This is Joe (nezaj) and Stopa (stopachka). Both of us are Clojure hackers [1]. For the last few years, we’ve been on a journey to “get six pack abs”. To do this, we hired a personal trainer, created a mini-community within our friend group, and built custom tools for ourselves, to create a sort of “Datadog for our fitness”.
3 months ago, we had a realization: what if we tried to create a company that did this? A combo of a nutrition coach, personal trainer, community, and custom tools that helps you get in the best shape of your life.
We weren’t experts, so we started off by launching a free cohort, and signing up 20 people. So far, folks have lost an average of 5LBs over the last 2 months. Over 43% said they’d be very disappointed if Consistent stopped to exist.
It started off with an Excel spreadsheet and a Slack group. But very soon, it turned into (a) a Slack bot, (b) a mobile app, and (c) a curriculum, that progressively sets you up with the habits to reach and maintain the best shape of your life.
Solutions in the space are fragmented, have poor technology, and rarely deliver. With Consistent, you get a bundled set of curriculum and tools to help you learn what you don’t know you don’t know, and make progress.
The program is 4 months, and costs 799 (200 dollars each month). This is equivalent to 2 sessions with a personal trainer a month. To keep us aligned, we’re also offering a 100% money-back guarantee. If at any point you choose to leave the program (even 1 day before close), you can get your money back.
There’s one catch though.
We require you weigh yourself everyday, log your food everyday, and log your exercise everyday. In addition you need to send a reflection once a week as well as a shirtless progress photo.
if you start missing days we’ll send you an automated follow-up. Miss those follow-ups and we’ll manually intervene. If you continue to be non-compliant, we’ll dismiss you from the program and donate your payment to the charity of our choice. This way, we only get paid if you succeed, and the money can work for you as an accountability factor.
This is early stages. We want to sign up 20-25 people for the Cohort, which starts in October. If you’re interested, please let us know!
Thanks for sharing! This market of virtual trainers is a huge opportunity and I hope you can make a splash in it.
If it's helpful, here's some critical feedback:
> For the last few years, we’ve been on a journey to “get six pack abs”.
This sounds like it's taken you years to get a 6-pack which isn't too inspiring. Plus, most fitness sites showcase the before/after photos. But on your site there aren't any photos that this program actually works.
> we started off by launching a free cohort, and signing up 20 people. Over 43% said they’d be very disappointed if Consistent stopped to exist.
Yeah, I'd be disappointed if I was getting something for free too and it stopped being free. The bigger question is how much they'd pay to keep going with the program. Is it $200/mo?
> So far, folks have lost an average of 5LBs over the last 2 months
That's not a really meaningful stat without knowing their starting bodyweight and fitness. And anyone can lose weight by eating in a caloric deficit, but are they getting the 6-pack abs you're advertising? If you want to be a 6-pack abs (or muscle-building) company, I'd focus on that as your primary stat rather than weight loss.
> Solutions in the space are fragmented, have poor technology, and rarely deliver
I can think of a few direct competitors with good tech and good reputations:
I'm not affiliated with either company, but I have used CoPilot and really enjoyed it.
At $200/mo what are you offering that those companies don't?
> If at any point you choose to leave the program (even 1 day before close), you can get your money back.
Sounds risky to me. Why wouldn't I quit with 1 day left and get my $799 back? What value is the app to me after the last day?
> We require you weigh yourself everyday, log your food everyday, and log your exercise everyday.
Logging food is hard and can feel exhausting to many people. I realize that getting your caloric intake right is a huge component of fitness, but there's a huge audience that wants to get fit without it taking over their life. You're targeting an audience that is willing to make a 4-month commitment to tracking their entire food intake every day. That sounds necessary for those interested in elite athlete / model fitness, but not so necessary for the majority of athletic-inclined folks that want to get back into shape. Is your more intensely focused audience big enough?
> In addition you need to send a reflection once a week as well as a shirtless progress photo.
Might want to wordsmith or rethink this. "Send me a shirtless photo once a week" sounds a little creepy. There are other ways to track fitness progress like benchmarking an exercise like pushups, pullups, L-sits, etc.
> If you continue to be non-compliant
Might want to wordsmith this too. "Non-compliant" makes it sound like you're building a dystopian fitness app. Instead of a stick, maybe think of a carrot that you can give users that are consistent with their progress? Like a leaderboard, achievements, discounts on future products / services, etc.
