Your Health, Our Priority

We are all unique and have our own life stories to tell. A huge part of my life’s journey has been fighting obesity, and I would like to share my story with you. 

As many have experienced, we know that adolescence is a critical period for body image development because of the various social, cultural, physical, and psychological changes occurring between the ages of 12-18 years old. During my adolescent years, being "skinny" was important to me. Or so I thought. My adolescent years were heavily influenced by super models: Cindy Crawford, Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington. The list goes on. If you didn't look like that or strive to look like that, then you were subject to social comparison, "fat jokes", and weight-related teasing and bullying. I felt like I was larger than many girls my age and that I was overweight. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. I was athletic, I was a tap / jazz / ballet dancer, cheerleader, ran track. I was probably in the best shape of my life. 

Fast forward a little – 18 years old. I’ve made it through high school and moved on to Air Force basic military training. Helloooooooooo! I’m on fire – sit ups, push-ups, chin ups, obstacle courses, shooting machine guns, 6 mile runs in formation with 40 other girls daily for 6 weeks. Best shape of my life and still feeling self-conscious. It’s not like I had anyone to impress, but I still struggled with my body image. 

I completed boot camp and was assigned to my tech school in Wichita Falls, TX. Guess what? Wow, I was back in the real world with small freedoms. Like ordering pizza. I didn’t have to eat every single meal from the chow hall now. I ordered pizza about 3 nights per week, ate it and gained 20 lbs. Uuugh. I was almost past the weight limit to be discharged back home to my home base. From here, my battle became a years long war. 

I’ve always had a food addiction. Hunger, food cravings, unable to say no or turn food away if it looked, smelled, or tasted good. My mom is the best southern cook of all time. I grew up eating delicious home cooked meals. Meat, potatoes, veggies - fried, buttered, salted, sugared. And every dinner came with a roll and dessert!

I spent most of my life eating my emotions: Happiness, let’s eat! Sadness, let’s eat! Anxious, let’s eat! Worried, let’s eat! Bored, you know the drill – grab the chips and Pancho’s dip. 

If that’s not enough, let’s throw in my nursing career: potlucks to celebrate everything in everybody’s life, food brought in by medical reps, food brought in by patient families. Food everywhere. Tired, hungry, emotional – food fixed it. 

The rest of my weight battle in summary (I am still measuring 5’ 7” in height):

1) Age 15-19: 140-160 lbs. 

2) Age 20-27: creeping up in weight constantly: 170-190lbs.  

3) Age 28: became pregnant. Highest weight before giving birth to our son 240lbs.

4) Age 29: post-partum. Lost down to 185lbs. 

5) Age 30-35: slowly creeping back up. Highest weight 245lbs. 

I was in imminent danger of having high blood pressure (essential hypertension), Type 2 diabetes and had developed very high cholesterol. 

Work out videos / Weight Watchers / South Beach Diet

Gym memberships / Nutrisystem / Atkin’s Diet

Phentermine / Hypnosis / Keto Diet

L.A. Weight Loss / Intermittent “starving” / Mediterranean Diet

Personal Trainer / GoLo / Bariatric Surgery

I got to the point in my life that I no longer wanted to engage in social settings, I HATED shopping for clothes or swimsuits, I did not want to be in any photos, I felt ugly and fat. I felt less than. Nobody made me feel that way but me. Oh, except the jackass that I used to be in the military with that pulled me aside once and said, “Dixie. You’re too pretty to be this heavy!” I was too nice back then to throat punch him. Oh, and the “you have such a beautiful face” comments. I hear that loud and clear - “Yep. You’re a biggun.” Or the one and only, “But you don’t look like you weigh that much. You carry it well.” Insert vomit. 

After 15 years of abusing my body with the wrong foods, I re-learned my value and self-worth and decided to improve and protect myself and my health. I researched and decided to proceed with weight loss surgery in August 2014. I specifically had Sleeve Gastrectomy (“gastric sleeve”). It removes a large portion of your stomach, leaving behind a narrow “sleeve.” Reducing your stomach helps restrict calories and reduce hunger signals.

