These 9 naturopathic doctors are proving that obesity medicine needs an integrative upgrade.
A quiet revolution is happening in weight loss right now, and it's not coming from where you'd expect.
It's not emerging from hospital bariatric centers or academic medical institutions. It's not being led by pharmaceutical companies or driven by insurance-based care models.
It's being built by naturopathic doctors across Canada, who decided they wouldn't wait for the system to figure out how to treat obesity properly. They're doing it themselves—right now, in their communities, with their patients.
And they're doing something most conventional programs can't: they're actually addressing the whole person.
The gap that had to be filled
Here's what we know: We have medications that work as well as bariatric surgery for many patients. We have access to sophisticated genetic testing that can tell us a lot about how people may regulate their appetite. We have decades of research on metabolic health, nervous system regulation, and sustainable behaviour change.
What don't we have? A healthcare system that knows how to integrate all of this into actual patient care.
The typical conventional medicine appointment looks like this: eight minutes with a physician who checks your weight, possibly runs some lab tests, maybe prescribes a weight loss medication if they feel like the patient has worked hard enough to deserve a medication trial, and advises you to "eat less and move more." If you're lucky, you may be referred to a dietitian for three sessions, which your insurance may or may not cover.
What's missing?
Everything that actually determines whether treatment is effective in the long term.
Nobody's assessing your micronutrient status to understand why you're constantly fatigued. Nobody's evaluating your nervous system state to see if your sympathetic activation is driving food-seeking behaviour. Nobody's helping you develop appetite literacy—the ability to actually understand and work with your body's hunger and satiety signals. Nobody's looking at sleep, stress response, body composition changes, or the psychological impact of decades of weight stigma and failed dieting attempts.
But naturopathic doctors have been trained to do precisely this work. They've been doing it for years, just without access to the medications and the specific obesity medicine framework that would make their interventions even more effective.
Until now.
Meet the pioneers
Nine naturopathic doctors from across Canada are currently completing intensive training in collaborative obesity medicine through The Confident Clinician Club. They're not dabbling in "wellness" or adding weight loss as a side offering. They're building sophisticated, evidence-based obesity medicine practices that integrate the best of both worlds: the diagnostic precision and pharmacological tools of conventional medicine with the whole-person, systems-oriented approach of naturopathic care.
These aren't practitioners looking for quick wins or trendy programs. These are clinicians who saw their patients struggling with a disease that impacts 40% of adults in North America, and they refused to accept that the current standard of care was good enough.
Let me introduce you to some of them.
Dr. Clare Sullivan has been practicing in Ottawa for 18 years. She's watched her practice evolve as her patients' needs have changed, and she's committed to ongoing education—completing two fellowships with The Confident Clinician and becoming a Menopause Society Certified Practitioner. When she started seeing more patients in perimenopause struggling with weight regulation, she recognized that the conventional approach wasn't working. These women needed someone who understood the connection between hormonal shifts, metabolic changes, and appetite dysregulation. They needed more than a photocopied handout about portion control.
Dr. Katie Rothwell owns a clinic in Barrie, Ontario, specializing in thyroid health, metabolic optimization, and perimenopause care. With over a decade of experience, she's become known for translating complex physiology into actionable care. She understands that when a woman's thyroid function is suboptimal and she's navigating perimenopause, telling her to "just eat less" is not only unhelpful—it's medically inadequate. The body doesn't work in isolated systems. Everything connects.
Dr. Sydney Milson is both a naturopathic doctor and a gym owner. She's seen firsthand that weight isn't about willpower—it's about biology, environment, and the systems we build around health. At her practice, For Health, she's helping people reconnect with their bodies and rebuild trust in themselves. Her approach is weight-inclusive, science-based, and grounded in the belief that wellness is about strength and self-respect, not just a number on the scale.
Dr. Sarah Vadeboncoeur is a Menopause Society Certified Practitioner who's spent over a decade helping women understand their bodies and improve their metabolic health. She recognized that women in midlife weren't getting adequate support for the metabolic shifts that happen during hormonal transitions. They needed someone who could blend naturopathic principles with the latest medical research to support sustainable results—without extremes or overwhelm.
