Project Weight Loss

Send us Fan Mail When you feel lost in grief, fear, or chaos, sometimes the only thing to do is act.  But not just any action.  This week I share a walk by the bay and one simple question to guide us through the season ahead: What would love do? With a little help from the research on behavioral activation, positive emotions, and values-based living, plus a few lighthearted Halloween-through-Chris...

Send us Fan Mail Gas is up. Groceries are up. And if your stomach does a little flip every time you open your banking app, friend, this one's for you. Last time we talked about money, we talked about the two levers. This week I'm going to what happens inside us when money gets tight… and, believe it or not, what happens when we suddenly get more of it. I'm also sharing what the rese...

Send us Fan Mail Did you know the saying is actually "you've got another think coming," not "another thing"? I didn't either, until I heard one of my Maesters, Ryan Holiday, explain it, and it blew my mind. It really just means think again, and this week I'm talking off the cuff about why that little phrase points right back to what we talk about here all the tim...

Send us Fan Mail This week I'm going waaay back, 2,400 years to ancient Athens, to hang out with one of the fathers of Western philosophy and, in my book, the original life coach: Socrates. I share a quick bio of this fascinating Maester, from his days walking barefoot on ice as a soldier to calling himself a "midwife of ideas." Then we dig into his idea of a healthy soul. My hope i...

Send us Fan Mail Hi my dears! This week I'm diving into one of my favorite topics: how to strive to have a great and long life. These are the amazing folks in their 80s and beyond whose memory is as sharp as someone 20 or 30 years younger. I share what researchers at Northwestern University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and beyond have discovered about how super agers keep their brains you...

Send us Fan Mail Ever notice the people who make you feel closest to you aren't necessarily the ones who agree with everything you say — they're the ones who actually hear you?  This week I'm talking about what it really means to feel heard instead of just agreed with, why a little friction in a relationship isn't something to avoid, and how the "do to me, I do to you&quot...

Send us Fan Mail Hey friends, welcome! What if the weight we're really carrying isn't on our bodies at all? I walk through five things I've watched show up again and again in every real transformation I've witnessed — in my own life, with my coaching clients, and on the teams, I led over 31 years in public service — honesty, acceptance, commitment, humility, and love. And how e...

Send us Fan Mail This week I want to talk about something I've been sitting with: eyes on your plate, eyes on your lane.  I was actually writing these notes when I found out Dolly Parton had passed away, and it sent me into a whole reflection on boundaries — how easy it is to want to fix people, to give unsolicited advice about their food, their choices, their life, even when we mean well.  I...

Send us Fan Mail Project Weight Loss, LLC  ·  @fina.projectweightloss  ·  projectweightloss.org   Ever finish dinner, close the kitchen, and somehow still end up back at the fridge an hour later?  In this episode, we get honest about night eating — starting with a surprisingly personal family story about where this habit actually began, before digging into five gentle, research-backed strategies (...

Send us Fan Mail I've stood in front of a thousand people on a livestream and thought, what were you thinking, Fi? Sit yourself down. If you've ever felt that same drop in your stomach — before a flight, a hard conversation, a moment in the spotlight — you know exactly the feeling I mean. Your brain convinces you the worst is about to happen, and no amount of logic seems to shut it up. ...

Send us Fan Mail The One Virtue That Makes All the Others Work Did you catch The Odyssey in theaters? I went with my daughter and my honey a couple weeks ago, and Christopher Nolan's version got me thinking about one scene in particular — Odysseus, tied to the mast of his own ship, choosing to hear the Sirens' song without letting it destroy him. That single choice is one of the oldest s...

Send us Fan Mail There's one small habit — noticed decades ago by researchers watching married couples through a one-way mirror — that predicts, with startling accuracy, whether a relationship lasts or falls apart. It's not about how often you fight.  It's not about compatibility. It's about a handful of tiny, easy-to-miss moments every single day — and whether you show up for...

