Breaking Medical Norms: The Future of Treating Childhood Obesity

Most people don’t even know pediatric bariatric surgery exists. When I started doing it, many in medicine thought it shouldn’t.

In this episode, I join Ashley Love on the @shadowmenext podcast to share what it was like to help build an entirely new field while being publicly criticized, challenged at national conferences, and labeled reckless for treating children with severe obesity. I talk about standing at a microphone, defending an idea no one wanted to hear, and choosing patients over professional approval.

We discuss why childhood obesity is a disease, not a failure of willpower, why “eat less, move more” has never been enough, and how fear and stigma delayed care for millions of kids. I also explain why I stepped away from a surgical career I loved to write a book, launch a pediatric weight-management telemedicine practice, and focus on advocacy at scale.

This conversation is about courage in medicine, challenging outdated thinking, and what it really takes to change a system that resists change.