SALISBURY — The public will have two chances to attend a weight-loss seminar at Rowan Diagnostic Clinic next week.

The seminar, titled “Why 98% of Diets Don’t Work: The Secrets of Permanent Fat Loss,” will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at the clinic, 611 Mocksville Ave.

Seating is limited. People can sign up at the clinic’s front desk or call 704-633-7220, Ext. 448. There is no charge.

The seminar will be led by Dr. Jonathan Burg, a nationally recognized weight-loss expert with Cornerstone Wellness Program.

Burg developed his program 12 years ago, and he says it has been successfully used “by hundreds of physicians and hundreds of thousands of patients nationally” to address weight problems.

“Many overweight and even obese individuals may be perfectly healthy because they don’t store that fat internally, and many normal weighted and even thin people may have serious risk factors due to the fat primarily stored intra-abdominally,” Burg says.

“By utilizing the Cornerstone proprietary device, the BC4, which is the first FDA cleared, cloud-based bioelectrical impedance device to accurately measure body fat, muscle mass, metabolic rate and hydration level, the doctors at RDC can monitor these extremely important parameters with patients on their new wellness program.”

After the seminar, any interested patient will be enrolled in an individual program run by registered dietician R.J. Lord and overseen by Dr. Augustine Obi, an endocrinologist at RDC.

“The physicians at Rowan Diagnostic Clinic believe their responsibility to Rowan County includes not only treating diseases but also preventing and attempting to reverse conditions by utilizing lifestyle modification on the part of their patients,” a news release said.

It added that diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, and fatty liver “respond incredibly well” to aggressive lifestyle changes — that is, dietary and activity changes.

“In other words,” said Dr. Doug Shellhorn, an internist at RDC, “successfully addressing these conditions requires not just medical and pharmacologic intervention but ideally lifestyle changes as well. This is the rationale for bringing the Cornerstone Wellness Program into our medical practice.”

Burg added that “all these conditions, like diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, high cholesterol, etc., which are massive risk factors for premature death from heart disease, are not due to overweight or obesity. They are due to over-fatness, especially the deadly fat stored around the liver called visceral fat.”

Burg said serious fat loss ideally requires medical oversight because of the need to lower medications and often discontinue them as improvement is made.

“But don’t forget the importance of maintaining muscle,” Burg said, “as your muscle determines your metabolic rate. And if you lose muscle, your metabolic rate drops which actually sabotages your efforts and sets you up for weight regain and yo-yoing.

“This is one of the major reasons why most other medical weight-loss programs don’t give long lasting results,” he added. “These diets rely on scale weight, not on monitoring fat and muscle.”