“I don’t want a bunch of skinny blondes with big boobs”

In 2021 I gained over 20 pounds and was prediabetic.I observed my mom and grandma struggle with diabetes and weight. Out of sheer fear I started strength training, yoga and indoor biking on Peloton. I also started eating salads for lunch everyday. I lost over 25 pounds in a year and a half and have kept it off. My journey continues to be really hard. And I literally study how people build healthy habits for a living. I shudder to think about the solutions out there to help you “eat better!”, “lose weight!” and “exercise more!”. They suck. No, I don't want to log everything I eat all the time. No, I don’t want to take a 30 minute fitness class with a supermodel I’ll never look like. Stop telling me to “just breathe”. I decided to test some new ideas. I focused on a simple question – how do we get 45-55 year old women to lift weights everyday? Yes this is weirdly specific. But menopause causes bone loss and lifting weights combats it. Less than 20% do the recommended amount so it felt like an important enough problem (I also need a solution in 20 years so yea, thinking ahead). I found that some ideas may be worth trying, and some may not (details in the paper). But mostly I opined that we need to design fitness apps better.