We are all set to revolutionise the weight loss industry

About 4 years ago, my previous venture, MEND, went under. It was the world’s largest and most well researched weight loss intervention for children. It had a published Randomised Control Trial, numerous published papers and was covered multiple times by every newspaper and broadcaster in UK. At its peak, it ran in over 350 locations and by 2010, more than 10,000 families had benefited from this free programme. Unfortunately, it could not survive the NHS UK’s transition from PCTs to GP consortia. The good news is that MEND still exists as part of a charity and continues to help people.

There are very few things you can do in the world that are as rewarding as helping someone lose weight. It makes a big impact on the person and, due to the scale of the problem, on society at large. I will never forget one of our participants who had lost weight on the programme. He was a changed person: a 13 year old who had self esteem issues pre-MEND, was standing on stage in front of 150 people and cracking jokes while he spoke. Hearing his story, I do not think there was a single dry eye that evening. Then there was the story of a girl who had gone on to become the captain of her school football team. And many, many, many more life changing experiences.

MEND was scientific, MEND was thorough. We even ran a one day training programme on “How to talk about weight”! I attended the training once and participated in a role playing exercise. A mom and daughter had just seen the doctor who told them the child’s asthma was better. She would benefit from losing weight and the nurse would explain further. I was the “nurse”. I started by saying how wonderful that her asthma was under control and we can now do things to make it even better. I then said that based on her BMI, she would be classified as obese. Before I could saying anything further, the “daughter” started crying, the “mom” started consoling her, and nothing I said made any difference. Our trainer (who was the psychologist behind MEND) then explained that I should have sent the child out and spoken only to the mom.

In this case, I had jeopardised the possibility that they would do something about their weight. If their doctor’s clinic could not help them, who could? If this happened in real life, that would be one child I would have missed an opportunity to change. I always knew psychology is important to help people lose weight but the above experience brought it to life.

Post MEND, I decided I still wanted to help people lose weight healthily and as sustain-ably as possible. To begin with, it would be for adults in India.

I spent the next few months reading every published paper on obesity. I looked at other weight loss programmes. I collaborated with dietitians and psychologists I knew from my MEND days. I got permission from nhs.uk to use their content on our website. I worked closely with copywriters who knew about behaviour change. I also had the good fortune of meeting Saumya Singh, a M.Phil from NIMHANS, a Fulbright scholar and Masters in Health Sciences from Johns Hopkins, USA. With her, I had the right mix of raw intellect, understanding of the Indian mindset and the research rigour instilled by two world class institutes. My sister, Dr. Priyanki Pareek, a Psychiatrist in the US specialising in Obesity, provided invaluable support. We spent our own money developing the intervention and raised some more from friends.

Thus were born the two elements of slim.in: a website that is free and a complete intervention in itself. And an offline, group-based intervention that will be run by slim.in trained psychologists.

Our web intervention is now online. It personalises the user’s allowance based on their height, weight, age and gender. We do not limit the intake of fruits, vegetables and low fat milk/yogurt (curd). Everything else is tracked against our database of 15,000 Indian recipes and 150,000 brands/restaurant menu items. Slim.in uses psychology based tools to help inculcate 14 behaviours that are proven to help lose weight, and keep it off for ever. In addition, our 450+ articles cover everything to know about solving common problems faced when trying to lose weight, healthy eating and physical activity.

From end September, we will start running free taster Slim.in sessions in Visakhapatnam. Filled with information and insights, the sessions will demonstrate, in brief, how lifestyle and behaviour changes can give sustainable results. Gradually, we want to cover the larger cities in India and plan to be in quite of few of them in the next 6 - 12 months. Our long term vision is to be a global, culture-aware, research driven, psychology based weight loss intervention.

I am an introvert. I do not talk much except with people I am close to (I hated the networking sessions at business school). But when I speak about losing weight (and don’t even get me started on food companies), I have been told that I don’t shut up.

Today I will let slim.in do the talking.