Ep 38: Pivoting Abruptly with Dr. Catherine Harmon Toomer

Dr. Catherine Harmon Toomer is a family medicine and community health physician, TEDx speaker, and founder/CEO of Health, Wellness, and Weight Loss Centers.   

In part 2 of this 2-part interview, Dr. Toomer shares:

• Why she transitioned from working at an FQHC she loved to opening her own center.
  
  
• How she created a successful system to help patients out of her distaste of the current industry model.
  
  
• What is her advice for doctors who want to pursue their dreams.

Tune in to this episode and hear how one physician embraced life challenges and pivoted again and again to live her dream life.
 
Dare to Dream Physician Resources:

Dare to Dream Physician, Life Planning for Physicians

 https://daretodreamphysician.com

Dare to Dream Physician on Facebook

 https://www.facebook.com/daretodreamphysician/

DreamPhysician on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/dreamphysician/

Resources for Dr. Catherine Harmon Toomer:

Dr. Toomer, The Courage Crusader
https://drtoomer.com

Total Wellness and Weight Loss Program
https://bitly.com/total-wellness-weightloss

Dr. Toomer on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chtoomermd/

Dr. Toomer on TedX "Imposter Syndrome By Any Other Name, Is Bravery"
https://youtu.be/SeLmwYdegLA

** Disclaimer: While Drs. Toomer and Gray are both physicians, we are not your physicians and nothing in this podcast should constitute individualized medical advice. We encourage you to seek the advice of your own healthcare professionals should you need to make any medical decisions.***

Transcript

Dr. Gray, Host 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of the dare to dream physician podcast. I am so excited. I'm also honored and privileged today to bring you our guests. Her name is Dr. Katherine Harmon tumor. She's a community health and family medicine physician. She is also the founder and CEO of health, wellness and weight loss centers. She is a TEDx speaker. She's just an all around amazing human being. We are a continuing part, two of our interview today. If you have not listened to last week's episode, I highly recommend you add that to your queue. After listening to this one that's episode 37, total wellness with Dr. Katherine Harmon tumor. We are picking up from her riveting story where she talks about how she went from working in an FQHC clinic too opening her own clinic and health, wellness, and weight loss centers.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 0:57

And so every time I see the name, it reminds me. what a blessing of a life I've had and 56 years old right now, I still have congestive heart failure. I still have chronic depression, and yet I am happier, stronger feeling better than I ever have in my life. And, and the only thing I have to fight sometimes is that feeling of running up. Because people keep telling me that I'm getting old. I don't think I'm getting old, but other people keep telling

Dr. Gray, Host 1:31

you certainly don't look old. I mean, you look like you're 10 years younger than your age.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 1:36

oh, well, thank you. Thank you. Good genes. Like I said, my mother's 90 and she doesn't have wrinkles. And so I'm like, okay, I guess I got, I got good genes. but. But yeah, there's a lot of messages that women get. particularly one of the reasons why, people keep asking me, it's like, you're a doctor and we get the health, you get the wellness. Why the weight loss. I mean, granted, yes, we know your history, you lost, now it's been 80 pounds, and we knew all this, but why would you put weight loss on there? And I was like for that question right there as if there's something smarter, About weight loss, being a weight loss physician. And for a long time, I actually w I hated being called a weight loss physician because there's this stigma of, we're only doing weight loss to make money, or it's like not really considered real medicine because people. Wouldn't embrace the fact that obesity is a, is a real medical diagnosis and that there's real hormonal and biochemical, molecular biological reasons for that have nothing to do with food and fit.

Dr. Gray, Host 2:44

Um,

Dr. Toomer, Guest 2:45

If it does have to do with food and fitness it's simply because no one was told how they could avoid it or reverse it. I can't tell you how many diabetics I've met, who are shocked that you can reverse your diabetes. They had no idea it was nobody ever told them or people who've been overweight. Their whole lives were just like, they just resigned to the fact that, well, that's it, I'm just going to be overweight. And I was like, but there's going to come a time when your joints are going to start hurting your back is going to start hurting. It's going to be harder and harder for you to maintain your active. Let's do this now. So I wanted a place where I could create somewhere that was nonjudgmental. That was not treating people as if they had somehow let themselves down by being overweight or by, because in my opinion, weight is a symptom of something. And we focus so much on the weight. We forget to look at the something else's and when you fix the something else, the weight goes away. And so for me, my something else was depression and diabetes. Once I fix those things, my weight dropped. I didn't really do much of anything else after that, once I fixed those things, they stopped. We shame people who are overweight and then we shamed them for the process of losing them. And I just got tired of seeing that. And so I was like, you know what, I'm going to embrace this. And if this is what gets people through the door so I can fix everything else then. So be it. That's what I'll do.

