If you’ve spent any time searching for weight loss advice, you’ll have noticed that most of it boils down to the same thing: eat less, move more. Calories in, calories out. And on the surface, that makes sense. It’s simple, it’s logical, and it’s backed by basic physics.

The problem is, it doesn’t work. Not for most people. Not long-term. And not because people lack discipline or knowledge — but because it treats the human body like a calculator, when in reality it’s more like an ecosystem.

Holistic weight loss is the approach that recognises this. It’s the understanding that your weight isn’t just about what you eat and how much you exercise. It’s about your sleep, your stress, your hormones, your emotional patterns, your mindset, your relationships, your history, and yes — your sense of self. All of these things affect your body. All of them affect your weight. And any approach that ignores them is only ever going to give you a fraction of the picture.

Beyond calories in, calories out

Let me be clear: energy balance matters. If you consistently eat far more than your body uses, you’ll gain weight. That’s physiology. But the “calories in, calories out” model massively oversimplifies what’s actually a deeply complex process.

Your body isn’t a closed system. How it processes, stores, and uses energy depends on dozens of variables — your hormonal balance, your sleep quality, your stress levels, your gut health, your metabolic history (how many diets you’ve been on), your activity levels, your age, and your genetics. Two people can eat exactly the same food and move the same amount and have completely different outcomes.

I’ve worked with women who were eating 1,200 calories a day, exercising five times a week, and not losing weight. Not because they were secretly snacking — because their bodies had adapted to chronic restriction and were holding on to everything. Their metabolism had slowed, their cortisol was elevated from the stress of it all, and their hormones were all over the place.

The answer for those women wasn’t to eat even less. It was to eat more. To rest. To address their stress. To rebuild the foundations that years of dieting had eroded. That’s holistic weight loss in action — and it often looks completely counterintuitive.

The four pillars: nutrition, movement, mindset, lifestyle

When I work with someone on their health and body composition, I look at four interconnected areas. I think of them as pillars — not because they stand alone, but because they support each other. Weaken one, and the others start to buckle.

Nutrition

Not “dieting.” Nourishment. Understanding what your body actually needs — not what a magazine tells you to eat, but what fuels your body well. This means learning about your basal metabolic rate and total daily energy expenditure, understanding macronutrients, and building a way of eating that you can genuinely maintain. Not a 6-week plan. A way of life.

Holistic nutrition also means paying attention to how you eat, not just what. Are you eating mindfully or shovelling food in while scrolling your phone? Are you enjoying your meals or viewing them as fuel to be optimised? Your relationship with food matters just as much as the food itself.

Movement

Exercise is important — but not in the way most people think. You don’t need to punish yourself in the gym six days a week. You need to move your body regularly, in ways that build strength, support your metabolism, and make you feel good. Walking counts. Yoga counts. Dancing in your kitchen counts.

The key shift in holistic movement is this: you move because it makes you feel strong and alive — not as punishment for what you ate. That distinction changes everything. If you haven’t exercised in a while, I’ve written about how to begin gently.

Mindset

This is the one most programmes ignore entirely — and it’s arguably the most important. Your beliefs about yourself, your body, your worth, and your capabilities drive every choice you make. If you believe you’re someone who “always fails at diets,” you’ll unconsciously prove yourself right.

Holistic weight loss addresses the all-or-nothing thinking, the perfectionism, the self-sabotage, the inner critic that tells you you’re not good enough. It addresses emotional eating — not by adding more rules, but by understanding what’s driving it.

Lifestyle

Sleep. Stress. Recovery. Relationships. Joy. These aren’t optional extras — they’re fundamental to how your body functions. Chronic sleep deprivation raises your hunger hormones and lowers your willpower. Chronic stress floods your body with cortisol, which promotes fat storage and breaks down muscle. A life without rest, pleasure, or genuine connection is a life where your body stays in survival mode.

You cannot out-exercise a stressful life. You cannot out-diet chronic exhaustion. Addressing lifestyle factors isn’t “soft” — it’s essential.

Why your emotional state affects your weight

This is something the fitness industry rarely talks about, and it’s one of the things I feel most strongly about.

Your emotional state directly affects your physiology. When you’re anxious, your body produces cortisol. When you’re stressed, your digestion slows. When you’re grieving, exhausted, or overwhelmed, your body’s priorities shift towards survival — not towards burning fat.

And then there’s the behavioural side. How many times have you eaten not because you were hungry, but because you were bored, lonely, stressed, sad, or frustrated? Emotional eating isn’t a weakness. It’s a coping mechanism. And it won’t resolve by adding another rule about what you can and can’t eat. It resolves when you address what’s underneath.

