A New Path to the Fastlane - App Development

[Supa]

Hey everyone!

Been a while since my last endeavour to get on the Fastlane – actually around 8 years.

I tried a few things over the years, but nothing that created a lot of value for others – and therefore nothing that made any money.

But now I am finally back driving on a lane that one day hopefully leads to the Fastlane.

I will keep this short, as there's not much to share as of yet. I still wanted to create this progress thread now, to have it follow along this new endeavor from the very beginning.

A few weeks ago – after stumbling upon this post on here – I asked something, that I didn't ask in a long time – what problem do people want to be solved?

And after a bit of thinking – especially about what hurt me in the past that I would have loved and also paid for a solution for – I found something.

It's an attempt at a solution for a problem in an area that I have quite some experience – and frustration – in: weight loss.

And the best way to being this idea to life is as an app. Only problem is, I'm not an app developer, or a developer at all.

So I started my journey to become an app developer, to be able to bring my idea (and more down the road) to life.

It's been a long time since I truly believed to ever be able to get onto the Fastlane. This idea brought back that spark of hope. So yeah. Happy to see where this will go. I'll take you along the journey.

 

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[Cameron Akhtar]

I like the idea. What will be your angle? How will you stand out from other weight loss apps? There are a lot of them out there. I think that deserves some reflection. If you can set yourself apart from the crowd, you will surely see more success.

 

[Supa]

I like the idea. What will be your angle? How will you stand out from other weight loss apps? There are a lot of them out there. I think that deserves some reflection. If you can set yourself apart from the crowd, you will surely see more success.

Great questions!

My app idea arose from multiple concepts, ideas and sources of inspiration:

• The posts by @heavy_industry and @Johnny boy in this thread made me rethink weight loss
• A post I read somewhere about calories tracking, that resonated a lot with my own experiences and those of loved ones - it said something a long the lines of "calories tracking is great - the problem is to consistently do it over a long time"
• My own weight loss journey
• I remembered reading about a japanese concept of eating until you are 80% full - it's called Hara Hachi Bu

The last one - Hara Hachi Bu - is at the core of the app idea, here's a short description (from here):

"Hara Hachi Bu is a Japanese term meaning “Eat until you’re 80% full”. It originated in the city of Okinawa, one of the world’s blue zones regions, or exceptional hot spots where people live extraordinarily long and healthy lives. People there use this advice as a way to control their eating habits. Interestingly, they have one of the lowest rates of illness from heart disease, cancer, and stroke, and a fairly long life expectancy.

Hara Hachi Bu: Stop eating when you’re 80% full"

While most of the weight loss apps are based on one or two concepts: calories (+ macros) tracking and/or fasting, I want mine to do something different.

To me, one of the most difficult aspects about weight loss is the long process - especially when trying to lose bigger amounts of weight. At the same time, while and after losing 30 kg (66 lbs) I actually enjoyed the process the most - even more than the actual weight loss.

I want the app to give people a process that's at the same time simple to actually do every day - even on a long journey over months or years -, that they can enjoy and gives them a sense of accomplishment on most days, and that is effective.

So yeah, that's the main idea behind the app. How I aim to achieve that is something for future posts. I am still working on the concept, while at the same time learning app development. I also built a "prototype" in my notes app that let's me manually do what the app should do and am currently testing the system myself.