Coaching for life after bariatric surgery and GLP-1 weight loss.
Losing the Weight Was Step One. Living Well After It Is the Work.
If you are a bariatric patient or you are on your GLP-1 journey, you may be wondering: • What will happen after I lose the weight? • How will I keep it off long term? • How do I make sure I never go back to the weight I was? As a bariatric specialist with both lived experience and doctoral research in long-term success, Marina James knows what long-term success really requires. There is a way and you don’t have to figure it out alone. Long-term success is not only about knowing what to do. It is having the tools to keep doing it, even when life gets in the way. Bariatric Success was created so you don’t have to spend years figuring this out on your own. This way you can focus on creating and enjoying a life that may be bigger, richer, and more fulfilling than you can even imagine right now.
What the Program Does
For people after bariatric surgery, people preparing for it, and people using GLP-1 medications. Not another lecture about protein, water, and willpower: the behavioral and psychological side of making it last.
Private 1:1 Work With Marina
Your work with Marina begins with understanding you: what brought you here, where you want to go, and what needs to happen in between.
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Group + Community
Be part of a community of people who understand the bariatric and GLP-1 journey and are working toward long-term success alongside you.
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Lessons + Practical Strategies
Understand yourself more deeply and learn practical ways to navigate the situations that can challenge your long-term success.
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Support Between Sessions
Your challenges do not wait for your next session. Voice and text access to Marina gives you support while real life is happening and the situation is still in front of you.
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Time to Build Lasting Success
Lasting change takes time to practice, experience, adjust, and make your own. Your program gives you the time and support to apply what you are learning as real life unfolds.
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From Support to Independence
The goal of Bariatric Success is for everything you learn and practice to become yours. As you grow more confident in your ability to navigate life, the support shifts with you toward greater independence.
Learn moreWhat Bariatric Success Can Do for You
Bariatric Success helps you go beyond losing the weight and learn how to build a life where you can maintain your success long term.
Whether you are preparing for bariatric surgery, already years post-op, or on your GLP-1 journey, the program helps you understand what gets in your way, change the patterns that keep pulling you back, and learn how to adapt when real life does not go according to plan.
Because knowing what to do is only the beginning. The goal is to know how to keep succeeding when life changes.
See What You May Not Be Seeing Yet
Uncover the patterns, experiences, and beliefs that may be influencing your relationship with food, your body, and your weight.
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Be Surrounded by People Who Get It
Connect with people who understand this journey and can share experiences, perspectives, and solutions you may not have discovered on your own. And you never know, someone you meet here may become a friend who stays with you long after the program ends.
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Understand Why You Do What You Do
Recognize the patterns, emotions, experiences, and situations behind your behavior, and learn practical ways to respond differently.
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Get Support When You Actually Need It
When something comes up in real life, you can reach out, work through it while it is happening, and learn from the experience.
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Lasting Change Requires Time
Behaviors learned over years cannot be changed overnight. You need time to practice, discover what works for you, make adjustments, and experience it in real life until what you know becomes something you can actually live.
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Make Your Success Truly Yours
Build the confidence, skills, and self-trust to navigate life independently, so your success belongs to you long after the program ends.
Learn more →You May Be Wondering If You’re in the Right Place
If you have been asking yourself any of these questions, Bariatric Success was created for you.
- What do I do if I start regaining the weight?
- Why are some of my old eating habits starting to creep back in?
- What do I do when stress makes me want to eat the way I used to?
- How do I enjoy eating again without worrying that I’m slipping back into old habits?
- How do I make this work when life gets busy, stressful, or completely unpredictable?
- Why do I still want to eat even when I know I’m physically full?
You have already traveled a long road and worked hard to get where you are. But losing the weight is not the end of the story. If you want to get the most out of your surgery and no longer be afraid of regain, the right support can help you build what you need for long-term success.
The Bariatric Success Framework
Transformational journey to lifelong success after bariatric surgery: mind, body, and soul. These eight steps help you build on where you are today, develop the skills to navigate what comes next, and discover what more is possible for your life.
Understand the Origin
Explore your past, your relationship with food, body, and emotions.
“Where did your story begin, and how has it shaped you?”
Define the Destination
Get clear on who you want to become and the life you are creating.
“Who are you becoming, and what does success look like for you?”
Build Skills & Tools
Develop the practical skills and tools you need for lifelong success.
“What skills and tools empower you to thrive every day?”
Learn Adaptation
Life will change. Learn to adapt so you can live your life to the fullest in every area, while still maintaining a healthy weight.
