I started my blog, "All is Well That Eats Well"
as a way to easily share my healthy and delicious recipes with my patients. I had just finished my Internal Medicine residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC and had moved to Virginia with my soon to be husband, who was stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton Roads. I started my first job as an attending there, in a busy outpatient clinical practice.
My days were long and packed with 20-25 patients daily. Oftentimes patient visits were only 15 minutes long and I was somehow expected to manage acute conditions like diagnosing a new onset cough as well as chronic conditions, like a rising HbA1c in my diabetic patient during that time (and any other concerns that came up).
It simply was not enough time to get to the root of the problem, to empower my patients with actionable tools to affect real change or to provide the type of care that my patients deserved. I knew that I needed to do something but as a new attending, I didn't want to create waves by requesting longer visits, less patients in my schedule or more support.
I also knew that the root of the majority of problems my patients faced could be prevented or reversed with lifestyle, most importantly, with food. During my residency, I heavily focused my research on studying different dietary lifestyles and how they impact the trajectory of overall health, with a specific focus on the Mediterranean Diet. I was thrilled to present the results of my research to the Department of Internal Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital and to the Department of Endocrinology at Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio. I was also selected to take part in a collaborative program between doctors and chefs at the Institute of Culinary Education in NYC, where we worked together to create meals that functioned as prescriptions for health.
So, I got to work and started a blog with my healthy, delicious and easy-to-make recipes, which I could readily share with my patients. It was the best decision I could have made. With limited time, I was able to provide them with a valuable and actionable resource to help get them on the path to whole health.
Even I was surprised by how well it worked!
My patients would come to see me for follow-ups and their cholesterol had improved, or their HbA1c had normalized and was no longer in the prediabetes zone or they had lost 15 pounds, and I would ask them how they did it. They'd tell me that they had started following all of the recipes on my blog!
Throughout my 14 years of practicing Internal Medicine, I have used this resource to help my patients achieve better health. However, I realized that in order to truly optimize my patients' health and reverse chronic conditions, I needed to create something more comprehensive and powerful. This led to my decision to leave traditional medicine to launch my own lifestyle medicine coaching practice, Enso Lifestyle Health, back in 2020.
As part of my more comprehensive lifestyle medicine coaching program, I began developing customized meal plans for my private clients. It not only worked in helping them achieve their ultimate wellness and weight loss goals, they also loved the food!
In the past four years, I have helped my private clients to lose weight and keep it off for good, improve their cholesterol levels, blood sugar and blood pressure, boost energy, lower inflammation, feel more confident, find balance, improve their relationship with food, wear clothes they never thought they'd fit into again, eat more mindfully and enjoy new foods.
Thanks to my amazing clients, my recipes are tried and tested, and the outcomes are incredible!!
That's why I am SO EXCITED to be making The Enso Kitchen, a 75-page book of my recipes to help boost energy, lower inflammation and lose weight sustainably, available to the public next week! Stay tuned!! :)
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