The challenge was based the diet from Tim Ferriss’s book, The Four Hour Body. The primary habit in the diet is to eat a Slow Carb Diet (SCD). That habit is augmented with eating protein as soon as you wake up, moderate exercise, and taking cold showers. We’re almost ready to post the the hard data, but we also loved the stories.

We’ve collected the best success stories below:

Give up sugar

By far the most difficult part for me was giving up sugar… I have always said I was a sugar/food addict but had no idea how serious a problem it was. Prior to SCD I don’t think I ever went a single day without sugar. The first few days were most difficult, without exaggeration I thought about sugar more than 300 times a day gradually getting better each day. 3 weeks in I only think about sugar about 40 times a day now. I still crave something sweet but it is getting easier to say no to myself. I believe my entire relationship with sugar has been permanently altered. For example, I’m able to be satisfied with considerably less sugar on cheat days. Previously, I would not consider drinking coffee with less than 4 sugars, now using just 1 is plenty sweet. ~ Stephanie, 14lbs lost.

Restarting.

Starting on March 11th, I used the 4HB diet to lose 40 pounds, however I fell off the diet wagon and needed motivation to get back on. After several failed attempts at getting back on the diet, this challenge was exactly what I needed. In four weeks, there were may times where I had opportunities to fail but the collective motivation really did help to keep me going. This was the single best motivation I’ve had for dieting. ~ Carmen, 10lbs lost.

One Year of Weight Loss

Actually lost more fat weight than this, as I also gained muscle mass during. Love the 4HB. Tim’s diet has me down almost 40 lbs from a year ago. ~ Spence, 7.5lbs lost.

Don’t cheat yourself.

Sticking to the plan exactly – details matter! It’s easy to “cut yourself some slack” when you do these things – but, of course -you’re just cheating yourself… ~ Don, 15lbs lost.

Motivation through tracking

Well, one of the things that made me follow the diet is the Lift app of course. I basically exercise, follow the diet and take cold showers so I can log the progress. I’m a geek, so techy stuff motivates me. I have read a lot of articles about creating habits as a behaviour changer. But the apps out there for habit modification/creation take TOO MUCH time out my day. Thankfully, Lift is simple enough and is always evolving. ~ Vanessa, 8.4lbs lost.

Scary results.

Had amazing results… scared my dietitian. ~ Joshua, 10.7lbs lost.

Tasty.

When I first started the 4 hour Body, I wasnt sure if I could handle it. The first week was the most intense but after seeing how I lost 5lbs that week, I was pumped up to continue and see how it would all go. 

I took cold showers every morning, 30g protein within 30minutes, took cold showers even before bed and ate at least 3-4meals everyday. This has been an overall amazing experience for me and I love it. The foods are the best part: chicken, steak, eggs, spinach, broccoli beans. All the foods that I love. I use to have a sweet tooth for candy, sugar, chocolate and all that. But I made a sacrifice in my life for the better and it has been the best experience by far. ~ Tara, 28lbs lost.

Wife and husband.

Lost all my weight on SCD. I am 5’2” and started at 247 lbs on April 18, 2011. On September 1, 2012 I reached my ultimate goal of 115 lbs. Currently, I am still doing the slow carb lifestyle and still lose weight even if I don’t wanna. I weighed in last week at 112.4 lbs and my lowest weight was 111.8 lbs. I’m at about 21% body fat and when I started I was probably well over 50%. I’m filipino, stay-at-home-mom of two kids and my husband has also lost 57 lbs on the Slow Carb Diet….we’re still going! ~ Maria, 135lbs lost over 18 months.

Staying on the wagon.

This is the second time I’ve done 4HB. The first time I lost 30 lbs in 10 weeks. I had fallen off the wagon for a while and gained a little back. Having Lift inspired me. I took off the weight I put back on, and then a more. ~ Jenn, 9.6lbs lost.

Family affair.

I lost 34 (and counting), my dad lost 28 and is below 200 for the first time in 15 years, and my sister who has been heavy her whole life started SCD 2 weeks ago and is seeing results. ~ Matthew, 34lbs lost.

Positive health reversal.

7 weeks ago I was diagnosed with fatty liver disease, high cholesterol, under performing thyroid, and very high levels of iron in my system. The specialist told me to change my diet and come back in six weeks to see if I needed a biopsy on my liver. I went 4HB hard, PAGG supps, no eggs, and the best green tea from Japan with milk thistle once a day. 6 weeks later, 14 lbs lighter, all tests are clear. Doctors are astounded. I’ve got the blood tests to prove it. 4HB diet sorted me out in six weeks. Doctors never seen it before. ~ Carter, 14lbs lost.

Two year mark.

I’ve been using Slow Carb Diet to lose nearly 100 lbs in the last 2 years. I started at 376 in early 2011, and now am about to be in the 280s. ~ Jack, 15.4lbs lost.

Getting past the plateau.

At the time I started this particular challenge, I had been half-assing the Slow Carb Diet. After losing 100 lbs, I had been on this plateau for 8 months. This challenge, along with adding some personal exercise goals in the Lift app has restarted my losing. Down 110 now (with 110 to go). ~ John, 10lbs lost (110 total).

