Fitho: Fighting obesity and helping people lose weight online!

Urban India is getting fat. A sedentary lifestyle, a junk food culture and lack of exercise are all combing to create a dangerous cocktail which is making more and more people obese. Not only is obesity unpleasing aesthetically, it also brings with it a host of ailments like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. One company that’s battling the obesity menace is Fitho – an online weight loss diet plan service. We talked to Prachi Agarwal, the CEO and co-founder of the company and the author of Losing It: Make Weight Loss Simple on how they’re fighting the good battle against obesity. Excerpts from the interview:

Please tell us a little about yourself. How did you get into the fitness industry? Were you always a fitness enthusiast?

My family is from Srinagar, Uttarakhand. So, that’s where I spent my early childhood. I went to Welham Girls School, Dehradun. After graduating from there, I did BA(Hons) Psychology from IP College, Delhi University. After that I did my Masters in Communication and Marketing and followed it up with a leadership program at IIM, Ahmedabad. I have always been very active in sports and athletics through school & college years and even played basketball at the national level and athletics at the district level.  As a result, I’ve always been a fitness enthusiast.

How did Fitho start?

Being fit all my life, I realized that being fit is not as difficult as it is made out to be. Further, I see a lot of people around who try very hard to get fit, but due to inaccurate information being propagated, their efforts are spent in the wrong direction, and they don’t get results, which sadly makes them think that being fit is difficult. This inspired me start Fitho, which helps people get fit, by providing easy-to-follow & realistic diet plans.

 How does Fitho diet plan work?

As dieting is different for everyone, we have designed a programme that is as individual as you are. Based on your personal information about your health history, lifestyle, food habits, cuisine preference we provide people with personalised diet plans, support and tools to get them there. The Fitho diet consists of three balanced meals with two optional snacks. We don’t follow a high fibre, low carb or high protein diet. All the nutrients have been balanced as per individual daily dietary allowance. For example, you can eat chapatti & rice on our diet which is missing from most of the diets. It’s not about the quantity but the quality of food that helps not only to lose weight but keep it off for longer. To accelerate the fat burning we also have exercises along with the diet. (Weight loss tips by expert dieticians)

In a recent survey, Fitho claimed one out of two urban Indians is fat? What do you think is the reason for that?

When we studied the data it showed that people who were obese did not exercise at all and indulged in unhealthy snacking. (One out of two urban Indians are obese!)

How many people does Fitho help? How do you analyse the success of a plan?

So far we have had 45,000 people on our diet plan. We have a weight loss tracker built in our diet plan that helps us measure individual progress and a mandatory weigh-in every week to get an update of every individual on our weight loss diet.

You also have written a book Losing it: Make Weight Loss Simple. Could you tell us more about it?

There is a lot of information floating around about weight loss. It’s hard for people to know what is effective and healthy. This book presents to you, the most important guidelines, tips and advice to follow when you want to lose weight, along with clarifying concepts, myths and more. For example, a lot of people think that mango makes you gain weight or that to lose weight you need to avoid carbs at night. But that’s not exactly the case. This book helps bust many such myths. It also addresses points that most of us never think about, but which play an important role in our lives, like how our social structure hinders or helps our weight loss process.

What’s next for Fitho?

Currently we are working on our mobile application and hoping to launch it soon.

If you want to check out Fitho’s diet plan, check out their website. 

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