Dr. Brittany Burrows focuses on metabolic health, hormones, and thyroid function, commonly working with patients experiencing fatigue, weight gain, nutrient deficiencies, and metabolic concerns. She takes time to help patients understand what's happening in their bodies and empowers them to make informed decisions. When she encounters a patient with insulin resistance, fatty liver, and unexplained weight gain, she doesn't just hand them a diet plan—she investigates the underlying metabolic dysfunction.
Dr. Erin TeWinkel believes effective medicine takes time, curiosity, and teamwork. With training in obesity medicine, menopause care, and teen health, she helps women and girls create sustainable change by turning confusion into confidence. She understands that when a teenager is struggling with weight, you can't just focus on calories—you need to address the whole developmental picture, including hormonal changes, psychological factors, and family dynamics.
Dr. Jules Passy practices at Flow Functional Health in Edmonton with a special interest in women's health, metabolic wellness, and digestive health. She blends evidence-based medicine with individualized care to help patients feel seen, supported, and empowered. She recognizes that digestive health and metabolic health are deeply connected, and that addressing one without the other leaves patients with incomplete care.
Dr. Krista Hennigar is a co-owner of The Helix Clinic, bringing nearly a decade of clinical experience. Her approach integrates naturopathic, metabolic, and aesthetic medicine, offering comprehensive support for sustainable weight management and hormone optimization. She believes health is about cultivating vitality and confidence, not just managing symptoms. Her patients aren't just trying to lose weight—they're trying to thrive.
Dr. Liz Dalglish focuses her practice on digestive health, cardiometabolic concerns, and the hormonal changes that arise during perimenopause and menopause. She works with patients experiencing IBS, constipation, reflux, bloating, and inflammatory bowel disease, as well as dyslipidemia, hypertension, and insulin resistance. In her clinical experience, gut health, metabolic function, and hormones are never separate issues. Her approach reflects that reality, drawing on her training in clinical nutrition, acupuncture, and biological sciences to support whole-system care.
These clinicians share a powerful quality: they're intellectually curious, clinically rigorous, and absolutely committed to their patients' well-being. They're not satisfied with surface-level interventions. They want to understand the mechanisms. They want to address root causes. And they're willing to do the hard work of learning a complex, evolving field so they can provide better care.
What makes collaborative obesity medicine different
Here's what they're learning:
Sophisticated diagnostic frameworks: How to identify specific genetic and metabolic phenotypes that determine treatment approach. Understanding the difference between someone with MC4R receptor deficiency (who experiences profound, unrelenting hunger), versus someone with leptin resistance, versus someone with stress-driven hyperphagia. These aren't academic distinctions—they change the entire treatment strategy.
Appetite literacy education: How to teach patients to actually understand their own hunger and satiety signals, to recognize the difference between physical hunger and emotional or environmental cues, to develop cognitive control without falling back into diet mentality. This isn't "intuitive eating" divorced from physiology—it's neuroscience-informed, trauma-aware skill building.
Integration of pharmacotherapy: Understanding how GLP-1 receptor agonists actually work at the cellular level, what realistic expectations are, how to manage side effects, when to escalate or adjust dosing, and—critically—how to support patients through the metabolic and psychological changes that happen when appetite suddenly becomes manageable for the first time in their lives.
Nervous system regulation: Recognizing that sympathetic activation literally changes metabolic rate and food-seeking behaviour. Understanding that you can't just tell someone to "manage stress" without addressing the physiological state driving their appetite dysregulation, and learning how to support nervous system resilience as a core component of metabolic health.
Micronutrient optimization: Identifying which deficiencies actually impact appetite regulation, energy levels, and metabolic function versus which ones are wellness theatre. Knowing how to assess and address these systematically rather than just throwing supplements at symptoms.
Collaborative care protocols: How to work effectively with physicians who can prescribe medications, when to refer for additional support, and how to build care teams that actually communicate and coordinate rather than just passing patients between disconnected providers.
