Dr. Susan Besser Offers Tips Regarding Body Image, Diet and Health

Dr. Susan Besser, responding to a query from the FOX45 Morning Show, offers tips regarding body image, diet and health.

Dr. Besser is a primary care provider specializing in Family Medicine and sees patients at Mercy Personal Physicians at Overlea.

1. Pay no attention to what celebrities, social medial or nonprofessionals tell you is your body’s “right size”.

2. If you don’t  have a primary care doctor who is knowledgeable about obesity medicine and can help you figure out what your own body is telling you your right size should be, then get yourself to a doctor who can help you do that.

3. It is not necessarily your fault that your body is a larger size that it should be, but it is your own responsibility (to yourself, your loved ones, your maker, others with whom you relate) to do something about rightsizing your body. You might have genetic reasons for being the size you are. You might have treatable medical reasons for being the size you are. You might have situational and environmental reasons for being the way you are. Work with a good primary care physician to figure this stuff out.

4. Understand that diets don’t work and that only lifestyle changes based on better intuitive eating (not just eating less, but eating better) and better intuitive physical activity (not just moving more, but moving better throughout each day) are the two most important things you can do.
 
5. I recommend two helpful books to help you readjust the way you approach “the weight problem”: Intuitive Eating and Changeology.

--Susan L. Besser MD, MBA, FAAFP, CIME, Diplomate American Board of Obesity Medicine, Mercy Personal Physicians at Overlea