For reasons we can’t quite figure out, there are very few offices like ours in the country.  Heartland Weight Loss is a doctor’s office where we focus on a subspecialty of medicine – but instead of specializing in lung disease (pulmonology) or heart disease (cardiology), we focus on excess weight and metabolic health (obesity medicine).  The science of medicine tells us that excess weight is a symptom of a deeper problem – something called cardiometabolic dysfunction.  We work on diagnosing the underlying problem(s) by taking a thorough history and gathering data (labs, measurements, body composition analysis) then we use a variety of tools gathered from the disciplines of nutrition, pharmacology, and psychology to craft a treatment strategy.  We take a comprehensive approach and work well upstream of the problem of excess weight. We often use FDA-approved anti-obesity medications, but they are not a required part of treatment.  We do not perform bariatric surgical procedures.

We won’t know this until we get there! Everybody is unique and everyone’s weight-loss journey is individual. During active weight loss, we typically see you monthly to manage the medical interventions pillar of comprehensive treatment. For optimal results, we encourage you to engage with specialists managing the other pillars of treatment as well. Once we get close to weight stability, you and the clinical team will determine the best way to loosen the reigns without causing all of your hard work to come toppling down. Our goal is to get you to regular yearly checkups – although everyone reaches that goal on their own timeline.

That’s difficult to answer without taking you down a hundred rabbit holes. Excess weight (abnormal fat storage) is usually the symptom of a much deeper metabolic problem. Until we can get that problem corrected, efforts to lose weight are rarely going to be successful. Rather than try to starve you again (most of our patients have tried that many, many times), we work upstream to correct the underlying problem. Although the process is often fairly simple, it’s rarely easy to execute. The world around us isn’t set up to help us make lifestyle changes and implementing the necessary changes can often be a difficult process. It requires tremendous support – medical, emotional, and psychological. Often, adding an anti-obesity medication to these other support pillars can make the lifestyle changes much easier to implement.

Although we would love for that to happen, the world of health insurance simply isn’t ready for comprehensive obesity treatment.

Many plans specifically exclude visits focused on the treatment of excess weight.  Those that cover treatment often come with high copays/coinsurance requirements.

Many of our patients use FSA or HSA accounts – we are happy to provide you with an itemized receipt if you would like to submit your visits.

We believe quality obesity treatment should be affordable and accessible.  Dr. Younglove spends a lot of time and energy fighting for insurance coverage.  Someday the industry will catch up.

A $50 deposit is required to hold a new patient visit.  The remainder of the fee is due at the time of service.

Following your initial visit, we will set you up on a recurring monthly subscription for $165.  This covers your monthly visit, body composition analysis, messages/communication, and everything that happens behind the scenes in a medical office (including prior authorizations and appeals and all the other regulatory things that are required in medical offices today).

Having your payment process automatically allows us to devote all of the time you spend in our office focused on your clinical care – and allows us to handle the administrative tasks during other times.

You can cancel your care plan at any time.  You just have to let us know you are disengaging from treatment at least 72 hours before the payment is scheduled to process.

Missed appointments and those canceled/rescheduled less than 48 hours prior will incur a $50 no-show/late cancelation fee.

We would love that!  Many women navigating perimenopause and menopause struggle with weight gain.  Dr. Younglove is one of less than fifty physicians in the entire US that are dual board-certified in OB/GYN and obesity medicine – AND are menopause-certified!

Managing excess weight and managing menopause are both complex topics that require a deep dive – especially at the onset of treatment.  When seeing us for weight management, we spend 45 minutes digging into your weight history and crafting a treatment plan.

It’s a lot!

Perimenopause/menopause consults are also lengthy and require an entirely different set of questions and considerations to craft a treatment plan.

Although there is overlap in many of the lifestyle interventions we use to treat both conditions, ongoing management (especially medication management) for each requires dedicated time and energy.