This is complex medical work. It requires clinical judgment, ongoing education, and the ability to hold multiple systems in mind simultaneously. These naturopathic doctors are doing this work because they understand that their patients deserve comprehensive care, not fragmented interventions.
Why this matters now
We're at an inflection point in obesity medicine.
The medications are here. Science is evolving rapidly. Genetic testing is becoming more accessible. We finally have tools that can genuinely help people regulate their appetite and achieve sustainable weight management.
But tools without a framework are just expensive interventions with high failure rates.
What determines whether someone on semaglutide actually achieves lasting change? It's not the medication alone. It's whether anyone is also addressing their micronutrient deficiencies, nervous system dysregulation, sleep quality, relationship with food, and understanding of their own appetite patterns. It's whether they have a practitioner who can help them navigate the psychological and metabolic shifts that happen when the constant noise of hunger finally quiets down.
The naturopathic doctors in this fellowship understand a crucial fact: obesity is a chronic disease that requires sophisticated, multi-systemic intervention. It's not about willpower. It's not about motivation. It's about biology, environment, genetics, nervous system function, metabolic health, and everything that connects them.
And they're positioned perfectly to provide this care. They have the training in whole-person medicine. They have the time and practice model actually to work with complexity. They are committed to patient education and empowerment. What they needed was specific expertise in obesity medicine and a collaborative structure to bring it all together.
That is where The MetAppTive™ Method comes in.
What their patients are experiencing
When these naturopathic doctors complete their training and implement my signature clinical framework, The MetAppTive™ Method, in their practices, their patients get something fundamentally different than what's available in most healthcare settings.
They receive a clinician who takes the time to understand their complete metabolic picture—not just their weight. Who runs comprehensive labs to assess thyroid function, insulin sensitivity, inflammatory markers, micronutrient status, and more. Who asks about sleep, stress, life transitions, past trauma, and the full context of their health history.
They get someone who can explain what's actually happening in their body in a way that makes sense, why their appetite changed after having kids, or during perimenopause, or after a period of severe stress. Why previous diets worked briefly but weren't sustainable. Why does their body composition shift even though nothing else has changed? Why do they feel exhausted all the time, even though their lab work comes back "normal"
They receive a treatment plan that addresses multiple systems simultaneously, because that's how the body actually works. Not "fix your thyroid first, then we'll talk about weight" or "start exercising more and then come back in three months." They receive integrated care that recognizes how hormones affect metabolism, sleep influences appetite, and stress impacts everything, making it impossible to separate these systems into neat sequential interventions.
They receive an education that empowers them to understand their own physiology rather than just following rules that someone else has made up. They learn to recognize their hunger signals, understand what drives their food choices, and develop strategies that work in harmony with their nervous system rather than constantly fighting against it.
And critically, they receive a clinician who views obesity as a complex medical condition requiring sophisticated treatment, not a moral failing that requires more discipline.
The ripple effect
Here's what's particularly powerful about what these nine naturopathic doctors are doing: they're not just changing care for their own patients; they're also changing the way care is delivered. They're demonstrating what's possible.
Every patient who finally gets comprehensive obesity care tells their friends. Every successful case challenges the narrative that weight loss is just about "eating less and moving more." Every practitioner who sees these results starts asking: what are they doing that we're not?
This is how system change happens. Not top-down from academic institutions or professional organizations. Bottom-up, from practitioners who refuse to accept inadequate care as inevitable.
These naturopathic doctors are proving that you don't need to wait for hospitals to build bariatric programs. You don't need to wait for insurance companies to approve comprehensive care. You don't need to wait for conventional medicine to figure out how to integrate whole-person approaches with pharmacological interventions.
You can build it now, in your community, for your patients.
And when enough practitioners do this, the system has to respond. When patients consistently report that they got better care from their naturopathic doctor than from the hospital obesity clinic, that's data. When collaborative care models consistently outperform conventional approaches, that's evidence. When these practitioners publish outcomes and present at conferences, that's credibility.
