Why I Became Involved with the Bariatric Community
In 1992, I met Carnie Wilson who was part of Wilson Phillips, a group I started to co-manage. Carnie and I became good friends and I continued to manage her career after Wilson Phillips disbanded.
In 1995, Carnie was selected to host her own daily talk show, Carnie. During that year I became acutely aware of how much pressure Carnie was under from the show producers to lose weight. Though I know Carnie was overweight during the Wilson Phillips era, it never really interfered with her professional life as a singer. That was not the case with the tv show. When the show was cancelled in 1996, Carnie started to experience serious health concerns all attributable to her excess weight. About that time, I started to become interested in initiating a web-based health care site and one of the issues we decided to explore was obesity.

By 1997-98, I founded a company that became Spotlight Health. I asked Carnie to host a segment about obesity for the site. During that time, a doctor friend of the company told me about something called “bariatric surgery.” I had never heard that term before and could not find the word “bariatric” in the dictionary. My doctor friend told me about a surgeon in San Diego, California, named Dr. Alan Wittgrove who could inform me about what bariatric surgery was and how it could help those suffering from morbid obesity. Of course, I was interested in learning about this subject both as part of what my company might wish to feature, but also to possibly help Carnie deal with her situation. I traveled to San Diego and met with Dr. Wittgrove. During our meeting I asked him if he would come to Los Angeles and meet with Carnie so he could explain to her what he explained to me. Dr. Wittgrove said he would. Within a week, I arranged for Carnie to meet Dr. Wittgrove and when they met it was almost magical. Within minutes, the two of them bonded and when Dr. Wittgrove excused himself to get a cup of coffee, Carnie looked at me and said, “That doctor is going to save my life. I am going to have gastric bypass surgery.” Considering that they had only met for a few minutes, I was truly surprised.

Soon after Carnie made that decision, I suggested to Carnie and Dr. Wittgrove that we cybercast the procedure live on the internet. Initially, they both thought I was crazy but after considering the idea, thought that this could be a great way to educate and inform people about morbid obesity and this surgical option for dealing with it. Over 2.5 million people clicked on to the cybercast and it became the biggest health care story of that year. Entertainment Tonight, 20/20, People Magazine, etc., all featured Carnie’s story.
What I have learned since 1998 is that there is so much suffering by those suffering from morbid obesity and unlike any other disease, those suffering from it feel ashamed of being ill. This seems to me to be very unfair. I find it almost ironic that jokes making fun of people based upon race, religion, sexual orientation are considered “bad taste,” yet jokes making fun of people who are obese are seemingly OK. Jay Leno regularly makes fun of “fat people” on The Tonight Show. Since Carnie’s experience, I have become very involved with this community. It was for this reason that I founded Medical Marketing Services, LLC in 2004. We decided to become a full-service web-based entity to assist surgeons, patients and their loved ones. www.liteandhope.com has become part of the complete solution for this greater bariatric community.

Through the weekly airing of our Carnie Wilson hosted Lite and Hope infomercial starting on January 1, 2005, we have been able to connect over 17,000 callers and/or web visitors with our Lite and Hope Registered Surgeons. We have over 500,000 site visitors a month our www.liteandhope.com and our community building features like Ask The Surgeon Chats, Real Stories and Discussion Boards attract thousands of visitors each day. Lite and Hope is a caring community that offers a wide variety of services for surgeons, patients and their loved ones such as financing for the surgeries from Carecredit, home delivered specially designed meals for bariatric patients from Zone Chefs, life insurance at affordable rates for all one year post patients from Prudential and a non-surgical treatment option for dealing with excess skin from Syneron. All of our services have one common aim—to offer the support needed to the greater bariatric community. I have become inspired by Carnie’s story to be involved in the bariatric community. Considering I did not know the word “bariatric” existed 10 years ago, I think I have come a long way and www.liteandhope.com is a reflection of what I have learned.