1) It's a strong commitment device. At this price point we hope people really will take this seriously and be committed.
2) Stopa and I are also providing personal coaching, we'll be giving you individual attention. In the future we may remove the personal coaching aspect, and in that case we will bring down the price.
I see this as a feature though. If I pay $2 for an app that helps me track fitness, I'm much more likely to lose interest. This is the same reasoning that Orange Theory uses...and seems like they're pretty successful.
That price point is what I pay my coach. She inputs my plan on Final Surge. I'm getting lifting, running, and biking plans. I can schedule a call, email, whatever to get her feedback. She knows me on a personal level including who I am, my history, who my training partners are, what races I want to participate in, etc.
I'm not willing to pay the same price for that because I know that the service will only get more generic as there are more clients.
I'm sure its great for people who want to work from home and dont know where to start and dont have a support structure.
Totally hear you! We're finishing up our first cohort Sep 19th and will follow-up with our current members and verify who is comfortable with their photos being shared. Will update with photos in a few weeks!
fitnessblender works really well. It has a paid program as well which I had used in the past for a while. Free content works really well if you are consistent :D
reddit's r/fitness community is honestly the best place IMO.
There are tons of guides, plans, and advice for achieving any fitness related goal you can imagine.
1. Eat at caloric maintenance or a slight caloric surplus to build muscle
2. Do a consistent ab workout routine 3-5x per week (free on YouTube), progressively overloading your body with more resistance through longer workouts, heavier weights or more demanding positions
3. When you want 6-pack abs, cut your caloric intake to be at a slight deficit for a few weeks and try to shred as much excess body fat as possible to let your ab muscles show
Falls under #1 but starts invoking specific foods in such a way that ultimately ends up confusing people in my experience. Better phrased as a reminder that drinks have calories, including alcohol and soda.
Very true, I shy away from that specifically because it starts veering into pure bodybuilding practice — the rationale for that leads to the conclusion of avoiding hydrating as much as possible (which sounds silly, but I saw it with a couple clients, and am not ashamed to admit I get a little giddy when I realize I'll claim a pound back the next morning weigh-in when i realize I'm dehydrated at night)
How do you measure calories in food? It takes a herculean effort to know exactly what ingredients are in food and weigh exactly how much of each you're consuming with every meal. Seems like a lot of work to manually keep track of all that every single day and not make a mistake.
1. Count your calories the best you can. Apps like MyFitnessPal help.
2. Weigh yourself every day.
3. After 2 weeks, raise or lower your calorie budget depending on how much weight you've lost. Look at averages, not daily weight.
4. Repeat.
The 2 week adjustment takes care of most mistakes you make with calorie counting. I am usually consistent with the direction I'm over or under counting.
Weighing food is not really a "herculean effort," but in my experience it is certainly fair to call it a "pain in the ass".
That said, dealing with the "knowing exactly what ingredients" part is actually easy enough, if you're cooking your own food. If not, most places have some kind of nutrition information available, and if they don't, a rough guess is definitely better than nothing.
Calorie tracking is not much fun, but it is definitely effective. Getting it perfectly right isn't as important as consistency.
Yeah, that's why a lot of people don't do it, or just ballpark it.
If you want to be more exact, some ways to make it easier are:
1) eat prepared food that has caloric info on it, like a pre-made salad
2) cook recipes that provide caloric info
3) make very simple meals (ex. 1 cup yogurt + 1 tbsp peanut butter + 1 banana) where you can do the math yourself
But yeah, for most people they'd rather ballpark it and have less stress. Maybe that means a 4-pack instead of a 6-pack, but you're still going to look good.
I've personally been tracking my diet publicly for over a year now. You can see my public record here -- www.joelogs.com
Over the years I've been on/off with tracking. But I've been able to stick with it over a year now, the longest I ever have. The big difference between now and then is that I'm okay with being 80% accurate if it means easy consistency.
Previously it was very important for me to be 100% accurate. This is especially difficult to do when you eat out. By allowing myself to be imperfect in my logging, it eases the burden to track.
Here's what I do now.
1) Take a photo of everything I eat
2) Log right after eating if I feel like it, but usually I log at the end of the day
Sometimes I underestimate. Sometimes I overestimate. I think it washes out in the net. If my logging is really off it will show in my scale and progress pics.
Doing the above has given me lots of visibility into my diet and unlocked optimizations.