The revolution doesn't announce itself. It quietly builds better care, one patient at a time, until the old way no longer makes sense.
What this requires
This work isn't easy.
These naturopathic doctors aren't taking a weekend course and adding "obesity medicine" to their service menu. They're completing 12 months of applied training with me. They're learning complex diagnostic algorithms, pharmacological mechanisms, genetic interpretation, and sophisticated patient education frameworks. They're doing an ongoing case review and consultation. They're staying current with rapidly evolving research.
This is the clinical rigour that obesity medicine demands.
And they're doing it because they understand that their patients deserve this level of care. Because they've seen too many people struggle with a disease that has effective treatments, but no accessible pathway to get them. Because they recognize that being trained in whole-person medicine isn't enough if you don't also understand the specific mechanisms and evidence base of obesity care.
What makes these practitioners exceptional isn't just their clinical skills. It's their intellectual humility. They're experienced clinicians with established practices, and they're willing to say "I don't know enough about this yet, and I need to learn." That's what separates professionals from amateurs.
They're also willing to work collaboratively. They understand that comprehensive obesity care often requires a team and that there are times when a patient needs prescription medication or a specialist referral. Having a collaborative relationship with physicians who understand and respect their work is essential. They're not interested in staying in siloed practice. They aim to develop care models that effectively serve patients.
This combination—clinical expertise, intellectual curiosity, commitment to evidence, and collaborative mindset—is what makes transformative care possible.
The invitation forward
If you're reading this as someone struggling with weight, I want you to know: there are practitioners who get it. Those who understand that obesity is a medical condition, not a character flaw. Those who have the training and tools to actually help you regulate your appetite, optimize your metabolism, and build sustainable health. Who will spend time understanding your specific physiology rather than handing you a generic diet plan?
These practitioners exist. They're in Ottawa, Barrie, Edmonton, and communities across Canada. And they're growing in number.
If you're reading this as a naturopathic doctor, I want you to understand: this work is possible for you. You have most of what you need already—the training in whole-person care, the commitment to patient education, the ability to work with complexity. What you may need is a specific framework for obesity medicine and a collaborative structure. That's learnable. That's precisely what The MetAppTive™ Method provides.
And if you're reading this as a physician or healthcare administrator, I want you to recognize: naturopathic doctors aren't competitors or alternatives. They're potential collaborators who bring expertise that conventional medicine desperately needs. Practitioners who can bridge evidence-based obesity medicine with whole-person care will be the ones providing the best outcomes. Collaborative models are more effective than siloed ones. This isn't theoretical—it's already happening.
What success looks like
Five years from now, we'll look back at this moment as pivotal.
We'll see that the most effective obesity care wasn't coming from traditional academic medical centers. It was being built by integrative practitioners who understood that medications are powerful tools. Still, they work best within a comprehensive framework that addresses nervous system health, metabolic optimization, micronutrient status, sleep quality, stress response, and appetite literacy.
We'll see that the practitioners leading this work were willing to do the hard learning required to integrate multiple paradigms. They didn't stay in their comfort zones. They expanded their expertise to meet the needs of their patients.
We'll see that collaborative care models—where naturopathic doctors and physicians work together, each bringing their specific expertise—consistently outperform single-practitioner approaches.
And we'll see that it all started with practitioners who were intrepid enough to build something new rather than wait for the system to change.
These nine naturopathic doctors are already doing this work. They're not waiting for permission. They're not waiting for the perfect research or the ideal practice conditions. They're learning, implementing, and improving care right now.
Because their patients need it. Because the current system isn't good enough. Because they have the capacity to do better.
And every patient who gets comprehensive care, who finally understands what's been happening in their body, who develops sustainable strategies that work with their physiology rather than against it—every one of those patients is proof that this approach works.
The future of obesity care isn't coming. It's already here. And practitioners are building it brave enough to lead it.
Want to learn more about collaborative obesity medicine?
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Explore how The Shift Clinic is reimagining comprehensive metabolic care, or take our quiz to explore whether weight loss medications might be right for you.
