When someone is diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, they’re often told that their immune system is “attacking itself” and that the primary treatment is medication to suppress that response. While medications can be lifesaving and absolutely have an important role, they don’t answer a critical question: Why is the immune system dysregulated in the first… Continue reading Autoimmune Disease Isn’t Just About the Immune System
One of the biggest myths in medicine is that hunger is simply a matter of self-control. If that were true, obesity would have been solved decades ago. Instead, millions of people find themselves constantly battling cravings, overeating foods they know don’t serve them, and blaming themselves when they feel hungry again just hours after eating.… Continue reading Understanding Hunger: Why Your Hunger Has Nothing to Do with Willpower
I view my journey to sustainable weight loss and healing my relationship with food as two distinct parts. The first is understanding my body’s relationship with food. Not my character or how much willpower I have. Not whether I believe that I’m not trying hard enough. My biology. As someone who went to my first… Continue reading Healing Your Relationship with Food in Two Parts: Biology First, Compassion Second
I was recently working with someone during a health coaching appointment who had spent most of her life fighting with her body. She knew every diet, every rule, every promise, and every Monday morning restart. Like so many people I work with, she wasn’t just carrying extra weight, she was carrying decades of expectations, disappointments,… Continue reading Choosing Maintenance: An Act of Self-Compassion
What if the food you crave most is the very thing keeping you stuck? This August, Coach Tia Reid is inviting all Toward Health premium app members to join her 30-Day Sugar Break-Up, a month-long challenge designed to help you understand your relationship with sugar, reduce cravings, and experience what life feels like when your… Continue reading Coach Tia’s 30-Day Sugar Break-Up: It’s Time to End the Relationship That Isn’t Serving You
My whole life, I thought weight loss was about food and willpower, but after decades in the trenches, it turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after losing more than 200 pounds and keeping it off, it’s that this journey is about so much more than the number… Continue reading 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Weight Loss Journey
There’s a kind of PTSD that comes from living in a morbidly obese body for decades. There is the reliving of the obvious moments — the stares, the comments, the humiliation — but also the way those experiences settle into our nervous system and linger long after, and one interaction in a restaurant can… Continue reading When Your “After” Still Looks Like Someone Else’s “Before”
This Isn’t Aging. You’re Being Treated Backwards As a physician, I see patients every day who present with the same frustrating cluster of symptoms: profound fatigue, brain fog, unexplained weight gain, and a loss of physical vitality. In modern clinical practice, it is entirely too common for these signs to be dismissed as the inevitable… Continue reading The Truth About TRT: How Modern Medicine Treats Low Testosterone Backwards
The condition long known as PCOS has officially been renamed Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome, or PMOS, reflecting what many metabolic-health clinicians have known for years. For decades, women diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, were given a name that never quite matched the condition. In this old paradigm, women who struggled with obtaining regular menstrual… Continue reading From PCOS to PMOS: Why This Name Change Matters
If you had told me a few years ago, when I weighed over 400 pounds and was seriously considering bariatric surgery, that I’d someday be writing about grief and food, I probably would have rolled my eyes. Or burst into tears. Or, if I’m being honest, eaten a sleeve of cookies to numb whatever this… Continue reading What is Food Grief? (And Why It’s Not Actually About the Food)
New program introduces physician-led, data-driven model to improve chronic disease management, reduce medication burden, and enhance quality of life in assisted living residents TOWARD Health is excited to announce the launch of a novel assisted living initiative aimed at transforming chronic disease management through structured, evidence-based metabolic care. The program is supported by a… Continue reading TOWARD Health Launches Assisted Living Metabolic Care Initiative with Support from Baszucki Group
For years, I followed a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic approach with consistency. This was not a temporary phase or a cyclical strategy. It was a sustained, deliberate way of eating grounded in clinical experience and personal results. Then life changed. Not in a minor way. Not a bad week or a difficult stretch, but sustained, cumulative stress: Stroke. Cancer.… Continue reading What Stress Quietly Changed: An Experiment and 10 Pounds Lost
New publication highlights historic FDA decision and calls for a shift from fear-based to evidence-based menopause care TOWARD Health is proud to announce that Dr. Laura Buchanan has published a new peer-reviewed article in Menopause, examining one of the most consequential regulatory shifts in women’s health in decades: the removal of the FDA boxed… Continue reading TOWARD Health Physician Publishes Landmark Paper on Hormone Therapy and Women’s Health
Guest Post by Ari Kalayjian, 8th Grade To: Superintendent of Schools Blauvelt, NY 10913 Dear Superintendent: I am an eighth grader at South Orangetown Middle School, and I am writing to you regarding the quality of the school food n the district. Informal peer-group surveys have shown consistent poor sentiment toward the school’s food quantity… Continue reading I’m an 8th Grader, and Here’s Why Our School Food Needs to Change
Dr. Tro Kalayjian recently took part in a special screening of The Cholesterol Code, a compelling new documentary that is already sparking widespread conversation in the metabolic health community. The film follows engineer-turned-researcher Dave Feldman, whose personal health journey led him to question conventional wisdom around cholesterol, low-carb diets, and cardiovascular risk. What began as… Continue reading Breaking Down Cholesterol Myths: Dr. Tro Leads Q&A After Powerful Film Screening
A ketogenic diet is high in fat and very low in carbohydrates. Here we will address the 12 most common anti-keto claims found in the media. While we are not suggesting a ketogenic diet is appropriate for all, this diet is clearly a safe and highly effective option for people with metabolic diseases (obesity,… Continue reading Debunking Low Carb: Myths vs Facts
In regard to my relationship with food, weight and body image, I’ve always secretly felt like I was more broken than most people, and that if anyone knew the real me, they would be horrified. The irony is that the real me I was so ashamed of and desperate to hide, became increasingly more… Continue reading Self-Loathing is a Learned Behavior
It’s no secret that as a society we are all under a ridiculous amount of stress, and that our own self-care often suffers serious neglect as a result. It is a noticeable trend that when someone is stumbling during a weight-loss program, and their weight is heading in the wrong direction, they generally say, almost… Continue reading The Importance Of Self-Care
If you’re trying to change your diet, reclaim your health and build a better life, you know how isolating it can feel. The world is not set up for us. It is built around constant eating opportunities, never-ending snacking, and sugar hidden (in plain sight) everywhere. The expectation: eat often, indulge and don’t think too… Continue reading Health Isn’t a Willpower Problem, It’s a People Problem
Register to attend the live special event here. We’re excited to invite you to a special live interview featuring Toward Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tro Kalayjian, and renowned nurse practitioner, women’s health expert, and author Cynthia Thurlow, NP. This insightful conversation will center around Cynthia’s highly anticipated new book, The Menopause Gut: Balance… Continue reading Dr. Tro Kalayjian & Cynthia Thurlow, NP: A Powerful Conversation on Menopause, Gut Health, and Disease Prevention
