If you focus on attaining vibrant, whole-body health, then excess pounds just melt away with no particular effort. But if your body is burdened with imbalances (hormonal or digestive or neurotransmitter), or if your stress load, toxic burden or overall inflammation are too high, then the body may protect itself by holding onto excess fat. Certainly the SAD (Standard American Diet) has gone astray.
All too often people are doing their best to “eat healthy,” following the official Food Pyramid or the low-fat, high-carb policy of the past few decades, and yet their weight is creeping upward. Lacking true nourishment, their bodies go into famine mode, efficiently holding onto every single calorie, growing fatter year by year. How frustrating it is to not understand why the body does this, how crazy-making it is to be often overwhelmed by cravings for sweets or salties or caffeine or bakery items. With good cheer and step-by-step coaching, Dr. McKay guides people out of the swamp of “over-fed but under-nourished” every day.
Questions to Ask
If you are shopping for a weight-loss plan, here are some considerations: Medical weight loss must be truly nourishing, with no synthetic food-like substances. Medical weight loss must be flexible, adapting to each individual’s needs. It must treat and prevent diabetes, treat and prevent Metabolic Syndrome (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, spare tire around the middle), and it must treat and prevent allergies and inflammation (this cannot be done using artificial colors, artificial flavors, or synthetic preservatives, because they are toxic to the body).
Most importantly of all, medical weight loss must teach people how to eat real food (not synthetic food-like substances) while honoring our genetic, evolutionary heritage (how did our hunter-gatherer ancestors eat?) Medical weight loss must reduce the killer load of stress that many people carry. And of course, clinical weight loss plans must offer dramatic weight loss while preserving muscle mass and melting fat — does your clinician measure your body fat percentage at every visit to ensure this? Dr. McKay certainly does, and she finds that people are often encouraged to see fat melting away even during a plateau phase when the scale is not moving.
Compassionate Coaching
Long-term success with weight management requires self-awareness, excellent nutrition, good metabolism, and refusal to revert to the unhealthy ways that led to overweight in the first place. For many people, this means a thoughtful re-examination of beliefs, habits, misinformation (there is a lot of that!), and hunger for things other than food — such as love, acceptance, conflict resolution, hormonal imbalances, intestinal dysbiosis, even brain chemistry imbalances. As an exceptionally compassionate, well-informed listener and coach, Dr. McKay loves to assist in navigating these often confusing pathways.
Hormone Injections and Creams
There is an extremely popular pregnancy hormone being utilized for weight-loss purposes these days. The Federal Trade Commission has made it illegal to advertise this hormone’s use for weight-loss. So please call the clinic if you have any questions about HCG weight loss. Thank you.