Send us Fan Mail She hiked over a thousand miles alone with a backpack too heavy for her body, no real experience, and a grief she didn't know what else to do with — and somehow, that walk became one of the most honest books ever written about coming back to yourself. This week I'm talking about Maester Cheryl Strayed: author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things, the voice behind the anonym...

Send us Fan Mail This week I'm breaking format for a special Maester Athletes episode, built around this year's World Cup 2026 of soccer.  I tell the story behind the photo that went viral right before the match — Lionel Messi bathing a baby at a charity event almost two decades ago, a baby who grew up to be Lamine Yamal, the very player who faced him on the pitch. I dig into why I never...

Send us Fan Mail This week, with the World Cup finals in full swing and my last team, France, still standing, I'm taking my podcast audience on a trip through 101 "so to speak" places I've loved and a few I'm still chasing — from watching monarch butterflies blanket the forests of Michoacán by the millions, to the light-and-shadow "descending serpent" that slides...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I am offering something that has genuinely changed the way I think about my body — the circadian rhythm.  I share what this 24-hour internal clock actually is, why researchers say it runs everything from your metabolism and hormones to your sleep and immunity, and how understanding it gave me a whole new perspective on the ongoing conversation around meal timing a...

Send us Fan Mail What if the fun you're chasing is actually working against you? This week I'm digging into why some fun fades the second it's over, while other fun sticks with you for years — and it comes down to a couple of things researchers can actually explain. I'm also giving you my go-to system, VERITAS, for building fun into your life on purpose — even when things are h...

Send us Fan Mail We've all used the phrase "real people" — meaning the regular folks, the everyday ones, as opposed to the famous, the wealthy, the powerful. But what if that whole distinction is a lie? This week, I'm pulling apart the binary between "ordinary" and "extraordinary" — sharing a story from my own childhood, a lesson from my years writing public...

Send us Fan Mail The Quiet Power of Legumes. What if the secret to a longer, healthier life isn’t trendy, expensive, or Instagram-worthy — it’s sitting in a can in your pantry right now? Today, I break down why legumes show up again and again in the diets of the world’s longest-living people, and how to add them to your plate without overhauling your life. Calls to Action •       Rate and subscrib...

Send us Fan Mail The Capacity to Have and Live “Whole” - Contentment What if the word you’ve been underestimating your whole life is the very key to what you’ve been reaching for?  In this episode, we explore contentment — not as a lesser version of happiness, but as the deep, stabilizing foundation from which real growth, goals, and real quality of life are built. We’ll walk through the “Goal San...

Send us Fan Mail I have been in your shoes — starting strong, riding the wave of motivation, and then one day, without warning, just... stopping. In this episode, I dig into why that happens, and I promise you, it is not a willpower problem. It is an experience problem — and once you understand the difference, everything changes. I am sharing research-backed strategies that are so simple, so doabl...

Send us Fan Mail Have you been "about to start exercising" for longer than you'd like to admit? You're not lazy — you're human. And that's exactly the problem this episode solves. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we're ditching the motivation myth and replacing it with something that actually works: a simple, research-backed system that takes the decision-makin...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I'm sitting with something that has weighed on so many of us for far too long — the relentless mental noise around food, what I call food chatter, and what it actually takes to quiet it for good. I'm not talking about another meal plan or a new set of rules. I'm talking about what is happening in your brain when the spiral starts, and the two scienc...

Send us Fan Mail What if everything you thought you knew about breaking a bad habit was wrong? In this episode of Project Weight Loss, we sit down — well, metaphorically — with one of the most brilliant scientific minds in the field of habit change and mindfulness: Dr. Judson Brewer, affectionately known as Dr. Jud. With over 20 years of NIH-funded research, a TED Talk viewed millions of times, an...

Send us Fan Mail   Curiosity, Habit Loops & the Hidden Treasure of Your Local Library What if the reason you can't stop eating had nothing to do with willpower — and everything to do with your brain running on autopilot? This week I'm exploring just that – the autopilot trap.   We are exploring behavior change research AND in the fabric of our communities: curiosity.   If you work in...