Dr. Francisco M. Torres, MD

Florida Spine Institute and Wellness

Dr. Torres graduated from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. He performed his physical medicine and rehabilitation residency at the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Juan before completing a Musculoskeletal Fellowship at Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans. He served three years as a Clinical Instructor of Medicine and Assistant Professor at LSU before joining the Florida Spine Institute in Clearwater, Florida, where he currently serves as the medical director of the Wellness Program.

Dr. Torres is the author of several health and wellness books, including Dr. T’s Drop the Fat Diet: 12 Steps to a New You Forever, Epigenetics and the Psychology of Weight Loss, and Keep Kicking Frisco, Keep Kicking, a memoir of his journey with anxiety and panic disorders leading to challenges with his body image and physical health.

In his practice, Dr. Torres leverages his ability to relate to his patient’s struggles with health and fitness to help them overcome these challenges. “Once, a patient asked for a different doctor because she felt I was ‘too fit’ to understand her struggles with her weight,” he says. “I wish she had read my book. Dr. Torres shares in his writings that “I grew up with stress eating from trauma and a poor self-image of my body. I only became fit in my 40s, after a heart scare made me realize I had to focus on my health if I wanted to live to see my children grow up.”

Doctor Torres believes it’s important to share success stories that may not fit the mainstream narrative of health and fitness to promote freedom from self-imposed limitations in their fitness journey, neither by age nor genetics. In his book Epigenetics and the Psychology of Weight Loss, Dr. Torres shares the account of an elderly patient who experienced a significant reduction in his body weight, which resulted in the remission of his severe chronic pain.

When he first met this patient, Dr. Torres was not hopeful that Jim would live long, given the severity of his obesity and the dangerously high levels of medication he needed to manage his chronic pain. Today, Jim is one of the most fit seniors in his 70’s and an enthusiastic exerciser.

In his updated 2023 edition of his Drop the Fat Diet, Dr. Torres focuses on a practical approach, providing healthy and straightforward weight loss recipes that can be made at home and scientific information about different diets and weight loss medications and supplements. In Epigenetics and Keep Kicking Frisco, he focuses on total health improvement’s theoretical and emotional aspects. He provides a roadmap on how lifestyle choices can change their gene expression anchored in his personal knowledge of what it feels like to be the unathletic kid in the room.

“We must treat the whole patient” is one of Dr. Torres’ mantras. “The mind is a part of the patient, and we cannot ignore that organ system when treating and preventing disease.”