Dying or Dieting, is it really a choice?

Summary

Dying or dieting, is it really a choice? The answer may surprise you.

Our modern diet is dictated by culture, media and what is available in the supermarkets. It is difficult to navigate what is good for our bodies or what is another fad diet. Let’s have a look at both the history of humans and how our bodies have evolved to digest food.

The beginning of the Human Diet: Hunter and Gatherers

Until agriculture was developed around 10,000 years ago, all humans got their food by hunting, gathering, fishing. Commonly named the Hunter Gatherers. This meant humans were living on a varied diet with an active lifestyle, nomadic in search of their food.

Which diet is right for you? Well, it depends on your goals.  Do you want to increase muscle mass, shed some pounds of just feel better? Don’t approach this with a “dieting” mentality but with a change in your eating habits that support your goals.

One common things in most diets is avoidance of heavily processed foods and trips to the drive-thru. You’ll be choosing nutrient-dense (but still tasty) meals.

Also, regardless of the diet selected, it is essential to track what you eat.

Important fact. Food is changing.  The chicken breast of today is different from a chicken breast 100 years ago. This is applicable to all meats, fruits, vegetables, and other food items found in the supermarket. You need to approach your eating habits as a scientific experiment, and you are the test subject.

 

Types of diets

• Calorie restriction
• Intermittent fasting
• Low carb
  • Atkins
  • Keto
• High protein
  • Paleo
• Eat-Clean Diet (focuses on whole grains, fruits, vegetables, fats, and protein)
  • Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet
  • Flexitarian
  • Mediterranean
  • Whole Food Plant Based (WFPB)

Calorie restriction

Calorie restriction means shaving off between 25-30% of total recommended daily calories. Very low-calorie diets, even though they sound similar, are quite different because they are prescribed by a doctor and you do not consume any food, only meal replacements.

Pros

• extended lifespan
• drop in oxidative cell stress
• weight loss
• does not rely on specialty foods
• short term success

Cons

• reduction in resting metabolic rate (metabolic adaptation)
• Can cause fatigue and nutrient deficiencies
• can negatively affect fertility
• can weaken your bones
• may increase your risk of infections and illness
• poor long term success
• careful tracking of the calories

Intermittent fasting

• The 16/8 method
• Eat-Stop-Eat
• The 5:2 diet
• Prolonged fasting

Basic idea of intermittent fasting is you simply don’t eat for a set period of time, on a regular basis. You might eat only during certain hours every day, or eat normally most days and just one meal on others.

Fasting period

• only have water and non-caloric drinks like black coffee or tea

Pros

• weight loss
• blood sugar and blood pressure control
• lower cholesterol
• lower inflammation
• slow aging

Cons

• may make you feel sick
• may cause you to overeat
• may cause older adults to lose too much weight
• may be dangerous if you're taking certain medications

Low carb/high fat

• Atkins
• Keto
• South Beach

 

A Low carb/high fat diet is an eating plan that focuses on eating lots of healthful fat, some protein, and minimal carbohydrates.

 

The body typically uses carbohydrates as fuel for energy. When a person does not get enough carbs, the body will start using up fat and some protein stores. In true ketosis, the liver will take stored fat and turn it into ketones, which the body then uses for energy. Reaching this state of ketosis is the goal of the keto diet.

 

Some believe ketosis is an efficient way to lose excess fat and to reduce the risk of problems, such as heart disease and diabetes.

 

In general, a person on a keto diet should consume:

70–80% fat

20–25% protein

5–10% carbohydrates

 

The keto diet encourages and excludes specific foods. A person on keto cannot get their carbohydrates from grains or legumes. Their carbs must come from a keto friendly vegetable, such as leafy greens, or a small group of fruits, primarily berries.

 

Pros

• Treatment of epilepsy
• Weight loss
• May help prevent cancer
• potential benefits for controlling blood sugar and improving insulin sensitivity

Cons

• Difficult to Sustain
• May have a negative impact on heart health
• can cause nutrient deficiencies and constipation

 

High protein

Paleo

A paleo diet is a dietary plan that focuses on foods that humans ate during the Paleolithic era. Some people refer to it as the caveman diet or the Stone Age diet.

