How I helped my mom lose 20 lbs in 2016
Introducing an app for low carb
Unacceptable is a smart meal tracker for a low carb lifestyle. It auto-detects food from images using machine learning, and a nutritionist chatbot coaches you to eat better.
This is the story of why we built it.
Home is where the heart is
When I was young, I lived far away from my mom, and she used to constantly ask “what are you eating?” As time passed, the roles reversed. I now find myself asking her the same question. You see, my mother is overweight and diagnosed with prediabetes. Prediabetes is when your blood sugar is higher than normal, but not in diabetes range yet.
Bigger problem
My mother is not alone. 6 out of 10 American adults are overweight (145M). 1 in 3 have prediabetes (86M) of which 1 in 4 will develop diabetes within 5 years without a scalable solution.
The economic burden of obesity is massive. In fact, obesity-related chronic conditions are the largest factor driving up our healthcare cost. Healthcare spending accounts for 17.1% of GDP in the USA, and obesity is responsible for 20.6% of these costs.
I was surprised to discover that this is all preventable.
How do we fix this?
There is a tendency for people to place undue emphasis on internal character or intentions rather than external factors. — Hanlon’s razor
People often blame overweight people for being lazy or lacking will-power. I disagree. 6 out of 10 people are not lazy. I am lazy. I know lazy. My mother is not lazy. She is a first-generation immigrant who works hard every day to provide for her family.
There are external forces affecting her weight gain that she can’t easily control: genetics, age, and hormones.
Conversely, there are external factors that she can control: nutrition, behavior, and support.
Nutrition is key
80% of the results come for 20% of the action — Pareto’s Principle
Our diet is the largest risk factor driving up obesity. Improving diet is the key to long-term weight loss. Even though most diets can work, many people slip, or regain their weight over time.
To find a solution, we started from first principles, and thought differently about nutrition. We followed the science.
Grounded in science
We need energy from nutrition to drive chemical reactions. Energy is measured in calories. There is a simplified energy model of calorie in, calorie out that states that only thing that matters for weight loss is calorie restriction. Calorie intake is calculated from our food. Calorie output is a combination of resting burn rate, energy required to burn food, and active energy expended for movement.
This simple model is limited for few reasons. First, it overlooks the hormonal and metabolic impact of food. Our bodies break down macronutrients like carbs, protein and fats for energy using very different metabolic pathways. The different pathways affect energy required to burn food, and appetite.
Second, calorie intake and calorie output are not independent variables, they are coupled. The amount and type of calories we intake affects the calories we can output. For example, when you starve yourself, your body defends itself, and causes long-term active and resting energy output to dip. Thus, we went deeper than calorie in, calorie out. We researched and experimented with nine great diets that played with macros, quality of food and quantity of food.
We found a low carb high fat (keto) to be the most effective diet for weight loss. It’s backed by a lot of science, practiced in many clinics, and it follows a simple motto:
Does it have sugar or starch? If yes, then don’t eat it.
The fat makes you feel full, you learn to listen to your body, and calorie restriction becomes natural.
In our own experiments, my friend lost 70 lbs in 12 months, and I lost 23 lbs in 6 months.
Like most diets, sticking to low carb lifestyle is a challenge.
Pain points
We interviewed 776 low carbers, and looked at existing solutions. Our hypothesis is that if we can address the primary pain points that are often ignored, we can achieve long-term weight loss. We found people lacked the following:
- Knowledge. What should I eat & avoid? How do I get started? How do I structure my week?
- Support. How do I manage cravings? How do I deal with social pressure? How do I do low carb with my dietary restrictions?
- Retention. How do I know I am doing it right? How do I stay on this diet?
The existing solutions lacked the right structure, behavior support, tracking tools, support, and personalizations for low carb.
This is Unacceptable
“Hacking is much bigger … than clever bits of code in a computer — it’s how we create the future.” — Paul Buchheit (Founder of Gmail)
After understanding the data, and not finding any good alternatives, doing nothing was unacceptable.
I joined forces with my friend who has battled obesity for 20 years. We’re engineers from MIT and the University of Waterloo, and we have 6 years of low carb high fat diet experience. We funneled all of our knowledge into a product called Unacceptable.
Our mission is to achieve long-term weight loss through nutrition, behavior and support.
We follow low carb, and use Unacceptable for accountability every day. Now we want to make low carb simple for every low carber out there. Our values are:
- Sustainability. We believe that for long term success, every meal matters.
- Support. We believe the right information at the right time can have a powerful impact in getting people to enjoy real food, reduce doubt and remove dogma.
- Spontaneity. We believe in having fun with design.
- Simplify.
We released to thousands of beta users in July. One member who reversed his own prediabetes diagnosis now uses Unacceptable to stay on track. More on him in the future.
Today, we’re happy to announce a release worldwide. Download Unacceptable here.
Going home
As for my mom, leading by example worked! I’ve been sending her pictures of my food with breakdown of nutrition. Eventually, the pictures helped and she started reciprocating. She has cut out all processed carbs from her diet, and started eating real whole foods. So far, she has lost 4 inches from the waist, and 20 lbs overall.
If you have someone in your life that may benefit from this, please share it with them.
Download Unacceptable here.
