Media & Podcast Booking
Your listeners are
trapped in a pattern.
She knows how to end it.
Leslie Chen is a neuroscience-trained weight loss expert and founder of Rise Lean. She brings a rare combination: rigorous science, a management consulting background, and 400+ client transformations — and a contrarian take on why everything your audience has tried has stopped working.
Invite Leslie to Your ShowAs Featured In
Why Listeners Will Love This
Four angles your audience
has never heard before
The Contrarian Take
GLP-1 drugs treat the symptom. Not the brain.
Millions are turning to Ozempic and Wegovy — but the food patterns that drive overeating are neural, not chemical. When the drug stops, the pattern returns. Leslie explains what actually rewires the brain.
The Science Angle
Willpower is the wrong tool for a wiring problem.
Trained at the world’s #2 ranked neuroscience program, Leslie breaks down why restriction-based dieting reinforces the very patterns it’s meant to break — and what neural retraining actually looks like.
The High Achiever Paradox
The smartest people in the room can’t figure out food.
CEOs, physicians, founders — people who execute flawlessly in every domain — are losing to a craving at 10pm. Leslie explains the neuroscience of why high performance and disordered eating travel together.
The Cultural Lens
Most of the world eats carbs and doesn’t count a single calorie.
Growing up in China, living in Italy — two cultures where food freedom and staying lean are simply the norm. Leslie uses lived cross-cultural data to challenge the core assumptions of Western diet culture.
About Leslie
The story behind
the method
Leslie Chen is the founder of Rise Lean and creator of the Lean Instinct Formula™ — a neuroscience-based method for ending the cycle of food obsession, chronic dieting, and emotional eating. She has worked with high achievers across four continents: executives, founders, physicians, scientists, and other high-performing professionals.
Her background is unusual. She trained in neuroscience at the world’s #2 ranked program, holds a background in top-tier management consulting, and spent her early career navigating government-level international negotiations — at 21, as a college junior, she was at the center of a China–Italy collaboration involving the CEO of Fiat Group and members of Italy’s foreign minister’s circle.
She brings that same precision — the ability to find the structural cause beneath the surface behavior — to every client she works with. Her core argument: food obsession is a neural pattern problem, not a willpower problem, not a nutrition problem, and not a drug problem. When the pattern is retrained, the cravings dissolve. The food noise ends. And it stays that way.
Her work spans two compelling reference points: growing up in China, and her time in Italy — two cultures where everyone eats freely, nobody counts calories, and nobody has a “food problem.” That’s not the exception. That’s supposed to be the baseline.
Episode Topics
What Leslie can cover
on your show
01
Why high achievers can’t solve their food problem
The neuroscience of why intelligence and discipline don’t translate to eating — and what does.
02
The verdict: Why you don’t need GLP-1s to experience the GLP-1 level shifts.
What happens to the brain pattern when the drug stops — and the alternative approach that targets the root cause.
03
Food noise: what it is and how to end it
The constant mental chatter about food, calories, and eating — what drives it neurologically and how it disappears.
04
The China and Italy paradox
Two cultures, zero calorie counting, zero food obsession. What Western diet culture systematically misses.
05
Cravings are not a willpower failure
The neuroscience of craving loops — why restriction intensifies them and what neural retraining actually does.
06
The hidden performance leak in high-achieving entrepreneurs
How food obsession and chronic dieting silently drain cognitive bandwidth, decision-making capacity, and leadership presence — and what founders and executives do differently once the pattern is resolved.
Credentials
What Leslie brings
to your audience
Neuroscience Training
MSc Neuroscience from the world’s #2 ranked program — with a specific focus on the neural mechanisms behind behavior, habit, and pattern change.
Management Consulting
Career background at a top-5 global consulting firm — bringing a rigorous, systems-level approach to behavior change that most coaches don’t have.
400+ Transformations
A decade of client results across four continents — including executives, physicians, founders, and other high-performing professionals.
Proprietary Method
Creator of the Lean Instinct Formula™ — a structured program built on neural retraining, not restriction, that produces lasting behavioral change.
Cross-Cultural Authority
Grew up in China; spent formative years in Italy — two living examples of a culture-wide relationship with food that Western diet culture has entirely missed.
Unusual Early Career
At 21, as a college junior, she was at the center of a government-level China–Italy collaboration — at the same table as the CEO of Fiat Group and Italy’s foreign minister’s circle. A formative window into how decisions get made at the highest level.
Client Results
What happens when
the pattern ends
I’d spent 20 years trying to fix this with discipline. Leslie found the actual problem in the first session. I haven’t thought about food the same way since.
I was considering Ozempic. What Leslie taught me about what was actually driving my eating made the drug feel completely beside the point.
The food noise I’d lived with for fifteen years — gone. I didn’t cut anything out. I didn’t white-knuckle anything. The craving just stopped showing up.
I run a high-functioning company. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t run my own eating. Now I understand it was never a willpower problem.
Give your audience
the actual answer
they’ve been looking for.
Leslie is available for podcast interviews, panel discussions, and keynote conversations. She brings rigor, a sharp point of view, and the ability to make complex neuroscience feel immediate and actionable.
