Come Together About Obesity with Dr. William Summers

Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered, "Why is it so much harder to lose weight than it used to be?" Maybe you've tried the diets... counted the calories... exercised faithfully... only to watch the scale refuse to budge. What if the problem isn't a lack of willpower? What if we've been asking the wrong question all along?

Today on Call IT in With Dar, I'm joined by Dr. William Summers, a physician with more than 36 years of experience helping people understand the science behind obesity. As a board-certified OB/GYN and medical weight management specialist, Dr. Summers believes it's time we stop blaming ourselves and start recognizing obesity for what it truly is—a complex medical condition influenced by biology, hormones, metabolism, and our modern environment.  

In this myth-busting conversation, we'll explore why obesity has become one of the greatest health challenges of our time, what new research is revealing, how medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro are changing the conversation, and most importantly, why compassion and understanding are far more powerful than guilt and shame.  Whether you're struggling with your own weight, supporting someone you love, or simply wanting to separate fact from fiction, this episode offers clarity, hope, and practical insight.  

Let's come together for this important conversation about obesity! Call It in with Dar! 

Transcript

Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered, "Why is it so much harder to lose weight than it used to be?" Maybe you've tried the diets... counted the calories... exercised faithfully... only to watch the scale refuse to budge. What if the problem isn't a lack of willpower? What if we've been asking the wrong question all along?Today on Call IT in With Dar, I'm joined by Dr. William Summers, a physician with more than 36 years of experience helping people understand the science behind obesity. As a board-certified OB/GYN and medical weight management specialist, Dr. Summers believes it's time we stop blaming ourselves and start recognizing obesity for what it truly is—a complex medical condition influenced by biology, hormones, metabolism, and our modern environment.  In this myth-busting conversation, we'll explore why obesity has become one of the greatest health challenges of our time, what new research is revealing, how medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro are changing the conversation, and most importantly, why compassion and understanding are far more powerful than guilt and shame.  Whether you're struggling with your own weight, supporting someone you love, or simply wanting to separate fact from fiction, this episode offers clarity, hope, and practical insight.  Let's come together for this important conversation about obesity! Call It in with Dar! 

Speaker Dar 

Hi, Dr. Bill. I am so excited to have you with me today, and especially talking about how we can all come together about obesity. What a wonderful topic. But before we begin, I'd love it if you tell us how you got to this place in your life and this passion. 

Speaker Dr Bill 

Well, thank you for having me. It is a privilege to be here. I have been a doctor in Birmingham, Alabama, for 36 years, a gynecologist, seeing women as my patients and dealing with an issue that we didn't get talked or taught in medical school about obesity, and as I often comment in this culture of misogyny, men gain weight and don't like the weight, and I see over decades how women gain weight and they don't like themselves, and then as years pass, we began to develop an understanding about the chronic disease of obesity and the absolute physiology which exists in all of us that makes it unfair when we eat and gain more weight, and then what we can do to understand that and maybe prevent that from happening, and then even medicines and other interventions or options for people dealing with this on a chronic level, so I get very passionate because this new exact science is not really well spread, it's poorly understood, and there's just comments made and mentions of things that are sometimes factual, not factual, that make people even more confused. So I'm excited about helping, and now this is not just with women, but this translates to men and women of the culture that has risen from 10% obesity at World War Two to 40% obesity today. So I get passionate to just help people to understand and through all of this, and not one time and one patient would ever feel badly about themselves. We are all God's people and beautiful, and we have differences, and we should celebrate, and when we have diseases, we could understand them and have interventions and appropriate managements as individually indicated, but to see that people that get shamed and blamed and made to feel worthless or bad about themselves because of a weight problem, that's just beyond ignorant, and yet we have to understand that with obesity, there are over 200 diseases associated with obesity that we could prevent, just all of this for the intent and goal to have a higher quality of life. 

Speaker Dar   

Wow, that many diseases,200 

Speaker Dr Bill 

200 and you could get me going on and on about that, but that's a, that is a scientific fact. There are cells in our body that we didn't know existed, and when we put fat inside of our body, the cells that sort of keep us alive, protecting us from cancer and inflammation and autoimmune diseases, on and on, are affected by the fat that we put inside of our body because of this exponential rise in obesity. 90% of cancers are associated with obesity. 

Speaker Dar 

Oh my gosh, 90% Wow, could you talk a little bit about how this even came to be a new science? What, what were some of the steps along the way. 

