Author Petties releases app for free weight assessment
The digital tool is available to the public and complements her 2021 memoir on food addiction.
By Nia Foster ·
Michelle Petties has launched a new digital application that offers a free assessment to users.
The tool is available for download and is designed to help individuals explore the emotional, mental, and spiritual factors that influence their daily habits. This release coincides with the fifth anniversary of Petties' 2021 memoir, “Leaving Large: The Stories of a Food Addict.”
Petties, a TEDx speaker and food story coach, gained and lost more than 700 pounds over four decades. She describes this period as a cycle of losing weight, regaining it, and searching for a permanent solution. Her new app is built on the premise that changing behavior requires an examination of the underlying beliefs and stories that drive that behavior.
The author distinguishes between wellness and wholeness in her new platform. She defines wellness as the practice of eating well, exercising, sleeping, and managing stress. Wholeness, in her view, involves a deeper look at unresolved experiences and the beliefs a person has accepted as truth. The app invites users to notice parts of their lives that may need attention beyond the physical.
Petties notes that weight loss options have expanded in recent years, including GLP-1 medications. She states that these medications can be valuable tools for treating obesity. However, she argues that medication may quiet appetite without rewriting the story behind it. She emphasizes that losing physical weight and releasing emotional, mental, and spiritual weight are not always the same process.
The Wellness to Wholeness app provides a starting point for this exploration. It is not a diet, a prescription, or a list of mistakes. Petties says the assessment is an invitation to become curious about one's own story. She notes that a person cannot examine a belief they do not know they have or change a story they do not recognize as a story.
Petties presented her work at the 2026 Obesity Action Coalition Conference in Orlando, Florida. She joined colleagues there to discuss her findings. The app is available at wholeness-snapshot.vibepreview.app, where users can take the assessment. The tool is free and open to the public.