Dr. Gray, Host 4:11

wow.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 4:11

But even now still people just like, they see weight loss and they think, okay, they get in fear because people are afraid of failing. And I understand that. And so when there's like weight loss, they're like, that's one thing they don't want to feel. Because we've been told it's your fault. It's our fault if we're overweight, because we've never been told how to not make it our fault. And so that's what I do a lot of educating because really the fault lies in the messages we're getting, not in the person themselves.

Dr. Gray, Host 4:41

Um,

Dr. Toomer, Guest 4:41

Long answer to your.

Dr. Gray, Host 4:44

You mentioned this a little bit, but from that transition, you, you, you got well enough so that you went back to an FQHC for family medicine, and then you, at one point you decided that this wasn't quite. Enough of, the impact that you needed to make with the patients. And that's how you founded the health, wellness and weight loss centers. w what, what was that transition like? you know, Was it like you thought of, okay, I need to have a change and then, and then boom, it happened, or, how did that process.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 5:14

well, actually those rather abrupt and the reason it was abrupt was because I was pushed into a situation where my health started failing again.

Dr. Gray, Host 5:22

Uh,

Dr. Toomer, Guest 5:23

I was in a small rural town. We were one of two primary care offices for the, almost the whole county. At the time, because there was such need in that space. I decided to work there even though it meant driving a total of three hours a day,

Dr. Gray, Host 5:38

Oh, wow.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 5:39

I would drive from my home, take my daughters to school, drive an hour to work, drive hour, back to them and then go back home. And It was just, it, it was the work I wanted to do. It was so obvious that there was such a need that going into work every day. It was just, I loved it. my people were appreciative even when they weren't appreciative. I just felt like I had the skills to counter whatever it is that came at me. And, and it felt really. But then the hospital across the street, shut down without warning,

Dr. Gray, Host 6:16

Oh,

Dr. Toomer, Guest 6:17

their emergency department. We were office right across the. So everyone who went to the hospital saw it was closed, would come across the street to us. So we became a defacto emergency room. He became an urgent care center. We were already seeing a full load of patients and I just, and of course being, family medicine, you help, you can't turn people away. Especially when they come in with an X, like an X in their leg, where to happen, uh, people having heart attacks, they're walking in and we used to have to have people sitting in the Mar monitoring people in the. And allow me, because we couldn't expect the receptionist to triage anyone. It wasn't their job to say whether something was serious or not. So we had to have someone who could have eyes on people walking in. So we knew if we had to stop what we were doing to help them. and there was ambulance, we used to have, like the ambulance service were like lined up and sometimes we just didn't have enough to take people to the hospital, which the closest hospital was 40 miles.

Dr. Gray, Host 7:17

Wow.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 7:18

And, and it was very frightening and it was very stressful. And even then I was only working part time and I still just hit a wall. I knew one day I was, I just hit a wall and I knew it was my heart. And I just said, I can't come back until I, this is fixed. And when I went to my cardiologist, he's like, I don't know when your heart got compromised, but it has. And whatever you're doing, you've got to stop

Dr. Gray, Host 7:46

oh, wow.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 7:46

I couldn't go back, but I was like, there's no way I can just stay away from this. They have there's I just, I just felt like I had too much to offer. And so that's when it just happened that I had a friend who had this space. And she was like, we're no longer going to need this space. It's already set up for a doctor's office. Do you work with before we move out? Should you know, do you want us to kind of set it up so that you can move in? And I was like, you know what, that's the answer. I was given a gift. So I was like, I'll just take it. I wasn't even sure what I was going to do at the time. But, But then I came up with the name help. My, my dream was always to have like a multicenter entity of some type where people could walk in and it was like a full service financial it's like, psychological, career, life, medicine, everything. And so I said, you know what, I'm going to step out in faith. I'm going to create this entity called health wellness and weight loss. And I put the S on the end of this. I was like, okay, might be one right now, but it's not going to stay that way. And health wellness and weight loss centers were born. I didn't know exactly what the structure was, but I knew that whatever it was, I could create it. I could make it whatever I wanted and evolved as I went along and then just, I was getting into nice, good stride. COVID hit. And I had to shut. and then I went online, so which actually ended up being another blessing because that meant I could help people everywhere, not just in my local area. So

