Ritva Mettänen, MD, is an obesity medicine doctor, educator, and the founder of Obesity Coaching Academy.

What sets her apart is the dual perspective: a decade of clinical experience as a physician focusing on obesity care and disease prevention, and also 34 years of lived experience with obesity and overweight. That combination gives her an unusually accurate understanding of the biology, psychology, and lived reality behind weight loss and transformation.

Her work is grounded in the understanding of a person as a whole – their body, mind, and emotions working inseparably together. True transformation requires understanding the resistance, the hope, the patterns, and the turning points — and knowing how to meet each one.

That understanding has shaped everything about how she works. Her patients stay. They follow through. They come back. Over more than five years of clinical practice, her adherence rate has been consistently close to 100% — at a time when research shows most patients discontinue obesity treatment within the first two years.

That difference is not accidental. It is the result of knowing how to truly meet a client where they are. Her depth of knowledge is exceptional, and every new insight and research finding fuels her work even further.

Ritva is known for her rare ability to translate complex clinical science into language that is immediately usable — without oversimplifying the truth. When she teaches, people don't just leave inspired. They leave with a completely updated understanding of obesity and the practical tools to act on it.

Her teaching is science-led and clinically grounded, but never detached from the real-life journey. She holds the complexity of obesity, hormonal health, and metabolic health with precision while still honoring each person’s lived experience and unique path in weight management.

She founded Obesity Coaching Academy because she saw that what was working in her practice could work at scale — not only in obesity care but in preventive healthcare — if the right professionals were trained to deliver it. OCS is the standard that turns fitness into preventive healthcare — her answer to the competence gap she has watched the fitness industry struggle with for years.

Her mission is not modest: to help millions of people by raising the standard of obesity care and making the fitness industry the frontline of preventive healthcare globally.