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

Welcome! You have decided to change your health for the better and it is time to get started! You probably are feeling some excited anticipation but may also have some trepidation, uneasiness, or uncertainty. Some people feel like this is their last hope for losing weight, or like their health or life depends on losing weight. Whatever you are feeling, rest assured, it is normal, you are not alone, and I will guide you through this process and the follow up care. And, while i

New Year’s Day is a day of excitement for the future. There are many different traditions in different cultures and even different days on which New Year’s is celebrated. But, the sentiment is the same: we are all here and now and we have our future ahead of us. We have hope and aspirations for the best future possible. New Year’s resolutions, while sometimes getting a bad wrap, are based on the honorable desire to make a change for the better. How can that not be good? Rath

Today is December 25th, the date on which Christmas is celebrated. Many of you are opening gifts this morning that may be wrapped in...

Top Ten Things to Keep in Mind As You Plan Your Holidays

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

Obesity is a chronic disease characterized by dysregulation of energy within an individual. There are several types of obesity, with many different underlying causes and changes in different individuals, with an almost unlimited combination of factors when you take all the different variables into account. It is not as simples as “calories in, calories out”, or “low-carb”, or “excess insulin”, although each of these things is not wrong, either. Science is finally devoting res

My message in today’s blog is one of gratitude for the privilege of working with each and every one of you. It has been thirteen years...

Did you know that physical fitness is so important to your health that the American College of Cardiology recommends that it gets measured annually at a preventive visit as a “vital sign?” Physical fitness has been shown to be linked not only to the risk of getting sick, but to the risk of dying once you get sick. Physical fitness is a different parameter than BMI. Some people erroneously assume that a person’s physical fitness level inversely correlates with their BMI, or

The most commonly used metric to define obesity is the body mass index (BMI). Fortunately, weight for height, without accounting for the...

The Perfect Week

Don't worry, this is a good "new normal!" With an average weight loss of 22%, the question for most people who do the Rainier Medical...

Healthcare is made up of many decisions based on risk/benefit analyses. Many things go into each decision so there are many nuances and many different permutations to each decision. Whether to get a mammogram or not; and if so, how often? A colonoscopy or a stool card? A statin or not? A daily aspirin? Which vaccines? Which vitamins? Medication for bone density or stick with diet and exercise alone? One of these decisions that comes up a lot is whether or not to take a “stati

As the understanding of obesity progressess, research is continuing to look at the the underlying causes of differences in metabolism...

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.

As a Diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine, clinical practice guidelines of excellence call for not only treating the condition of overweight/obesity, but also for addressing the comprehensive healthcare needs individuals with this condition. After all, effective treatment for one thing loses its impact if a competing condition causes illness. Historically, this has emphasized ensuring people were up to date on routine health maintenance, as studies showed that

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

The 10 Week Fall Challange begins on Monday and I am so thrilled with the signups! I wanted tot take today for a pregame huddle and talk...

We have talked a lot about physiology within the body that causes energy dysregulation, but today we are dipping our toe into the subject...