I can't recommend fasting enough. I do rolling 72-100 hour fasts to lose weight and its by far the easiest thing to do. Are you familiar with water? Yeah. Good to go. (You probably want to add in a bit of sodium/magnesium/potassium)
Yes the first day and last bit suck, especially the first time. But its also ~3-5x more time efficient than most calorie reduction diets and you save time and money.
What is a rolling 72-100 hour fast? You don't eat for 72 hours and then allowed to eat for 100 hours before the cycle starts? How do you source your magnesium/potassium?
Fast for 72-100 hours. Eat normally for 1 day then fast again. Works better with WFH (you want to be near a toilet after breaking a fast). But you can also just time it so your fast ends on Sunday and do it once a week. You do have to be a bit careful about not binge eating after a fast. I don't count the calories on my eating days but I am also conscious about not stuffing my face all day.
Magnesium from random supplement I got at target, potassium from no-salt salt alternative.
Well on average it's eating closer to twice a week. People fast for much longer. I think at most I've done 3 in a almost a row - doing stuff with friends will mess stuff up - I fit them in where I can.
You can look into it if you want but there are a lot of people that think its actively good for you. I'm more in it for the weight loss and take anything else as a bonus.
That's why the first week or two your weight yourself everyday, chart it and note everything you eat. If your weight doesn't change then you can start reducing calorie intake by reducing portions.
Plan sets of meals with known calories and macronutrients, make them all on Sunday and eat them throughout the week. Easiest is obviously eating the same thing every day, but if that's too monotonous, then choose two or three varieties and make them in big batches. Then you're not weighing grams of ingredients for a single meal at a time, you're weighing X times that for X meals at a time.
Also easy to split them up into the right serving size in a container in the fridge, and you don't even have to think about meals, just grab from fridge and pop in microwave or oven to hear.
That gets you 90% of the way without having to micromanage every meal. The odd meal out on weekends is not a big deal as long as you don't go crazy.
To look things up, I often land on https://exrx.net/Lists/Directory . As someone, who went from skinny to muscular with just bodyweight workouts, I think consistency is the key.
No, I just found it couple of years back and since then it’s my cheatsheet. The best part is, you can pick your workout focused on any particular muscle and learn about it as well.
All of the resources are out there if you are willing/able to develop your own plan and self-direct. This is more of a personal trainer as a service. The value add is that humans will be monitoring your progress and they’ll be on your ass about it. The price should be competitive with hiring an actual personal trainer.
Get rid of the "get six pack abs in X weeks" line - visible abs come from reducing body fat, you'd have to get me to lose 4 pounds a week to get to that point, and losing 2 lbs / week is a reasonable maximum for high effort.
Six-pack definitely doesn't mean best shape of your life. But the habits we build throughout the program will certainly help you get in the best shape of your life. We're still pretty early and we go for the six-pack angle because
1) We wanted a six-pack ourselves so in the spirit of solving our own problems we started Consistent
2) Getting a six-pack is a pretty concrete outcome, especially when looking at before and after photos.
That being said, we're also open to folks who want a body transformation!
Most of getting a six-pack is losing weight. What value-add do you provide that counting my calories myself on a free app doesn't do? MyFitnessPal is free.
Agreed that a calorie deficit + regular exercise + good sleep + managing stress is the recipe for a six-pack -- and indeed you can do it yourself!
In a similar vein, the resources to learn how to code are freely available online. Instead of going to a bootcamp, one could learn on their own (and indeed there are bootcamps that put up their whole curriculum online for free, and it's exactly the same as their paid in-person version).
In practice though, it's not so easy. It takes a lot of willpower and discipline to stick with both a weight loss program and learning how to code. Being put in a structured environment, with other people working towards the same goal, and getting personalized coaching when stuck can make the difference for those who have tried in the past to do it on their own.
Adding to earlier commenters, you may want to consider rephrasing the one liner.
You are probably 20 somethings, but I am close to 40. There's no way in hell I can get six pack abs in 16 weeks.
Besides, I'm not so sure that getting six pack is really a function of workouts and nutrition alone, it's also a matter of genetics.
54 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadThis is Joe (nezaj) and Stopa (stopachka). Both of us are Clojure hackers [1]. For the last few years, we’ve been on a journey to “get six pack abs”. To do this, we hired a personal trainer, created a mini-community within our friend group, and built custom tools for ourselves, to create a sort of “Datadog for our fitness”.
