For as long as I can remember, obesity has affected me and my family. From my father to my brother and even five generations before that, the disease was in our DNA—starting in childhood for some and later in life for others.
Obesity met me in med school, and not just on the pages of my textbooks. My routine was flipped upside down, and I was all of a sudden struggling with my weight and overall health. Pulling all-nighters and on many days getting my sustenance from the hospital vending machine, I went from being somebody who never gave much thought to what food I was putting into my body to someone who quickly noticed my serving sizes were getting larger and larger. Dealing with the stress of residency, and shortly thereafter the stresses of pregnancy, like many people I found myself eating the standard American diet and gaining weight. The reality was, I was predisposed to this disease—I’d just made it that far without experiencing it first-hand. Once I experienced it, it felt nearly impossible to manage.