This diet strives to eliminate products made via modern food processing and farming methods. People who follow the paleo diet may choose foods that a Stone Age ancestor would have been able to hunt or gather and eat. The diet of a Stone Age person would have varied according to the natural resources available in their area.

Some people believe that the human body is not well adapted to modern-day foods. According to supporters of the diet, cutting out foods such as dairy, grains, and legumes can help a person lose weight and prevent heart disease and diabetes.

A paleo diet excludes highly processed foods, as well as legumes, grains, and dairy products.

The paleo diet also encourages the consumption of healthful fats, such as those from wild or grass-fed animals, nut oils, butter, olive oil, and avocados. It also recommends that people eat higher amounts of animal protein.

Pros

• You are more likely to eat a clean diet without additives, preservatives, or chemicals.
• There are anti-inflammatory benefits from the plant nutrients in fruits, vegetables, oils, nuts, and seeds.
• If you are eating more red meat, you will get more iron.
• You may see improved satiety — a feeling of fullness between meals, due to the higher intake of protein and fats.
• Many people lose weight primarily due to the limited food choices.
• Elimination of processed foods – The diet is comprised of whole foods, which means less salt and sugar is consumed. This improves blood sugar levels and blood pressure and can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Cons

• It can get expensive.
• You don’t eat any grains or dairy which can be good for health and energy.
• This diet can be difficult for vegetarians, especially since it excludes beans.
• Most athletes need between 3 to 6 grams of carbs per pound of their body weight, per day. This would be very hard to do with just fruits and vegetables.
• People in the West often obtain their calcium from milk, cheese and yoghurt and those following the paleo diet are at risk of inadequate calcium consumption and therefore low bone and tooth density.
• The diet does not allow the consumption of legumes, which are highly beneficial to gut health and rich in magnesium, selenium and manganese.

Eat-Clean Diet (focuses on whole grains, fruits, vegetables, fats, and protein)

• Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet
• Flexitarian- primarily vegetarian diet but occasionally eats meat or fish
• Mediterranean- emphasizes fruits and vegetables, nuts, grains, olive oil (as opposed to butter) and grilled or steamed chicken and seafood (as opposed to red meat)
• Whole Food Plant Based (WFPB)- describes foods that are minimally processed

The fundamentals of eating clean encourage you to consume more whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains, and healthy fats — and limit highly processed snack foods, sweets and other packaged foods. An example of a meal containing all of these foods would be a spinach salad with grilled chicken, quinoa, avocado, walnuts and apple slices.

tips for eating clean include:

• Limiting highly processed, packaged foods
• Cutting back on foods with added salt, sugar or fat
• Avoiding foods that are drastically altered compared with their natural form
• Preparing and eating more foods at home

Pros

• Largely plant-based diets are healthy
• Research shows diets with an emphasis on fruit and vegetables can actually have a factor in preventing or reducing diseases like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
• Research also shows a correlation between diets with high amounts of fruits and vegetables and healthy weight management and glowing skin.

Cons

• Clean eating is not always convenient
• Taking too much out of your diet can be unhealthy
• Clean eating can be expensive
• Clean eating can become obsessive which causes it to become unhealthy

 

 

 

 

[ The following is the full transcript from this week's post. This is a health blog with a focus on weight loss. Please consider that all episodes are unscripted, direct to camera, with focused talking points. ]

 

How are you guys doing today?

Today, I want to talk to you about dieting. There are a lot of different diets out there that people try. And it is important to understand what the influence of them, on our dieting decisions.

If you think about going to the modern-day grocery store, there are many, many factors that influence not only what we are buying, and how we are shopping, but obviously, throughout the day, we're bombarded with media and advertising. That is all related and influences how we shop and how we eat.

It is important to understand that, because that has a great impact on your weight and your overall health.

Today, I am going to talk to you about some different diets, and of the pros and cons of them.

Hopefully, to help you make better decisions in in how you are eating, because nutrition and what you eat is extremely important in your health and wellness.

Whether you are trying to gain weight or trying to lose weight or just maintain health, it is still about being healthy.

If we look at the history of how we ate, prehistoric man was a hunter gatherer, their food source was what they could find and what they could kill or catch and that was dependent on kind of the area of the world that they were living.

For the most part, this was the diet of the prehistoric humans. And that changed about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture. And that is when we, as humans, started to really kind of produce things, both raising animals, and producing specific crops. But also, in and kind of modifying those crops to serve our needs.

