Tag: weight loss

Inside 1-Year-Old Calibrate’s $100M Raise for ‘Rx + Behavior Change’ Weight Loss

Aug 26, 2021

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Just ONE-year in market, and Calibrate has already closed a $100M Series B co-led by Founders Fund and Tiger Global, with participation from Optum Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Threshold Ventures, and Redesign Health. Why is this virtual care startup getting so much attention (and funding) from so many notable health tech investors? Founder & CEO Isabelle Kenyon is here to introduce us to the telehealth-plus-prescription-drugs business she’s building to help people lose weight.

This is NOT a Noom. Calibrate’s business model is built around a class of $700-$1,300-per month, prescription weight loss drugs called GLP-1s, which it helps its members sort through for both fit AND health insurance coverage (Isabelle says 90% of Calibrate members get the drugs covered by their health plan.) Once the drug is prescribed, the Calibrate member is wrapped in a telehealth-driven, lifestyle intervention program that addresses sleep, eating, exercise, and emotional health to help support the reset of their metabolism. As a result, Calibrate members are losing an average of 14% of their body weight, a significantly better, more sustainable outcome than achieved in clinical research when the drugs were prescribed without support.

There are lots of compelling aspects to the Calibrate story here, and we get through all of them: the 175M-person total addressable market of Americans diagnosed with obesity… the recent FDA-approval of Novo Nordisk’s new GLP-1 drug called Wegovy… and how Calibrate will use its fresh funding to build-out an Enterprise program aimed at meeting the shifting thinking employers, Medicare Advantage plans, and other health insurers have about obesity treatment as “preventative care” against more costly chronic diseases.

What else could this “behavior change + drug” framework – and its unique de-coupled payment model – be applied to? Diabetes, cholesterol, and hypertension sound like they’re all on the table, but how defensible is this? What stops a pharma company from doing this themselves? Isn’t this digital therapeutics?? A VERY interesting discussion about the often-taboo subject of weight loss, pharma, and the disruption of the healthcare delivery system behind both.

Five Weight Loss Myths I am Constantly Fighting

May 13, 2021• 5

By HANS DUVEFELT

1) EXERCISE MORE

I talk to people almost every day who think they can lose weight by exercising. I tell them that is impossible. I explain that it takes almost an hour of brisk walking to burn 100 calories, which equals one apple or a ten second binge on junk food. To lose a pound a week, you need to reduce your calorie intake by about 500 per day – that would be the equivalent of five hours of moderate exercise every day. We’d have to quit our jobs to do that.

2) EAT MORE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

The other fallacy I hear all the time is that, somehow, adding “healthy” fruits and vegetables can make a person lose weight. I tell them that adding anything to their daily calorie intake will have the opposite effect. I more or less patiently explain that our job is to figure out what to take away instead of what to add. Maybe substituting a fruit for a Whoopie pie is healthy in other ways, but it has almost nothing to do with weight loss.

3) EAT BREAKFAST

A third fallacy is that eating a healthy breakfast will ensure weight loss. To explore this one, I ask: “Are you often hungry?”

So many of my overweight patients deny ever feeling hungry – that gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach and the low blood sugar onfusion and weakness I feel by 9 or 10 am after doing barn chores on an empty stomach (only coffee).

When I hear “I never feel hungry”, I don’t recommend starting a good breakfast habit because that would likely increase a person’s daily calorie intake. But when I hear that a breakfast skipper goes for the doughnuts mid morning due to hunger, I certainly recommend eating breakfast. When I do, I always point out that the typical American cereal and banana breakfast, along with soft drinks, is actually the major reason for our obesity and diabetes epidemics.

