Figwee Bios

I’m 44 years old, a software engineer, an entrepreneur, avid tennis player, and a guitar / bass / keyboard hack. Though marginally athletic, I have struggled with weight issues most of my adult life. At my worst some three years ago, I was one happy meal away from 300 lbs, with a 48+ inch waist. Today, I fit into 36" pants and weigh 223 lbs, which is not bad on my 6 ft frame, but still a good distance from my goal weight of 185 (where I was when I graduated high school).

When I was at my spectacular peak weight, things were starting to get ugly. I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease, and the resting heart rate of an Angora rabbit. I had to practice free diving breathing techniques before going in to tie my shoes. Going up a fight of stairs required a base camp, rest stops and Sherpa support. The last time my thighs didn't rub together was during the Reagan administration.

Seriously, though, it was difficult to play with my children, and it was difficult to do the things I loved. My father died of a heart attack at the age of 42 when I was just 7 years old. I did not want that for me or my family. I had to do something.

So, after talking to my doctor and looking at various options, I decided that tracking calories was the way to go. I did a bunch of research for the best online calorie counter, and settled on one. I was so motivated that through calorie counting and exercise, I lost a lot of weight; 79 lbs in about one year.

However, I was never satisfied with the data entry side of the available text-based calorie counters. Recording what I ate was such a chore. There were so many items in the database that finding what I ate was a pain: "I had turkey, I don't know what brand, I was at a restaurant." Also, estimating portions took a lot of effort. "How should I know how many ounces of turkey it was? What does 4 ounces of turkey look like?"

Anyway, with my weight loss success, I surely had become my own personal weight loss expert, so I didn't think I needed to track my calories anymore. I could just stop using the food diary. Forget it. I could wing it. I could guesstimate how much I ate relative to how much I was exercising. I didn’t need the calorie counter anymore. I could...I could...put back on 45 lbs in less than a year!

Clearly, I have to track what I eat and what I do, and to stay healthy, I will have to do it for the rest of my life.

That realization led me to research yet again what was the best online method for tracking calories and exercise. There were more options to choose from this time, but other than that, not much had changed. It was going to be difficult, every day.

But that brought my brother John and I to discuss why this should be so? Why couldn't there be a more efficient, less tedious, more helpful, and more fun way of tracking what we eat and what we do? We want something we can stick with forever.

So, we started brainstorming. We had already created a couple of moderately successful web sites, so we had some experience on how to go about things. After working the problem for quite some time, we came up with the concepts that are now emerging as Figwee. Over many months, we and our team of family and friends have put in an unbelievable number of hours buying and preparing the food, taking and processing the photos, creating and reviewing the database, and building the software.

At the end of September 2007, I started using Figwee myself. At that point, I was back up to 262 lbs with a 42" waist and 35% body fat. As of this writing, I have lost 33.5 lbs, an average about 2 lbs a week. I have also dropped 6.5% body fat so far.

Figwee is working for me, and I personally LOVE it. It is so much easier than what I used before that there is no comparison, and no going back.

I hope Figwee helps others out there with their fitness struggles the way it continues to help me.

-Jeff

I am a 42 year old married entrepreneur, guitarist, songwriter, and lately, hiker. I have a business background in Accounting, Management, and IT. Like Jeff, I have struggled with my weight ever since I stopped waiting tables in my grandparent's restaurant. In that restaurant, you learned to eat fast, and quite well. Since food was free, and we served world-class ice cream in an old-fashioned soda fountain, consuming several shakes a day was commonplace. I learned to eat fast because if things got too busy, you didn't get to finish your food. I am definitely a stress eater, and a lifestyle health risk. After leaving school for a desk job, it was all downhill. At my worst, I would get puffing just doing simple tasks like taking a shower. I am 6'1, and at my peak weight was 265 pounds of pure lard.

My fitness goals started with, ahem, making a fitness goal. This was to be able to walk up a flight of stairs and not break into a sweat. I started lifting weights and playing racquetball. I watched the calories and tried to eat foods that were satisfying at acceptable volumes. I lost my way down to 215 pounds, and swore I'd never go back.

I was a fool. I willed myself through the program, lost weight too fast, and did nothing to change my relationship with food. I hadn't really understood that my natural, unmonitored tendency was to overeat each and every day. Even if it is a mere 384 calories a day, guess what? 40 pounds in one year! This frightening reality reared its ugly head, because as I started to use Figwee, I weighed 255 pounds. I also stopped going to the gym, so there was no muscle mass to speak of.

My problem is pretty simple to see, harder to solve. For me, I need an easy, interesting, and effective way to make sure that I don't let things slowly build. 384 calories are not a problem at all. It is only when I lose the battle on a daily basis that things get ugly. The act of entering food in a diary helps me focus on this problem, and there is no doubt in my mind that it is the only realistic solution for anyone who has a lopsided sense of the right amount of food to eat. The key is, the diary has to be easy enough to use to become part of your routine, much as would watching your finances or any other goal. For me, it has to be a goal that has my daily focus; otherwise, I won't care and the slide is on. Each day, I will say to myself, "What difference do a few chips make?" But I never mix in the "good" days. It is pure procrastination. Tomorrow I'll be good, so today is no big deal. Tomorrow never came without a clear determination to make it so.

Figwee was born out of the frustration of using text-based online calorie counters. Show me a person that knows that they ate 2.25 "servings" of fries and I will show you someone who doesn't need a calorie counter in the first place. I have absolutely no idea how many "ounces" of nuts I had. I had a small handful. Why is this so hard? Jeff and I quickly realized that text-based solutions were not only extremely limited, but couldn't be drier and more boring to use. For me, I knew I wasn't going to be able to sustain any kind of program without finding a better way. I believe we have.

My fitness goals are now to slowly win the battle on the positive side. Along with a modest rate of weight loss using Figwee everyday, I lift heavy weights at the gym 3 times a week. On days that I lift, I will consume extra calories of protein to try to build muscle. Then on the other days, I will scramble in the local sandstone mountains for my cardio fitness. So far, I have lost 15 pounds. My real triumph, however, is my resting heart rate reduction of over 20 bpm, my now normal blood pressure, and my extra two inches of muscle on my biceps. Also, my body fat % has dropped 8%.

I still have a long way to go, but I have every confidence that I will be able to win the up and down battle thanks to the focus Figwee gives me.

-John