How Was Nootris Born? Founder Story

Introduction

Hi, you can call me Gab. I'm a software engineer from Argentina. I've been working in the software industry for about ~15 years now. And I've also been struggling with my weight for almost twice that amount of time. I really like software engineering because it gives me the opportunity to learn every single day. Things move fast, things break, I fix them. Learning is probably one of my biggest passions.

The joy of learning

Well, the thing is, one day, I said to myself: Hey, what if you learn about nutrition and losing weight? No, for real, learn the science behind it, stop reading about fad diets, or what happens if you drink lemon water while fasting, or what's the magic soup to burn fat quickly. So I did that.

I started reading books, studies, meta-studies. I started watching evidence-based YouTube channels. I began connecting the dots of the information that both made sense and was talked about by many. So, what's next? Move fast, break things, fix them? Well, kind of. I started with 105kg/230 lbs and went down to 83kg/182 lbs in a few months. How? Understanding my energy needs. My body burns a certain number of calories; if I eat less, I need to tap another source of energy: fat. Well, actually, it is fat but also muscle.

I also learned that your body is quite the machine. It tries to stay in a certain balance (homeostasis) in every possible way. So, to prevent muscle loss, let your body know you're using muscle and that you need more of it. Weight training. Also, give it some fuel: proteins, to keep building it. The more weight you lose, the more you'll adjust your calories because, you know, balance.

And what about cardio? Did you walk 10,000 steps? I certainly did not. I tried crossfit and didn't like it. I did run on treadmills and it's super boring for me. Cardio is important for health reasons. Walking is great. You want a strong heart and cardiovascular system. But doing cardio often makes you hungry and you don't burn as many calories as you'd think. Cardio is good. Do it, more so if you enjoy it. Just remember, you can't out-exercise a bad diet. You burn most of your calories just by existing.

A rollercoaster of a journey

I did this for a couple of months, maybe almost a year. But it's really tiring. Physically and mentally. I did cook all of my meals. I weighed every single ingredient, searched for it in a nutrition database, and logged it. I asked for plain salads with no dressing at burger joints. I've brought my own food bowls to parties. And I've burnt myself out of it.

While I could maintain it for a while, it was very time-consuming and very hard on my mind and life. I tried an intuitive approach for a while, and it worked, but I didn't hold myself accountable since I didn't have a log or something similar. I gained 15kg/33lbs after a while. This behavior of losing weight and gaining it again, always over long periods of time, has been going on for a while.

Focusing on what matters, our health

For most of my life, I could hyperfocus on something and accomplish really cool stuff. However, I often tend to leave the rest of the things in my life in the background, neglecting a lot of important stuff. So I decided to make my health and nutrition my professional career as well. I decided to put all the knowledge I've gathered over the years and add some help from professionals in the industry into what I already knew how to do best: a web app.

The birth of Nootris, an AI-driven nutrition coach

Nootris is the culmination of understanding how our bodies work, countless successful and failed journeys, the ease of surfing through them on auto-pilot, and applying a lot of small tips and hacks to be flexible enough that it becomes sustainable for life.

You'll find things such as:

• Macros: They are automatically calculated and tracked for you; enough protein so you don't lose muscle while losing weight, a good amount of fats to keep you healthy, and the rest is carbs to get the energy you need
• Calories: They are easily adjustable based on your plans, but they are way more simple. We don't want to give you infinite options to prevent decision/analysis paralysis. Also, the default view of your calories in your progress is set to weekly to be flexible. It's okay if one day you eat a bit more; just make sure to hit your weekly targets near enough, and you'll be good.
• Weight: We recommend you to track your weight daily, but we don't care about the daily number. So, why? Well, weight fluctuates with water intake, sodium intake, going to the bathroom, workouts and another thousand more factors. So we look at the bigger picture. If your average weight from this week is better than the previous one, you're doing great, don't be hard on yourself.
• Mood: If you're not feeling great, we could try to find patterns in your nutrition habits and give you tips and recommendations to improve how you feel. Same thing if you're feeling great.
• Meals: You can scan your meal by grabbing a picture. You can write down the recipe or just give a brief description, and we'll try to give you an estimate of the calories and macros. The more precise and exact you are, the better the performance. It's not the same to say "Steak and potatoes," "Lean beef steak and boiled potatoes," or "200g lean beef fillet steak, 250g of boiled potatoes, a teaspoon of olive oil."
• Progress: Not only we help with the big picture for weight and calories but we try to adjust your calories on a weekly basis to your current progress so you can see the changes you want to see.

Nootris is helping me to be my best self. And I'm really hopeful it will help you as well. You can try it out for free right now.