How I lost 50 lbs
(and started a company to help others do the same)
Six years ago, I was finishing up my junior year at MIT. I was pre-med at the time, so my main goal was to learn as much as possible so that I could best help my future patients. I spent my days studying, in lab, volunteering, or exploring Boston with friends; focus on anything else seemed pointless and vain. Which, I suppose, is why I found my BMI square in the “obese” weight range as I neared the end of college.
Food was my fuel, and reward for studying.
Convenient, unhealthy options lined our campus. (I’ll pause here in remembrance of the sweet time in my life prior to finding out that an Anna’s burrito was 1,000 calories.) I knew I needed to start losing weight, but I didn’t know where to begin. And I felt doomed from the start, because after studying neuroscience and biology, I knew three things for sure:
- What we eat is the key to losing weight, not exercise.
- 80% of diets fail.
- Behavior change is next to impossible.
I was shocked at how bad the existing weight loss solutions on the market were, and how little they did to help people change their lives for the long term. I tried calorie tracking apps, assigning point values to food, and ate hundreds of frozen meals. But these were all temporary solutions that elbowed their way into my life. They were not sustainable.
There’s a happy ending to this story.
Eventually, I lost fifty pounds. It took two years, but I figured out that the secret to sustainable weight loss was to harness the power of defaults. I needed to have fresh, healthy food on hand at all times, so that I wouldn’t be tempted by cookies and ice cream. I needed to stop coming home to an empty fridge, and ending up with 1200 calories of Indian take out from down the street. I needed to have ingredients for quick lunches to pack for work, and grab and go breakfasts to avoid the Starbucks run every morning. Simply put, I needed eating well to be easier than not eating well. After figuring out how to do this for myself, I wanted to share it with other people. And so began PlateJoy.
PlateJoy embraces the fundamental idea that eating healthy food needs to be easier than eating unhealthy food. To do this, we first learn as much as we can about you. We analyze more than 50 data points over time about how you eat and live. Then we create a menu that matches your preferences, and send you a custom shopping list and personalized recipes every week.
It’s a healthy eating membership that you’ll actually want to stay on for a long, long time, because it’s been designed specifically for you.
A few other things I learned:
- Willpower is finite. When it comes to foods like donuts and candy bars, make a preemptive choice to say no — you already know they are empty calories and counterproductive to your goal, so the decision is made. Instead of agonizing in the moment over whether or not you “deserve” something, decide before they’re offered — or before you see them on the shelf — that you don’t need them. This was surprisingly easy, because the decision not to waste time deciding becomes your default.
- Pay close attention to how certain foods make you feel. I didn’t actively avoid any one ingredient for the first 40 of my 50 lb weight loss, but eventually realized I physically felt much better adhering to a paleo diet. And yes, I used to be a gluten-free, dairy-free skeptic just like all the cool kids, until cutting these items out of my diet made me feel better and cleared up my skin. There’s only one way to know for sure.
- Startup wisdom applies: choose the one metric that matters and watch it. And don’t kid yourself — if your goal is to lose weight, that number is probably going to be the weight on your scale. It’s too hard to tell whether you’re losing weight by looking in the mirror, and I needed the daily reinforcement that what I was doing mattered. Too many people refuse to track this number because “it fluctuates.” You’ll have to get over that. Imagine if startups didn’t track their metrics for the same reason.
- Approach the situation with positivity. I had fun losing weight (and often remarked that it wasn’t that hard) because I made sure I was eating delicious foods, and every week I succeeded a little more. It was the ultimate positive feedback loop.
My hope is that when we think about someone losing weight, we’ll stop thinking about someone pounding a treadmill at the gym.
This creates the unrealistic view that pain, punishment, sweat, and embarrassment is standing between you and your goal weight. Exercise has many benefits, but changing the default food in your direct environment is by far the most important factor. And it doesn’t have to be difficult or painful or unappetizing, like the frozen HealthyChoice dinners might lead you to believe. Healthy food tastes great. And when you eat well, you will physically feel better than you ever have ordering take-out. I know, because I did it, and I enjoy food now more than ever before. If you’ve wanted to lose weight, but traditional dieting hasn’t worked for you, I hope you’ll try changing your defaults. Spoiler alert: it’s going to be great.