More abs.

I’m vegan, so I ate tons of lentils and beans for protein. I didn’t measure body fat at the beginning (I wish I did though) and I started the diet a week before the Lift Experiment began. Lost @8 lbs and I can see my upper ab’s for the first time in years! Gonna keep it going for two more weeks. ~ Nate, 8lbs lost.

New clothes.

The diet works, I’m down 1 pant size, 4 inches off my belly, 2 shirt/neck sizes, need a belt for all my pants now. I will stick this out and I have another 80 lbs to lose for my goal weight. ~ Steve, 23.5lbs lost.

This post is to catch you up.

Launch

We’re going to launch an iPhone app in August—a simple, positive way to achieve any goal.

In our beta group, the Lift app has worked for health, fitness, productivity, happiness, and relationships. That’s a lot of good things, but there’s also a lot more work to be done.

We think our first version will work for many users, but that we’ll spend a lifetime improving Lift so that it will work for everyone.

Team

We’re a four person startup and if you’re a fan of startups, want to work at Lift or just want to know more about who we are, then you should read our Work At Lift post.

Mission

We’re all driven by the idea that we can make a giant impact on human potential through positive support. I’m going to go bold for a bit before coming back to the pragmatic.

We want to eliminate willpower as a factor in achieving goals. Imagine smooth, fun, optimized, self-reinforcing paths for every aspiration. That would qualify as a giant impact on human potential. We think we can turn chores into positive draws.

We’ll get there. Eventually. Step one is to make positive support loops generally available. A little bit of tracking of your goals paired with a little bit of positive support has gone a long way with many of our early testers and that approach is already working across hundreds of different goals.

Many Steps Lead to Big Wins

People make progress toward goals by either having major epiphanies (Eureka! moments) or through incremental improvements. We’re in the incremental camp because that’s how we experience sports, music, business, education and even our relationships with friends and family.

The Power of Habits

Success often feels like it comes down to a battle with your own willpower. That’s no fun. Thankfully there are researchers like BJ Fogg, at Stanford, who break goals into tiny habits that are so small that you can’t help but get momentum. There are articles like this NY Times piece on Decision Fatigue, that explain how to work around the finite capacity of our willpower. There are books like The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, which go into great depth about the success that comes by focusing on creating new habits. 

This growing knowledge about how to apply decades of psychology research in simple ways is what allowed us to build Lift. When you set a goal, think about what habits will support it.

Tracking = Mindfulness

Proponents of habit design often work as if they have complete control of your environment. But they don’t. The secret defense for the chaos in your life is to develop mindfulness, or as one of our most successful friends says, “the ability to pay attention.” The universal tool for developing mindfulness is tracking. You could use a piece of paper, or, in August, you could use Lift.

Lift is a habit tracking tool, which has some pros and some cons. Mindfulness is one of the biggest pros.

Screenshot

Here’s a screenshot from the version of Lift that I have on my phone.

Feedback Loops

Lift offers two feedback loops: visualized progress and support from a community of people with similar goals.

When our beta testers report success they describe seeing their progress and wanting to beat it, seeing what other people are doing and feeling inspiration and accountability, and feeling great when they get recognition from other people. 

Beyond Gamification

The feedback loops above evolved from an idea we had to gamify your life, which is a friendly way of making you as addicted to living a good life as you might be to playing video games or slot machines. We ended up dropping any semblance of gaming because we found the above feedback loops just as powerful and much more flexible. The core idea is the same though, to give some positive support to your goals. We talked more about moving beyond gamification in this AllThingsD article. 

Quantified Self: Less Is More

We’ve also been influenced by a global movement of self-trackers who call their community Quantified Self (there is is probably a monthly meetup near you). People in this movement are inventing new tools to track and analyze every part of their life.

Our goal was to put together a simple tool that would work reliably for all goals, so we had to hone in on the most powerful data to track: consistency. 

Consistency is what pushes people toward making new habits. Here’s one of our beta testers inching toward hitting Inbox Zero (completely emptying your email inbox):

Any Goal, In Practice

We’re serious about supporting all of your goals, although, in practice, people tend to have a lot of similar goals. Yesterday, 2 out of 5 Lift users tracked their flossing (including me). That’s an example of a supposedly trivial, fundamental habit that everyone’s been told to pick up and that most people will say they wish they did. But flossing has never had proper support (just bi-annual guilt from your dentist). 

Exercise habits are less trivial and we see a lot of activity in “Exercise” and “Go to gym.” These habits are also getting more social support. You’re much more likely to get props for having an awesome gym trip then you are for another day of flossing.

The hardest habit in the community is “Don’t eat sweets.” The most interesting (to us) is “Talk to at least one stranger.” There are a lot of great stories in that one.

Getting to know each other

Thank you for reading all of that. Now that we’ve broken our radio silence, we’ll be posting more to this blog and to our twitter. Make sure to follow us.

We’d also like to hear more about you. If you have time, would you mind filling out this quick survey (this is also the place to go if we didn’t answer all of your questions)?

To our future selves!

Tony & the Lift Team