Weight Loss Is No Longer Impossible. Here’s How This Philly Program Helped Patients Get Their Ideal Body Back

A new program is getting attention from Philadelphians for its ability to get you back on track—and help you acquire the right habits for long-term health in the process. Weight loss medication semaglutide has dominated headlines for its impact on your waistline, but there’s a lot more to do than simply take semaglutide if you want to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable way.

That’s the idea behind the semaglutide program at the Bucky Body Center, a four-month program that helps you get to your ideal weight, while giving you a better understanding of your body and teaching you how to keep it off for good. It combines analysis of your body composition with an exercise and nutrition program and controlled delivery of semaglutide, all through a comprehensive wellness center, to maximize the positive effects of the medication. It’s particularly important when you consider that changing body chemistry and lifestyles as we age can make losing weight difficult. The program is designed to help patients overcome that hurdle. 

“We say we’re doing medical weight loss right,” says founder Dr. Louis P. Bucky. “We want them to lose weight in a healthy fashion, and that means selectively losing fat and preserving their muscle and strength.”

The program is setting the bar for a healthy approach to semaglutide and attracting an increasing number of patients who want to get their health back on track. We spoke to patients in the program to find out how it’s offering a level playing field when it comes to weight loss.

The Beginning of the Journey

Before she signed up for the program, Philadelphia resident Kaitlyn* went through an 18-month, Stage II cancer battle. Some patients gain weight as a result of cancer treatment, due to the medications that they’re put on, as well as difficulty exercising and eating well during that challenging period. As a result, Kaitlyn, once her cancer treatment was successful, felt a need to get back to her old self again.  

“I wasn’t feeling good about myself during this time,” Kaitlyn says. “I had put on 25 to 30 pounds.” Having started working with the Bucky Body Center during her cancer treatment for their lymphatic drainage program, she trusted them as medical experts who could help her with weight loss.

“I knew this was going to be a safe way for me to lose weight. I knew Dr. Bucky, and he knew my background. And they have on-site nurses who I know and trust as well,” Kaitlyn says. Five months into her remission, she sat down for a consultation. 

The first step in healthy weight loss is to understand your body, and Kaitlyn found that the Bucky Body Center has a unique advantage. In addition to an initial blood test panel, their Dexa Scan system analyzes your body composition at the start of the program to tell you what and where you need to lose. Visceral fat, which is a deeper, more unhealthy kind of fat, may take longer to lose, for example, while maintaining and even increasing lean muscle is important for both weight loss and long term health.

This level of understanding and control, when combined with the careful, measured application of semaglutide, can help overcome any deficiencies your body may have in its ability to burn calories, which can be caused by factors ranging from genetics to age. 

“I was working out regularly, but I was struggling with perimenopausal weight gain,” says Kim, a nurse living in the Philadelphia area who also went through the Bucky program. “You can reduce your calorie intake and still be doing high-intensity interval training and weights, and you still just gain weight.” 

The approach doesn’t just benefit your waistline. The overall aim is to improve your well-being, something that Bucky starts working on from the very first sit-down. Bucky medical staff help their patients understand their unique composition, and create a custom plan to maximize their results. They also sit down with the patient to discuss their goals at length in relation to where they are, what’s possible, and what will be expected of them. 

“They actually shared clinical studies with me that showed me the cardiac benefits from being on semaglutide. As a nurse, I really appreciated that,” Kim says. 

“I spent a good hour talking with them about what my goals were, and they took the time to make sure this was right for me,” Kaitlyn adds.

The discussion doesn’t end there. The program helps you with regular check-ins that function to track how you’re responding to the medication, how your habits are changing, and acts as an opportunity for the medical team to offer support in your journey. 

Across four months, that process plays out with life-changing results. 

Groundwork for a Better Body

The successful execution of a plan to optimize your body takes a lot of different parts, and that’s where Bucky Body Center’s status as a comprehensive center for wellness comes to the fore. 

The key to Kim’s success was their on-staff nutritionist. The semaglutide may have eased her need to eat, but she still had to take in the right nutrients to get her body in healthy shape. To maintain lean muscle, her nutritionist created a diet based around high-quality protein, with scrambled eggs in the morning and a plant-based protein shake during the day to fit her busy schedule as a nurse. 

“She helped me clean up certain aspects of my diet, even though, as a nurse, I was already eating pretty healthy,” Kim says. “When I plateaued, she helped me break through the plateau.”

Bucky also closely monitors your intake of semaglutide, gradually ramping up over time before weaning you off, as needed. That helps avoid any significant side effects from the drug , and if symptoms like nausea do occur, Dr. Bucky can prescribe medication until your body adapts.

“We decided to start very low and very slow on the adjustment of the medication. And that really was very helpful because I never felt sick,” Kim says. “And I never needed the full dose because I kept losing weight.”

Working It Out

It is critical to maintain muscle mass during the weight-loss process, therefore protein intake and resistance training are two important factors to maintain muscle mass. Each patient has an option for a trainer, or the ability to use their own exercise program, or both–as long as they have a plan to maintain muscle. Lean muscle helps you burn calories, but it’s also important for longevity and well-being. Kim’s trainer applied a type of exercise called functional pattern movement, focused on building up lean muscle that would help her balance–muscles that she had never consciously worked out before.

“It’s focused on your ancillary muscles so that as you age, they’re able to recover faster, and your body is better able to avoid injuries,” Kim says. “By the end of the program, my family doctor was shocked that I had gained muscle mass while losing weight.”

The Bucky Body Center has technology and treatment programs that complement and enhance weight-loss. Cryotherapy, in which you stand in extreme cold for a short duration, can burn up to 600 calories and reduce inflammation. Red light therapy and compression therapy also reduce inflammation, using advancements in sports medicine to help you get more out of your workout. In addition they have skin tightening technologies like Morpheus8 Burst and Evolve that can improve your appearance while losing weight.

“The Body Center technologies help break down fat over the course of the program,” Kim says. The program is designed to negate or limit any side effects, such as the infamous “Ozempic face”, a result of too-rapid fat and muscle loss. But Kim notes that Bucky makes a point of checking in on skin tightness throughout, as well as after the completion of the program, so that she felt if she ever needed skin-tightening services, she could access them at the center.

“If you really have a concern, or you’ve lost some volume in your face, they’ve got four or five people that can tell you on this high, professional level what you might be able to do about that in a very natural way,” Kim says. 

The Impact

The results are not just significant in the short term. Kim and Kaitlyn both lost large amounts of weight (Kim lost more than 50 pounds, while Kaitlyn got back to her pre-cancer weight). But more importantly, they’ve kept it off. 

“My one fear at the outset was, am I going to put it back on when I’m off it?” Kaitlyn says. “But they were very clear–they’re gonna give you a jumpstart on this, but this is your chance to create healthier habits.”

Those healthier habits are important for their long term health. But their return to the body they feel best at is something that impacts their life everyday. For Kim, she gets regular compliments for her weight loss–or her patients ask if she’s had facial contouring. Simple everyday activities like going upstairs are easier.

“I feel like I’m 35 again,” she says. For Kaitlyn, it’s about being back to where she was prior to cancer–feeling like her old self again. Now, she’s committed to those healthy habits she learned.

“I want to continue down this path–I don’t want to put bad things back in my body. They gave me the tools, now it’s up to me to keep it up,” Kaitlyn says. “I’m feeling good, and I want to continue feeling good.”

*Name has been changed to protect anonymity. 

This is a paid partnership between Bucky Body Center and Philadelphia Magazine