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Weight Management
Your body is more than a number on the scale. Weight is influenced by many factors including hormones, metabolism, sleep, stress, thyroid function, muscle mass, and life stage, not just willpower. Our goal is to understand what's happening in your body and create a personalized, sustainable plan that helps you feel stronger, healthier, and more energized.
Feeling like you're doing everything right but not seeing results?
Weight is one of the most physiologically regulated things about you. If you've been eating well, staying active, and still feel like your body isn't responding the way you'd expect, you're not alone. Hormones play a major role in appetite, metabolism, energy use, and where your body stores fat. Changes related to stress, insulin resistance, thyroid function, perimenopause, or menopause can all make weight changes feel frustrating, even when your habits haven't changed.
Many people have also spent years cycling through restrictive diets, which can make it harder to build muscle, support metabolism, and maintain long-term results. Instead of focusing on another diet, we focus on understanding why your body is responding the way it is and building habits that support your health for the long term.
You may benefit from an assessment if you experience:
- Have noticed weight changes without a clear reason
- Feel like your body isn't responding despite healthy habits
- Carry more weight around your midsection than you used to
- Have a history of dieting or weight cycling
- Experience frequent cravings or feel hungry all the time
- Struggle with low energy that makes movement feel difficult
- Have noticed changes alongside perimenopause or menopause
- Wonder if hormones or another underlying health issue could be contributing
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Not just calories
What causes stubborn weight?
Insulin Resistance
Elevated insulin promotes fat storage and hunger while making stored fat harder to access. It's among the most common findings in stalled weight loss, and it's testable.
Thyroid Function
Thyroid hormones set your metabolic rate. Even mild hypothyroidism slows energy expenditure and adds fluid retention, and it's frequently undiagnosed in women.
Cortisol and Sleep Debt
Chronic stress and short sleep shift hormones toward hunger, cravings and abdominal fat storage. Two weeks of poor sleep can measurably change appetite hormones.
Muscle Loss
Muscle is your largest calorie consumer. Dieting history and midlife both erode it, quietly lowering the budget your body burns each day. Rebuilding it is often the missing intervention.
Hormonal Stage
Perimenopause redistributes fat toward the midsection and reduces insulin sensitivity. The approach that works at this stage differs from what worked before, which no one tends to mention.
What lab testing helps with weight loss resistance?
We look for the physiology behind the pattern. Testing could include: a complete thyroid panel, fasting insulin and glucose, HbA1c, and where relevant iron, cortisol patterns and reproductive hormones. Alongside labs, we review your diet history honestly, including the restriction that may have shaped your metabolism, plus sleep, stress, medications and movement.
The outcome is a specific answer to why this has been hard, which changes everything downstream.
How is weight management approached?
Treatment follows the findings. Commonly that means eating more protein and often more food overall, structured for steady blood sugar; strength-focused movement to rebuild metabolic muscle; treating thyroid or insulin findings directly; and repairing sleep and stress physiology. Where weight loss medications (GLP1’s like Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy) are part of your care, we support the nutrition and muscle preservation that make it succeed long term.
Progress is tracked in labs, strength, energy and measurements, not just a scale, because feeling your best is the truer goal.
How Somewhere Health helps
Care starts with the bigger picture rather than a single test. If you've already been diagnosed, we build on what you know. If you suspect something deeper but have never had a full workup, we can order the testing that gets you clear answers.
Your first visit is 75 minutes with a licensed naturopathic doctor who has reviewed your full intake. Together you'll create a plan that may include nutrition and lifestyle changes, targeted supplementation, and functional testing where appropriate. Bloodwork happens at any LifeLabs or Dynacare, and specialty panels like the DUTCH test ship to your door.
Appointments are completely virtual, so you can access care from anywhere in Ontario, and visits are covered by most extended health benefits plans.
Our Approach
- Nutrition and dietary guidance
- Lifestyle recommendations
- Stress and sleep support
- Targeted supplementation
- Functional or laboratory testing when appropriate
- Ongoing monitoring and treatment adjustments
- Collaborative care with your broader healthcare team when needed
How it Works
Dr. Courtney Ranieri is a licensed naturopathic doctor with Therapeutic Prescribing authorization, in practice since 2018. She holds a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine from the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and an Honours BSc from Western University, and her clinical focus is women's health: hormones, fertility, digestion, pelvic floor and metabolic care. She sees patients across Ontario virtually.
