Last week, we read about making over the home environment to be conducive to a healthy lifestyle, especially healthy food, limited screen types, good sleep hygiene, and a clutter-free environment. This week, we will talk about how to makeover your lifestyle to nurture more physical activity and less sedentary time. After all, “Sitting is the New Smoking” and humans do best when they are constantly lightly active. Ironically, the more active you are, the more energy you will h

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

Part of healthcare is preventative, or trying to keep people from getting sick, and another part is treatment once a person is sick or...

What is the link between depression and anxiety? If you are concerned about both, how do you address them both at the same time? Which came first? These are a few of the complex questions that many people face. Statistics show that about 43% of adults with depression have obesity (compared to all adults in America, of which 32% have obesity). Conversely, studies show that people with obesity have a 55% greater risk of developing depression. Thus, the relationship is said to b

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.

Very Low Calorie Diets using meal replacements have been well studied as a medical protocol for both non-surgical treatment of obesity and for the treatment or induction of remission of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. They have been shown to lead to new 15 to 20% weight loss with an excellent safety profile using medical screening, monitoring, and nutritionally fortified medical food formulas in studies such as this one .

For better or for worse, managing weight is a lifetime journey. Obesity Medicine is the specialty of diagnosing and managing the chronic...

Exercise is very exciting because it so quickly changes how you feel and how your body works. While all types of exercise provide...

“Managing Macros” is a relatively precise way of doing a nutrition plan using grocery store food. I am doing a blog on it to illustrate...

People with the chronic condition of overweight/obesity who have lost a significant amount of weight benefit from longitudinal care and...

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 finished your sprint and you and it is time to settle in for the endurance portion of this journey. I wish I could say that you have finished your journey and arrived at your destination, but, like many things in life, weight and health management takes ongoing time and attention. Think of it as a very special garden. Year in and year out, as seasons change, it takes tools, processes, and work to keep the weeds from strangling what you have sowed. Re

Congratulations! You are on week eleven! Keep in mind that while these blogs are written for a 12 week program, the length of your program may be shorter or longer than 12 weeks, and the blogs are applicable throughout the maintenance phase as well. The steps and progression are more important than the actual timeframe, since people are losing different amounts of weight, lose weight at different rates, and may need to take breaks during the weight loss phase or come back an

Congratulations! You have completed 9 weeks on a 12 week journey! You are three quarters of the way there! It is like mile 20 of a marathon, otherwise known as “The Wall“ in a marathon (so I have been told, since I have never run one). This when your legs feel like jello and you think there is no way your body can go farther. In weight loss, this is when you may feel like you are hitting a weight loss plateau. What is a plateau, and what should you do about it? Don’t despair,

You are doing great! You have completed 8 weeks of your program! By now, you probably have experienced significant weight loss and are feeling much better! You may be at the lowest weight you have been in a while, so any additional weight loss is getting below a weight you have been lately. This is great, but it can also lead some people to lose focus. Wherever you are in your journey, remember to keep “running your own race.” Many people, by now, notice that people around th

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!