How Rise Connects Users With Diet Coaches To Help Them Eat Healthier

Over the past year, I’ve been taking a photo of more or less every meal that I’ve eaten. But I’m not sending those photos to Instagram or Facebook — instead, I’m uploading them to a diet app called Rise, which has helped me to eat better and lose weight.

Rise works by connecting its users with diet coaches who take a look at their client’s meals and offer feedback. That feedback ranges from telling you “Good job!” to making suggestions about what you can do better. In my case, a lot of what my diet coach wrote back fell under that latter category — i.e., telling me I need to eat more greens, less starchy vegetables, and to scratch fried foods and desserts from my diet.

It’s one part education and one part accountability, as coaches first help users understand what they’re doing wrong, and how they can make meaningful changes over time.

Rise founder Suneel Gupta created the app in part based on his own family’s experience dealing with diet and weight loss when he was a kid. (Disclosure: Suneel is the husband of my former colleague Leena Rao, who first introduced me to the app.) His parents were struggling with eating healthy, and ended up finally finding a dietitian that would work with building a plan around their South Asian diet.

With the app, Rise is seeking to bring the same amount of personalized instruction to users at a fraction of what it would cost for them to hire a diet coach on their own. Not only that, but they’re connecting with their coaches every day, as opposed to following up once a week.

For diet coaches, the platform enables them to serve multiple clients at a time in their spare time, as opposed to just a few each day. My coach, Jo, was working in a hospital providing diet advice before joining Rise. Now she’s able to help dozens of clients improve their daily eating habits.

Of course, it’s still up to the user to actually implement the changes. After gaining back some weight, I’m back on track… Although Jo still isn’t thrilled with my Sunday dinner of a cheeseburger and fries.

Check out the video above to learn more.