The important thing to understand is, there is not one diet that is perfect for everyone. What is important, is to approach your health and wellness in the context of what is the right diet for you.

And that is important to understand, because it is going to take time for you to figure that out. We know, through research that people can eat the exact same diet, and how their body responds to that, can be significantly different.

So, I want to break it down into different diets, and unfortunately, a lot of these diets are kind of framed in the spirit of weight loss.

Which, a lot of these do produce weight loss, but overall, what I am talking about is just general health and wellness.

So, if weight is one of those things that is holding you back, then obviously that is something that needs to be worked on, these diets can help that. But also, just because you are not overweight, does not mean these diets add no value because there is all the other value in your health and wellness related to these diets.

It is important to understand, if you are serious about that health and wellness journey, I believe it is essential that you track what it is you eat, both meaning what actual substance is you are eating, but also the macros or the amount of protein or no fat and carbs.

There is lots of apps out there that help you do this. But really, if you want to manage something, you gotta measure it.

It is important that you are tracking what you are eating.

Secondarily your water intake is really, important. So regardless of what the type of meal plan you choose to pick, water consumption is essential, so make sure you are drinking plenty of water.

That is something also I would track because often we underestimate how much water we are drinking. So again, there's apps that help you do this but the important thing to understand is the food today is significantly different than the food 100 years ago, so even if you just looked at the chicken breast, they are not the same.

When I am talking about these foods, I am talking about food items that are bought at the store.

So, I am not talking about you raising a chicken on a farm, or something like that, but what is available to the masses.

Think for a minute, as we develop agriculture, the goal was to produce more food basically and higher caloric density food.

And, and fortunately, have been successful with that to help beat famines and malnourishment, but unfortunately, it shifted us to society, specifically, in the modern age here of a basically calorie surplus, meaning there's calories all around us, and there is more calories than we need to sustain, which is actually something that's causing us to kind of go down, the path would be unhealthy.

So, you have got to understand that the food items, but also understand that modern food is significantly different than prehistoric foods.

Some of the diets that I am going to touch on tonight basically is the calorie restricted diet, intermittent fasting diet, low carb diet, which kind of put Atkins and Keto diets in, a high protein diet, which is a paleo diet in what is called the Eat Clean, or Clean Eating diet.

I will talk a little bit more about what that means.

But the first one I will talk about as calorie restriction kind of restriction or simply means what it says is you are just going to reduce your calories from your fiscal year total recommendation calories.

So, you will increase or decrease your calories by 25 to 30% of the total recommended daily.

I am not talking about very low-calorie diets. These are their diets below one thousand calories a day.

These are often medical diets.

Those need to be very well supervised, because there is a lot of medical problems that can develop with a calorie restriction.

What I am talking about is the old fashion, “I'm just going to eat less and try to lose weight.”

Well, what we do know is that by doing a caloric restriction, you can extend your lifespan.

So, some of the pros is an extended lifespan.

It drops the oxidative stress your body, meaning that your body's not metabolizing as much. Therefore, you do not have the oxidative stress or the byproducts of metabolism that can cause oxidative stress to the cells. So obviously there is going to be reduction there.

Weight loss is one of the pros. It does not rely on a basic specialty food and it can produce short-term success.

But the flip side of that are the cons, is as you go on a calorie restricted diet, your metabolism is going to slow down, and that is called metabolic adaptation.

And so, your weight loss is going to kind of flatten. And you are basically going to stabilize with reduced calories. But you can find a point that you are not going to lose weight.

Often you can feel fatigued. Because you will have some nutritional deficiencies probably.

Obviously, it can negatively affect fertility.

It can weaken your bones, and it may increase your risk of infection and illness because it impacts your immune function.

Really, just pure calorie restriction, long term success is bad, and probably most people that have tried to just eat less, using a calorie restricted model, can attest to this, because it is just not sustainable.

And the important thing to remember is, that in calorie restriction, as you restrict your calories, you really need to also consider changing what it is you are eating. Because often, it is not just a simple thing as reducing what you are eating but making different choices about what you are eating.

So, if you are eating a bunch of bad things, and you are just now eating less calories or less amounts of it, that is not a good thing.

A calorie restricted diet has some short-term value, but really the evidence shows that long term. It is not a good choice.