It was a SUCCESS!!!!! I was seeing weight loss that I had been unable to achieve in years. I was eating much smaller portions, change my eating habits to healthy ones. My clothing sizes were getting smaller. My body was transforming in ways that made me happy. I have never had the perfect body, never intended to, but I started feeling damn good about ME! I came back out of the shell that I’d been living in since I was 20. By 9 months after my surgery, I had lost 100 lbs. 

7 years after my surgery (2021), I noticed some changes that I wasn’t happy about. Now I’m in my forties, having some hormonal changes and seeing weight slowly creep back up over a 2-year period. 30 lbs.to be exact. Also fallen somewhat off my healthy nutritional track. Wait, whaaaa???? I had my body surgically altered to lose weight and keep it off. How? Why? Still maintained 70 lbs. of loss but really? 

I opened my own medical practice in May 2023 and decided that I was going to offer medical weight loss to my patients. I’ve been prescribing Ozempic, Bydureon, Trulicity, Victoza and Saxenda for many years and saw the absolute health benefit that it had for my Type 2 diabetic patients: finally controlled blood sugar, normal or close to normal A1Cs, normal blood pressures, improved kidney function, and wait for it……………… wait for it……………… WEIGHT LOSS! So now, we are using GLP-1 medications to help aid in fighting obesity. I have the opportunity and platform to help my patients reclaim their health and confidence. And what better way for me to get back on track than to go all in and do this with my patients! On semaglutide since June 2023, I have lost the excess 30 lbs., adopted my healthy eating habits back and reclaimed my ticket to being my healthiest self. 

Excerpt from article by Dr. Caroline Apovian, endocrinologist and co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

“Some of the backlash against drugs like Ozempic being used for weight loss stems from the idea that people using the drugs for weight loss are taking them away from people with diabetes, for whom the drugs were designed. Another swath of the anger seems to stem from the fact that the cost of the drugs -- over $1,000 per month without health insurance in most cases -- makes them inaccessible to most people.

Both Ozempic and Mounjaro are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat Type 2 diabetes, but some doctors prescribe the medication "off-label" for weight loss, as is permissible by the FDA. Wegovy is FDA-approved for weight loss.

Some of the biggest shaming around the idea of using drugs for weight loss, however, comes from those who say certain people may not be "obese enough" to be using the medications, and from those who call using drugs for weight loss the "easy way out," despite medical evidence showing otherwise, according to Dr. Caroline Apovian, an endocrinologist and co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Apovian said the way people are called out for using Ozempic implies that they haven't "earned" their way to being thin, which society still deems as the acceptable size. She said she sees patients who cannot lose weight on their own but still waver on using a medication to help because of the implication that it's somehow "the easy way out."

"With obesity, we think that all you have to do is stop being a glutton and stop being lazy, and it's your moral failure, and you can do something about it, so it's very easy to look at that person and stigmatize them," Apovian told "GMA." "Can you imagine if you said that about somebody who had high blood pressure? 'Oh, she's on Lisinopril [a blood pressure medication], the easy way out. Why doesn't she stop eating salt?'"

Obesity is a medical condition that affects nearly 42% of people in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Obesity-related conditions including heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer are the top causes of premature and preventable death, according to the CDC.

All the ways Ozempic and other drugs like it work in the body show that, as Apovian said, weight is not a matter of willpower or calories alone, and that's the case whether a person has 20 or 120 pounds to lose.

Ozempic and similar drugs mimic the effects of GLP-1, a type of hormone in the body that impacts everything from the brain to muscle to the pancreas, stomach, and liver.

Without taking something to change the hormonal levels in the body, people with certain genetics simply cannot lose weight and keep it off, according to Apovian.

"When we try to lose weight with diet and exercise alone, the hunger hormones skyrocket and the satiety hormones drop, and it is almost impossible to keep the weight off," she said, adding, "There are powerful hormonal forces that are pushing the body to gain the weight back."