Lena Osei has been through four programmes before this one. She can recite the pattern: intense start, visible early result, quiet collapse around month five.
The other half of the programme was a twenty-minute call every two weeks with the same practitioner. Not a different person each time reading notes. The same person, who remembered.
The fix, when it came, was unglamorous. One dose moved. One meal moved earlier. That was most of it, and it had been available the whole time.
Most programmes are built for the first month, because that’s when people are enthusiastic. We build for the fifth.
Illustrative composite
The review in the spring moved contact from fortnightly to monthly — the first time in three years that the frequency of appointments had gone down rather than up.
She is eleven months in — past month five, for the first time.