The next one I want to talk about is, is intermittent fasting.

From a pure sense, intermittent fasting is not a diet. It is basically a method of timing eating.

There is a lot of programs out there that kind of add other factors to it. But the whole point of intermittent fasting is to have periods of fast, meaning you do not eat anything during those periods of time.

You drink water. Or black coffee or tea.

No other substitutes, Nothing like that.

No diet, cokes, nothing else other than water, tea, or black coffee with no additives.

When I am talking about intermittent fasting, they have different models. There is the 16:8, meaning fast for 16 hours, and your feed periods last eight hours long.

There is the eat-stop-eat.

Which means that every other day, you basically eat then you take a 24 hour period and eat again.

Another common one is called the five two diet, which means that to two days out of the seven, you are going too fast.

And then there is prolong fasting.

Prolong fasting, I want to separate that out of this conversation because that is typically a fasting that's greater than three days. And it can be very long.

In fact, the longest fastest was over 380 days. Where someone who did not have any, the food other than minerals in the water, for 380 plus days or something like that.

Obviously, there is a lot of potential risk associated with that, so I would not recommend that.

I am not talking about anything that falls in, the prolonged fasting bucket. In fact, I am mostly talking about the more common fast that you still eat something in a 24-hour period. But yes, that time period, may be a little bit different between different people.

A very common one, is the 16 and 8. 16 hours fast, followed by eight hours of feeding time, which means during that eight hours, that's the time you are going to eat.

Now, like I said, from a pure standpoint, what you eat in that eight hours, really is up to you. But a lot of people have incorporated other kind of things into that, on how you eat during that eight-hour period.

Some of the pros related intermittent fasting will, it can produce weight loss.

The big one, though, is with your blood sugar and blood pressure. It helps control blood, sugar, and blood pressure.

It can lower your cholesterol.

It can lower inflammatory markers and it can slow aging.

So, these are some of the benefits of intermittent fasting.

Well, obviously, everything has something good probably has a flip side of that, and some may feel it sick during these prolonged fast periods.

And then also, you may be prone to overeat during and your feed periods because we feel very hungry, and you tend to gorge yourself.

And the interesting thing is as we get older, you may actually cause you to lose too much weight and go on the other side of that, that the weight concern and be underweight and sell them.

It is important to really understand what it is you are eating.

So again, you know, I would recommend regardless of any diet we are talking about that you track what it is you are eating, your caloric intake.

Another con to intermittent fasting is that if you take certain medications. Obviously, certain medications can be problematic if you are doing prolonged fasting period, so it is not for everyone.

But there is good and bad, like any, any type of diet. You need to understand yourself and what it is you are trying to do, what works for you.

So, the next one I want to talk about is called low carb. I call low carb slash high fat.

Because the Atkins falls in this keto diet, and South Beach fall in that.

And that is really where you are trying to remove a significant amount of carbs from your diet. Often, these caloric demands are made up by adding fat to your diet.

So that is why I say low carb, high fat, because often in these diets, people are consuming large amounts of fat.

So, minimal carbs, moderate protein, but then lots of fat, hopefully it is helpful fat. But at the end of the day, large amount of fat, if it is not done right, can be problematic for you.

So, the theory behind this is, is if your body does not have access to carbs, kind of the go to fuel for the body. And if it does not have that, then it must go into something called ketosis where basically you have the breakdown of fat into ketones that your body that can use for energy in that.

So that's ketosis, not to be confused with diabetic ketoacidosis. That is a whole separate thing related to lack of insulin. That can be fatal.

But the keto diets don't develop a Ketoacidosis.

And so, the belief is as you go into this ketosis, you are burning fat.

And we know that ketones, kind of the energy source that you are developing, is an appetite suppressant.

So, people also talk about the day, get into ketosis. They really are not hungry anymore, they have kind of this mental clarity, kind of a lot of different descriptions.

But the problem with that is, you are not eating any, vegetables or specifically fruit, so it can be a little bit of a challenge for you.

The keto diet was developed for the treatment of epilepsy. They found that people that suffer from seizures, often the keto diet, would kind of suppress the seizures.

It can produce weight loss. It can produce significant weight loss early on. Important thing to understand that early weight loss, any diet, is typically usually water weight loss, not actual fat.

