Why I Built Summit Metabolic Health
I was the kid who shopped in the “husky” section. If you grew up in that era, you know exactly what that meant — a different rack, a different fit, a quiet signal that something about you didn’t match the standard model. Weight has never been effortless for me. It has always taken real attention and real structure, and it still does.
That’s not a detail I share for sympathy. It’s the reason I understand, from the inside, why “eat less and move more” is true and also nearly useless as advice. I have felt the frustration of doing the right things and not seeing the results match the effort. That gap is not a willpower problem. It’s a biology problem, and biology problems need clinical solutions, not better willpower.
Twenty years of watching the same pattern repeat
Over two decades in medicine — including years in emergency medicine — I kept seeing the same story walk through the door. Patients who were doing everything a doctor tells you to do, and still losing ground to a metabolism that had quietly shifted against them. Most of the medical system isn’t built to look for why. It’s built to treat what’s in front of it and move to the next patient.
In 2017 I went back and formally studied obesity medicine, and have focused my practice on obesity medicine ever since. That training changed how I see weight entirely — not as a single number to chase, but as the downstream output of a whole hormonal system: thyroid, cortisol, insulin sensitivity, sex hormones, and more. Treat the number without treating the system behind it, and the number comes back.
What Summit actually is
Summit Metabolic Health exists to do the thing most weight-loss care doesn’t: treat the whole metabolic picture, with one physician who stays with you instead of handing you off. I personally review every application. I’m not delegating that to an algorithm, a nurse queue, or a chatbot — if you’re accepted into the program, you are working directly with me.
I built the practice I wish had existed when I was still buying jeans from the husky rack. Structured. Physician-led. Built around what’s actually happening in your body, not just what’s showing on the scale.