Practice Spotlight: Teresa Sherard, M.D.

Americans are finally waking up to the power of fiber.

“Dietary fiber makes you feel full,” said Dr. Teresa Sherard. “Add fiber to your meals and you’ll eat fewer calories. Consume fewer calories than you burn and you’ll lose weight. It’s that simple.”

As a staff physician at the Lifestyle Center of America (LCA), a non-profit organization in Sulphur, Okla., Sherard believes consuming fiber-rich foods leads to healthy weight loss – effectively and simply.

“Preferably the majority of the foods consumed would be whole foods,” said Sherard, an ACLM member whose interest in Lifestyle Medicine began when she volunteered at the Wildwood Lifestyle Center and Hospital in Wildwood, Georgia, outside of her hometown of Chattanooga, Tenn.

An easy step, she said, is to “fiber power up” the foods already consumed.

“Add berries to your cereal, barley or fresh vegetables to tomato soup, or nuts and beans to a salad,” she suggested. “It’s easy.”

Still, Sherard cautions not to drown fiber in fat, even healthy fat which has lots of calories. She advises eating fiber-rich foods first to fill up with low calories, and eat fiber foods that are moist to avoid unnecessary calories.

To promote dietary changes in people with weight problems, Sherard and her fellow coworkers, Stuart Seale, M.D., and Diana Fleming, Ph.D./LDN, recently coauthored a book, “The Full Plate Diet.” The three authors spend a large part of their time promoting the book around the country.

“It’s all about slimming down, looking great and being healthy,” Sherard said. “The most exciting and enjoyable part of this endeavor has been watching the audiences’ response to the book and listening to the renewed sense of hope they express.”

Many readers who have struggled with maintaining long-term weight control view the program as “simple enough to be implemented immediately with foods that are readily available in local grocery stores,” Sherard said.

“We hope that the book will achieve national recognition and become an important lifestyle intervention to help curb the burgeoning obesity epidemic that fosters so much of the chronic disease in this country,” she added.

Sherard and her fellow authors cite high-fiber intake as a great way to avoid heart attack and stroke, fight cancer, control diabetes, raise energy levels, reduce symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, and calm the storm of digestive complaints.

“The long-term goal is to eat at least 40 grams of fiber a day,” Sherard said. “And it’s not that hard.”

Making a commitment is the key, and help is available at www.FullPlateDiet.org, Sherard said. A free download of the entire book is available onsite.

“The Full Plate Diet is not a new idea, but simply an attempt to make the medical research encouraging increased consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds more accessible to the average American,” she said.

The Surgeon General, the Institute of Medicine, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Association, The American Dietetics Association, and many other professional organizations have recommended increasing consumption of fiber-rich foods for years, she noted.

“However, compliance with these recommendations has not been sufficient to stem the tsunami of obesity and overweight in this country,” Sherard said. “We hope that by simply relaying one message – eat more fiber-rich foods – we can make a difference.”

Their marketing strategy includes focusing on developing relationships with physicians’ offices, corporate wellness programs and church groups as vehicles to promote healthy weight loss using their book, Sherard added.

Lifestyle Center of America, which also has a second office in Sedona, Ariz., no longer operates its 18-day residential lifestyle program for patients, but recognizes the message promoted in the book, Sherard said.

“Perhaps the greatest lesson that the Center has learned over the years as we transitioned to a weight loss program was the importance of recognizing the stages of change – the Prochaska model of behavior change – in particular the ‘readiness’ to change,” Sherard said.

LCA’s residential program cost between $8,000 and $9,000, with most expenses not covered by insurance. Over a period of 12 years, more than 4,000 people went through but very few continued the program once home, Sherard said.

“Few were really ready to take the necessary actions required to implement the principles they had paid so much money to learn,” she said. “Many were still hoping for a magic bullet despite being told this was a ‘lifestyle’ program.”

We realized that all lifestyle change is behavior change, and that most Americans have been educated to expect medical care to be paid for by insurance companies. Only a few of the most desperately ill are willing to try paying for health care out of pocket.”

Yet many are willing to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for liposuction, breast augmentation, hair transplants and other such “vanity” procedures, Sherard pointed out.

“Among the list of vanity programs are weight-loss programs,” she said. “Americans spend $40 billion every year on weight-loss programs. Since weight loss is associated with much chronic disease, we realized that we could, in a sense, get to health concerns via the back door, using weight loss as an entering wedge.”

Although no biometric data has been used to track the book’s success, public response tells Sherard that she and her coauthors are on the right path. She advises medical students, whether pursuing Lifestyle Medicine or not, to become educated in the principals of behavior changes, nutrition and exercise physiology.

“This is surely a part of the wave of the future,” she said. “Your patients can only benefit from a physician with a broader breadth of knowledge.”

For others pursuing Lifestyle Medicine, Sherard added, “This is essential!”

To assure reasonable compensation for teaching Lifestyle Medicine in groups, Sherard used Drop-In Group Medical Appointments (DIGMA), a billing method that LCA experimented with during its residential program.

 Sherard earned her medical degree from Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 1999 and completed her internship and residency at Loma Linda University Hospital in 2002. Two years later, she completed one of the only fellowships in Lifestyle Medicine at LCA, where she now educates patients to recapture their health and successfully achieve weight loss.

ACLM Disclaimer: Our Practice Spotlights are intended to provide examples of Lifestyle medicine in practice. We recognize that Lifestyle Medicine practices vary widely, and inclusion in Practice Spotlight is not intended to imply official endorsement of individuals or practices.