About Us

Our Practice - Our goal is to help overweight patients optimize their health by offering several safe and effective methods incorporating both mind and body to help them lose unwanted and unhealthy fat without slowing metabolism.

Our Staff

	Christine Dixon, MA – Marketing Director & Counselor/Coach Christine has a wide range of experience consisting of executive positions in business and healthcare, including many years as the Assistant Director of the Hoag Chemical Dependency Unit.  Christine also has extensive experience in the area of counseling psychology.  With her quick mind and loving heart, she plays a valuable role in helping patients who may have subconscious emotional issues preventing them from achieving their optimal weight and health.
	Lisa Menezes – Office Manager Lisa has been with our team for the past 2 years.  She brings the benefit of 11 years of experience in the Health Care Industry, including 5 years in management.   Lisa utilizes her talent and skills to provide the framework to ensure that everything runs smoothly so that we may better serve our patients. In addition, Lisa has extensive knowledge of our protocols and works directly with our patients to help them maximize their weight loss for the best result.
	Melissa Oakley - Front Office Melissa Oakley is a recent addition to our staff (January 2009).   Melissa works as an assistant to the office Manager. She directs the day-to-day operations of the office and is one of the reasons things run smoothly.  Melissa also works directly with our patients and provides valuable knowledge regarding treatments and procedures offered in our office.

Health Care Professionals

Suzie Schuder, MD – Founder & CEO Dr. Schuder is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology.  Prior to her relocation to California Dr. Schuder built a successful weight loss clinic in New York treating 1500 patients over a 2 year span.  Recognized at the time for her expertise in weight loss, Dr. Schuder was interviewed by 2 local news stations and quoted by the NY Times.  Additionally, she was included in the 1999 Castle Connolly Top Doctors in the New York Metro Area, and in California she received the Patients’ Choice Award in 2008.  Dr. Schuder is pleased to offer effective weight loss methods, including the hCG weight loss protocol.

Dr. Schuder’s Story

Like many people, I had a weight problem. It wasn’t terrible but enough to fluctuate between a size 4 and a size 12, a 25 lb range.  Jokingly, I’ve said I was a size 4 only long enough to spend money on tiny clothes. 

A number of years ago, I heard that the hCG diet did not work or that weight lost with hCG and a 500-calorie diet was not due to hCG but due to starvation.  I also realized that hCG was relatively safe.  hCG had been used for overweight or obese patients in various countries, for many years and by a variety of physicians.  To date, no dangerous side effects have been reported. 

Before using hCG, I checked the research on hCG used for weight loss.  There were a number of studies but most were done many years ago.  One article reviewed all the studies and concluded that there were almost an equal number of “pro hCG diet” articles as there were negative ones.  Therefore, they could not conclude that hCG was effective for weight loss.  It also was not clear whether the studies abided by Dr. Simeons’ protocol exactly as he had devised.  Through years of trial and error, Dr. Simeons found that substituting different foods, even foods with a lower calorie count, brought weight loss to a grinding halt.  It seems that unless the studies were designed to follow the Simeons’ dietary protocol meticulously, it didn’t work.  It’s possible that an inexact dietary protocol was responsible for the lack of a positive result for some of the studies.  

For the subjects who lose weight the thought is that a 500-calorie diet would have caused weight loss even without hCG.  However, it is exceedingly difficult to maintain such a low calorie diet due to the extreme overwhelming hunger.  In addition, a very low calorie diet will usually cause slow metabolism even more, making it easier to gain weight when the diet ends.  Muscle loss is part of the metabolic slowing.  furthermore the fat lost first for the most part is the structural fat that helps to hold our organs in place. 

With hCG and a low calorie diet, fat is lost from the difficult to lose areas rather than from the structural areas.  In addition, muscle is not lost and metabolism does not decrease.  The new weight becomes the “set point”. The set point is the weight your body returns to when you sometimes eat too little or too much. Your body seems to hover around a five to ten pound range. 

Although the original studies were done with the injectable form of hCG, it seems that for many people the sublingual drops are also effective.  Currently there is a new format, an hCG sublingual PILL.  This means that there is no refrigeration required and it is much easier to use.  I used the sublingual drops and that worked very well for me.   

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow the protocol exactly when starting hCG.  I did not eat enough food on the 2nd “pig out” day.  This made me ravenously hungry on the 3rd day when I started the 500-calorie diet.  However, by the next day I was not as hungry.  I also found that if I split the food into even smaller amounts and spaced it throughout the day, I felt satisfied. 

Having been on many diets I have not experienced anything like this. I lost a pound the first day and about a pound per day after that.  I occasionally cheated on the diet but it was rarely.  I did not lose weight on the day following the “cheat” but lost weight on the following day when I adhered to the diet properly.  I had only about 15 lbs. to lose and had to increase my caloric intake to 1000 calories.  The remarkable thing was that I lost it all from my “middle” the area that I couldn’t lose no matter how much I lost on other diets whether I exercised vigorously or not.  The hCG diet was decidedly different than anything I had experienced or seen as a weight loss specialist in New York.