Gila didn't start in a boardroom. It started at a kitchen table, watching someone we love struggle — and realizing the tools that existed were watching too.
Sezen's partner has lived with obesity for most of his life. Through years of cycles — losing weight, regaining it, trying again — food became tangled with comfort, identity, and coping. Every approach worked for a while. None of them lasted.
When he discovered GLP-1 medication, something shifted. For the first time, the constant noise around food began to quiet. The medication did what it promised. But what came next was unexpected — a different kind of struggle.
Social media was flooded with contradicting advice. Influencers sold quick transformations. Forums were split between miracle stories and fear. There was no clear guidance on what to expect at month three, month six, or beyond. No one talked about the doubt that creeps in when progress slows, or the identity confusion that comes with changing your relationship with food after decades.
As an ICF-certified coach, Sezen had spent years helping people build lasting behavioral change. She knew what sustainable transformation required — identity shifts, habit architecture, emotional resilience. She also knew what it looked like when those elements were missing.
Walking alongside her partner's GLP-1 journey, she saw the gap firsthand. There was clinical guidance for dosing. There were trackers for weight and meals. But there was nothing for the moments between — the creeping doubt at month four, the silence when the scale stalls, the noise from every direction telling you what to do while no one asks how you're actually feeling.
Trackers recorded the data. No one addressed the person behind it.
Today, Sezen's partner has reached a sustainable weight — not through willpower or a quick fix, but through habits, identity work, and a support system that understood the full picture. The lasting insight wasn't medical. It was behavioral. Long-term persistence isn't driven by data alone. It's driven by identity, belonging, and feeling understood.
Most people who start a GLP-1 don't yet reach a place where it sustains itself — by the two-year mark, only about one in seven is still on the medication. Side effects begin the attrition, but close behind: lack of support, motivation no tool was built to sustain, and no framework for who you're becoming. Gila was built to close that gap — not as a tracker, but as a persistence companion grounded in behavioral science and shaped by the lived reality of a GLP-1 household.
Gila brings four evidence-based disciplines together into a single daily companion:
Reframe thought patterns around food, body image, and identity — not just log them. Gila helps you recognize and reshape the mental patterns that drive behavior.
The language you use about yourself shapes the identity you build. Gila's Identity Architect uses NLP principles to help you become someone new, not just someone lighter.
Habits engineered for the real life of someone on GLP-1 medication. The Habit Playground builds routines that persist through side effects, plateaus, and life.
Understand your medication's presence in your body — not just your dosing schedule. Gila models serum exposure, therapeutic buildup, and side-effect timing so you know what to expect.
Co-founder · Professor of General Surgery
Prof. Dr. Varlık Erol has practiced general surgery since 2004, completing his specialization at İnönü and Ege Universities, and has held the title of professor since 2017. His clinical focus is obesity and metabolic surgery — sleeve gastrectomy, gastric bypass, and gastric balloon — and he currently practices at Medicana International İzmir. He co-founded Gila together with Sezen Soykut.
varlikerol.com
Co-founder · ICF ACC-Certified Coach
Sezen Soykut is an ICF ACC-certified coach, trained at Erickson International, whose coaching practice — Bugündeki Sen, based in Barcelona — centers on identity-focused change. The GLP-1 journey that shaped Gila is the one told above: her own family's. She leads Gila as co-founder and editor-in-chief.
bugundekisen.com
Host, Gila Podcast
Behavioral narrator. Covers habits, identity, and community.
Host, Gila Podcast
Research co-host. Translates GLP-1 studies, drug news, and pilot data.
Ada Serra and Matt Cole are brand hosts of the Gila podcast. Their portraits are illustrative AI-generated images.
Articles are edited by Sezen Soykut (ICF ACC), editor-in-chief.
"If you're on this journey — you're not doing it alone anymore."