Gyroscope X: Coach
The Future of Human Health
For the last few years, we’ve been working on a new program called X, to rethink human health from the ground up using all the data we’ve measured. While most companies use data for better ad targeting or conversions, we believe it can be used to save lives and directly help our users live a healthier life. As we analyzed more data and spoke to many of our users, it became clear that almost no one is properly managing their health yet or feels in full control of their lives. Wearables and technology are part of the solution, but not enough on their own. People would set ambitious health goals on January 1st with a vision of who they wanted to be, but soon afterwards those would be lost.
Why is more than half of the country overweight, and how do we fix that? How do we make sense of the millions of new data points, which can make people feel more confused about what to do? How do we empower people to understand what is happening in their own body? Why do people care about health for the first week of the year, but then fail to maintain their aspirational habits?
There is a better way, and it is now available to you.
At Gyroscope, we have access to one of the largest repositories of human health and behavior that has ever existed. This let us deeply analyze these issues and work on new solutions to address the root cause of health problems rather than just patching the symptoms.
Every data tracker we’ve built in the last few years has gotten us close towards our goal of fully understanding the human body, identify potential issues, and then guide people to reach optimal health. These range from the mood tracking which adds details about your cortisol, happiness, wellness and other metrics, to sleep analysis, physical and mental recovery, workout and step tracking, meditation tracking in the Apple Watch, and even Places detection. X adds the rest of the missing pieces from the equation, like nutrition, sugar, fasting, caffeine, alcohol and much more.
Statistics aren’t everything, and working one on one with early customers let us fully understand their lives and how to find insights from that data that can have a lasting impact. Even these amazing data-driven insights aren’t enough. Constant motivation and guidance is then needed to incorporate those in people’s lives to achieve behavior change. This is why we decided to incorporate coaching and guidance from a human. For most of our members, this has been the missing key to unlocking the health benefits they’ve always wanted.
If all of these steps—the tracking, the insights and the coaching—are done correctly, then we see dramatic improvements in all the stats, from bodyfat percentages to mood and productivity. This is a complex product with hundreds of moving pieces, so we’ve spent the last few years testing and refining it with beta customers.
It’s unlike any app you’ve used before, combining the best aspects of technology and with knowledgeable humans to fully understand you as a person, and accomplish what neither half could on their own.
Everyone needs a coach
Do you have an athlete you really admire, or a CEO that you look up to? Someone who is the best in the world at their job and very experienced?
I guarantee you they have a coach, or possibly even more than one. This wasn’t just in the early years to get to where they are, but now—to keep growing and stay at the top of their game. Having a coach and spending time learning isn’t a sign of weakness, but strength.
If you aspire to greatness, do you have a coach? If not yet, you should.
However, until now they’ve been prohibitively expensive. Just having a personal trainer at the gym (which is only a fraction of your total life) costs thousands of dollars right now. Even spending that much at your gym would leave you on your own for everything else that is arguably more important—sleep, fasting, eating, working, meditation, prioritization, staying active for the rest of the day, and so much more. Does that mean we should just give up and resign the rest of the country to being obese? Definitely not.
With X, we make it possible to have world class guidance available for a fraction of the cost. The level of guidance and analytics that were previously only possible for Lebron and Fortune 500 CEOs can now be yours as well.
The main way this happens is by using new technology and tracking to streamline most of the cost. In the past, 90% of the work has been in routine tasks like emailing around Excel files of your calories, or talking and asking questions about what you did that day, rather than getting the insights and feedback.
Can we cure our obesity epidemic?
Our lives are generally more safe, luxurious, interesting and lengthy than any previous point in human history. In most ways, technology has dramatically improved our lives. However, every action has an opposite reaction.
Many of these recent advances have also created some brand new health problems, as we take our Uber’s around town, eat our processed foods and binge on the latest TV series. These are all great inventions that we shouldn’t get rid of, but we need a way to incorporate them into our lives without sacrificing our health.
Over half of the people in America are now overweight, with many considered unhealthily obese. This isn’t just an aesthetic or self-esteem issue, but has a dramatic reduction on people’s health, mood, and ultimately lifespan. It has resulted in about 10% of the population having diabetes already, and 84 million more being at the prediabetes stage. Our goal is to prevent this for all our members, first through Gyroscope X—and then for everyone on the app through more automated solutions.
The human body is very complicated. Anyone who says they have a one-line answer to obesity is likely wrong—whether it is reducing calories, walking more, reducing portions, being keto, fasting, or anything else.
Some of these may be some of the tools used in a solution, but none on their own will be sufficient. Without a holistic view, all these efforts may be ineffective. Working out every single day may be a waste of your time if you are just eating donuts afterwards to reward yourself. Even the strictest diet will be useless if you’re also sleep deprived or under constant stress.
Fortunately, we are now able to see the big picture for the first time in human history. This lets you spend your limited time focused on the correct thing that will give you the most health impact each week, and find balance in life.
The best food tracker ever made
If our goal is to cure obesity and help everyone get to their desired bodyfat percentage, nutrition will obviously be a large part of that equation.
Calorie counting is not a scientifically correct solution to this problem, so any apps and technologies built upon that assumption will unfortunately not be effective in the long term.
Even for the few people who spend hours diligently entering in everything with manual tracking, the data is unfortunately not detailed enough to be useful, with most of the details getting lost in the conversion to simple calories.
If calorie counts aren’t enough, what is the information that would be needed to accurately optimize someone’s nutrition?
