We envision a future without diets

BACKGROUND 

Dieting has always been a big topic of conversation in my family. My mum, sister and I have tried so many different diets - from Atkins to 5/2 - even a diet where you eat rice pudding for breakfast, lunch and dinner...!

What they all had in common was the idea that ‘willpower’ was the key to resisting cravings. Of course, we soon realised that willpower IS NOT infinite and when we ran out, the weight returned - along with another diet.

HOW WE STARTED

"I learned about the hunger hormone (ghrelin) and how it was triggered by sugar crashes."

6 years ago while working as an AI Researcher at a health-tech startup and personally experimenting with low carb diets, I noticed that I wasn't feeling hungry all the time anymore. I started digging into sugar levels and I learned about the hunger hormone (ghrelin) and how it was triggered by sugar spikes and crashes.

These low carb diets - including keto - worked well at first but (without burgers or beer) and still having to track all my macros I still felt they were overly restrictive and willpower requiring.

Luckily I came across a paper on Personalised Nutrition that used continuous glucose monitoring sensors to prove that food could have a completely different effect, depending on the person.

I’ve been measuring my sugar levels ever since and I’m still amazed at what causes my levels to spike (I mean cherry tomatoes, seriously!) and what doesn't (Prosecco and Indian curries :))

I found these little insights empowering, but I knew this was just the tip of the iceberg. 

JOURNEY SO FAR

In Spring 2018, as part of the London based incubator Entrepreneur First, and with Iliyan Zarov, I founded myLevels.

We conducted the first trial with 25 people with a simple app that allowed users to view their sugar levels in real time.

Since then we’ve taken 100s of people through our program, while improving the app with new features and helpful tools for our growing community of users.

We’ve helped people totally revamp their views on food and dieting. We’ve also been featured in newspapers like the The Guardian, magazines like Wareable and podcasts like Masters of Scale and Women in AI.

Over the years that followed we ran a total of 6 rounds of beta trials, where we experimented with a variety of cutting-edge sensors and continuously evolved our app. We continued refining and improving myLevels until we were confident it was not just highly effective but also affordable.

So now, in 2024, it's with immense excitement and pride that we share it with you.

MISSION AND VISION

Our vision is to eliminate fad diets through understanding of everyone's unique responses to food.

Our mission is to provide an affordable solution for lasting weight loss that leverages the power of AI to help you make the best choices for your own unique body.

We see myLevels becoming an AI nutritionist in your pocket, automatically recommending and delivering meals to you based on your unique health goals.

AI has been used for many things, but I have a personal vendetta and that is to eliminate yoyo dieting once and for all!

Laura Douglas
myLevels | Founder

OUR TEAM

Multidisciplinary Team

myLevels is a lean startup meaning we are focussed on creating an exciting new product with great user experience over trying to become too big too quickly.