Consumer Weight Loss Platform Noom Heads for Digital Health | Saeju Jeong, CEO, Noom

Jan 29, 2020

By JESSICA DAMASSA

Popular weight management app Noom is officially stepping into the world of digital health and digital therapeutics. CEO & co-founder, Saeju Jeong, shares some of the impressive stats that the behavior change platform has been able to help users achieve — including an average 7.5% reduction in body weight in 6 months. With more than 1 million (!) users around the world already, Noom is expanding globally and is venturing further into the healthcare space as a result of their successful pilot with Novo-Nordisk, which saw Noom as a ‘wrap around’ support to the drug company’s diabetes medication. On tap next, Saeju tells us he’s headed further into diabetes management, hypertension, kidney failure, and various cardiac conditions.

Filmed at Frontiers Health in Berlin, Germany, November 2019.

65 Million People Lost Weight With MyFitnessPal?

Nov 13, 2014• 13

Vik Khanna

65 million people lost weight with MyFitnessPal. Really?

Now, let’s see, according to Gallup, 18% of American adults are at their ideal weight, so we’ll assume they don’t want to lose weight.

That means 82% of American adults or about 198 million people might want lose weight. Thus, based on My Fitness Pal’s headline boast, their market penetration is nearly a third of the adults who need to lose weight, which is just boffo if you are a potential advertiser.

Or, is it? Observe, my dear Watson, as we play 20 questions with My Fitness Pal:

How many of these people were repeat customers?
How often did they come back?
At what time intervals?
When they came back, how much weight had they (re) gained?
How much weight did the average user lose?Continue reading…

Obesity: Global Public Health Challenge or Investment Opportunity?

Aug 3, 2012• 5

By Marion Nestle

Worried about the potential personal and economic costs of obesity? Never mind. It’s time to view obesity as a business opportunity.

As the press release for a new research report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Globesity—The Global Fight Against Obesity, points out:

“Increasing efforts to tackle obesity over the coming decades will form an important new investment theme for fund managers…Global obesity is a mega-investment theme for the next 25 years and beyond…The report…identifies that efforts to reduce obesity is a “megatrend” with a shelf-life of 25 to 50 years…BofA Merrill Lynch analysts across several sectors have collaborated to identify the sectors and companies developing long-term solutions.”

Given the worldwide increase in obesity, its high prospective costs, and the ever-present threat of government regulation, the report identifies more than 50 global stocks that provide investment opportunities for fighting “globesity.” These fall into four categories:

Pharmaceuticals and Health Care: companies taking advantage of the FDA’s increased support for obesity drug development; tackling related medical conditions and needs including diabetes, kidney failure, hip and knee implants; making equipment such as patient lifts, bigger beds and wider ambulance doors.
Food: companies accessing the $663 billion “health and wellness” market and reformulating portfolios to respond to increasing pressure such as “fat taxes” to reduce sugar and fat levels.

Shame

May 16, 2012• 39

By Rob Lamberts, MD

I saw a gentleman in my office recently. He was having severe pain radiating from his lower back, down to his calf.

I was about to describe my plan to him when he interrupted me saying, “I know, Doc, I am overweight. I know that this would just get better if I lost the weight.” He hung his head down as he spoke and fought off tears.

He was clearly morbidly obese, so in one sense he was right on; his health would be much better if he would lose the pounds. On the other hand, I don’t know of any studies that say obesity is a risk factor to ruptured vertebral discs. Besides, he was in significant pain, and a lecture about his weight was not in my agenda. I wanted to make sure he did not need surgery, and make him stop hurting.

This whole episode really bothered me. He was so used to being lectured about his obesity that he wanted to get to the guilt trip before I brought it to him. He was living in shame. Everything was due to his obesity, and his obesity was due to his lack of self-control and poor character. After all, losing weight is as simple as exercise and dietary restraint, right?

Perhaps I am too easy on people, but I don’t like to lecture people on things they already know. I don’t like to say the obvious: “You need to lose weight.” Obese people are rarely under the impression that it is perfectly fine that they are overweight. They rarely are surprised to hear a person saying that their weight is at the root of many of their problems. Obese people are the new pariahs in our culture; it used to be smokers, but now it is the overweight.