Herbal Remedies and Alternative Medicine Information

If you are looking to lose weight, you need to eat snacks.  I’m not talking about chips and pretzels, I’m talking about healthy snacks that will fuel your body and keep you feeling satisfied.  A common problem is women wait too long before eating, so they become really hungry and eat too big of a meal.  Instead of waiting, listen to your body’s signals and eat when you feel your belly rumbling!  Always keep snacks on hand.  Some suggestions include a couple handfuls of nuts, a banana (they are filling fruit) alone or topped with peanut butter, Kashi Go Lean Crunch Cereal in a ziplock bag, or a sports bar (I prefer balance bars because they have a “balance” of protien, fat, and carbohydrates).  By eating “snacks” you will keep your body satisfied and will be less likely to eat a huge meal full of calories.

Key Point: Eat healthy snacks= keep your body satisfied= lose weight

When you want to lose some postpartum pounds, a lot of women fear eating anything that has fat.  Most women will stop eating things that are high in fat because they believe that eating foods high in fat will put more fat on their body.  Well, I have some good news for you…high fat foods can help you lose weight!  I suggest including healthy fats such as nuts,  avocados, and cooking with olive oil.  These fats not only taste good, they will also keep you satisfied longer so that you won’t crave as much food. So bring a small bag of nuts with you to work, or have a bagel with peanut butter, and include a little avocado on your sandwich.  You will enjoy the taste, and your body will stay satisfied longer! 

Key point: Eat what you enjoy= eating healthy for life= permanent weight loss

We did a little experiment a while back that I thought was worth sharing.

In the early days of practice, many CAM docs struggle with whether or not to hire someone to answer the phone and take care of other admin tasks. After all, it may not even be ringing, right? Who wants to pile a receptionist salary on top of all that business and education debt?

The truth is, in the very beginning, it's not a big deal for a lot of practitioners. The problem arises when you start to grow and can't answer those calls yourself. At this point, many practitioners use the fallback solution of voice mail to save on staffing costs.

I was always suspicious, though, about how many people actually left a message when they couldn't get a human on the phone. After all - I hang up a lot when I can't get someone in person, why wouldn't patients?

Enter the experiment. While we were on holidays, the receptionist took some vacation too, with the exception of one task: checking phone messages. Rather than just phone in to retrieve them, however, we asked her to come into the office and use the call display information to track how many people had called, versus how many actually left messages.

The results were insightful: only a third of callers left a message.

With a full-time receptionist in the office, every one of those calls would have been answered, and many converted into appointments. Moreover, those appointments would have filled a few holes in the schedule immediately after our holidays - time that can never be "gotten back" from a billing perspective.

The point here is not just to convince you to hire staff, but also to make sure that have staff that view incoming calls as a priority. Each call is a potential opportunity to fill an opening in the book, or gain a new client. And as we've discovered, you can't rely on voice mail to do the job. It's just not the same.