Dr. Gray, Host 9:28

okay, so you

Dr. Toomer, Guest 9:29

finding my blessings. Yeah. Yeah. I did. I had already, I had been working with, my business coach, Dr. Who is for anyone who's interested in becoming an entrepreneur, particularly for your physician, because she helps physicians become entrepreneurs, find her and grab a hand, both hands and don't let go, because she saved me. She saved me before the pivot because I was kind of fun because I could do anything. I wanted, I had the space, I had the knowledge I had the dream. I had all of it. I could do anything. Going anywhere, I'm a musician, I'm an artist. I was like, maybe I'll open a space where people can, you know, art therapy, I just anything. And so I actually met her at a conference and she helped me focus. And because I had always expected to go into medicine, working in in rural Africa, And never expecting to get paid. I actually went into medicine with the sole purpose. I mean, I planned my medical education with the expectation that I would never get paid for what I do. So I made sure I didn't have student loans. I made sure I went to local schools. I made sure. So I came out not knowing hardly anything so that if I worked in the middle of nowhere and someone said, I'm going to pay you with. Fine.

Dr. Gray, Host 10:50

okay,

Dr. Toomer, Guest 10:51

I didn't, I didn't need the money or anything. And so I've never been able to think of myself as a money-making entity.

Dr. Gray, Host 11:00

Hmm.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 11:01

And I think that's one of the reasons why I've never hired anyone, because then it's like, if I don't have to pay anybody, I don't really have to care about whether I make money or not. I was blessed with the fact that I wasn't the primary, income. In my home, but I also started to realize that it was a little bit selfish for me to not pay attention to, because what that meant was everything fell on my husband. And I could relieve some of that. If I, really started focusing a little bit on my revenue. And so I got a business coach. My first coach ever, never had a coach before. She helped me streamline and she helped me. Do what I wanted to do in a way where I could make money, but it wasn't so much, it was more, almost passive. It just, it's like I could set my price, have this happen and I would get paid, but it wasn't like I was chasing the dollar and that worked for me. but then she's like, you're going to have to change with the. It's all labor-intensive for you. But if something happens to you, none of this can continue. If something happens. And I was like, you're right. So would you like, you need to create something that's automated something in a way so that no matter what happens to you, it can carry on or someone can step into your. And so I started digitizing everything. I've started putting my plan on paper digitally. I started putting my intake forms digitally. I digitized all my protocols. I digitized everything because up until that point, they were on paper, in a file in my office. And then I was 90% finished digitizing when COVID hit. And so I pivoted. all I had to do. In fact, all I had to do was come up with. Uh, flow of how I was going to intake people and, get them through and get them, set up in a way and all that was because I'd never done telemedicine at that point. And so all it was, was becoming familiar with telemedicine and explaining to my patients and my new clients, how it was going to work in a way that I was comfortable with and actually what it did. It reduced the amount of time I had to. It helped me help people actually more efficiently and more effectively because, I had to, I cut away a lot of the fluff.

Dr. Gray, Host 13:28

Yeah.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 13:29

One of the things it did do though it removed some of the. I guess some of the passive, accountability that my clients had because when you're in an office before they walk out and make your appointment, the little bull. And so I realized I had to reproduce that online because what would happen? I go a month and a month and a half and I'm like, wait a minute. I haven't heard from so-and-so in awhile. Then I realized, Okay. so I like I had to change that system and even, but the beauty of creating my own is I could create whatever system. And so that's what I've been doing and it's still a learning process. And now what I've done is actually created group coaching, which a year ago, two years ago, I mean, considering I had got my first coach two and a half, three years ago to be group coaching when I didn't even really understand coaching as an entity is pretty amazing. I think.

Dr. Gray, Host 14:21

Yeah. Tell us more about this, this program that you're offering in 2022.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 14:28

