For more than 40 years, Amy Eiges struggled to make sense of a hopelessly broken system that made her feel it was her that needed fixing. More than 200 pounds overweight, she was given the same advice we’ve all heard for years: “Eat less, exercise more. Have more self control. Everything in moderation.”

That advice led her to join Weight Watchers more than 30 times, and try countless other programs and strategies. “I followed all the rules, counted all the points and yet somehow still ended up in a body serving a death row prison sentence for a crime it didn’t commit,” she articulated in a heart-wrenching article that went viral on Twitter and generated tens of thousands of page views.

Then in early 2017, Amy made an appointment with a weight loss surgeon. She wrote, “It is the culmination of decades of being repeatedly told there’s something so intrinsically wrong with me that my only recourse is to mutilate my internal organs.”

Fortunately, Amy read an article about keto just two weeks before her appointment with the surgeon and finally, after more than four decades of failed attempts to lose weight, she learned about a way of eating that would help her lose weight in a sustainable way.

She cancelled the appointment, and never looked back. She has lost more than 170 pounds, and now works for the Nutrition Coalition, a non-profit organization that lists as its top priority to reform the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). Eiges has also joined Dr. Tro’s Medical Weight Loss & Direct Primary Care, where she will serve as a health coach, with the goal of helping others avoid the heartache and torture she endured as a result of a broken system.

“I’m so grateful to be joining Dr. Tro‘s practice as a health coach and will help launch the group coaching program,” said Amy. “These groups will enable us to support even more people in their weight loss journey, and give us a place to share our struggles, triumphs and experiences.”

The group coaching will take place Tuesday evenings from 5:30-7:00 p.m., and will be available both in-person and remotely. For more information, visit the Group Coaching page.

“Living a low-carb/keto lifestyle can sometimes be a bit disenfranchising,” said Amy. “It is still not mainstream and often the people in our own lives don’t understand. I regularly find myself turning to the low-carb community via social media for their support and incredible wealth of knowledge, and now, to be able to have that community and support in person — it’s incredibly exciting!”

As Amy begins a new chapter of her life, helping people at the individual level through her health coaching, she continues to work to try to fix the systemic problems that are at the root of the epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease plaguing our country.

Last week, Amy traveled to Houston, TX to give public testimony to the 2020-2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. “I felt compelled to speak for myself and the millions of people who became sick and damaged even though we faithfully followed the government’s nutrition recommendations,” she said.

Amy spoke out in favor of the inclusion in the Guidelines of a proper definition of low carb diet (under 25% of calories, not the 45% they are currently considering). This would mean that everyone (especially doctors, dietitians and others who dispense nutrition advice) would become aware of how safe and effective this way of eating is – especially for the 88% of Americans that are not metabolically flexible enough to handle a higher carb diet.

“As I said in my statement, if just one of the many ‘experts’ I saw over the four decades I spent trying to lose weight had known about the benefits of a very low-carb diet, I might have been offered a solution that led to meaningful and sustainable weight loss instead of being told to simply eat less/move more—advice which landed me morbidly obese and pre-diabetic.

“It’s not that we were fat, sick, and lazy,” concluded Amy. “We were fat, sick, and misinformed.”

For more information about Group Coaching, click here.

Follow Amy Eiges on Twitter at @AmyDee1001.

Amy was recently the featured guest on the Low Carb MD podcast hosted by Dr. Tro and Dr. Brian Lenzkes. Listen using the player below or visit Low Carb MD.