Celebrating Nearly Four Years of the Enlighten Me Program: Our Story and Why It Has Wrapped Up

The Enlighten Me program, including the Medical Weight Management Assessment, wrapped up on the 21st of August 2026. We let our Graduates, as we call the members who completed our program, know a month ahead, and they were handed over to their regular GP or a suitable colleague. Today's post is to share our story and to celebrate this chapter as it comes to a close.

The Enlighten Me program has been a big part of many, many people's lives since it launched in November 2022, ours included. It's taken a little time to find the right words for this post, but we're glad to finally share it. Our nutrition products are not going anywhere, and you'll find more on that below.

So let's walk through where Enlighten Me began, what it became, and why we made this decision. If you need the practical details, you'll find them at the end under What This Means For You.

Where It Started

The idea began in mid-2022, in the consulting room. Our founder, Dr Angela Kwong, was working as a full services GP in face-to-face practice, and she was well known in her community for women's health.

There were more and more patients coming to her for help to reach a healthier weight. And many of the women were telling her the same thing: that it had been much harder to return to a healthy weight after their pregnancy.

She also noticed that many of them were having their families later in life, and some had complications along the way, such as gestational diabetes or high blood pressure in pregnancy. That made her wonder about a connection. When one body is supporting two, the first signs of metabolic strain can appear early. Would those signs be linked to why weight has been harder to shift afterwards?

It sparked her interest in seeking further knowledge. She obtained SCOPE certification with the World Obesity Federation, becoming one of only 19 GPs in Australia certified at the time.

Why We Built It The Way We Did

Dr Angela grew up in the small country town of Inverell, and the pandemic had just established telehealth as a part of everyday care. It was a chance to look after people well beyond her local area, including those from rural and remote communities, something she had always wanted to do.

But she wanted to do it differently. Many telehealth services were focused on speed of access to treatment, prescriptions and referrals. For Enlighten Me, it was always about the quality of the assessment and the amount of support and education a person received.

Every person deserved to understand what was driving their weight, and what had brought them to ask for help. Nobody needed to feel they had a lifelong commitment to medication unless they wanted or needed one. And when there were addressable factors, such as protein intake, emotional eating, thyroid disease or insulin resistance emerging in perimenopause, the goal was always to work through them together and give people the knowledge and skills to manage them.

What Enlighten Me Became

Enlighten Me grew faster than we had expected.

Over time, one GP grew into a multidisciplinary team. We had GPs with a special interest in weight management, a dietitian, a nutritionist, an exercise physiologist who ran weekly online exercise classes, and a wonderful support team. We built the Enlighten Me Content Hub, so that Graduates could continue learning between their appointments.

The program ran for 20 weeks, with many Graduates returning for subsequent rounds. Some stayed with us for maintenance care, returning when they needed to review their metabolic health.

And we always called them Graduates, never patients. They weren't sick people. They were people who had completed an education program and gained the knowledge and skills to care for themselves.

We were honoured to be recognised along the way:

• In 2024, Dr Angela was named Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year in the Women's Agenda Leadership Awards. The judges recognised the clear business model and innovative approach behind Enlighten Me, and its potential to make a meaningful impact.
• In 2025, Enlighten Me received the Outstanding Patient Education Award at the Patients Australia Gala, also listed in the Patients Australia media release.
• In 2026, Dr Angela received the General Practice Education Impact Award from General Practice Clinical Sessions for her podcast episode on side effects and nutritional changes during GLP-1 therapy, which had more than 7,000 downloads in its first month.
• Also in 2026, she was named Outstanding General Practitioner at the Patients' Choice Awards, a category voted on by patients in the first round, then judged by colleagues and industry.

Dr Angela’s acceptance speech, on why weight management care needs every profession working together.

Adapting To Support Our Colleagues

In January 2026, we started offering more flexible care. Colleagues and community members kept asking for a way to see a GP with a special interest in weight management for a single appointment, or a second opinion, without moving their care away from their regular GP. So we created the Medical Weight Management Assessment for exactly that.

At the same time, Enlighten Me was growing in other directions. There were more requests for partnerships. Our product range was expanding with the Enlighten Me Protein Ball and our ‘mini’s’ (single serve sachets). And Dr Angela's teaching at webinars, conferences, podcasts and public events was increasing.

Dr. Angela Kwong speaks on the Women’s Agenda GLP-1 panel alongside Dr. Yemi Penn and Angela Priestley. Photography by Katherine Griffiths.

Dr. Angela Kwong presenting on ‘Weight Management in the Perimenopausal / Menopausal Woman’ at the Women’s Health Essentials in Primary Care Conference. Photography by Celeste Riane.

Dr. Angela Kwong interviewed by Journalist Georgie Tunny on the Fernwood Unfiltered Podcast on the topic, ‘The Truth About GLP-1s’.

Choosing Our Focus

As a team, we reached a point where we had to be honest with ourselves. We could continue to grow and treat as many patients as we possibly could, or we could choose one focus.

We chose focus.

Staying boutique has always been our intention, even when there was demand for us to grow and scale. Rather than treating as many patients ourselves, we decided to put our energy into education and advocacy, so that more people can access a multidisciplinary approach to weight management with their own treating teams, in their own communities.

We know this was disappointing for many of our Graduates, and we completely understand why.

How We Looked After Our Graduates

Every Graduate's regular GP received a written handover, with the option to contact us by phone for a case conference at any time. Graduates were referred back to their regular GP, or to a colleague in the weight management space, in their local area or online.

Our GPs, dietitian and exercise physiologist had always been working with us alongside their main roles, and have now returned to their usual practices. We're so grateful to every one of them.

Where We Are Now

We're a smaller team with a clear focus on education, advocacy and nutrition.

Dr Angela continues to practise as a face-to-face GP and as the RACGP NSW State Lead for the Specific Interests Group in Obesity Management, and she uses her knowledge from Enlighten Me for education, advocacy and nutrition. She also shares what she learnt from running a boutique multidisciplinary program with clinicians and founders through advisory work.

Our nutrition products are staying, and they're a big part of what comes next. Looking after people through medically supervised weight management taught us something. So much of the conversation is about 'loss', and nourishment can get lost along the way. That's what drives our interest in creating high quality, doctor designed products for the future. Product design is something Dr Angela is genuinely passionate about, and she continues to lead our formulation and design. We want every product to be easy to use in real life, so we put as much care into education as we do into the products themselves: how to use them, how they can support everyday nutrition and protein intake, and how to adapt them to your own routine, whether that's a shake on a busy morning, a protein ball in the car or a recipe from the blog. There is plenty in our pipeline, and we can't wait to share it. You can find everything in our online shop.