormone-related problems (eg. infertility), aches and cramp; pains, sleep problems, fatigue, depression, and more.
Dr. Marianna Ledenac, at GW Center for Integrative Medicine, is dedicated to improving your health, reversing chronic illnesses, and helping you lose weight while improving your body composition.
Change Your Health with our FirstLine Therapy Program
FirstLine Therapy (FLT) is an evidence-based therapeutic lifestyle program unlike any other, to help you lose weight and improve health.
Dr. Ledenac provides a professionally supervised and personalized lifestyle medicine plan which incorporates a sensible eating plan, regular exercise, targeted nutritional supplementation and stress management.
The primary goal of FLT is to achieve and maintain a healthy body composition (losing fat while preserving or improving muscle). This leads to better health, decreased risks of more serious health problems, and increasing your chances of keeping the weight off (permanent weight loss).
Improving body composition decreases inflammation and helps to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, balances blood sugar and insulin (pre-diabetes and diabetes), promotes better hormone balance, and reduces aches and pains.
Many popular weight loss programs available today focus on weight loss and do not place much attention to improving body composition. The problem with this is the weight that’s lost comes primarily from muscle and not from fat. Loss of muscle mass is associated with accelerated aging and declining health. Having a normal BMI or being thin doesn’t necessarily mean health.
Dr. Ledenac incorporates body composition testing (measurement of body fat, lean mass, and other health indicators) as part of your assessment to allow for personalization of your program and tracking of progress.
The Support You Need to Succeed
FirstLine Therapy provides education, guidance, and tools in a format that patients can easilyunderstand and follow, for life.
It is structured with professional supervision to help you:
- Establish realistic, personalized goals to improve health and lose weight
- Monitor your progress and help you stay on track
- Learn how to eat and shop for healthy, nutritious foods that manage (not increase) cravings
- Exercise, relax and manage unhealthy stress
- Feel better and do more!
Many patients are able to achieve their goals in as little as 12 weeks on this program.
What Makes FirstLine Therapy Different?
What are the key reasons that make this program different from other conventional diet programs?
- FLT is physician supervised and recommended
- Dr. Marianna Ledenac, ND, Certified FirstLine Therapy Health Care Provider
- FLT is more than a weight loss program
- Best used as a first-line treatment for chronic disease.
- Designed to assess and improve body composition, not just weight or BMI.
- FLT Food Plan is different
- Helps patients maintain/improve lean muscle as they lose fat; this is necessary for permanent weight loss ~ loss of muscle results in reduced ability to burn calories, making it more difficult to maintain weight loss over time.
- Most programs are focused on low-fat diets or very limited/restricted diets but FLT focuses on eating the right kind of foods (proteins, fat, carbohydrates) in the right size and the right number of servings for each patient ~ it’s not a short-term diet, it’s an eating plan for life!
- Based on a modified Mediterranean diet that emphasizes low-glycemic eating to support healthy blood sugar management.
- Patients report less hunger, fewer cravings, more energy, and higher compliance than with other commonly recommended diets.
- Shown to be more effective than other diets in treating obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and hormonal imbalances.
- Demonstrated to be effective in multiple clinical studies
- Most programs lack clinical evidence of effectiveness.
- Clinical studies, including a multicenter trial at 3 respected universities, have demonstrated impressive results for metabolic syndrome patients with the FirstLine Therapy program.
Dr. Marianna Ledenac is a naturopathic physician providing comprehensive health care. She is also certified in Therapeutic Lifestyle Medicine helping patients to lose weight, improve their body composition, and prevent and reverse chronic disease with the FirstLine Therapy Program.