Speaker Dr Bill 

Well, I think that this science developed as a sort of a parallel sidearm to the studies being done in type two diabetes, and we talk about insulin as a hormone that lowers sugar, and when people have type two diabetes, they become insulin resistance, and as you get more insulin resistant when you eat, you gain more weight unfairly, and you just keep going up this hill, and you end up with two diseases, not just type two diabetes, but obesity. So, as the recognition of a finer-tuned pathophysiology of type two diabetes led into, like, hey, this is what causes obesity. So now, in the development of medicines, one medicine will treat two diseases, so one medicine, semaglutide, gets two names, Ozempic, for type two diabetes, and we go before weight loss. So the science of obesity spawned from an already long-standing understanding of type two diabetes getting more sophisticated, and as it did, there's just so much of the.. it's almost like when you talk about one, you're talking about the other. 

Speaker Dar   

Wow, could you share some client stories with us, just to kind of let us know what happens with treatment? 

Speaker Dr Bill  

I feel, in a general, in a general sense, anybody that does anything for weight loss, you have to sustain it, and so, so most about everyone I see has tried something, or this thing, or that, or this medicine, or that program, or this gimmick, and maybe it works temporarily, and all the weight returns, so everybody's already so. Straighted with just like why even try when it doesn't last and all of it's coming back, so the biggest thing I see in a population of people is when we get some knowledge and information that they can carry and persist that they feel like they get momentum they can continue, so across the general board I see once people see like hey this starts to work, and then they get into it, and they involve themselves more on an individual. I have so many individual patient stories, which really touched my heart. I mentioned what I was discussing earlier. I have a 16 year old girl that was brought in by her mom to my weight clinic as a new patient on a Saturday morning, and the mom was very, very into her physical appearance, very nicely dressed like an evening wear at 9am in the morning, and a size two, and her six year old daughter was, we would say, class three obesity, and her daughter, when we were talking, the mom was answering the questions, it was very obvious to me, her daughter was very, very smart, very intelligent, and I had to just interrupt and ask the mom if I could just meet with her daughter, my patient, just one on one, and in that discussion my patient was revealing to me that, that she, of course, does make great grades, and she's put a lot into her academic success, but that at school she's an outsider, she never gets invited, she gets mocked and laughed at and made fun of constantly, and she tries not to let that hurt her feelings, but while she's telling me the story, she's just crying tears. It broke my heart, and at that moment, instead of trying to, we took, we just started to get into the education of the disease of obesity, and kind of what's going on. It makes everything so unfair, but I started just to make her understand that, as any disease we can take steps and get to a point which is going to be healthier for her, but I wanted to give her support and encouragement to empower her to let her understand that discrimination on any level to anybody on this planet is wrong, and to discriminate on obesity with a science showing this disease is just wrong and ignorant and it's shameful, and none of us should ever do that, or we should be aware of our even sort of systemic biases that we're not even aware when we're doing it, and how we make people feel. So I spent my hour with her, telling her how amazing she was, how brilliant she was, and even kind of joked that the people that make fun of her will be working for her one day. She would, I said, she can be a CEO or a CEO or a president, but in any event, I think I made her feel better about herself. Just a few weeks later, I got a phone call. I had given her mom my actual cell number to call me, so I could be involved if they had any questions.  I wanted to be sort of their cheerleader, and her mom called me at about 7pm and all I heard was noise and stomping like a, like a rock concert, and my patient that I just mentioned had gone to her school and enrolled herself into the beauty queen pageant of her school, also being made fun of and mocked and laughed at, and she didn't wear the expensive pageantry gowns and on did all the makeup, she just went as herself and went to the microphone and the format involved for her to give a speech about something she was passionate about, so she started talking about the disease of obesity, and the audience of maybe three to 500 people were in there just listening to every word she said, and she captured them because with her articulation skills, and she was getting more and more of the audience and support, and as they fed back questions to her, then she was answering them with the skill set that she already had in her, and at the end of that pageant, there's a picture, and her mom calls me, and I can hear all this change. She won that pageantry contest, and she, and just her whole acceptance of herself, and yet what's more important for everybody, I just see the beauty in her that was already existing, and she won the pageant, and it was her next year, was her senior year, and I kept in touch with her a few times, and her level of living, the only thing different was not only did she love herself, but the people could love her for who she was, not because of her size, and that was one of my most touching stories, but I have individual stories all day and all night, I could write a book about, just to see people that feel the confidence that they can treat this like you would any other disease, and not to be wearing size two clothes, but to feel like they have a higher quality of life, that they can live around to see their their kids and their grandkids and their great grandkids. It's all about developing the quality of life and preventing the things we've been doing just by habit that are so wrong for us, creating this exponential rise in obesity. 

