Hello Product Hunt! I’d like to introduce you to Vikara, a chatbot nutritionist. Vikara is designed to help people learn healthy eating habits and maintain a healthy body weight in the long-term. I’m seeking feedback from early adopters as well as gauging interest from seed investors. Who is Vikara meant to help? Vikara can benefit anyone interested in developing long-term healthy eating habits and maintain a healthy weight without restrictive dieting. Vikara 1.0 can be especially helpful to people who may at times find themselves overeating or occasionally binge eating, or who may have body image issues. Backstory: How did I, an 'enterprise product guy', end up building Vikara? Early last year, I went through a period of high anxiety that made me binge on junk food and caused me to gain weight in a short span of time. Fortunately, the circumstances that triggered my anxiety eventually changed for the better and my symptoms eventually subsided, but that brief binge eating episode was concerning enough for me to research whatever had actually happened to me. I learnt that our emotions, especially strong negative ones like stress, anxiety or sadness, can affect our eating habits, and that ‘emotional eating’ is a real thing (the Germans even have a word for it - ‘kummerspeck’). I learnt the benefits of eating mindfully (a.k.a. ‘Intuitive eating’) by listening to our body’s hunger and satiety cues to prevent overeating. I read how cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is helpful in managing our negative emotions. I even took a Stanford CBT course to learn more. Finally, I learnt that some people may suffer from body image issues, which may cause them to overeat. There’s a wealth of information on all of the above freely available on the web, but I thought it would be useful to capture the essence of it all in an app, delivered via carefully crafted conversations. That led to me designing and building Vikara over 6 months. Future plans: If I get market traction and funding, future versions will include daily/weekly nutrition tips and meal plans. These conversations will be tailored to individual user's dietary preferences. Vikara is completely free and is available on both iOS and Android. I’m eagerly looking forward to hearing any specific feedback that the Product Hunt community has. I’m also interested in hearing about any hurdles you face that prevent you from eating healthy. Please download Vikara and give it a try, and join the conversation!

Pravin Halady

Vikara

Maker

📌

2yr ago

Olga Neudakh

Sequoia

Hi, I like your chatbot. It is easy use it! Do you have doctors in team?

@olga_neudakh not yet. :)

Kornel Grunwald

Tenshii

Hi Pravin, this sounds amazing! i have been fantasising about something similar, but always was kept back by the fact that medical (even if focused on eating) advice is super regulated in majority of geographies. It is amazing to see someone did it - I see your app is available at my geography, so would love to hear how did you manage to overcome regulators approvals issues? I bet it had to be super hard!

@kornel_grunwald Thanks Kornel! Since Vikara is not meant for clinical treatment of eating disorders, I did not have to apply for any regulatory approvals (so far!). Using Vikara as part of treatment protocol would certainly involve regulators, but I'd prefer to stay on nutritional side of things. For example: conversational flows that focus on specific macronutrients, meal plans, etc.

@pravin_h so good to hear, as it definitely allows you to build initial market traction before playing the hard game with regulators. Happy to observe how Vikara will develop!

Vikara

Chatbot nutritionist to help you eat healthy

Chatbot nutritionist to help you eat healthy

Vikara

Chatbot nutritionist to help you eat healthy

Chatbot nutritionist to help you eat healthy

Do you use Vikara?

Do you use Vikara?

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