Based in Lisle, Illinois, The Plourdé Institute takes a multi-disciplinary approach to weight management and weight loss. David Plourdé leverages more than 20 years of experience as a nutrition scientist and exercise physiologist to design optimum weight-loss plans using a wide range of scientific measurements and approaches. The Plourdé Institute combines nutrition, exercise physiology, body composition, and the psychology of eating behavior to create a highly effective weight-management system for its clients. The Plourdé Institute system balances the physical and mental components of weight loss to scientifically design personalized weight-loss plans. The Plourdé Institute maintains a staff that understands each person’s body is composed differently, with different ratios of fat, muscle, and bone. The experts at The Plourdé Institute measure each client’s body composition, calculating the weight of the lean tissue, as well as fat. An accurate measurement of the body’s composition helps The Plourdé Institute’s scientists to make effective decisions about diet and exercise. The Plourdé Institute team measures clients’ metabolisms, focusing on the byproducts of cellular respiration to determine how the body is using fat and sugars to generate energy. This detailed understanding of metabolism enables the Institute to offer the most effective plan for each client. Through nutrition science, the team at The Plourdé Institute precisely calculates the appropriate proportions of fat, protein, and carbohydrates for each client’s diet. Exercise physiology serves as the last physical component of The Plourdé Institute weight management system. Through a scientific analysis of exertion, exercise frequency, exercise duration, and types of exercise, The Plourdé Institute’s scientists create an individual exercise prescription for each client. The staff at The Plourdé Institute knows that weight management is not a purely physical issue, and so the final element of the Institute’s interdisciplinary scientific approach to weight loss is a study of the psychology of eating behavior. Eating beyond the point of fullness or eating for an emotional reason is called self-medicating behavior. The Plourdé Institute works to help clients understand their triggers and their relationship with self-medicating behavior in order to change their habits and sustain long-term weight loss.