Obesity and Insulin Resistance Over 50

My name is Dr. Meredith Goodwin. I am a Board-Certified Family Physician who has been in practice for over 30 years. Like nearly everyone else in my medical school class, when I first became a physician, my goal was to help people. At that time, obesity and diabetes were relatively rare, and we had only a few drugs to help.

Don’t take this wrong, but I HATE obesity. I grew up in the 1960s when nearly everyone, including my parents, was trim. As I hit my teen years, I started gaining some weight. The weight gradually increased through high school, college, and medical school. But I’m a doctor, right? There must be a drug that would help. Well, nothing really worked long-term. Medicine treated weight loss as a reflection of a person’s inability to have self-control. Remember that? It took a long time for obesity to be regarded as a disease process.  Eat less, exercise more, right? Not only did that not work for me in the long term, but it also did not work for my patients.

My goal for this course is to help learners understand how we got where we are today - overweight, obese, and diabetic.  We will then look at the current theories of obesity and figure out what actually causes it.  What works for weight loss, what doesn't, and why.  Then we'll apply what we have learned to get us turned around and on the right path to regaining control of our health.  Ready to join me?