Illinois Mayor Loses 100 Pounds With AI Digital Twin

Rodney Buckley stepped on the scale last March at 376 pounds, feeling like he'd tried everything. The 55-year-old mayor of Third Lake, Illinois, had cycled through diets for years, losing weight only to gain it back each time.

Then he discovered something different: a digital twin of his own metabolism. Within a year, he lost 100 pounds without taking a single weight loss drug.

Twin Health, a California startup, creates virtual replicas of people's metabolism using data from wearable devices. Users wear a continuous glucose monitor, use a smart scale, track their fitness, and monitor blood pressure. All that information feeds into an AI model that learns exactly how their body responds to food, sleep, stress, and activity.

The app predicts how specific meals will affect blood sugar before users even take a bite. It suggests personalized tweaks throughout the day, like adjusting portion sizes or taking a post-meal walk. Over time, the AI learns individual preferences and adapts its recommendations.

For Buckley, the changes felt manageable. He swapped frozen breakfast sandwiches for homemade burritos with high-fiber wraps. He quit soda and started walking daily. What began as painful one-mile walks turned into six and a half miles every morning.

The instant feedback kept him motivated. Watching his blood pressure and body fat percentage trend downward on his phone gave him reason to keep going. After decades on blood pressure medication, his doctor recently lowered his dose.

The Ripple Effect

Employers are paying attention because the stakes are massive. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic cost up to $1,500 per person each month, creating unsustainable healthcare expenses. Twin Health offers an alternative that's actually delivering results.

A Cleveland Clinic study of 150 people with type 2 diabetes found that 71 percent of Twin users reached healthy blood sugar levels with fewer medications after 12 months. Only 2 percent of the control group did the same. Twin users also lost nearly 9 percent of their body weight.

The company now serves tens of thousands of people across nearly 200 employers, including asset manager Blackstone. Twin only gets paid when users hit specific health goals like lower blood sugar or weight loss, which means results matter.

Dr. Kevin Pantalone, who led the Cleveland Clinic study, admits he was skeptical at first. Americans have long struggled with the simple advice to eat better and exercise more, despite knowing they should. Twin Health found a way to make those lifestyle changes stick by making them personal, immediate, and adaptive.

Buckley reached his initial goal of 300 pounds and now weighs around 275 pounds, proving that sometimes the best medicine isn't a prescription at all.