Some brilliant scriptwriting by the masterful Aaron Sorkin.

   

TheyGotFit.com Is Live!

Over the past four months, I’ve been working on a little project called TheyGotFit. Inspired by r/progresspics, TheyGotFit is an online directory of before-and-after photos for people losing/gaining weight and getting fit. You can search “I weigh ____ and want to weigh _____” and see photos of people who’ve undergone the change.

You can also add photos of your progress with the weight, date, and height attached.

TheyGotFit is an exercise in product management, in programming, and in building discipline. Here are the great things that came out of building it:

• I learned and practiced a lot of Ruby on Rails
• I couldn’t be a hypocrite and build a fitness website while sitting on my butt, so I used the project as another motivation to hit the gym
• I designed and built a UI from scratch while obsessing over every element of user experience
• I got to stay with a problem for four months all by myself
• I built the discipline to code consistently at least a few times a week
• I lost 10 pounds working out

I’m now reaching out to initial users, which is very much an exercise in itself. I finished last year with 3 (!) users who were not my friends or in any way connected to me. It was a thrill. Once I hit 20-30 users, where records are showing up no matter what weight you search, I’m going to announce it to all my friends and to some larger online communities.

I hope that TheyGotFit takes off and becomes something, but if 3 users are all I’m lucky to get, it’s still a great exercise, and a fantastic stepping stone to my next project – whatever it may be.

Until then, check it out!