Speaker Dar 

Yes, and especially when you talked about it being connected to, you know, so many other diseases just changing in their eventual lifestyle. 

Speaker Dr Bill  

It's really important for people to understand that when we put, when we start making fat in our body, we put that right under our skin, and you can just grab your belly, and under the skin, there's some subcutaneous fat, and these cells, as a fat cell gets filled, and another one forms, and another one forms, but there's only so many of those cells that can form in our body, and after that point, then all. Fat we store goes inside of our body, and it's in the mesenteric, we call the mesenteric fat, and up around our liver, and our, in our pancreas, there are some small cells that we didn't even know existed. And now that we know, and then the guy in 1994 a dude won the Nobel Prize in medicine, because inside this empty cell we kind of like locker rooms for future fat, you might say they're just, you wouldn't see them if I opened up someone real thin in surgery, but they're in that loose tissue, and in one of those cells, this guy won in 1994 the Nobel Prize in medicine, because he found that cell has something in it, it's called leptin. Well, he is still getting praise for that discovery, but now we know that there are 650 chemicals in that cell, and that keeps us alive in every way possible. If we took these cells out of a baby, they would not even go through puberty, that would be disrupted, their thyroid wouldn't work, they would not have any cellular immunity and be super immunocompromised. So these cells are keeping us around the clock, alive in every way possible, secreting things at supersonic speed that we didn't understand. Now we start putting fat in there, and these chemicals that protect us from cancer are not being made, because they can't be released, and the chemicals that keep us from inflammation. The arthritis of an obese person is not the gravity and of a heavy weight on the knee, it's the lack of these inflammation protectors that are not being released from these cells. So, as we fill these cells up, the 650 chemicals, not one that we didn't even know existed up until 10 years ago, are totally compromised in our body, and that is why the rise of obesity paralyzed the parallels with the rise of cancer, immunological autoimmune diseases, and inflammatory disorders. You know, there was no such thing as fibromyalgia when I started medical school, and that is so widespread now, which is all due again to the lack of our body's ability to counter everyday sort of threats that we did every day until we put in fat in cells. They're not, they're not empty locker rooms, they're supersonic, and the cells I mentioned of in our upper abdomen are believed to actually have come from the brain that communicate to the brain in a way that's kind of hard to talk about right now, but 200 diseases are associated, so if anybody listening to the podcast as a male, and you measure around your belly, we call the abdominal girth, you want to keep that under 40 inches, and you can live your highest quality of life, your genetic determinants under 40 inches, and women under 35 inches, and when it starts measuring over that, then we are affecting our body in some adverse way that is really just now beginning to be understood 

Speaker Dar  

well. Thank you for giving us some measurements, and, and tangible, because I know you're all about fact-based decisions. So, what can we do? 

Speaker Dr Bill 

Well, I think one thing we need to do is, but my passion is to just like I said, I've had the privilege of being educated, and there's so many facts. I just think we should get on Channel Six News and stop and make everybody just understand some basic things in our bodies. When someone gets overweight, we can measure four chemicals that are not operating correctly, and when they don't operate correctly, we didn't know that, and we gain weight unfairly. And now we've introduced, well, where did all this obesity start with it? With the introduction of these products post World War Two, with commercialization and things put in our food, which were only simply the types of sugars I say complex that God put in fruits and grains and vegetables, they take those and they simplify them, refine them, and when they get in our body, they don't behave like the other sugars, and they create havoc and are sugar regulating and fat making hormones, and so the so what can we do? Well, understand what's going on in our body, but then this will lead to cultural changes and transparency on food labeling, because these things that are added into our food are added simply in there, so that we are affected in our brain to want to buy more, so we have food scientists working commercially, putting things in our food, and if you think a sugar is a sugar and a calorie is four calories in a gram, that's true, but the refined sugars is not just the calories, it's what they're doing in in response to other receptors and secretions of hormones that make more fat, but they're in there because that simple refined sugar puts something into our brain, not God sugars, not complex, but the refined sugars go to the reward zone in our brain, so when we go back into the store, we'll buy that can, we'll buy that package, and it's just gotten more sophisticated with simple sugars, and then corn syrup, and now high density fruit test corn syrup, simply man-made sugars that are put into our food, so we buy more, and high-density fruit test corn syrup is illegal in most of the world, and it is like in about, about well, corn syrup in 70% of what we eat, and high density fructose corn syrup, and about 40% of what we eat, and that is illegal because of his cause of obesity and liver damage in other cultures, so what I'm saying, what can we do? We can demand changes and least transparency, and then we can make our own decisions of what would work for us and what we can do, eat what we like and change it, but like it to sustain it, so understanding could lead to individual. Options and medicines are on the table, but as I mentioned, I mean, medicines are there, and we should understand them, and they're surgical interventions, but they're not for everybody, because we can just do simple things before we introduce medicines and surgeries. 

