Hi, I'm Amanda.

My struggles with my weight started when I was twelve. Both of my parents have type 2 diabetes, and I was borderline prediabetic myself.

Long before any GLP-1 medication, I was trying to control the size of my body, and I developed bulimia doing it. The food noise was there the whole time, and it was debilitating. It was not hunger, and it was not a lack of willpower. It was a constant negotiation about food that I could not turn off, and trying harder never made it any quieter.

I came to all of this as a patient. I started a GLP-1 medication in October 2024 with almost no guidance, and I figured most of it out on my own.

The medication itself was life changing. The food noise that had been running since I was twelve finally quieted, and I got to think about something else for the first time in a very long while.

Everything around the medication was harder. I was terrified of the first shot. I was trying to work out how to dose myself, and the idea of putting a needle in my own arm frightened me. It felt like I was doing something I was not supposed to be doing, so I hid it from my family.

Nobody prepared me for what came after that either. My hair fell out. The constipation was awful. I did not know which parts were normal, which parts I should have been worried about, what might help, or what I was supposed to ask my doctor.

There are people going through that same stretch every single day, on their own, the way I did. That is why I became a health coach, and why I took it two steps further with advanced training in anti-obesity medications and a specialization in weight management. I wanted to be able to say, with something behind it, that obesity is a disease and that it is not your fault.

I have a lifetime of experience with weight stigma, and I decided to put it to use. What I am building is a compassionate care model for GLP-1 patients specifically, because it is what I needed and could not find. I am an ACE-certified health coach based in Marion, Iowa, and I am still a patient myself.

What I built, and why

When I first learned about GLP-1 medications, people were frightened of losing affordable access and worn down from fighting their insurance for coverage. Access could disappear because a medication got too expensive, a policy changed, or a pharmacy could not fill the prescription. The stigma around all of it was rampant.

I founded the GLP-1 Collective, a nonprofit, to provide support and education. I started the GLP-1 Studio Podcast to push back on the stigma and to put real patient stories and resources in front of the public.

I created a petition calling for affordable access to GLP-1 medications and gathered more than 27,000 signatures. I took it to the FDA and to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, because the patent office has far more power over what patients pay than most people would think.

Since then I have gone where these decisions get discussed. I attended ObesityWeek, run by The Obesity Society, and Your Weight Matters, run by the Obesity Action Coalition, and I joined the OAC advocacy group.

I built free resources for the questions patients kept asking me, and I co-founded a community with Kim Carlos so people would have the kind of support every patient should have had from the beginning. My group coaching happens there now.

I created the STRONG Framework for Self-Advocacy because so many of us only realize we want to advocate for ourselves after we learn that obesity is a disease and that it is not our fault. After a lifetime of making yourself small, standing up for yourself is not simple. The framework is there to help you do it for yourself and for the rest of us.

What I bring to coaching

I bring formal training and my own experience as a patient, along with respect for what I do not know. I have not lived your exact experience, and I will not pretend that I have. When someone tells me the food noise is the hardest part of this, or that their relationship with food got complicated a long time ago, I am not hearing it for the first time.

I want to understand what you need and help you hear your own thinking more clearly. I will offer information when it is useful. You remain in charge of every decision.

Two important boundaries

First: I am not a doctor. Coaching is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. I won't tell you what dose to take, when to titrate, or which medication is right for you. Those are conversations for your prescriber. What I can do is help you walk into those conversations clearer about what you actually want.

Second: GLP1Coach and the GLP-1 Collective nonprofit are separate entities. The nonprofit work I do is volunteer. The coaching work I do here is professional, paid, and operated by my LLC. The two don't share funds. I mention this whenever both come up, because I think the distinction matters.