Eleve

BOOK NOW
Contact us
Request Demo

Five Questions to Ask Before You Pick a Weight Loss Provider in Lenexa

From the woman who lost 175 pounds before she ever helped anyone else do the same. By Kelli Rausch, APRN, FNP-BC — Founder, ÉLEVÉ Regenerative Aesthetics & Wellbeing

If you’ve already read From 320 to 145: My Weight Loss Story, and Why I Do This Work, you know I don’t usually lead with my own story. But you know the bones of it: 2006 car accident, weight up to 320 by 2010, a hard climb back down, a midlife pause, and nearly two years of maintenance at 145 without any weight-loss medication and counting every single day.
This post isn’t that story. This is the one I get asked about almost as often: Kelli — how do I pick the right person to help me?
There are a lot of clinics in Kansas City right now offering weight loss support. Some are real medical practices. Some are storefronts with a prescription pad. You deserve to know the difference before you walk through any door including mine. So here are the five questions I’d ask, if I were you, sitting in my car in the parking lot before my first appointment.

1. "Have you done this yourself or have you only watched other people do it?"

This one matters more than the credentials hanging on the wall.
I am not against providers who haven’t lost a hundred-plus pounds themselves. Plenty of excellent clinicians have never lived this. But I’ll tell you what I know: there is a difference between a provider who has read about food noise and one who has had it. There’s a difference between someone who knows the textbook answer to “why do you eat when you’re not hungry” and someone who has stood in a kitchen at 11 p.m. and eaten an entire Nothing Bundt Cake without remembering opening the box.
I am the second kind. That doesn’t make me a better clinician on paper. It makes me a different kind of partner. Ask the person you’re considering: Have you been here? If they have, listen to how they talk about it. If they haven’t, ask how they listen when you talk about yours.

2. "Are you going to look at my hormones, or just my weight?"

If you are a woman in your forties or fifties peri-menopausal, post-menopausal, or “I-don’t-know-what-this-is” and the weight will not move no matter what you do, the most important conversation in the room may not be about food at all.
I learned this the hard way. After my 320-to-160 stretch in the 2010s, I crept back up into the mid-180s. I was active. I was eating like an adult. And my body was not listening. What I didn’t understand until I went through it myself: you cannot out-work disrupted hormones.
I’m post-menopausal. I’m on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT), and getting my hormones dialed in has done as much for my weight, sleep, and energy as anything else I’ve done. (More on that on our BHRT page and in Brain Fog, Fatigue, or Just Aging?.)

So the question to ask any weight loss provider, especially after 40: Do you check my hormones, or just my BMI? If the answer is “just your BMI,” you are in the wrong office. 

3. "Will you tell me when medication is the wrong tool or only when it's the right one?"

There are clinics in this town whose entire business model is writing a prescription as fast as legally possible. A real medical weight management program including one that uses compounded weight-loss medications when clinically appropriate should be willing to tell you no. 

I will tell you no. I have told people no. If your labs say something different than your wish list says, if your medical history says we need to slow down, if your habits are not in a place yet where medication will actually help I will tell you. That’s the job. 

Medication can be an excellent tool. It is not the whole plan. In my own story, what the medication did was quiet the noise long enough for me to learn how to eat. It didn’t make me thin. I did the work of learning when I was full, when I was bored, when I was stressed. The medication bought me the quiet to hear it.

If a provider is selling you the medication as the answer instead of as a tool, leave. 

4. "Will you hold me accountable, or just refill the script?"

This is the question that separates a real partnership from a transaction. 

Here is what accountability looks like in my office, because it’s also what it looks like in my own life. I weigh myself every morning. My scale sends the number to my phone. I give myself a five-pound window up or down anything outside that window is a red flag and I adjust. I write down what I eat. Not obsessively. Honestly. 

I am going to ask you the same things. What did you eat. What did you drink. Did you move today. Are you sleeping. I am not going to ask you to be perfect. I am going to ask you to be honest with me, and with yourself. The plan is not the prescription. The plan is the conversation we have every two or four weeks, where you tell me the truth and I help you adjust. 

If your prospective provider’s follow-up plan is “see you in three months for your refill,” that is not a medical weight management program. That is a vending machine. 

5. "Will you treat the whole picture, or just the number on the scale?"

Weight does not exist in a vacuum. Sleep matters. Stress matters. Hormones matter. Skin matters yes, really. After a significant weight change, your skin and your face look different, and how you feel about what you see in the mirror is part of your wellness too. 

Many women I work with begin with weight, and then start asking about their skin, their hair, their energy, their sex drive, their mood. I treat all of it. Not because I’m selling you more but because all of it is connected, and you deserve a provider who can see the whole picture. That might mean BHRT. It might mean microneedling or skin resurfacing. It might just mean a real conversation about sleep. 

The honest bottom line

I cannot promise you a number. No one can. I can promise you a plan, a partner, and the truth. 

I’m not going to ask you to be perfect. I’m going to ask you to be honest. I’m not going to sell you a medication and disappear. I’m going to weigh you, ask you about your week, look at your labs, talk about your hormones, and adjust the plan together every visit, every time. 

I’ve been the woman in your chair. I’ve been 320 pounds, and I’ve been 145 for nearly two years now, off any weight-loss medication, and still counting. I know the shame, the plate-cleaning guilt, the food noise, the “I’ll start Monday.” I also know what it feels like on the other side. 

If you’re tired of starting Monday and ready to actually start, come see me. Ask me these five questions. Ask anybody in town these five questions. The answers will tell you everything. 

Book a Medical Weight Management consultation at ÉLEVÉ

— Kelli 💜 

APRN, FNP-BC | Founder, ÉLEVÉ Regenerative Aesthetics & Wellbeing 

Serving Lenexa, Overland Park, and the greater Kansas City metro 

8801 Penrose Lane, Suite 106, Lenexa, KS 66219