Why I Built My Tummi
At some point you've probably experienced bloating, indigestion, or nausea at the worst possible time - whether that was during a meeting, before an outing with friends, or even in the middle of a meal.
But for the majority of people these issues aren't frequent or severe enough to consult a dietician or doctor.
Throughout my life I've dealt with stomach issues that were annoying but manageable so I never prioritized fixing them.
However, there was one month where my bloating and indigestion became so bad I finally caved. I set out to find the easiest way I could get to the root cause of my stomach problems.
Where the idea came from
Most online resources tell you the best way to identify your food sensitivities is to keep a food/symptom journal and try elimination diets.
I was already logging the meals I ate in my fitness tracker and appreciated how easy their search feature and barcode scanner made it.
I was also using Yuka to see the additive and nutrition scores of products I eat.
I thought to myself, why not create an app that allows me to
- Log my meals with ease
- Track my calories and macros
- Rate products the way I want them to be scored
- Use my journal to find what I might be sensitive to
- Check whether products contain ingredients I’m avoiding
I knew exactly what I wanted to build and spent the next few months doing it.
What changed since the start
Making food logging take seconds
When I was getting feedback from My Tummi's first users, one common complaint was that logging meals wasn’t easy enough.
As someone who has used apps like MyFitnessPal for years scanning barcodes, searching for food, and creating recipes were second nature to me.
But even then, it still takes a decent amount of time and effort.
I decided to add a feature where users can describe their meal or just take a picture of their food.
This means logging a meal takes seconds but our system still breaks down the food into the ingredients and categories we need for our analysis.
Finding your triggers
Another major change since the beginning is how we identify patterns between what you eat and how you feel.
At first, I was using AI (Claude) to identify patterns between the foods a user ate and any symptoms they have.
But anyone who's used AI before knows it can make mistakes, and that its answer can change if you ask the same question twice.
Instead, I created a model that is more structured and understands what food categories cause which symptoms and how long it takes for them to show up.
I won't bore you with the details of the model here but I’ll cover them in a future article.
How My Tummi helped me
As the first user of My Tummi I was essentially the company's guinea pig.
It took a couple of weeks to identify my first triggers (capsaicin and sugar alcohols) but it was worth the time to understand my body.
My Tummi not only identifies potential triggers but sets up experiments to eliminate and then reintroduce those triggers to see if they are actually causing your symptoms.
After running an experiment for each it became clear that both capsaicin and sugar alcohols were causing my bloating and indigestion.
Now, I haven’t cut out spicy food completely as I couldn’t live without it. But knowing it might cause a reaction allows me avoid it when it matters, like before a big meeting
That’s exactly what I set out to do when building My Tummi.
It does take some commitment to log what you eat and how you feel but we made it as easy as possible. Try it out and see what you can discover about your body!
If you have any feedback or questions, we'd love to hear from you!
You can email me directly at arman@mytummi.app