Dr. Tom Rifai is the lead architect of The Flex5 Lifestyle – a behavior modification methodology which has proven itself in the Henry Ford Health system in Michigan, as well as part of one of Harvard’s most popular online Lifestyle Medicine course for professionals – “Nutrition & The Metabolic Syndrome”, which was taken by over 5000 physicians worldwide during its tenure.
Dr. Tom (as he’s affectionately known by his patients and health coaching clients) was the Medical & Wellbeing Director for Fortune 500 Magna International, North America’s largest mobility technology company, providing elite level executive health coaching to the CEO and C-suite, as well as developing programming to the manufacturing sites.
Dr. Tom is a diplomate of both American Boards of Internal and Lifestyle Medicine and a past president of the National Board of Physician Nutrition Specialists and serving on its as well as the True Health Initiative’s Board of Directors.
The Flex5 Lifestyle is comprised of all the critical skills and knowledge needed in the five domains of health most influential to healthy longevity. The methodology is akin to becoming a “mixed martial artist of health and wellbeing”.
The domains are: psychology, nutrition, physical activity, environments and accountability.
The Flex5 is rooted in Dr. Tom’s unique combination of medical and lifestyle modification training, over 20,000 hours of clinical experience leading and building multidisciplinary lifestyle intervention and support programs, blended with his personal binge eating disorder experience, a disorder to which he lost his youngest brother, Basil.
The upcoming book, The Flex5: Your 5 Keys to Get Lean, Reverse Disease and Forever Health, will be dedicated to Basil.
The Flex5 inspired the central theme for the 2019 Harvard Institute of Lifestyle Medicine International Conference. The methodology was chosen in 2021 by Henry Ford Health system’s Metabolic Health program leaders to be their unifying patient education curriculum for all of Henry Ford’s Metabolic Health programs in Michigan.
Dr. Tom’s personal health journey was a central theme in his premier article as Editor in Chief for the True Health Initiative’s NOTeD (News Of The Day) platform. NOTeD was originally focused squarely on debunking nutrition and lifestyle misinformation in the media with written articles.
But in late 2020, Dr. Tom evolved NOTeD to also include a video interview-based format, providing THI audiences with access to world luminaries in nutrition and exercise science, lifestyle medicine, innovation and anthropology.
NOTeD’s success gave birth to a full blown podcast: True Health Revealed (THR). THR launched in 2022 and is co-hosted by Dr. Tom and another THI Board of Directors member, award-winning dietitian Kathleen Zelman MPH, RDN, LD.
Dr. Tom also served as Associate Medical Director of the renown Pritikin Longevity Center in Miami, Florida, spent over a decade on Pritikin’s science advisory committee, and continues to serve as Pritikin’s lead video educator on dietary fats and weight control for their Medicare-approved Intensive Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, which is now running in over 100 hospital cardiac rehabilitation programs throughout the USA.
Dr. Tom is married to Angela and has two amazing young children, whom – especially being in his mid 50’s – Rifai considers his primary answers to “WHY” he is so passionate about staying healthy via lifestyle as medicine.