We get on the scale, we feel great, like we are making lots of progress in the first couple of weeks. Because that scale numbers changing, but we are just losing a lot of water weight and that's really kind of exaggerated with the Keto diet. You are losing a lot of water weight of the very beginning.

There is some evidence that supports that it may help in the prevention of cancer. And, in controlling your blood sugar and kind of improving your insulin sensitivity, so those are some of the benefits.

Some of the cons is the keto diet can be difficult to sustain.

When you tell people about Keto diet at the beginning, they often say, “Wow, I could do that all day long.”

But the interesting thing is it is somewhat of a difficult diet to sustain. And obviously, there can be a negative impact on your heart health, secondary to the amount of fat you are eating. So, it is important that you are cautious on the types of food you are eating them.

Also, since you are removing whole food groups, from your diet, you can be subcomponent of nutritional deficiency.

And then with the removal of a lot of fruits and vegetables, you lack fiber. So, constipation is a common thing.

There is something called the Keto flu when you are first starting this, where you kind of feel like you got the flu. And that is when your body is trying to adjust to this.

So again, it has its pros and cons. But like I have been saying, it is really one of those things that you have to trial by fire, see how your body responds to see if this is the right way to eat for you.

The next one I want to talk about is what I call high protein or the paleo diet. Often people confuse it, and the keto diet as one of the same, and there is some significant difference in the Keto diet, processed meats are fine. In the paleo diet, it is about eating whole foods and unprocessed foods.

So, a lot of meat is consumed in the paleo diet. But it is not processed meats. It is steak, and things like that. It is not lunch meat or are things that have been processed, so things that have big labels on them saying all the different things that are in the food. A lot of people call it, the caveman diet. The important thing to understand is, is the Whole Foods only, so stuff such as the fruits, the vegetables, they eat all components of the food pyramid, but they are heavy on the protein side, and then really avoid anything processed. So, grains, things like that, are off limit. It does encourage the consumption of healthy fats.

It's wanting you to eat your meat that's kind of the wild, or grass-fed animals, things like that.

Some of the benefits with this is, you are eating, what is called part of the clean diet. We mean that you are not eating fruit with any additives or preservatives or any additional chemicals.

There are some anti-inflammatory benefits from in this, this diet. And that is probably derived from the whole plants that you are eating, the healthy oils, and things like that.

Not going to suffer from any iron deficiency if you are eating with a lot of red meat.

And then often, since you have a large amount of protein or fat, really, you do not get hungry between meals because of that high amount of protein that you are eating.

It does produce weight loss. That is often because of the limited food choices.

And then obviously, one of the big pros is the elimination of the processed foods. So, kind of whole foods, whether it is meat, or vegetables, or fruit, the whole food concept is really important.

One of the cons, is it can be very expensive.

Another con is, if you are not eating any grain or dairy, that can create a little bit of problems for you, related to health and energy.

And then also, it is not really a vegetarian diet.

But they are still limiting quite a bit of vegetables and things like that So that can be kind of a problem for micronutrient deficiencies or things like that.

The diet usually does not have a lot of beans or things like that or legumes in that. Which is important for gut health and the digestive system.

There can be some kind of bad side effects with your guts or digesting things and how you feel.

Again, there is good and bad with everything and what works for you might not work for others.

Then the final diet that I want to talk about is the eat cleaner, or clean eating diet.

Really, what that means is, the food you are eating has not been processed. Meaning there is not a bunch of labels explaining all the additives.

The diets that I put it in this group is what is called the dash Diet.

That is one of the most common recommended medical diets, it is the Dietary Approaches to stop hypertension diet. What that means, the flexitarian diet falls into this, and the flexitarian diet is someone that is primarily a vegetarian, but they do eat occasional meat and fish.

Now, to what degree they eat meat and fish. The barriers that may be a couple of times a week, a couple of times a month. But they do not completely remove meat and fish from their diet.

Then the Mediterranean diet, which really emphasize the fruits and vegetables nuts, grains, olive oil, as opposed to butter, and then grilled or steamed chicken and seafood as opposed to red meat.

And then also, a diet that falls in with the eating clean or clean eating diet is what is called the whole food plant-based diet.

Often people look at this as you are a vegetarian when you say that.