Speaker Dar  

Well, on that line of thought, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about some of the latest buzzwords around GLP one, and some of those other widespread terms out there. 

Speaker Dr Bill 

Let's talk about that. Everybody hears the word GLP one. GLP one. There's a hormone in our body, it's a peptide, and a peptide is a piece of a protein. It's called glucagon, like peptide one. Every time we eat a meal, it is secreted from our intestines and goes to the part of the brain, the hypothalamus. So, GLP one goes from the intestine to the brain, and we feel satisfied, we feel full, we put our fork down. Anyone overweight, that stuff is not.. it's.. I'll just say that chemicals are low in our body now. It works outside the brain to regulate blood sugar, so when it gets low, our blood sugar is not regulated, and when it's not regulated, we make more fat. So, GLP one.. it was discovered is like.. well, it's slow in our body. So, let's give it to you. And so, semaglutide came out to replace GLP one medicine. It's known as Ozempic, branded by Nova Nordis for type two diabetes, and we govt. People probably heard that it's the same drug for weight loss. Now, they've also learned that GIP, gastric inhibitory peptide, GIP comes from the intestines, and it helps GLP one do its job, and it is also low in our body. So, Eli Lilly decided, well, we're going to fix both of those things, so let's give you a GLP one fix and a GIP fix together, and that's a double receptor agonist, and that's called Terzepatide, and that's known as Mounjaro for type two diabetes, and that's renamed Zet Bound for weight loss, and these are injections once a week. Now, that has been sort of widespread, people have heard about the Mounjaro,  Zepbound thing, and it goes from 18% to 22% obesity, from similar glutide to it's just more weight loss, 18% to 22% Anything before the standard has only been 5% weight loss over measure time, and similar blue tie was like 18% Now we have 22% Eli Lilly now is going to add the third button hitter, and that's glucagon. Glucagon is made and is also considered like the anti-insulin in a way. And now they know it's messed up in our body when we're overweight. So now they got the drug coming out that's going to have GLP, one GIP and glucagon, a triple receptor agonist, we call it triple G. Eli Lilly has done the studies, and it's ready to be released. They were going to release it this year, and then in 27 and now they're going to postpone it to 28because probably because their marketing on Zbound is so successful, they don't want to   kill the buzz yet. But this medicine will give you 30% weight loss over the same measure time, while everything preceding this was only 5%. Amgen is another pharmaceutical company. I am not connected to any of these in any way, anything at all. I don't have any monetary backup or gain to mention these names, but Eli Lilly is really on top of things with Triple G going to be released. Amgen is making the drug, which will be an injection once a month, that will be the double GLP, GIP receptor, double receptor agonist. A lot of pharmaceutical companies are getting into this, but the point will be they're just treating the chemicals that are messing up in our body. The other one is Amylin. Amylin is going to be something that helps insulin, and if you get the gist of all this, chemicals are messed up, and therefore our blood sugars are messed up. And putting this back into normalcy allows people, when they're doing behaviors, to lose weight, they actually work, and that's when you see something that works, that's when they get the momentum going. Hey, this really works, and so it, like any medicines, and I'm throwing just generically all these medicines out there, all medicines need to be understood individually for use and exclusions and side effects and adverse events, but treating the disease with the right target medicines just makes sense to me. 

Speaker Dar   

Yes, so it's not just all hype. 

Speaker Bill 

No, it's not hype… No, it's not. It, you know, you take any, like rheumatoid arthritis. Since I became a medical student to today, and understanding that autoimmune disease and what can be done, it's unbelievable how that physiology is understood, and what we can do to get people a higher quality of life using the right medicine, and so not everybody needs a medicine for every disease, and not that I have to say that over and over, because I'm not here to say get on a medicine, but I am going to be here to say that we do have medicines that target the disease, if we understand kind of in the first place that there is one, and it's going to get better and better. I'll just say I always like to use this example. Penicillin came out in 1941 when Fleming discovered penicillin as the first antibiotic for any bacterial infection. So, if you had any bacterial infections, infection was the number one killer in the world before World War Two. It's heart disease now, but before Ward Two, because we didn't have any antibiotics, so when he discovered a pen. Selling, then that change, that was a game changer. And if you had strep throat in 1935 if you, it was severe, you probably got leeches. In 1950 if you got strep throat, you would probably not get leeches, and it would be wrong if you did, you'd get penicillin. And these are the penicillin’s for the obesity management, and like penicillin, we had then the cephalosporins and their macrolides and all the quinolones, so the first antibiotic spawned all the other classes, all other antibiotics, and that's what we're seeing now to the understanding the pathophysiology of weight gain and what it's doing to our bodies, but what our culture allows the weight gain to do to our mental health when we're judging people and discriminating people and treating them bold standard wrong to discriminate, just to discriminate anybody for anything. We're all different, and I say we should have so many differences to celebrate, but to make somebody feel unworthy because of who they are. I don't think there's anything more unjust. 