3 months ago, we had a realization: what if we tried to create a company that did this? A combo of a nutrition coach, personal trainer, community, and custom tools that helps you get in the best shape of your life.
We weren’t experts, so we started off by launching a free cohort, and signing up 20 people. So far, folks have lost an average of 5LBs over the last 2 months. Over 43% said they’d be very disappointed if Consistent stopped to exist.
It started off with an Excel spreadsheet and a Slack group. But very soon, it turned into (a) a Slack bot, (b) a mobile app, and (c) a curriculum, that progressively sets you up with the habits to reach and maintain the best shape of your life.
Solutions in the space are fragmented, have poor technology, and rarely deliver. With Consistent, you get a bundled set of curriculum and tools to help you learn what you don’t know you don’t know, and make progress.
The program is 4 months, and costs 799 (200 dollars each month). This is equivalent to 2 sessions with a personal trainer a month. To keep us aligned, we’re also offering a 100% money-back guarantee. If at any point you choose to leave the program (even 1 day before close), you can get your money back.
There’s one catch though.
We require you weigh yourself everyday, log your food everyday, and log your exercise everyday. In addition you need to send a reflection once a week as well as a shirtless progress photo.
if you start missing days we’ll send you an automated follow-up. Miss those follow-ups and we’ll manually intervene. If you continue to be non-compliant, we’ll dismiss you from the program and donate your payment to the charity of our choice. This way, we only get paid if you succeed, and the money can work for you as an accountability factor.
This is early stages. We want to sign up 20-25 people for the Cohort, which starts in October. If you’re interested, please let us know!
[1] The story: https://consistent.fit/posts/founder-diaries/
If it's helpful, here's some critical feedback:
> For the last few years, we’ve been on a journey to “get six pack abs”.
This sounds like it's taken you years to get a 6-pack which isn't too inspiring. Plus, most fitness sites showcase the before/after photos. But on your site there aren't any photos that this program actually works.
> we started off by launching a free cohort, and signing up 20 people. Over 43% said they’d be very disappointed if Consistent stopped to exist.
Yeah, I'd be disappointed if I was getting something for free too and it stopped being free. The bigger question is how much they'd pay to keep going with the program. Is it $200/mo?
> So far, folks have lost an average of 5LBs over the last 2 months
That's not a really meaningful stat without knowing their starting bodyweight and fitness. And anyone can lose weight by eating in a caloric deficit, but are they getting the 6-pack abs you're advertising? If you want to be a 6-pack abs (or muscle-building) company, I'd focus on that as your primary stat rather than weight loss.
> Solutions in the space are fragmented, have poor technology, and rarely deliver
I can think of a few direct competitors with good tech and good reputations:
* https://mycopilot.com/ ($69/mo)
* https://www.future.co/ ($149/mo)
I'm not affiliated with either company, but I have used CoPilot and really enjoyed it.
At $200/mo what are you offering that those companies don't?
> If at any point you choose to leave the program (even 1 day before close), you can get your money back.
Sounds risky to me. Why wouldn't I quit with 1 day left and get my $799 back? What value is the app to me after the last day?
> We require you weigh yourself everyday, log your food everyday, and log your exercise everyday.
Logging food is hard and can feel exhausting to many people. I realize that getting your caloric intake right is a huge component of fitness, but there's a huge audience that wants to get fit without it taking over their life. You're targeting an audience that is willing to make a 4-month commitment to tracking their entire food intake every day. That sounds necessary for those interested in elite athlete / model fitness, but not so necessary for the majority of athletic-inclined folks that want to get back into shape. Is your more intensely focused audience big enough?
> In addition you need to send a reflection once a week as well as a shirtless progress photo.
Might want to wordsmith or rethink this. "Send me a shirtless photo once a week" sounds a little creepy. There are other ways to track fitness progress like benchmarking an exercise like pushups, pullups, L-sits, etc.
> If you continue to be non-compliant
Might want to wordsmith this too. "Non-compliant" makes it sound like you're building a dystopian fitness app. Instead of a stick, maybe think of a carrot that you can give users that are consistent with their progress? Like a leaderboard, achievements, discounts on future products / services, etc.
Good luck!
$200/month?!
"Non-compliant"?!?!
"Manually intervene"?!?!?!
That's a hard no for me, dawg.
1) It's a strong commitment device. At this price point we hope people really will take this seriously and be committed. 2) Stopa and I are also providing personal coaching, we'll be giving you individual attention. In the future we may remove the personal coaching aspect, and in that case we will bring down the price.