Well, just like when I was in, clinical practice and I felt frustrated by the 15 minute appointments, I started feeling like I wasn't doing enough with the one-on-one. A process either. And so I thought, the community health part of me was just not being fed, especially since I could no longer do community lectures, which I was doing before. and just doing health education in the community. And so I thought, what's a way that I can. More people. So I started actually, I joined a couple of group programs, group coaching programs, just to see how it was done while learning something at the same time and took notes, not just the notes from within the course, but also about the course and things. I liked things. I didn't like, things that I thought worked for me. and why I thought it worked for me or didn't, based on my personality. And Just to go back a little bit. One of the things I did when I was homeschooling my daughters is I took a test to see what kind of homeschool teacher I would be, and then gave each of them a test to see what kind of learning, what type of students they were. And there, this book that would take each of those tests and give a list of programs that would feed all three of us. And so I thought I could apply here too. I know what kind of teacher I am. So these are the components that have to be in there in order for me to be an effective teacher. And I said, but these are the different types of students, people are. So I need to make sure that those things are there. They're fed. And then I also applied the process that I had developed for myself of doing the minimum, taking the minimum effort and getting the maximum. Because when I developed my program, I was just too sick and tired to do anything complicated. And so one of the things I did was just, I paid close attention to what small things made a big impact. And I was like, I can do that. I can apply this here. And so I started realizing there's certain things I really didn't need. There's other things that would be nice, but it's just extra effort for no benefit, real benefit. Then I put it all together. And, and so I created what I think is a wonderful program. And again, wonderfully of that, because it's mine, I can tweak it as I go along and it starts in, January now. and it's total wellness plus weight loss, and essentially what it is. I applied my bio-psychosocial process to all the things that cause weight gain that maximize weight loss and that empower people to do that. And I go after the causes, weight loss is the goal for most people who join and that will happen, but really to lose weight, you have to go after the cause. Not the symptom, weight is the symptom, but when you hit the cause and most of us gain weight because we're under stress. So we're high cortisol levels. So our fat production is really. We stress eat. We eat out of emotion, whether good or bad emotion cause celebrations are emotional eating too. And focusing on ways to deal with that, finances are another stressor. So basically what I do is I hit all the stressors. And when you hit the stressors, the weight falls off, whether it's emotional stress, whether it's sleep deprivation. Whether it's subconscious blocking stress because of fear of failing, fear of, of getting in your way, fear of actually losing the weight, fear of the success. If people are out there, like I was, I don't like attention. I don't like people paying attention to me when I'm out and about. I would much rather sit quietly somewhere. So when walking around and if I associate my weight to attention, I start eating

Dr. Gray, Host 18:27

Um,

Dr. Toomer, Guest 18:27

I want that weight to act like a barrier.

Dr. Gray, Host 18:30

um,

Dr. Toomer, Guest 18:30

And a lot of people are that way. So we focus on that. and then the other is just time management. We underestimate how important time management is to the success of everything. Including weight loss. And so I just pull in all these components that a lot of people may not think are important for weight loss, and they might think it's fluff and they may think it's not important, but once they start to notice, cause one of the things I actually noticed that I have, I have several clients who was like, this is too easy. I don't want them doing anything. I actually had someone say, I don't think this is working. It's just too easy. And I was like, okay, well, how much did you weigh when you say. You told me, I was like, how much do you weigh? Now? You can tell me. I was like, so you've lost 20 pounds in the last two months. Uh, what, what was the reason you came to me like, oh, I was like, so what's. So what is it? And I said, because we've been programmed to think it's does it, shouldn't value it unless it's hard. And the problem is, is weight loss is a multi-billion dollar. It does not serve that industry for people to lose weight and keep it all. Because what people will say is this program helped me lose weight, but they never mentioned why they gained that weight back and they blame themselves for the weight gain, but they assign the weight loss to the program and blame themselves for the weight gain. When it's the program, that's just as much at fault for that weight gain. But that's what the programs do. They tell you whatever, if you, if you don't get the results you want, it's your fault. And I wanted to remove that because it is not the fault is ours. We're not educating the fault is ours for not really giving people the proper tools. The fault is ours from making them think it's their fault. And that is the cornerstone of my program. That if they fail, it's my fault.

Dr. Gray, Host 20:38

Mm that's fascinating, everything that you've said about the weight loss industry, and for, for this podcast, part of my goal is to help physicians. Really moved from that, victim hood mentality to one of empowerment and one of taking charge of their own life. And, it sounds like that's what your program is doing for people who are looking for weight loss. I teach my patients, I'm asleep position. I teach my patients who have insomnia the same thing, because, patients with insomnia often think of themselves as the victim. I can't control whether I go to. This night or not. And, just really taking back some of that power to say, Hey, even though I can't control when I fall asleep, but I can control, how I feel about sleep, what I do in response to this feeling and not feeling helpless anymore. So I love that that's the model you invented from your own experience and observation.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 21:37

