Announcing a Winning Strategy That’s Certain to Help People Lose

Overcoming Obesity or Chronic Overweight (O/CO) is one of the hardest challenges people ever face. Consider the statistics. A relatively high proportion of drug addicts (>55%),1 alcoholics (>50%),2 and smokers (>66%)3 who seek to overcome their addiction eventually succeed. In contrast, less than 5% of chronically obese people will ever reach a healthy weight.4 The only recovery process I’ve encountered that can be harder is surviving cancer. Few have the odds more stacked against them than the O/CO.

Why Overcoming O/CO is so Difficult

An overweight man with a beard and wearing shorts, a yellow T-shirt, and sunglasses runs down an asphalt road

The problem with O/CO is that it isn’t a single bad habit or behavior. O/CO is a lifestyle. That lifestyle must end if a healthy lifestyle is to be born, which means several interdependent components of this O/CO lifestyle need to change. Any one of them can initiate the change process, and any one of them also can stop it.

  1. Energy consumption—reducing the total number of kcals consumed each day/week/month as food or beverages.
  2. Energy expenditure—increasing the total number of kcals burned each day/week/month through physical activity and exercise.
  3. Self-image, self-regard, and self-efficacy—developing a new and healthier self, which requires the death of, and attendant grief for, the O/CO self.
  4. Life balance—receiving too many rewards from food and food-related activities and not enough from other areas of life such as relationships, friends. hobbies, interests, activities, and achievements.

The highest hurdle to reducing weight is that the O/CO person’s readiness for change on these four fronts is rarely at the same stage. The key to success is to determine the O/CO person’s stage of change on each front and to work on the four components in parallel, i.e., to “meet the person where they’re at.” Above all, it means avoiding the prime mistake would-be helpers make in working with the O/CO—trying to force them into action before they’re ready.

The Six Facets of Integrative Weight Reduction

My work as an integrative wellness coach is informed by six powerful change-management practices that work in concert to promote sustainable weight loss.

  1. Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM)—an integrative theory of change that assesses a person’s readiness to adopt new, healthier behaviors, and provides change strategies and processes appropriate to each stage of change.
    2. A graphic representation of the six stages of the Trans-theoretical Model of Change
    Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM)5
  2. Motivational Interviewing (MI)—a particular way of talking with people about change and growth to strengthen their own motivation and commitment. MI is not about installing motivation in people, but rather evoking it from them.6
  3. Client-centered coaching—a nondirective coaching approach based on the principle that people are inherently motivated to achieve greater wellbeing. The client is trusted as the expert in their life and sets the direction, while the coach provides a supportive environment based on deep listening, complete acceptance, and genuineness.
    4. Rearview of the left side of a woman in fitness attire leaning forward and doing a reverse fly with a 15-pound dumbbell
  4. 360° Fitness Coaching—my experience as a Strength and Conditioning and 360° Fitness Coach helps me develop tailored movement and fitness programs for each client. We work together to create a physical activity program the client looks forward to doing, not a sentence to boring exercises.
  5. Meditation and mindfulness coaching—meditation instruction is central to my coaching practice and includes instruction in meditation fundamentals; moving meditation; somatic meditation; breathwork; mindfulness meditation; visualization and visioning; and meditation for emotional and physical healing. Developing a new mindset through meditation practice is key to transformational change.
    6. An array of natural foods on a wooden table including fresh salmon, tofu, and a variety of fruits and vegetables
  6. Nutrition counseling—weight reduction doesn’t necessarily require you to eat less. It does, however, require you to eat smarter and better. Through dietary analysis, we work together to eliminate 100-to-200kcals of energy consumption a day—not hard to do when one avoids ultra-processed, chemically altered (factory) food substitutes.

Together these six practices are practical, comprehensive, and highly synergistic. I have never known a single person who sincerely engaged these methods who didn’t lose a considerable amount of fat-weight, while also developing muscle strength and tone.

The Travesty of Medical Weight-Reduction Interventions

Money-driven medicine’s interventions for the O/CO, namely gastric surgery and appetite-suppressing drugs, are among the most cynical and sad that Western medicine has to offer. They address one determinant of O/CO (appetite) without doing anything to address its underlying psychological, emotional, and social causes. People drop weight temporarily, but without becoming healthier in any way, shape, or form.

Is it any surprise that most of them gain the weight back once their digestive organs adjust to the surgery or the drugs are no longer affordable? These methods are madness and the medical establishment that relies on them is amoral. They might be good for big-pharma and provider billings, but they have nothing to do with the long-term health and wellness of O/CO patients.

Sailing a Steady Course for Health and Wellness

Theoretically, the integrative weight-reduction protocol is simple. It’s based on three premises:

  • Since a net deficit of 1,400kcals = 1 pound of weight loss, to lose 1 pound per week, a person needs to achieve a 200kcal energy deficit each day (7 x 200kcal = 1,400kcals).
  • To achieve the required daily energy deficit an O/CO person simply needs to:
    • Eat 100kcal less than usual per day.
    • Burn 100kcals more than usual per day through increased physical activity and exercise.
  • At this rate, we’ve set course for 1 pound of weight reduction per week or about 5 pounds per month. Some people can double this rate by doubling their energy deficit.
A brass weight scale with two arms is labeled to depict the ways in which weight reduction depends upon creating an energy deficit

Although the logic is simple, that doesn’t mean following it is easy. The challenge is to find the “sweet spot” for each person by taking small steps to reach that <200kcal daily deficit and maintain it day-after-day. This is where an integrative wellness coach can really help—someone who has the O/CO person’s back and supports their self-awareness, commitment, emotional engagement, and capacity to counter undermining influences.

Rightsizing is Your Right and Destiny

A woman wearing fitness attire is spinning around like a whirlybird on the grass near a beach

For decades, I’ve helped O/CO people succeed in achieving sustainable weight reduction. I’ve come to view integrative coaching for weight reduction as more about gaining something than losing it. What people gain is what was theirs from the beginning—a healthy, vital, active body that they value and want to take good care of. That’s their true self, their core self, the one designed from the beginning to be free of disease and compromised living.

The benefits of freeing oneself from O/CO outweigh the costs 1,000 to 1. Truth be told, reducing weight doesn’t need to be painful or stressful. The main thing that’s required is a radical shift in mindset. I put it this way:

“To change your body is to change your mind about yourself.”

When O/CO people come to see and believe in the rightsized version of themselves, they inevitably begin to reshape their bodies. That body is already there, waiting to be freed. Please call, text, or email to learn more about integrative wellness coaching for weight reduction for you or someone you care about. There’s nothing to lose but excess weight, and so much else in life to gain.

Footnotes

  1. National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2018). Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A
    Research-Based Guide (3rd Ed.)    , Washington, D.C. National Institute of Health.
  2. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (2021). Support recovery: It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Downloaded from https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/core-resource-on-alcohol/support-recovery-its-marathon-not-sprint#pub-toc1 29 Apr 2025.
  3. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Smoking and tobacco use: Smoking cessation fast facts. Downloaded from https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/php/data-statistics/smoking-cessation/index.html 29 Apr 2025.
  4. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. (2003). Weight Management: State of the Science and Opportunities for Military Programs. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.
  5. Adapted from Prochaska, J. O., Norcross, J. & DeClemente, C. (1994). Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward. New York: Quill.
  6. Miller, W. R. & Rollnick, S. (20023). Motivational interviewing: Helping people grow and change, 4th Ed. New York: Guilford Press.