Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ashworth Medical PA Receives 2009 Best of Ormond Beach Award

U.S. Commerce Association’s Award Plaque Honors the Achievement

WASHINGTON D.C., June 8, 2009 -- Ashworth Medical PA has been selected for the 2009 Best of Ormond Beach Award in the Psychiatrists & Psychoanalysts category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA).

The USCA "Best of Local Business" Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2009 USCA Award Program focused on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USCA and data provided by third parties.

___________________________________________________________________________________

In all honesty once the medical condition or conditions have been treated the tough part begins.  You as the patient can pretty much lay the burden of responsibility on the doctor to figure out what is going on with you physically from a disease oriented approach.  The issues of the mind are a bit harder to tackle and really take a team effort.  This is when the patient needs to open up and start to seriously consider changing old habits, which as all of us know can be the hardest part.  With a trained doctor at your side it will make the process easier, but you are the one that needs to start being your own best friend.

When I say being your own best friend I mean to say that you would not expect a true best friend to purposely sabotage your efforts at losing weight and getting healthy.  It will be time to look in the mirror repeatedly and say that you are your own best friend.  There will be many people around you that would love to see you fail.  The last thing you need is for you to also be one of those people who do not believe in  yourself.  When I was in college I hated getting up in front of groups of people and speaking.  At times I would get myself so worked up that I would just go blank.  I knew I needed to get a good grade and that this ability to get up in front of people and speak was going to make or break me.  Many of the other students were also pre-medicine and would love nothing more than to have one less student to have to compete with for a seat in medical school.

I thought long and hard about how to break this cycle.  It hit me one day before talking in front of a large group of people.  Why in the world am I making this hard for myself.  I should be my biggest fan and hope for a tremendously successful speech.  Just like a best friend would want for me if he were to be sitting in the audience.  That is when I decided that instead of sabotaging myself and getting myself all worked up I would try my best to treat myself as if I were my own best friend.  Ever since that moment, before I speak publicly or perform a surgery I look in the mirror and wish myself the best of luck; and promise to do everything I can to have a successful outcome to whatever it is I want to accomplish. This is just one of the many strategies I employ in my clinic and have written in the book to help each reader beat the issues that have doggedly been there to make things difficult. A few of the issues I have written about are as follows:

• Snacking
• Eating Out
• Eating at night
• Eating out of pure boredom
• Getting motivated to exercise
• Overeating or simply eating the wrong foods because you are stressed

These represent but a handful of the information I give to the reader to help them be a success.  It will always be easier if you do not keep the effort to lose weight under your hat.  Tell as many people as you can.  The more you tell the bigger your support network and the bigger the team.  This action in and of itself may scare you but I talk about it in detail in the book and how to do it properly.  There will definetly be people who you should not incorporate on the team, or they should be given a specific task they do not deviate from.  The goal I am reaching for is to empower the reader and hopefully educate them along with the primary care doctors on the front line.