And, their diets are very similar, but a big difference is, the whole food plant based, really tries to avoid food that with minimal processing, so vegetarian or vegan, really remove all animal products from their diet. But they may still eat vegetable products that have been heavily processed. Whole food focuses on taking in plants in their natural state.

The important thing is the cleaning diet, really encourages you to consume, basically, whole foods, such as your fruits, vegetables, you lean proteins, whole grains, healthy fats, and, and really limit your highly processed snack foods, sweets, and basically your other packaged foods.

And that is important, but also, each one of these days I have talked about, one of the pros on all of them has been a weight loss, but one common denominator to all these is just that, most of them basically say don't need to highly processed foods.

They have kind of a different formula for how much of the macros to eat or how you align your protein versus carbs, or things like that.

The reality of it is one common thing across all these deists is the avoidance of these highly processed foods.

So, one thing I can tell you is, as we are learning more and more in the medical world, about the impact of these highly processed foods, and one of those things is, the correlation to weight gain.

There are lots of other negative effects of these highly processed foods, but that is really what are the common denominators, but the clean eating diet really emphasizes not even naming these highly processed foods.

So, some tips to eat clean is basically, avoid the highly processed foods, and really try to avoid the added salt, sugar, fat, to these.

Now, you also want to look at the foods, and then decide are they in their natural state, and that is one of the things, is eating foods that are still in their natural forms. Obviously, if you are preparing these foods at home it is going to help you because you know what is going in them.

So, the pros of the clean energy diet are it is largely plant based.

Plant-based diets have really been the ones that have been supported with the strongest evidence for working specifically in weight loss and then having kind of sustainability.

They found that these plant-based diets or eating clean, really can have a large impact on specific diseases, specifically, type two diabetes, it can affect your blood pressure positively and prevent heart disease.

And then obviously, there is a correlation between the diets with the high amounts of fruits and vegetables and your maintained healthy weight.

Some of the cons, this diet can be a little bit inconvenient, especially if you are having to make all your meals at home.

And the today's fast-paced world, that can be a real challenge for you. Know if you start to avoid any kind of food groups there is a concern for some type of nutritional imbalance there, and then you are going to have a deficit related to something.

Clean eating can be very expensive. If you are eating a lot of fresh things that are really not processed. That means they are not designed to be stored long time. That can make it really go up in cost.

And then, sometimes clean eating can be taken too far where people can become obsessed with it.

To be honest with you, it can lead to some eating disorders.

So again, it is important for you to understand what it is you are trying to accomplish and then kind of working through it.

You are kind of investigating what works best for you.

So here we have gone through several diets.

But one thing that I want to end with is the importance of the dieting mindset.

It is important to understand that if you if you approach this like dieting mindset, and that means you are going to try something temporarily until you reach some other state and then, you don't need to continue it.

That is why diets fail. Because often, we modify our behavior in life, we want to lose 20lbs, and then we lose 20lbs, and so we go back to what got us 20lbs heavier in the first place.

Now, we have had all these physiological responses to the weight loss or metabolism, slow down, and things like that. And we end up putting on more weight.

So, if you are looking at things from a dieting standpoint, meaning that you are going to try this for a period of time, with the hopes of not doing it after that, but maintaining whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.

That is really no improvement on your life. It is setting yourself up for failure.

You really must look at this as a lifestyle change.

You must approach this like, “What is it that I can do?”

What kind of method of eating can I do?

And still enjoy eating.

But it be sustainable, meaning that I am going to do it for the rest of my life.

The important thing is to look at it like, this is not something you are going to do for just a period, but it is something you are going to do for the rest of your life.

That is important to understand, when you are assessing, what is the best way for you to get to your ideal state of health? Is this something I am prepared to do the rest of my life? And if it is too challenging, now you do not feel like you are getting good results, then, you are probably not going to continue with it.

As long as you are in the dieting mindset. Which is you got to change your mindset to a lifestyle change. Which means that you are going to change this, and this change is going to be permanent. This is going to be the new way of eating.

Now there is lots of things you can do along the way here, but you know, it is really up to you to experiment and figure out what works for you.

You can seek the guidance of nutritionists, dieticians, or are physicians to help you along the way.

But at the end of the day, it is up to you to do the work.

I wish you the best on your health and wellness journey, and if there is anything we can do to help you, just let us know.

Thank you.

Kelly Cox MD, FACEP

Member, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine