IME Community

Ultra-processed foods often contain high levels of sugar, salt, unhealthy fats, and artificial additives, which can stimulate the brain's reward system and trigger cravings.

Ultra-processed foods are often designed to be highly appetizing, inexpensive, and convenient, which can contribute to their addictive qualities.

The Food Addiction business model is powerful!

Do you fully love and accept yourself no matter what?

What if I told you full love and acceptance is possible for yourself and you can stop self-judging?

Ready to create a self-acceptance movement? Check out imecommunity.com for more!

Did you know your current thinking creates your current reality?

If you keep getting stuck with the same result, it’s because you are attached to the same thought that keeps coming up for you.

Can you create awareness of your current thoughts that aren’t serving you?

Let’s talk sugar:

Urges and cravings for sugar are conditioned pathways in your brain; that’s why we over-desire and end up overeating and coping with our emotions using food/sugary food.

So recognize:
🧠 your brain is conditioned to over-desire sugar
🧠 your brain is malleable and can change
✨ your environment can feed into that conditioned pathway

Have grace and compassion. You’re not powerless or stuck in your sugar habit. Do not restrict or you will cause a binge!

Goals…we all try to make them. If you’ve decided to make this big goal in your life and you start ti get into it and you notice your mental health is suffering, abort ship!

It can be really hard, but it is very courageous to recognize you need to go in a different direction from a path you believed was your calling. Mental health and well being first. Nothing is worth sacrificing your mental health over!

When we try to change up a habit, we oftentimes do not give ourselves an ample amount of time to see real change. When it comes to health habit changes, many of us will measure our progress on a scale to judge whether we are successful or not, and that is simply not helpful.

The best thing we can do is have a psychology approach where you use a 20%-50% increase into the positive from where you are at today. For example, if you are already drinking 2 glasses of water a day and you want to increase your hydration, then add in another glass of water.

Try a 7 day habit challenge, track it, and then add another habit in. Always add in the positive and celebrate your wins only. Shaming yourself to your goal won’t work. ❤️Dr. Karla

Something I'm noticing lately is coaching clients and patients who are food journaling, meaning just simply writing down what they eat and when, are also judging their food and themselves for their choices.

"I shouldn't have eaten that."
"I don't know why I ate that."
"I didn't do very good today."
"Tomorrow I'm going to do better."

The problem with judging food and yourself is it takes away the benefit of self-tracking and monitoring, which is great accountability towards your goal.

If it's all just data, then the self-judgement is all unnecessary diet culture. It's internalized weight bias and shaming.
If thoughts create feelings which drive action or inaction, then staying attached to self-limiting thoughts about food will create shame which will drive amotivation.

Data is great.
Food tracking is helpful data.
Judging your food and yourself is not helpful.
You can always make tweaks and changes with your eating to get you to your goal.
Just make sure you view it as neutral data.

🤫 Silence fuels eating disorders.

▪️ Avoiding the topic, being unaware of how to discuss it, adhering to diet culture, and overemphasizing weight rather than mental health are ways parents and doctors contribute to eating disorders and potentially cause harm.

▪️ Parents, your teen's weight does not reflect their mental state. Thinness doesn't equate to happiness, and larger bodies don't need to shrink for improved emotional and mental well-being.

▪️ While better health habits can enhance well-being, equating weight with health and emotional health is misguided.

Parents, please share your coaching needs on this critical health issue!

Life and weight coach Karla Lester M.D. uses compassion and expertise to help teens transform their health. She’s channeled her decades of experience into a holistic, teen-focused weight loss platform that emphasizes the power of choice.

“Parents, we expect you to strike a balance between providing constant support for your teen without being overbearing. We want to evoke personal growth in your child, both mentally and physically, that leads to a permanently improved outlook on their overall health.”
– Dr. Karla

It's always important to listen to what’s happening in healthcare, specifically primary care. Things have changed. We aren't operating like we always have been. Swipe to see four ways to talk to teenage patients.

Please don't make losing weight your whole personality...what other creative projects are you working on, what makes you interesting? People want to hear about YOU, not your weight-loss.

Research shows that weight stigma, not weight, causes physiologic and psychological disease. Medical weight bias is an epidemic because doctors refuse to admit we've caused them.

Have you ever been exposed to this? Head to the link in my bio to find out how we can work together.

IME is a safe space with Body Positive Coaching for Teens and Parents of Teens in a Body Negative World.

Join me today!

Self-love superpower,
Dr. Karla, ActivistMD

Parents remember…

👉🏼Self-Compassion NOT Perfection is what you’re going for.

Be kind to yourself and know that you’re not causing or controlling all the things in your teens life. You can’t. But you CAN decide how you want to show up as a parent.

Metabolic health is a measure of how well your body processes and generates energy aka when our mitochondria are operating at peak efficiency.

In other words, to be metabolically healthy means that our body is able to respond to food in a way that reduces our risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, metabolic syndrome, PCOS, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

Insulin controls our blood sugar but it is also a powerful fat storage hormone and a powerful growth hormone; so what we want to do is control our insulin levels.

Start by eating more protein, fiber, and healthy fats, and less high fructose corn syrup, no trans fats, as well as limiting ultra-processed foods.

A reason why we over desire food is that we overeat, which means we are overweight...and the cycle continues.

What it boils down to, is that we are not taught or given permission to allow our human emotions, so when we perceive a negative emotion we go to buffer with food.

Need a cheerleader to help you along? Come work with me! Visit drkarlamd.com

Food chatter is a term used to describe when your brain has a lot of urges and cravings, often with voices in your head and you think about food all day long.

Please note this is physiologic, there’s nothing wrong with you and you’re not stuck. So what to do?

* Clean up your food environment because stimulus control is imperative
* Minimize your inputs, the neuromarketing tactics are powerful
* Medication might help

Want to know more? Check me out at drkarlamd.com for a coaching consult.

I recently coached a teen I've been working with for the past year.

Like many, she struggles with fixed negative beliefs about herself. She shared an experience of her first depressive episode, during which she couldn't function as a good friend.

It took some time to understand what was happening. As she began to feel better, she learned to recognize negative thought patterns as temporary "thought rainbows" that come and go, realizing she doesn't have to attach to them or let them define her.

Remember to stay out of the fix and solve with your child, teen or young adult. Help them create awareness of the thoughts that are keeping them stuck and give them hope that they can write their own story moving forward.

Never invalidate their feelings,
Dr. Karla

Have a safe and happy 4th ❤️

Summer health loss is due to less structure and routine, less family mealtimes, less structured sports and more ultra processed foods, boredom eating, more boredom eating, no sleep schedule, and copious screen time.

Here are a few of my tips to mitigate summer health loss:
* get outside
* make sure family mealtimes don’t take a backslide
* stay off your phone around your child or teen
* enroll them in camps
* be the house where their friends are welcome to hang out
* try new foods
* plant and grow vegetables
* go to a farmer’s market
* set a sleep schedule for your family
* make sure your child or teen is eating protein
* try simple meal planning and prep

Summer is a great time to connect with me for a coaching consultation or you can schedule a metabolic telehealth consultation with me. Go to www.drkarlamd.com to schedule today. No referral needed!

What are your self beliefs about eating?

Do you have negative self beliefs or powerful thoughts on a loop in your brain about yourself and your eating?

Maybe your past self or things that you’ve tried and didn’t stick with bring up lies such as:

“I’m a quitter, I can’t do it!”

Those are just thought rainbows and clouds going by, they are not you. They are optional, so you need to create some awareness. Summer BBQs are around the corner, so be curious and create awareness, but don’t make it mean anything about you.

It's important to always remember:

✨ Emotional health and physical health are connected.
✨ You can't have one without the other.
✨ Small changes count.
✨ Celebrate your wins!

You can always head to drkarlamd.com for freebies, info, and more!

Have a Happy Memorial Day!

Dr. Karla

Parents, do you want a health focused approach for your child or teen with insulin resistance? I can help. Check out my metabolic telehealth for children and adolecents.

I am licensed in:
✨ Arizona
✨ Colorado
✨ Georgia
✨ Illinois
✨ Indiana
✨ Iowa
✨ Kansas
✨ Michigan
✨ Minnesota
✨ Nebraska
✨ Ohio
✨ Texas
✨ Utah
✨ Wisconsin
✨ Wyoming

Come work with me! Visit drkarlamd.com

Many teens tell me both of their parents are both food and body judgers. This, in turn, can cause disordered eating and negative body image. Oftentimes, you might not even know you are doing it until you really start paying attention.

Commit to doing the work to stop food and body judging for your child or teen. Leave me a 👍🏻 if you are committed.

Should your teen try a medication like Qsymia before starting Wegovy?

Some insurances dictate the patient has to first start Qsymia. Qsymia can help a patient who has a lot of food cravings/food noise/food chatter. The topiramate component in Qsymia can help with night time eating, but It does NOT treat insulin resistance like Wegovy.

I’m Dr. Karla and I’m licensed in 15 states; you don’t need a referral to work with me and my success rate is 80% for getting patients who meet the criteria for Wegovy started on a prescription.

Check me out at drkarlamd.com If you have any medication questions, drop them here!

A child or teen who grows up in an almond family is at great risk for many health and psychological consequences including obesity and disordered eating.

Weight based victimization that happens in their home with constant food judging, body judging, and shaming causes harm. Studies show it’s the internalized bias that creates both physiological and psychological consequences in the body including eating disorders, poor body image, increased inflammation, and increased risk of metabolic disease. Almond families don’t prevent obesity, they contribute to it.

The toxic nature of these things can come out in every activity of your daily life. Turning on the tv, scrolling social media, stopping at a coffee shop, heading to the gym. It's easy to get sucked in. If you're ready to get out of that toxicity, let's chat!

Karla Lester, M.D. is a board-certified pediatrician, board-certified obesity medicine physician, and certified life and weight coach with decades of experience helping children and adolescents struggling with their weight, health, and body image.

Did you know I have a podcast?

Get educated and motivated on the go! We know you’re busy, so we made it easy to tune in to life and weight coaching at any time. Whether you’re working out or driving to school, you can access the podcast from literally anywhere — making this another great free resource!