How My Path Lead to HMR

Meet Dr. Jeanene Fogli, HMR’s Director of Bionutrition Research and Strategic Initiatives

I decided to be a dietitian when I was 16. I applied early admission to college, and before Thanksgiving of my senior year of high school knew I was off to a happy career working as a registered dietitian. Four years later, I had my first job: giving hospital patients one-page handouts on a “cardiac diet” or a “diabetic diet” with little time for explanation as they were being discharged. Not exactly my grand plan of helping people eat a healthy diet, maintain a healthy weight and decreasing disease risk. This was not nutrition counseling, not saving lives, this was pushing paper – literally.

So I came to a crossroads – now what do I do? Go back to school to be an actuary just like my dad always wanted, or try to find a place in the world of nutrition that made sense to me? I saw a posting for a research position at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. I thought maybe getting in on the ground floor of nutrition recommendations might just be my dream job. We did all sorts of research: Does Coffee Decrease Your Risk of Diabetes? Can Almonds Decrease Your Cholesterol? What is the Best Approach to Dietary Management of Disease? I was there for 8 years, learning so many interesting things and at the same time completing my Ph.D., which involved looking at healthy dietary patterns and diabetes risk. There in a medical center that was affiliated with Harvard Medical School, where so much nutrition research is born, it became very clear that we didn’t have a handle on how to use these lessons we learned in our clinical practice. We had far too many patients that were overweight and had other related health issues and we couldn’t develop a clinically effective weight-loss program. People kept coming in and they were bigger than they were the last time. It was depressing!

So I left to organize and conduct international clinical trials for obesity drugs, and I thought “Eureka! Maybe the magic pill is the answer!” I worked on drugs that increased metabolism, improved satiety, decreased absorption of foods, and several combinations. Consistently there were side effects (and some were very unpleasant!), or the drugs became less effective over time. I realized you can’t just take a pill that tricks your body into doing something it wouldn’t usually do without changing your energy intake and output. Even if a pill works in the short term, the results are rarely sustained.

I came to an interview with HMR in December 2011. After hearing just some of HMR’s published results and tasting one of their shakes, I was sold! I thought, “I have to get this job! They “get it,” they are patient-focused, they understand the importance of weight loss through a healthy diet and physical activity for disease management, and they see and collect results!”

As a researcher, I am a sucker for data and numbers and HMR is driven by their results. And they have the most impressive outcomes in the industry. This is what I decided I wanted to be when I was 16 years old, and I Iook forward to living my professional dream with all of you!
 

Stay tuned for blog articles from Dr. Fogli on the latest published health and nutrition information.
 

 

by DrJeanene on 07/18/2012 | Share Story With a Friend

tags: HMR, nutrition