Jo Lynn Hawthorne, MD, FACOG, Bariatrician

Making a difference in the lives of her community is Jo Lynn Hawthorne’s personal mission. As a physician for 18 years, she has done just that – kept women healthy, cared from them when they were not and literally delivered great joy into the arms of families. As an obstetrician and gynecologist, Dr. Hawthorne has done all this and more.

In her medical practice, Dr. Hawthorne realized a concerning trend was occurring with the patients she holds so dear. Each year, the scale was creeping up, sometimes dramatically. She began to see her once healthy patients become increasingly unhealthy. And, worse, her patients felt helpless and were losing hope that anything could be done to give them the figure and good health they once possessed.

Then, in January of 2006 a realization hit – Jo Lynn Hawthorne would be turning 50 the following year. With this mile-marker firmly in place, Dr. Hawthorne decided that if she was going to be 50, she would be the best 50 possible. So, she set out to do what she had been telling her patients to do – eat right and exercise.

As she does with everything in her life, she went full-force into that goal, determined that nothing would stop her from hitting her goal weight and looking her best on her birth-date. Six days a week, she woke at 4:30 a.m. to work out at the local YMCA for an hour. She did indeed watch what she ate, carefully following the vegetarian diet she grew up on.

The spring and summer months fell away. But her weight did not. In August Dr. Hawthorne stopped exercising and gained 30 pounds by January.

As her birthday came and went, Dr. Hawthorne had a life-changing realization – Maybe her patients have been telling her the truth all along! Maybe they were exercising and eating better! She began to see very clearly that she, as most physicians, weren’t prepared to address and manage this serious epidemic.

This realization began a process that not only changed her life, but the lives of people within her community. Dr. Hawthorne began to study weight, the causes, the whys. She began to study how to address it and manage it in a way that worked. And what she found was alarming.

In this website, you’ll benefit from the knowledge she learned, the training she then underwent. You’ll learn the startling truth about obesity and what Dr. Hawthorne discovered was the solution.

As Dr. Hawthorne has said dozens of times: “I love delivering babies, it is such a miracle to see life created and to be the first one to touch these new blessings.” But, even more, she loves giving adults their lives back. You see, when people are overweight and obese, their full potential is limited. Their life is limited. By intervening in a significant way, she is able to see people who have given up hope, re-create their lives.