Weight Loss

When your sessions fall

The program is built in four-week modules. Sessions come thickest at the start, when what you decide matters most, and step down as things settle. That is 5 sessions of 45 minutes across 8 weeks, counting the visit before week 1.

Week by week

1. Before you begin
   Before you begin

   Your pathway starts with a 45-minute visit with Cindy Cathcart, your Whole Health Coach. To prepare, complete your baseline questionnaires and a three-day food log. Cindy is also a Nutrition Coach, so she reads the log herself and builds your plan from it in week 1. Nothing here is a test and nothing is graded.

2. Week 1
   What you eat, and how much of it

   Cindy takes you through your three-day food log in her Nutrition Coaching session and builds the plan around what it actually shows. The Mediterranean pattern and why it holds up where restrictive diets do not. The plate method as a way to build a meal without counting anything, and protein at every meal to protect muscle and blunt hunger. We are explicit about what this pathway is not: no cleanses, no elimination, no extremes.

3. Week 2
   Sleep and the hunger hormones

   Short sleep raises ghrelin and lowers leptin, which is why a bad week of sleep shows up as appetite you cannot talk yourself out of. Sleep-hygiene principles from CBT for insomnia, and your Insomnia Severity Index baseline. Kelly Day O'Brien takes this week and is bookable below.

4. Week 3
   Movement that builds, rather than punishes

   150 minutes a week of moderate activity plus two to three strength sessions, and why strength is here for body composition rather than for the number on the scale. We set an activity floor you can hold on a bad week, not a ceiling you can hit on a good one.

5. Week 4
   Mid-program: what is working

   We repeat the questionnaires you took at baseline and put the two side by side. Your coach refreshes the care plan around what actually moved, and you meet 1:1 to decide what the second half is for. If progress has stalled, this is where we look at medication, thyroid, and hormonal causes rather than assuming effort.

6. Week 5
   Your relationship with food

   Identity rather than willpower: what it takes to become someone who eats this way rather than someone currently on a diet. Perfectionism and the all-or-nothing rebound, and where you are on the readiness-to-change scale now compared with week 0.

7. Week 6
   Stress eating and the pause

   Identifying your own stress-eating pattern: what precedes it, what it does for you, and where a pause can go. A daily relaxation practice you will actually repeat, and your Perceived Stress Scale re-score. Lucy Paulise takes this week and is bookable below.

8. Week 7
   The medical picture

   The labs that belong in a weight conversation: A1c, a lipid panel, thyroid where indicated, and a medication review, since several common prescriptions drive weight gain. We close preventive-care gaps at the same time, and get anything outstanding in front of your primary care doctor.

9. Week 8
   Making it hold

   Your final re-score against week 0, and the honest version of relapse prevention: naming the three situations most likely to undo this and deciding now what you will do in each. We agree what maintenance looks like after week 8 and who you contact when it slips.