I'm not willing to pay the same price for that because I know that the service will only get more generic as there are more clients.
I'm sure its great for people who want to work from home and dont know where to start and dont have a support structure.
1. Eat at caloric maintenance or a slight caloric surplus to build muscle
2. Do a consistent ab workout routine 3-5x per week (free on YouTube), progressively overloading your body with more resistance through longer workouts, heavier weights or more demanding positions
3. When you want 6-pack abs, cut your caloric intake to be at a slight deficit for a few weeks and try to shred as much excess body fat as possible to let your ab muscles show
Easier said than done though.
I regularly have alcohol when I'm cutting weight. It just gets counted towards my calorie budget.
I do find non-diet soda to be completely wasted calories though. Just not worth it.
2. Weigh yourself every day.
3. After 2 weeks, raise or lower your calorie budget depending on how much weight you've lost. Look at averages, not daily weight.
4. Repeat.
The 2 week adjustment takes care of most mistakes you make with calorie counting. I am usually consistent with the direction I'm over or under counting.
That said, dealing with the "knowing exactly what ingredients" part is actually easy enough, if you're cooking your own food. If not, most places have some kind of nutrition information available, and if they don't, a rough guess is definitely better than nothing.
Calorie tracking is not much fun, but it is definitely effective. Getting it perfectly right isn't as important as consistency.
If you want to be more exact, some ways to make it easier are:
1) eat prepared food that has caloric info on it, like a pre-made salad
2) cook recipes that provide caloric info
3) make very simple meals (ex. 1 cup yogurt + 1 tbsp peanut butter + 1 banana) where you can do the math yourself
But yeah, for most people they'd rather ballpark it and have less stress. Maybe that means a 4-pack instead of a 6-pack, but you're still going to look good.
Over the years I've been on/off with tracking. But I've been able to stick with it over a year now, the longest I ever have. The big difference between now and then is that I'm okay with being 80% accurate if it means easy consistency.
Previously it was very important for me to be 100% accurate. This is especially difficult to do when you eat out. By allowing myself to be imperfect in my logging, it eases the burden to track.
Here's what I do now.
1) Take a photo of everything I eat 2) Log right after eating if I feel like it, but usually I log at the end of the day
Sometimes I underestimate. Sometimes I overestimate. I think it washes out in the net. If my logging is really off it will show in my scale and progress pics.
Doing the above has given me lots of visibility into my diet and unlocked optimizations.
Consistency > Accuracy
Yes the first day and last bit suck, especially the first time. But its also ~3-5x more time efficient than most calorie reduction diets and you save time and money.
Magnesium from random supplement I got at target, potassium from no-salt salt alternative.
There's no way that's healthy, especially longer term.
You can look into it if you want but there are a lot of people that think its actively good for you. I'm more in it for the weight loss and take anything else as a bonus.
That's why the first week or two your weight yourself everyday, chart it and note everything you eat. If your weight doesn't change then you can start reducing calorie intake by reducing portions.
Plan sets of meals with known calories and macronutrients, make them all on Sunday and eat them throughout the week. Easiest is obviously eating the same thing every day, but if that's too monotonous, then choose two or three varieties and make them in big batches. Then you're not weighing grams of ingredients for a single meal at a time, you're weighing X times that for X meals at a time.
Also easy to split them up into the right serving size in a container in the fridge, and you don't even have to think about meals, just grab from fridge and pop in microwave or oven to hear.
That gets you 90% of the way without having to micromanage every meal. The odd meal out on weekends is not a big deal as long as you don't go crazy.
And six packs means just no fat over your abs, and actually made in the kitchen as the saying goes.
Six-packs don't indicate 'fitness'.
1) We wanted a six-pack ourselves so in the spirit of solving our own problems we started Consistent 2) Getting a six-pack is a pretty concrete outcome, especially when looking at before and after photos.
That being said, we're also open to folks who want a body transformation!
In a similar vein, the resources to learn how to code are freely available online. Instead of going to a bootcamp, one could learn on their own (and indeed there are bootcamps that put up their whole curriculum online for free, and it's exactly the same as their paid in-person version).
In practice though, it's not so easy. It takes a lot of willpower and discipline to stick with both a weight loss program and learning how to code. Being put in a structured environment, with other people working towards the same goal, and getting personalized coaching when stuck can make the difference for those who have tried in the past to do it on their own.
That's what we provide!