Lee’s Weight Loss Leads to Business Gain

If you’d told me a couple of years ago that I’d end up developing an app, I’d probably have laughed at you.

I’m Lee Shaw, an ordinary bloke from the Black Country, and I certainly don’t come from a technology or software-development background.

This all started because of my own weight.

Like a lot of people, I’d struggled with it for years. Eventually I started using a GLP-1 weight-loss medication, and the results made an enormous difference to my life.

But going through the journey myself made me realise that losing weight with these medications isn’t simply a case of having an injection once a week and forgetting about it.

I wanted to know how my weight was changing, keep track of my weekly injections and injection sites, remember how I’d been feeling, monitor side effects and look back at my progress.

There were lots of little pieces of information that were useful individually, but I wanted somewhere simple where I could keep the whole journey together.

That’s when the idea started.

I remember thinking: why can’t I have something on my phone that does all of this in one place?

I’d never built an app in my life. I didn’t have a team of software developers sitting around a table and I wasn’t some technology entrepreneur with a big budget behind me.

I was just someone who’d been through the experience himself and thought, “I’m going to see if I can do this.”

And that’s what I did.

There was a huge amount to learn. There have been late nights, mistakes, things that didn’t work, things that had to be changed and plenty of moments when I’ve wanted to pull my hair out.

Slowly, though, the idea in my head started turning into something real.

That something became WeightPilot GLP-1 Tracker.

Seeing it running on a phone for the first time was one thing. Seeing something I’d created actually become available on Google Play was something else entirely.

I’m proud of the app, of course, but I’m probably even more proud of what it represents personally.

My life has changed considerably since I started my weight-loss journey. Somewhere along the way, without really planning it, I also discovered that I was capable of doing something I’d never previously imagined myself doing.

I’m still learning every day and I’m still improving WeightPilot.

I’m not pretending to be some Silicon Valley tech genius. I’m still the same bloke from the Black Country.

I just happened to have an idea because of something I’d experienced personally — and instead of leaving it as an idea, I decided to have a go at building it.

If what I’ve learned from my own journey can eventually make somebody else’s GLP-1 journey a little easier to organise, then all those frustrating nights will have been worth it.

My weight-loss journey changed my life.

I certainly didn’t expect it to lead to me becoming an app developer as well.