My Practice is Changing and I Need Your Help

Gregory A. Buford, MD, FACS, PCEOThose of you who know me well know that I am not the same person now that I was a few years ago. I have always been driven to accomplish my goals but in building a practice I became sidetracked and focused on the wrong things. As a Plastic Surgeon and small business owner, for many years my sights were set on being busy and in building out what I thought was the ideal practice and the ideal life. But I was wrong. My intentions were good but my idea of what I should be building was not. Until a few years ago.

At the age of 44, I looked in the mirror and didn’t like how I looked. Quite simply, I was working too hard, getting little sleep, and focusing on simply being busy. And it was taking a toll. I was, as I am now, very happy with my practice and my amazing patients but I wasn’t taking the time for me. The person looking back at me was overweight, looked tired, and didn’t reflect who I thought I should be. Good friends of mine were experiencing health problems and I made the decision that I needed to make a change before it was too late. And at that point I decided it was time for this change. Life passes quickly if we don’t take the time to stop once in a while. And, for me, the journey had become more focused on the endpoint than on the simple joys along the way.

I hired a personal trainer, began exercising every day, drastically changed the way I ate, and began reassessing what I really wanted to do with my life and how I wanted to live. I looked at the things that made me happy and I looked at the things that did not. And I prioritized my time looking at how I was spending each day and whether I would be satisfied if each day was my last. I looked at my bucket list and too many things had been put on hold for another day and for the future and I realized that we are simply never guaranteed that this future will ever come. And so I began living for each day and not for each tomorrow.

A big part of this change was in response to friends of mine who began experiencing health problems and who had simply let themselves go. Each one of them had their respective excuses why they didn’t have time to exercise, why they couldn’t eat right, and why there was simply little time for themselves. And so I looked at my own excuses, dissected them, and reassessed why and where they had come from. And I made the change.

Since then, I have incorporated small changes as well as major changes in the manner that I live my life and I have never looked back. I work out with a trainer at least 3 days a week, eat a clean diet, take more time to relax, and have begun to appreciate the simple things around me that I never saw before when my life was moving forward at breakneck speed. And I encourage you to do the same.

For many of us, it takes a life changing event such as an illness, loss of a loved one, career change, or a catastrophic event to step back and look at what we are doing with our life. And the sad truth is that we could have made this change at anytime but we were simply too busy to do so. I challenge you to make this change now.

As a result of my own life changes and my newfound focus on my physical and spiritual health, I am adding an entirely new focus to my practice. In the next few months, I will be launching a Health and Wellness component at BEAUTY by BUFORD that will focus on your health at a level that you have never seen before. As we age, our hormones decline and our bodies effectively break down. And although many of us see this change as a necessary part of the aging process, science shows us that it doesn’t need to be and that we can proactively slow down this process and live much better than ever before.

But I need your help. I know the basics and I know the science; but I need to know what motivates you to change and what it is that you want to change. For example, simply reducing body fat can add years and quality to your life. But there are literally thousands of recommendations on how to eat and what to eat and many of them are simply flawed. To address optimal wellness in my surgical patients, I began asking them to consume additional protein after surgery to help them heal more effectively. And while I have no study to back up my conclusions, I can confidently say that I am seeing improvements. I have had the honor of working with a number of clients who are active in the fitness community and they shared their suggestions with me and I have incorporated them into my protocols. And in building out an Anti-Aging component to my practice, I intend to do so in a much more effective manner that is easily practiced by my patients. My goal is not that you simply heal better after your surgery. My goal is that your life changes and that it changes for the good. And that is why I am going down this road.

But, again, I need your help. Please email me with your suggestions on what you would like to see in an Anti-Aging/Optimal Wellness program. I am looking to a direction that is outcome-based and one that will be far ahead of what is currently being practiced by most Americans. The data you see in the press is outdated and, for the most part, is wrong. My goal is to help you sift through the rubbish and embrace those practices that will help you live a healthy and fulfilling life.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I look forward to working with each and every one of you. Please email me with your suggestions (drbuford@beautybybuford.com) or CLICK HERE.

Be well!