I’ve seen women release weight they’d been carrying for years — not because they found the right diet, but because they finally addressed the emotional weight they’d been carrying alongside it. The grief. The resentment. The unprocessed stress. The body holds onto all of it.

Your body keeps the score. And sometimes the weight you’re carrying isn’t just physical.

Sleep, stress and cortisol

If I could only give one piece of advice to someone struggling with their weight, it might surprise you. It wouldn’t be about food or exercise. It would be this: sort out your sleep.

Sleep is when your body repairs, rebuilds, and regulates. During deep sleep, growth hormone is released (essential for muscle repair and fat metabolism), hunger hormones are recalibrated, and your brain processes the emotional load of the day. When you consistently get less than seven hours, or when your sleep quality is poor, all of these processes suffer.

Research shows that even a few nights of poor sleep increases ghrelin (the hunger hormone) and decreases leptin (the satiety hormone), making you hungrier and less satisfied by food. It also impairs insulin sensitivity, meaning your body handles glucose less effectively. And it elevates cortisol, which promotes fat storage — particularly around the abdomen.

Chronic stress has similar effects. When your body is constantly in “fight or flight” mode, it prioritises short-term survival over long-term health. Fat storage increases, muscle breakdown accelerates, digestion suffers, and your immune system is suppressed. You can eat perfectly and exercise religiously, and if your stress is unmanaged and your sleep is poor, your body will fight you every step of the way.

This is why boosting your metabolism isn’t just about exercise and nutrition. It’s about creating the conditions in which your body can actually function properly.

The role of community and support

One of the loneliest things about struggling with your weight is feeling like you’re the only one. Like everyone else has it figured out and you’re somehow defective. Social media makes this worse — curated bodies, perfect meals, effortless-looking transformations that make your own messy, imperfect journey feel inadequate.

But here’s the truth: almost everyone is struggling. They’re just not talking about it.

Holistic weight loss recognises that you don’t do this alone. Having support — whether that’s a coach, a group, a friend who understands, or a programme that meets you where you are — makes an enormous difference. Not because you need someone to tell you what to eat, but because transformation is hard, and having someone in your corner who believes in you when you’ve stopped believing in yourself can be the thing that changes everything.

In F.L.A.M.E, community is woven into the programme intentionally. Not as an add-on, but as a pillar. Because connection, belonging, and feeling seen are fundamental human needs — and they directly affect your wellbeing and your body.

What a holistic approach looks like day-to-day

I think people sometimes hear “holistic” and imagine something complicated, time-consuming, or woo-woo. It’s none of those things. In practice, a holistic approach to weight loss looks remarkably ordinary. It just looks different from dieting.

A typical day might look like this:

  • Waking up after 7-8 hours of sleep and having a breakfast that includes protein, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates
  • A 20-minute walk in the morning — not for calorie burning, but for your nervous system, your mood, and your connection to the outdoors
  • Eating meals that are satisfying, nourishing, and that you actually enjoy — without guilt, without counting, without restriction
  • Moving your body in the afternoon — maybe a strength session, maybe yoga, maybe a dance class. Something that builds you up rather than breaks you down
  • Taking 10 minutes in the evening for reflection — journalling, breathwork, or simply sitting quietly. Processing the day so it doesn’t accumulate in your body
  • Going to bed at a reasonable time. Prioritising rest over productivity

Notice what’s missing? There’s no food diary. No calorie count. No weigh-in. No punishment for yesterday’s choices. No anxiety about tomorrow’s.

There’s just a woman taking care of herself — consistently, gently, and in a way she can sustain for the rest of her life.

Is holistic weight loss right for you?

Holistic weight loss isn’t for everyone. If you want a quick fix, a 6-week transformation, or someone to hand you a meal plan and tell you exactly what to eat — this isn’t that. Those approaches exist, and they work in the short term. They just don’t last.

But if you’re tired of the diet cycle. If you’ve tried everything and nothing has stuck. If you suspect that the answer isn’t another set of rules but a fundamentally different way of relating to your body. If you’re ready to address the whole picture — the food, the movement, the sleep, the stress, the emotions, the mindset — then yes. This is for you.

You can read more about my philosophy in the 7 Pillars that underpin everything I do. And if you want to explore what holistic change could look like for you, F.L.A.M.E is the programme where all of this comes together.

Holistic weight loss isn’t about doing more. It’s about addressing everything that matters — not just the food on your plate.

Diets don’t work because they only address one piece of the puzzle. A holistic approach works because it addresses all of them. And it does so with compassion, patience, and respect for the fact that you are a whole person — not just a body to be shrunk.

You deserve better than another diet. You deserve an approach that sees all of you.