Speaker Dar  

I so agree with that, and having been a school teacher for 30 plus years, I saw and did my best with some of the bullying that took place, and quite often it was around obese children. 

Speaker Dr Bil 

I love that you were a teacher. I was a teacher for a year, also. You know, I created some videos to help educate my patients and other providers. And in the first one, you don't have to watch that one, it's just the introductory, like, who's this dude talking, and where do you come from? But I mentioned that I was a teacher for a year, and it's probably the best clinical work experience I ever had in my life. Everyone needs to be a teacher. I mean, I think it is just like everyone needs to be a teacher for one year, and I think you get a new outlook on life in a good way, in a positive way. 

Speaker Dar 

Yes, definitely. And definitely see life in action. 

Speaker Dr Bill 

If you, and if you're ever a teacher for a year, you will be a pro teacher. I mean, I would just march with signs they need. I will say, take the salary of a teacher and move the decimal place over one to the right, and after you do that, don't start talking about the raise they need. 

Speaker Dar 

Good for you, good for you. So I would love you to talk about these videos that you're going to have that we have available for the audience to listen to when you've made them available for a large section of the population, but let's talk about that. 

Speaker Dr Bill 

Thank you. Thank you. These are totally free. There's no hidden message to bind anything, there's no links to sell you or get ads or go anywhere with my patients, and I've had the privilege of seeing a lot of patients over a long time, and with weight management, I've always tried to address this evidence base, I began to get referrals from other clinicians in the area, and my, my waiting room gets full, I would give these group lectures, because I want everybody to kind of understand, like, hey, what's going on, and what are we doing? I'm not the doctor, say, "Take this and do as I say. So I started doing these lectures, and some people were in there with, like, just listening and leaning forward and taking notes, and about a third of the room, they're just sleeping, and they're just bored, and I get it, there's not that there's not the right time for them to get a college lecture on obesity, so I ended up filming 810 minute videos to discuss what I would want everyone to know, and they can listen to it if they want to, and their own space and time, and stop it and replay it if I talk fast and the words get weird. I try to really make it just like simple talking, like I was talking to my kids, not they're not big doctor words, but to get just an understanding, so it's called weight management, a class with act, and, and I didn't really know what to call the series, but if you go through the series, I'm a big, big list, enjoy everybody's beauty and encourage each other and love one another, that's what we're here for, and the very end of it is the act a c t is for us to all come together, we can come together as a group of people dealing with life and the same issues and the ups and downs, and to celebrate our differences and to encourage one another, and in this understanding of the disease and the same process that to help and encourage, because when we start making behavioral changes it takes three weeks to break a habit and we've got a lot of bad habits going, and sometimes when we get started, we just have to kind of, I'll say, I'll just have that day, you're just going to have to go get that hot fudge sundae and put every bad sugar on top of it, and that you don't need a judgment, you need a hug, and just kind of a redirection back on path. So I think when I say all come together, it's as just in a general rule, to love each other and to try to understand our differences, and to celebrate them, instead of trying to change people, and to let everyone be themselves, and that's the beauty of all of our lives, to let people be themselves, and we should never try to block that, and in this context, being ourselves can be to understand. If there's something not functioning correctly, what we can do to make it better. 

Speaker Dar  

Yes, and I just want to reiterate that we entitled this interview all come together about obesity, and so that's all come together with the Act. Is there one last thing that you just want to make sure that our audience hears from you before we close? 

Speaker Dr Bill 

Oh, there's so many, so many things I would love to say. I would like to just give the impression that I just am here, my, but my paycheck, any and all this, would for somebody to say that really helped me. I understood something, and my passion is for you to know that I am passionate and compassionate. I hope that that will never leave me to my last breath. And I think if I gave the last lasting something, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “we may have all come on different ships, but we're all in the same boat now.” 

Speaker Dar   

Beautiful, I love that. Thanks so much for being here, Dr. Bill, and sharing. 

Speaker Dr Bill 

Well, thank you for talking to you and your audience. And thank you so much. 

Speaker Dar  

Bye. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai