First off when I called the business, the woman did not give me very many details on the program. She insisted on making an appointment, my husband and I decided to go down and talk to them to see if it would fit our life style. When I got there it did resemble to some degree a doctors office. it was full to the brim with people and it turned out they were doing a mass intake of people. I still had little to no idea what was going on, but we waited thinking they should explain the program once things got going. I was called back and was told i could not bring my husband with me. They started to push me through a health check like you would get in the military. None of them were talkative or overly friendly. Most just did their work and ignored the fact that it was a person they were processing. I tried to explain to the ladies that I had no idea what was going on and had hoped that I would get some information before I decided if I wanted to do this. (preferably before the exam they were charging close to a hundred dollars for) finally with some exasperation the woman tersely informed me that it was a diet pill and a low carb diet. I asked a few times to talk to my husband to tell him about it but they didn't 'have time' for me to go out and talk to him. I decided to go through exam as i was desperate to drop weight due to health issues. When I got out and spoke to my husband he decided not to join, again they made out like it was some great inconvenience to them that he backed out. The pill that you get works wonderfully but my doctor is very against me using it. she does not like it at all. It does help me control the desire to eat through out the day which i like. After i drooped about 25 pounds I was not dropping the weight as much, 1 pound a month.
Each week you can go in and get a 'free' b6/b12 vitamin shot when you do a weigh in. Now their idea of free is that they charge you almost a hundred a month plus medication cost. So you are paying for your free shots. Once a month you are suppose to be able to see the doctor but the truth is that 99% of the time you go in you see a nurse practitioner.
You are offered little to no diet counselling, you go into the office she looks over your weight and tells you that you are doing good or you are not ok's your medication and you leave and pay for the next month and medicine. The medication at the center is a bit more expensive then if you get it at a pharmacy.
When I was on my stand still of weight loss, i was still not gaining weight and managing to drop a pound here and there which was still progress in the right direction. However the last time I went in to get my prescription filled i was told if I did not start to lose again I would be removed from the program. She went so far as to tell me i had lost nothing recently (In fact I had dropped a whole pant size if not the weight) When asked how this made sense as it seemed that their job was to help me learn to loose weight she informed me that it would look bad if they were audited, so it seems to me they only want people that are losing weight on their plan so they can say 'XX% of people that do this lose weight' rather then helping those that really need the help to find a way to lose the weight. When I asked if maybe something other then a low carb diet may work better for my body she got rather annoyed and curtly informed me that she would not recommend any other diet and I could do what I wanted to do.
Pros:
The pill did seem to work for appetite control
Regular blood work ups to ensure the pill is not causing problems are nice
Dr run when the Dr actually appears
Cons:
Less then friendly attitude
Little in the way of encouragement
Little in the way of nutritional counselling
Little in the way of exercise counselling
Little information on the actual program untill you are signed up
Expensive monthly fees
Medication that is frowned upon by the medical practice in general.
Hours of operation are lacking.
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