“How will you navigate changes and continue growing?”
Mind-Body Connection
Learn how to understand and listen to what your body needs, so you can make choices that support your well-being.
“What is your body telling you, and how will you respond?”
Integrate It Into Real Life
Bring what you are learning into your everyday life, so your choices and skills can work through routines, relationships, celebrations, stress, travel, and change.
“How will you make long-term success work in the life you actually live?”
Build Self-Trust & Independence
Build confidence in your ability to make decisions, recognize what you need, and adjust when life changes, so you can increasingly rely on yourself.
“What does trusting yourself look like in everyday life?”
Live the Life You Are Creating
Bring everything you have learned together and move forward with greater confidence, freedom, and possibility while maintaining a healthy weight.
“What becomes possible when your weight no longer determines how much of your life you get to live?”
You Do Not Have to Do This Alone
You’ll have support throughout the program, with people who understand this experience and a community where you can learn, connect, and grow together.
Private 1:1 Support
Work privately with Marina by Zoom, focused on you, your life, and what you need. Support is more hands-on at the beginning and gradually shifts as you build greater confidence and independence.
Community & Group Support
Be part of a Bariatric Success community with people who understand this experience, where you can share, learn from one another, and grow together.
Direct Voice & Text Access
Between sessions, you’ll have direct voice and text access to Marina, so you can reach out when real life happens and get support while you’re in it.
About Marina
Bariatric Success Specialist · Board-Certified Bariatric Counselor · Doctoral Researcher
After vertical sleeve gastrectomy in 2015, Marina James went from 289 pounds to 146 pounds in one year.
“I lost half of me. But that is where I started to find myself.”
What followed became much more than a weight-loss journey. Marina went on to build a career in psychology and behavioral health, become a Board-Certified Bariatric Counselor, and make long-term bariatric success the focus of her doctoral research.
Today, she brings together lived experience, professional expertise, and research through Bariatric Success, with a bigger purpose in mind: helping people make weight loss part of a larger life, rather than making weight loss the rest of their life.
Professional Credentials
Board-Certified Bariatric Counselor (BCBC) — American Association of Bariatric Counselors
Academic Committee — American Association of Bariatric Counselors
Doctoral Research in Long-Term Bariatric Success — Grand Canyon University
Master of Science in Psychology — Capella University
Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology — Regent University
What Bariatric Success Means
Making your success part of how you live
Bariatric success is much bigger than reaching a number on the scale. It means learning how to use surgery or weight-loss medication as a tool while building the skills, habits, and confidence to maintain your success as life changes. Over time, what once required constant effort can become part of how you live.
Self-Awareness
Understand your patterns, what drives your eating, what tends to pull you off track, and what you can do differently.
Self-Regulation
Build practical skills for the moments that challenge you: hunger, stress, difficult days, plateaus, and unexpected changes, without letting one moment derail your progress.
Motivation
Build motivation that comes from more than watching the number on the scale go down, so you can keep moving forward even when the scale is no longer rewarding you every week.
Responding to Real Life
Learn how to respond when life changes or challenges arise, so a difficult day or week becomes something you navigate, not something that ends your progress.
Success is not simply losing the weight. It is learning how to live successfully after losing it.
I believe bariatric surgery should give you more than a smaller body. It should give you the opportunity to live a bigger life. That is why I have dedicated my work to understanding what makes long-term success possible and helping people build it. My goal is not for you to spend the rest of your life managing your weight. It is for you to have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to maintain it without being afraid of regain, so your weight can stop being the center of your life and you can get on with living it.
Let's Talk
Tell me a little about where you are in your bariatric or GLP-1 weight-loss medication journey and what you are dealing with. It starts with a free 20-minute consultation. We’ll see whether Bariatric Success is the right support for you.
LOCATION
Online, by Zoom
Send a Note
Contact me to discuss how I can support you.
Free Resources
There are three free ways to join the Bariatric Success community, learn from Marina, and get to know how she works.
Bariatric Success Insider
Get bariatric and GLP-1 education, insights from Marina’s research, practical resources, upcoming events, and Bariatric Success updates delivered to your inbox.
Bariatric Success Squad
Join a free community where you can connect with others on the bariatric and GLP-1 journey, ask questions, share experiences, and get support as you build long-term success.
Bariatric Success Live Q&A
Join Marina live every Saturday at 12:00 PM Eastern to ask your questions about bariatric and GLP-1 success, weight maintenance, regain, behavior change, and whatever you are navigating in your journey.