- What actual food was eaten
- When the food was eaten
- How much sugar you’re eating
- Soda, caffeine and other drinks
- Alcohol intake
- Micronutrients like vitamins and minerals
- Amount of processed foods
- Total fat intake
- Total protein intake and per meal
- How much fiber you’re getting
- Fasting and eating durations
- Your blood sugar over time
- Omega 3/6 ratios
- Total calorie counts
A food tracker that doesn’t capture all of these will likely not provide a full picture of your health or let you identify potential health issues. Since the original idea for Gyroscope was to integrate all the best sources, we waited for years for someone to build our ideal food tracker. Unfortunately that never happened—and the experience here is so critical to successful health—so we’ve done it ourselves.
A picture is worth a thousand words
So what is the best way to track food? Fortunately, most of us already have a thousand dollar food sensor in our pocket. It’s a camera.
Ten years ago, taking a photo of everything you ate would have been almost impossible, or hours of extra work carrying around a bunch of photography gear. Now, it is something almost millions of people already instinctively do.
A few years ago, phone cameras weren’t that great. Now they are outstanding, even in the lowest light. The camera can now be accessed faster than ever, straight from the home screen, to take a photo of something you’re eating in less than 1 or 2 seconds. We’ve built our new food tracking to take advantage of these recent changes. It results in most convenient and passive experience possible, one that will enable you to successfully track every single thing you eat for the rest of your life.
Like the Places tracking (which is used to determine where the food was eaten and add further details), it can be done asynchronously to fit best with your routine. While you’re eating, you can be fully present and then open your phone later (even a day or two later) to then add the photos.
Once the photos are synced, your health team figures out what was in them and adds those details for your account. This adds an order of magnitude more data than has ever been available before.
As anyone who has previously tried food tracking, just having all of this data in your account won’t magically change your body. Rather, it is the first step in a conversation with your coach and a series of insights that are designed to gradually change your life.
Much more than just a diet
Eating healthy is one of the most dramatic changes for people to make, so the coaches usually focus on that for the first few months. Improving your daily nutrients, fasting times and other habits will have exponential effects on your entire life.
Great nutrition is just the starting point for managing your health. After that foundation, you can focus on optimizing other aspects like exercise, sleep, mindfulness, longevity, and much more.
Balancing all of these is a full time job that could keep you busy for the rest of your life—fortunately we are here to help and make it easy. Your roadmap will be custom designed for you based on your goals and your data, and change in realtime based on your progress. The entire experience is tailored as much as possible to your individual needs, and the more things you track and share, the more powerful it becomes.
How much does this cost?
X comes in a monthly membership that is $199/month, and includes everything you need—an Apple Watch, wifi scale, the Gyroscope app, X-Ray food tracker, and time with your coach. Additional discounts are available if you already have the devices and just need the software.
This is a fraction of the cost it would take to try and assemble this experience on your own. A question we get a lot is “Can I afford to spend this much?” but a better question may be “can you afford not to?”
To understand our urgent need for prioritizing health, Warren Buffet (one of the most successful investors ever) gives a simple analogy…
Let’s say that when I turned sixteen, a genie had appeared to me. And that genie said, “Warren, I’m going to give you the car of your choice. It’ll be here tomorrow morning with a big bow tied on it. Brand-new. And it’s all yours!”
Having heard all the genie stories, I would say, “What’s the catch?” And the genie would answer, “There’s only one catch. This is the last car you’re ever going to get in your life. So it’s got to last a lifetime.”
If that had happened, I would have picked out that car. But, can you imagine knowing it had to last a lifetime, what I would do with it? I would read the manual about five times. I would always keep it garaged. If there was the least little dent or scratch, I’d have it fixed right away because I wouldn’t want it rusting. I would baby that car, because it would have to last a lifetime.
That’s exactly the position you are in concerning your mind and body. You only get one mind and one body. And it’s got to last a lifetime. Now, it’s very easy to let them ride for many years. But if you don’t take care of that mind and that body, they’ll be a wreck forty years later, just like the car would be.
It’s what you do right now, today, that determines how your mind and body will operate ten, twenty, and thirty years from now.
This is obviously good advice. Your body is priceless. Yet, it’s likely that you’re spending more money on your car right now than your own health. One of them can be easily repaired or upgraded. If your heart or brain or liver got damaged, it would be nearly impossible to replace. Game over.
Do we take as good enough care of our bodies as we should? Not yet.
Most people are ready to invest more time and energy in their health. Fixing these issues is something they aspire to — otherwise we wouldn’t see all these New Year’s resolutions — but it’s very unclear where that time and money could actually go to have an impact.
A fancier health insurance plan? Probably won’t unless something goes very wrong. Buying the latest wearable? It’s still unclear how that helps directly, though the latest Apple Watch is great. Healthier food from Whole Foods? Fancy gym membership? Many people already spend thousands on these things, but still haven’t gotten the weight loss they desired.
Take the next step in your health journey
The first step is in X is to find your why. The greatest software and coaching in the world won’t have any impact if you’re not motivated to use it, or reluctant to make any of the necessary changes.
Reviewing all of the data that you’ve tracked already can help—especially with tools like the Annual Report to get a high level view of your life.
We’ve found that people who have a clear understanding of why they’re trying to change (like to live long enough to see their children graduate, or to improve their energy and mood to feel fulfilled) are more successful than people who have an incomplete objective like “lose some weight” or “get more muscles”—though those may be important steps along that journey.
Now we have just two simple products to choose from—the digital app ($12.99/month) or Gyroscope X ($199/month).
You can learn more and apply for access here!
If you’re a doctor, nutritionist or coach who has always wanted something like this to exist and would like to be involved, please send us a message.
