If you decide to become one of our medical weight loss patients, your first visit will include the completion of your paperwork, a weight and body fat analysis, measurments, a "Before" picture and meeting with Dr. Gates or one of his trained and trusted midlevel providers (a Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant). Your first visit will last an hour. One of the keys to Dr. Gates' weight loss plan is taking the time to get to know you and your individual struggles with weight over the years. Dr. Gates also looks closely at what you eat on a daily basis in order to give you lifestyle recommendations. Reviewing your history and answering your questions takes up the largest portion of this first visit.

Following your initial visit, you will be scheduled for a one-week follow-up visit with the doctor. This second visit is at no additional charge to you. Dr. Gates feels that it is important to check on you to make sure that you are doing well with the medication (if you choose to use it) and also answer any questions that were not answered during the initial visit. The first week of your weight loss program will be the most difficult and also the most exciting.

Your medications will be dispensed in the office at the conclusion of your visit. The appetite suppressants are included in our fees.

If all is well after your follow-up visit, you will then visit with the doctor once a month. We encourage you to stop by once a week and step on our scale and allow us to check your blood pressure, but these "weigh ins" are at your convenience and not mandatory. The length of your attendance at Scale Solutions is completely up to you - there are no contracts to sign here. Some people come for one or two months and are able to reach their goal weight. Some need to stay longer, but ultimately the choice is yours. Dr. Gates has excellent long-term weight loss results because of all of the learning and lifestyle changes that are advocated here. However, if a former patient needs to come back after a period of time away from our program, they need only to call and schedule an appointment and we put them back on the program where they left off. There are no "re-entry" fees here, other than our standard monthly fees. We recognize that maintaining a slim figure is a lifelong work for almost everyone. While being at your goal weight is quite a motivator to maintain lost weight, Dr. Gates encourages all of his patients to come back in if they find the scale tipping upward again. Five pounds is much easier to take off than 50.

Because we book an hour of Dr. Gates' time for you when you call to schedule your initial visit, it is very important for you to respect his time and show up for this appointment or have the courtesy to cancel it so that someone else can have it. When you book your initial visit, a Scale Solutions employee will take your name and two phone numbers. Two business days before your appointment, you will receive a phone call on both phone numbers. If we do not get you in person, the message will ask you to please call us and confirm that you will make it to this appointment. You will be given until noon the business day before your appointment to confirm that you are coming. If we do not hear back from you by noon the business day before your appointment, your time will be given to someone on our waiting list. If for any reason you do not get a message from us, you are still required to confirm this appointment.