HERSHAW DAVIS JR., LEFT,said he is trying to eat better and exercise more to control his weight, but finds his 12-hour, overnight shift as an ER nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital makes it difficult. (GABRIELLA DEMCZUK | THE BALTIMORE SUN)

Taylor DesRosiers was a competitive swimmer throughout her life, always fit. But in her first year of medical school, she realized that had changed - she was at an unhealthy weight.

The rigors of her education had piled on top of two rough years in which she went through a broken-off engagement and supporting her mother through a health scare. During a course on obesity, she realized, according to body mass index charts, she was technically obese herself.

"It just kind of hit me: I need to make a large change," DesRosiers said.

She had some support in doing that: Two fellow Johns Hopkins University students recently launched the Patient Promise, a program that aims to ensure health professionals do as they tell patients when it comes to healthy lifestyles. It is one of many similar programs to arise in the industry as health professionals seek to tackle rising obesity rates nationwide by starting with themselves. (Lakeland Regional Medical Center, for example, offers Living Well: Lakeland Regional's Culture of Health. It includes classes on nutrition, diabetes, smoking cessation and more, as well as an exercises series and health screenings.)

Research has shown that healthy lifestyle choices on the part of physicians can translate into better care for obese patients. That care is important as the health industry seeks to tackle the rising costs of care, particularly for many chronic conditions that can stem from obesity.

About 36 percent of adults in the U.S. are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control. For a 5-foot-4-inch adult, a weight above 174 pounds is considered obese, while a 5-foot-9-inch person weighing 203 or more would qualify, for example. Obesity-related conditions like heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer are among the leading causes of death.

Hopkins students Shiv Gaglani and David Gatz started talking about the idea behind the Patient Promise early this year, realizing that their career choices were taking a toll on their health.

"Our own healthy-lifestyle behaviors were going out the window," Gaglani said, given time spent sedentary in classes or studying and busy schedules leaving little room for exercise or healthy cooking. "It's sort of a sacrificial career. By sacrificing our own health, we would become potentially less effective as clinicians because we wouldn't be credible."

The pair got about a dozen students together, including DesRosiers, to draft the Patient Promise, and they launched it in June. Within a few weeks, 300 medical professionals and students across the country had signed it, and the organizers plan to raise that to a few thousand eventually.

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Medical Professionals Not Always Leading Healthy Lifestyles