How It Works

The reason we need a smarter way to lose weight is because the traditional approach to weight loss isn’t effective for most women LONG TERM. Your own experiences with losing weight and not maintaining it, perhaps multiple times, should be your most compelling evidence that we need a smarter approach to losing weight. But the research below also supports this need.

What Research Shows

About Gaining Weight: It has been found that after women turn 26-years-old, they gain an average of 1 ½ pounds every year! With modest lifestyle changes, I can help you create the foundations for taking off those extra pounds and also preventing further creeping weight gain.

About Losing Weight: Studies indicate that most weight loss programs are not effective in the long term. Most women gain back the weight they lose, and often more. If you are reading this, most likely your previous attempts to lose and maintain weight have not been successful long-term. The question is, are you ready to learn a different approach to losing weight that you will be able to sustain over time?

The smart weight loss approach I developed below will empower you to take small steps in some areas and huge leaps in others based on what works in your life, today.

S.M.A.R.T. Weight Loss

Sustainable: Smart weight loss is beginning with the end in mind. Creating long-term sustainability is the core goal of EssentialSteps. As a women’s behavioral psychologist and health education researcher, my approach to losing weight is unique and supported by science. An important reason most weight loss programs don’t work is that they direct you to learn two vastly different and difficult behavioral changes (diet & exercise) at the same time. For most of us, our lives are just too busy and complicated to be able to integrate both diet and exercise into our lives at the same time. Because women juggle multiple roles and responsibilities, we have even less energy, attention, and time to learn and integrate both dietary changes and regular physical activity at the same time.

Sequential: Smart weight loss takes a sequential approach to losing weight. Because learning and integrating a behavior like exercise or changing your dietary intake takes a great deal of focus, intention, and energy, my sequential strategy has you learn ONE behavior at time so that it can stick. After you have had adequate time to learn how to integrate that behavior into your life in a positive and consistent way, then you work on learning the next behavior. We wouldn’t build a house without building a solid foundation first. Why? The foundation is essential to the support of your house over its life span. Similarly, we should also build a solid foundation to maintain the weight we lose before we start to lose weight. Sometimes the smartest way to do something is also the most simple and commonsensical.

My Self-care: Smart weight loss addresses women’s underlying comfort with making their self-care, well-being, and health a top priority. Regular self-care is the “oxygen mask” women must consistently put on if we are to optimally take care of ourselves, control our weight, and experience life to the fullest. It is very difficult to sustain the self-care behaviors that lead to weight loss and maintenance if we don’t feel like we deserve and/or value making regular time for our own self-care. (Self-care includes creating time to move our bodies as well as other nurturing activities like reading a great book while we relax on the couch.) Targeting improved self-care attitudes and behaviors among my clients is one of the essential steps to creating a solid foundation to support the weight loss and weight maintenance phases. It is also one of the unique and women-specific aspects of EssentialSteps and my smart approach to weight control.

Active Lifestyle: Smart weight loss starts with learning how to INTEGRATE physical activity into one’s life in ways that are pleasure-based and convenient. Not only is learning how to sustain a physically active life one of your essential steps to long-term weight loss and maintenance, you’ll immediately start to feel better from doing it. Research shows that exercise reduces depression/anxiety, elevates mood and energy level, and helps people sleep and think better, among MANY other things. Because being more physically active will also get you in better touch with your body, you should also see a reduction in emotional and stress-based eating - without even working on dietary changes. Learning how to develop an active lifestyle FIRST permits you to then take a more focused and sensible approach to making dietary changes that you can sustain over time; something that will help you achieve greater success in the phases that directly target weight loss and maintenance.

Rejects “quick fixes”: Smart weight loss is for women who have learned, often numerous times and from firsthand experience that “quick fixes” do not stick in the long-term. My clients value losing weight in a way that they can maintain over the long haul, instead of losing weight quickly and then gaining it back. They are ready to build a solid foundation and embrace an integrated approach to weight control, wellness, and health that they can sustain for a lifetime.

Tailored: Smart weight loss has to fit into your life. I tailor the program to meet each client’s unique needs. When clients work with me, they learn how to fit the essential, foundational behaviors to lose and maintain weight into their busy lives. Because I take an empowering and life-enhancing approach to changing one’s lifestyle, women rediscover a deep trust in themselves; they learn new relationship and communication strategies to achieve their weight goals, in addition to their greater wellness and health goals. In fact, my research strongly suggests women will be more likely to sustain their behavioral and lifestyle changes if they are pleasure-based and life-enhancing (instead of depleting).

Women who work with me learn their essential steps to losing weight and keeping it off.

Now that you have a better idea about the results you can expect by working with me and doing the EssentialSteps program, go to the Success Stories page to hear about how specific clients have benefited from working with me.