For decades, the story most of us have been told is that weight is a matter of willpower. If we just tried harder – ate less, moved more, stayed disciplined – the problem would disappear. But people living with obesity know that this explanation doesn’t fit. The truth is more complicated, and far more hopeful. […]
Semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) isn’t a cure for obesity. Yes, most people who take them experience some weight loss, but the average effectiveness is 15% weight loss – over the course of more than a year. Don’t get me wrong – 15% is clinically significant (and I would jump up and down if all of my patients
I am constantly trying to undo disordered thinking about food. By the time most people come to my clinic, they have tried every weight loss program out there. Sadly, most of the programs in the world are not based in science. Most are based on calorie counting and cheerleading – which is not super helpful
There is so much debate today about the process of weight loss. Some people claim it’s all about calories and others claim it has nothing to do with calories altogether. The fact that not all health professionals have the same opinion means that we don’t have it all figured out yet. It probably doesn’t surprise
Preventing disease is usually fairly straightforward. Prevention is never perfectly guaranteed to work (nothing in medicine is), but most of the time, we can prevent lung cancer by avoiding smoking and air pollution. We can prevent pregnancy by using reliable contraception. We can prevent paralysis from polio by getting a polio vaccine. However, preventing disease
Patients periodically ask me about apple cider vinegar. I stay away from social media and news, so perhaps the interest waxes and wanes with marketing and propaganda, but regardless, since the topic seems to come in bursts and has reemerged lately, so I thought I would address it. Apple cider vinegar is a type of
Human beings (myself included) can be very close-minded and dogmatic about some things. This isn’t usually deliberate – we simply hear something several times and absorb it, then file it away as a fact. When we hear something that contradicts it, we dismiss the new information as untrue and move on. The older I get
I was putting together a lecture this weekend and started organizing my slides about metabolic disease and how it’s the biggest problem we are fighting and I realized that although that concept is common knowledge to me, that many people haven’t heard it. Although I tell all of my patients that when we are fighting
Science doesn’t support the calories-in, calories-out hypothesis. If you are still trapped into believing that model, it’s time to learn more!
People like giving advice. People like helping others solve their problems. It’s human nature. We do this to some degree when it comes to all medical problems. We get diagnosed with pneumonia and the people around us give us their advice. Things like; “when my mom had pneumonia last year, her doctor gave her xyz