About Kim Carlos
Founder, podcast host and obesity care advocate
Kim Carlos has lived with obesity her whole life and has been on GLP-1 treatment since 2022. She hosts The Plus SideZ, where she interviews the doctors and researchers shaping this field, and she speaks with lawmakers about medication access and quality care for obesity.
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Kim’s story
The podcast origin story
In 2022, Kim got a GLP-1 prescription and almost no guidance. Within weeks, the food noise she had lived with her whole life turned off. For the first time, a medication treated her disease instead of everyone blaming her for it, and it changed her life so much that she needed to understand why and tell everyone.
She went to TikTok for answers and found a few hundred people searching too, a group that grew into tens of thousands. That is also how Kim reconnected with Kat Carter, a friend and former coworker in Atlanta who turned out to be on a GLP-1 too.
The headlines said influencers were taking a diabetes drug to lose weight, going viral and causing a national shortage, but that was spin, full of bias and ignorance about what was actually going on. Since April 2023, the podcast has helped turn that trend into a movement of hundreds of thousands of patients lifting each other up and pushing real information through the algorithm. When platforms censored them, they kept going.
The show has since won four 2024 Anthem Awards for social impact (Gold in Podcast or Audio; Silver in Emerging Company or Organization, Community Space, and Best Influencer Collaboration), American Writing Awards Podcast of the Year and a Communicator Awards Award of Distinction.
“People with obesity have a kind of grit others may not. We’ve had to get up again and again after failing to lose weight, with everyone blaming and shaming us. If the world is going to change, we’ll be the ones to do it.”
Kim Carlos
Career background
Twenty years making complicated things clear
Before the podcast, Kim spent twenty years in marketing, the last ten of them in product marketing, building go-to-market strategy for startups and launching major enterprise product lines. She is an expert in messaging and positioning, and she holds a degree in public relations from the University of Alabama.
Her job was always to take something complicated and help people understand why it mattered. Now she does that for obesity medicine, sitting down with the specialists and researchers leading the field and translating what they know into something patients can actually use.
These days she puts those skills into her own businesses. She founded The Plus SideZ, Plus SideZ Media and Cozy Butter, and is building The Butter Place, so the work she used to do for other companies now goes toward something she lives every day.
Industries
Advocacy
The part that happens away from the microphone
Much of what patients face is built into the system, which is why Kim works on medication access and drug pricing. That has meant testimony-adjacent work with lawmakers, conversations with journalists at Good Morning America, Bloomberg News and ABC Nightline, and showing up at ObesityWeek and OAC events to keep patient voices in the rooms where decisions get made.
A WebMD company
Physician education
Kim’s patient story is featured in Partnering for Change, a 2025 CME program from Medscape, a WebMD company, for primary care clinicians developed with The Obesity Society and the New Jersey Academy of Family Physicians. It was presented at 15 physician workshops and online.
Kim's brands
Everything Kim has built
The Plus SideZ Podcast
A top 1% GLP-1 podcast on obesity treatment and metabolic health, co-hosted with Kat Carter.
Listen to the show
Plus SideZ Media
Kim’s company for brand consulting, patient insight, sponsorship and speaking.
Visit Plus SideZ Media
Cozy Butter
A free GLP-1 patient support group and community for meaningful connection and support.
Explore Cozy ButterThe Butter Place
Kim’s newest brand, launching soon.
Coming soonWork with Kim
Three ways to go further
One-on-one session
Bring your questions about starting treatment, side effects, plateaus, insurance denials, or what to raise with your doctor. Patient to patient.
Kim is a patient advocate and will not diagnose, recommend or adjust a dose, or interpret your labs. Paid session, booked through Calendly.
Book a sessionSupport groups in Cozy Butter
Kim’s GLP-1 patient support groups now meet inside Cozy Butter, alongside coaching and the rest of the community.
Join Cozy ButterBrand partnerships and speaking
For brands who want to work with Kim, it starts with a partner discovery call. Consulting, sponsorship and speaking all run through Plus SideZ Media.
Sessions and groups are paid peer support from someone who has lived this. Kim Carlos is a patient advocate and is not a physician, dietitian, nurse or therapist. Sessions do not diagnose conditions, recommend or adjust medications or doses, interpret lab results, or replace care from your own practitioner. Consulting and speaking are offered by Kim through Plus SideZ Media. Full detail in our Terms of Use.
Follow Kim Carlos on social
Daily conversation, live Q&A, and the community as it happens.