Before the pandemic, I would have said that many people spend as many waking hours at work as they do at home. Now, many people spend a lot of time at home, and many people enjoy it (to a point). Studies tell us that engineering your environment is the most powerful action you can take to realize a change in your actions. While we speak of motivation, the power of habit and your surroundings are hard to overcome, so why not make it work for you instead of against you! We spen

Alcohol has somehow managed to take a significant place in our society. Primarily in the form of ethyl alcohol (ethanol), it has occupied an important place in the history of humankind for at least 8,000 years. In most Western societies, at least 90% of people consume alcohol at some time during their lives, and 30% or more of drinkers develop alcohol-related problems. Severe alcohol-related life impairment, alcohol dependence (alcoholism), is observed at some time during the

Stress: it seems to have become an omnipresent thing in so many people’s lives for the past two and a quarter years or more. While stress...

Yesterday, it hit me once again; I failed my patients. In April 2020, faced with the start of the Covid pandemic, school closures, and...

Obesity is a medical disease characterized by a chronic metabolic dysregulation of energy in which there is a higher than normal weight set-point that is defended by a host of metabolic adaptations. Obesity is a worldwide problem that causes not only medical consequences but also may cause disturbances in psychosocial functioning. This may be due to weight bias and stigmatization in part or whole.

Losing weight and keeping it off is difficult enough for many reasons. Add to the intrinsic difficulty the mixed messages people get, the...

Congratulations! You have now gotten down all of the integral parts of weight loss! Look at all of the wonderful things you are doing:

Congratulations! You are on Week 7 and half way through a 12 week program. This is a fun week. We are going to celebrate your victories! You have had many of them already and it is hard! Recognition and positive thinking is crucial for the adversity acceptance it takes to do something hard. We are all doing something difficult, swimming upstream and going against the grain. It is not easy, but it is worth it, and let’s see why!

Congratulations! You are on your sixth week of your program! If you are doing a 12 week program, which is typical for women losing about...

Congratulations! Each week, you are getting closer to your goal! You have completed two weeks of a very low calorie diet/protein sparing...

Congratulations! You have made it through Week 1, or Adapting Week! The first week can be the hardest with physical symptoms. If you experienced more challenging “keto flu” or withdrawal symptoms, do not be disheartened. It is not portending what is to come. The goal of the first week was to get into nutritional ketosis, and to simply follow your plan, usually having 5 medical foods per day, spaced evenly throughout the day, usually at 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm and 7 pm, and to

Mindset is possibly the most important part of a health and wellness plan. Unfortunately, self-blame, shame and guilt have been conditioned into the mindset of many people via ongoing exposure to various sources such as weight stigma and bias, the media, saboteurs, and other factors. Overwhelmingly, studies show that when people either feel negatively about their weight or receive negative messages about their weight, it typically results in an increase in unhealthy behavior

The Perfect Week

During the Fall Challenge, you have been asked to do "Color My Day" to win an entry to a drawing. But, that is only the tip of the iceberg of what the app we use can do. Today, I will show you what a fully completed profile on the app can do to enhance your health program.

It is week 2 of the Fall Challenge. Congratulations to everyone who has decided to invest some space in your brain, time, and life to take care of yourself. The Fall Challenge is based on engagement with the Color My Day portion of the HealthTrac app. A video on how to do this was sent out to everyone signed up for the challenge and is posted here on the website. The Color My Day is a holistic way of looking at weight management. It does not just look at “calories in, calori