Male 1: You just had a baby, you gained 40 pounds, what do you think would be appropriate to that mother who realized she gained a lot of weight to come to a place like you have, to start to get herself back where it should have been.
Female 1: Absolutely. And we deal with a lot of the women.
Male 1: How soon?
Female 1: How soon? Well, listen there are all types of women. There are some women who are in great shape before pregnancy, they do eat well, they work out, for those women maybe they can get back to their weight on their own.
But most of the pregnant women that we see or women who are overweight before they got pregnant, then they gained a lot of weight during pregnancy, and then they come in to us after that. And a lot of them are referred by their OB-GYNs because they were gestational diabetic in pregnancy perhaps and they had other complications.
My goal especially for a first time mother is to really try to explain some of the importance of breaking the cycle of bed ill. Because if this is all she knows because her mother had that garbage in the house, her siblings were overweight. If she does not like being overweight herself, if she does not like the way it feels, if she does not like the way it looks, if she does not like herself when she go shopping, I hear this all the time. I always say to them, “How do you expect to teach your child something different from that which you yourself do not know? You have to start it now.”
There are things that we all do not like about our parents. We have to strive to do something different. If this young mother does not like the fact that her mother was overweight, her father was overweight, all her siblings are overweight, I say to them, “Go with that feeling and break it. Do you want your child to grow up resenting you for contributing to him/her being overweight?”
I love dealing with these women because getting through to them is a real high for me. It is about getting into some good habits now. And, I will tell you something, there is no reason why a woman who is pregnant and went through those profound hormone changes cannot loose weight nice and steady all the way to the end just by eating right. Eating right is what will speed up that woman’s metabolism better than anything else.
Male 1: But how soon after they have a baby would you say they just start thinking coming to a place like yours?
Female 1: As soon as they want to.
Male 1: Would that be like a week?
Female 1: Well I mean it depends on how they are feeling physically. But I had people come to me a week after. We even have a fabulous protocol for women who are nursing. We obviously treat them differently than any other person who comes in.
Male 1: It is their food that you would limit?
Female 1: It is not that that we will limit. Actually, nursing mothers have to have many more milks and many more grains. Example, someone was nursing, they were 5’5” and they need to loose 50 pounds, they would have much more milk, much more grains than somebody who is 5’5” headed to loose 50 pounds in wahoo who did not just gave birth.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the nursing women complained that there is too much food for them to eat, and like with anything else, we tell the, show this program to your physician and we never in all these years –
Male 1: You always want them to work hand in hand in with the physician?
Female 1: Of course. It is only food, there is nothing to buy from us, there is no gimmicks, there is no diet pills, there is nothing, it is just proteins, vegetables, fruits, milk and dairy grain and fats that they buy in the supermarket. The way they eat is good for the whole family. And that is what we are trying to teach really.
Male 1: So basically, what you are doing is doing what the doctor should have been doing in the beginning, educating them about a good diet.
Female 1: Okay.
Male 1: But the fact they do not do which you can do. The other one is going to keep them on the diet.
Female 1: Well, I am going to keep them on the diet, I am going to keep them very focused, very motivated and we help. Like I said, the big part of what we do is we never let anybody to fall out of our sight. That is why we see them as often as we do. I am there to help them plan their days from morning until night based on who they are, what their work schedule might be, what their travel schedule might be.
They can call us 24/7 anywhere, anytime, for any reason. Whether because they have a quick question that they want to ask, “Laurie, I was planning to have a hamburger but what else can I have?” I hold them right on the phone. Or maybe they are having a bad moment, they are feeling a little bit weak, they can call me at anytime.
It is an all around package. It is not just, here is what you should eat, here is the amount you should eat, try not to go under, try not to go over and then we send them on their way. It is not like that at all. It is almost like the 24-hour support system. If they need us, we are there, and I think that is why we are so successful.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services