Yeah. And, and really, the reason is health wellness and weight loss in that. Because I know people walk through the door, they contact me for weight loss often, but in the process of talking to them, they're like, well, I really don't feel like myself. And one of the things I've always said, even in practice and that when someone says something's not right to me, that is a real symptom. That's something to be invested in. Because people know when something's not right. And I know from personal experience and I know how frightening it is to know something's not right. And being too scared to get the answer or being too scared of what that answer might be. And so what I feel my job is, is to remove that fear by ruling out the things that scare you the most. And usually it's usually cancer, heart diabetes, and those are the things that I make sure. people understand are well in practice. I would, I would focus on cancers and different things. Now I do prevent diabetes. I do check. I checked for thyroid issues, heart issues, diabetes issues, because those things are there. I don't care what your weight is, your health first, and once the stress of that goes away, the eating patterns change the energy levels. The weight changes. It's all feeds it all, it's all interconnected and feeds and it may not be this drastic, a hundred pound weight loss in four months, which isn't healthy anyway. but it's consistent. It's sustainable. And I'm a living example 20 years, and 80 pounds. I've been through multiple. I'm a physician and mother, all the stresses of being a mother, wife, dog, Wrangler, business owner, and so I speak from experience and I speak from a place of empathy cause I get it. I really do. And it's not always easy. There are days I still struggle. when somebody. It makes us big. Like today my husband made us a huge brunch just because, and I'm thinking, oh man. But then I did what I teach my clients is like deconstruct everything and just, I dropped the carbs to what I knew would not give me a problem. And I just loaded up on all the proteins. I don't pay attention to calories. I don't pay attention to the fat content. And I just did it that way because for me, that's what makes it. I just teach people what makes the difference for them,

Dr. Gray, Host 24:10

mm.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 24:11

for some people that is dealing with their emotions, for some people is dealing with their job or their schedule, learning how to work around a schedule and being told, oh, you can't do that because, and so just helping people problem solve around their issues that they have, that have really nothing to do with the actual weight itself. It's more the logistics of it. a little bit life-coaching coaching too, as you probably do you see? I'm sure. Especially with sleep. I can imagine coaching.

Dr. Gray, Host 24:43

Wow. Yeah, this is great. Well, thank you so much. I'll leave all the links, to your program and to your website and, we didn't even get to, but I will also leave the link to your TEDx talk in the. And, and, and the show notes. and as we, and I don't want to end, but you know, I have to respect your time. I would love for you to leave, some words for our listeners, for, for that listener, who's maybe, Feeling overwhelmed or stressed out feeling like they're running the hamster wheel, but also deep inside thinking. I think there's more, there's more to my life and maybe they didn't have a health scare in their life yet. but they just feel like, I don't want to just, waste my days, in my life, what, what would you tell that.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 25:30

I would first and foremost, tell them be honest with yourself. I mean, really honest. What is your, why? What is it that you. Why do you want it and why haven't you done it? And if you can answer those questions, honestly, then you can counter those answers. Honestly, if you cannot answer those questions, honestly, then it's going to be very difficult to change anything. And don't be afraid of the process. We spend our lives, especially as physical. Telling people how to get from point a to point B, using a process that we know works. So when you have a process that's outside of medicine, find somebody who's going to tell you a process. That's going to make it work. We don't have to know everything. And like, I always say, if you want to learn how to fly a plane, you can ask somebody who spends a lot of time in place. Like a flight attendant. You could ask a pilot, who'd actually flies the plane, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're a good teacher of how to fly a plane. It just means they know how to find the person who taught the pilot and go to that person and get your answers. And as far as business is concerned, I know there's a lot of people out there. I cannot vouch for everyone. But it's sometimes it takes a combination of people. For me, it was a combination of a business coach, Dr. Una and the entree MD business school and a psychological coach. I kept getting a lot of things. People tell you, you have imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome. And I was like, no, I don't think so. Which is what my tip talks about. So I had to slip that in, but I just like, no, there's something else. There's something else out there. And so I thought, you know what? It's fine. Somehow I got a message over the years that making money is bad. And so I would always do what I needed to do, but not work on getting compensated for it. And, and I think part of is because many of us have doctors are getting this negative. Oh, you just went into medicine for them. Doctors are overpaid. You make too much. But when we realized, if you really put in the number of hours we make and divided by what we, we are not being overpaid, we are definitely being underpaid. There are many welders make more money than we do. Plumbers make way more money than we do per hour. it's not about money as if it were, there's no way we would put ourselves where the hell we went through to be, to do what we're doing. Right. And so it's finding some way of really recognizing your obstacles, recognize your conscious obstacles, but recognizing you have subconscious obstacles and that you may need help getting around those also, and just doing what's necessary, trusting the process. If you know, somebody knows they've done it already and they've helped other people do it, don't find it. Listen, that's the best advice I've got.

Dr. Gray, Host 28:52

Yes. Well, thank you so much. I so appreciate you being on the podcast and I'm so excited to see the work that you'll be doing in 2022. and I wish you the best.

Dr. Toomer, Guest 29:07

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this.