CHatting About Kahani

00:00:00 Georgie: I was playing around with the app on my phone this morning.

00:00:03 Mehek: We're so excited to get into it with you.

00:00:05 Georgie: Oh, neat. where shall we start? Do you want to, tell me about where this originated. This whole idea of the app. You don't roll out of bed one morning and be like, I'm going to spend thousands of hours working on this particular thing.

00:00:18 Mehek: Yes, absolutely. I'm happy to do that. Elena and I were brainstorming a little bit yesterday, and, it'd be great to sort of give you a little bit of a rundown of, who I am and why Brandon and I are building this app. but then Elena and I have just gotten really, really close over the past seven, eight months, actually, over a year. I think at this point, and she was a part of our very first iteration, our second iteration. And so been a lot of our, you know, creative director and strategy. And I think her story is really worth, others hearing just because, she's putting a lot of work to come to where she's at now, and it's been a real privilege to be able to support her in this phase of recovery. So, um, I think it could be maybe potentially interesting for your listeners. And she's written a lot about her journey as well.

00:01:03 Georgie: Cool. Elena, How did you guys cross paths, and how did you get involved with this project?

00:01:09 Elena: Yeah. So one of the beauties of social media is, that you, you know, just come across folks. And so I saw Mahek post on LinkedIn, and we have kind of some overlapping circles. I'm in, the MBA program at Berkeley, graduating in May. And Mahek graduated from Stanford's program last year. so I saw we had some mutual connects, and I think that she was asking for beta users. I reached out to a friend of mine that was connected with her already And then we just started chatting from there.

00:01:43 Georgie: Very cool, very cool. So how would you describe, where are you at now in your relationship, with food and eating? Sometimes people think it's binary, like you have a disorder and then you don't. And that is absolutely not how it works.

00:01:58 Elena: yeah. I resonate a lot with, your message of how it's not binary. I was listening to podcasts yesterday, and, it was your last episode that you did where you really emphasized that for me. I have been in and out of of moments of recovery. Relapse. In the past year and a half, I went through separation and divorce, and I think that eating disorder is a coping mechanism, and so it can come back in different phases of life. in the past six to eight months, I've done a lot of, looking at internally what was going on there. I, started working with a different therapist. we integrated some ifs work, more somatic work, that I had just touched on before, and it kind of just clicked things for me in a different way. I think also, as you get older and you've been doing this run around a lot, not to say that it ever goes away, like you said, but I think it evolves differently. And for me at least, my recovery has matured. and, I can kind of see that in the tone of voice, that I hear internally.

00:03:19 Georgie: That's really cool. So, so you've done a lot of different work over the years, as you said, you've seen different counselors. You've done ifs, for anyone who's not familiar with that, IFS is internal family systems, and it has nothing to do with your family. It actually involves all the different sides to our own personality, which coexist within us. So we can feel like, well, there's a part of me that really would do anything to, let's say, be thinner. And there's also a part of me that doesn't want to give up all the pleasure in my life. And so these two parts sometimes are in conflict. And so it's it's a unique perspective on how to understand sometimes the, the internal conflicts that we have. And the goal of IFS is to be able to get all of our internal sides, all the pieces of us, to be able to coexist and help us, you know, live a life that matches the the values that we have in the direction we want for ourselves. So I'm glad that you have been exploring that and benefiting from it. I know a lot of people really have, I think it can help us see that none of our parts are bad, right? As Dick Schwartz says, like, there's no bad parts, there's just parts of you that are trying to protect you. And sometimes, you know, coping with adversity like a separation. The part of us that is like we we don't want to become undesirable might lead us to clamp down more on food. So, that is a great asset for a lot of people to look into. There's books and counselors who specialize in working one on one with people. they also call it parts work. So if you're looking for a practitioner, you can ask if somebody does parts work or is familiar with it. and then you also said that you've been using some more somatic stuff. usually we think of psychology or therapists as headshrinkers. You know, helping us deal with our thoughts and emotions, but there's actually so much involvement from our entire bodies. And so especially people with eating disorders can be very separated from our bodies, where we're not even paying attention to the signals or sensations anymore. And so Somatics work often includes trying to reconnect. And when we feel a particular emotion, how does that show up in our physiology? so yeah, it's a great example that you've given of how all of these different modalities, even if they sound like they're vastly different, they all can build together to support us in developing, a healthy, resilient ability to deal with all the blows that life dishes up. So how have you found, Kahani, the app, that we're talking about today that Mehek is developing. How are you finding that Kahani is helped you along this journey?

00:05:48 Elena: I really do feel like Kahani was what I need now and then. Also, like I imagine if I had had it ten years ago, twelve years ago, when I was first learning about, what true mind body connection was, it would have been a game changer. because I was stretching my mind and, benefiting so much from my therapy sessions, my nutrition sessions, group therapy. And then I'd go home right away and maybe I'm overwhelmed from all of the information that I just took in, and I don't even know what's happening before I have food in my mouth. And it's a complete antithesis to everything that I just learned. But if I had someone, if I had something right next to me where I'm like, This is the moment I'm feeling. All of these emotions. I'm feeling these urges. I feel that that real time support has been a game changer for me. I also find that in my therapy, I mask a lot. I want to be a good patient, and I want to seem like, I'm vulnerable, but not too vulnerable. Messy but not too messy. And I can't let even my practitioners see the ugliest parts of me. And so knowing that Hani is, not someone that I'm going to have to face, it allows me to put my guard down more, but it is still such a human voice, um, that I haven't found otherwise.

00:07:26 Georgie: Yeah, there's some advantages. I've chatted with AI tools and there are obviously some limitations that it can't provide that a human can provide. But some of the advantages that it has is unlike a human practitioner, it's not showing up after, having an argument with their spouse, and it's not bringing its own baggage. And it's really one hundred percent there to listen. AI tools have this endless creativity and ability to reframe things. And when I checked out the app and I did some of the the chats with Hani and, you know, I said things to it that a lot of my clients have said to me, and one of the things I really liked about it was that it asks the hard questions.

00:08:07 Elena: Yeah.

00:08:07 Georgie: And I think as a, as a human, sometimes we're hesitant to do that. You know, we can recognize this person in front of me as, delicate or in a sensitive place right now, or I'm not sure they trust me yet. So I don't want to like really launch one at them. And it's nice to have the AI companion to ask you these hard questions and also to have all the time you need to sit there and go, what do I usually do in that spot and not be like, tick, tick tick tick tick tick tick. You know, there's only so many minutes left in this session. Like you can really sit there and take your time with it. So yeah, that's really interesting.

00:08:43 Elena: Also, what feels different about Kahani than any other AI therapy or talking to ChatGPT about how you're feeling about food and body, the version that, is coming out now is so personalized, there's times when I go into my activities and you know, you check in first how you're feeling. So if I'm having a low day, I'll say I'm not feeling great. And then one of the activities will be like lay your nod pod, which is like a weighted blanket on your chest for five minutes. I'm like, did I tell you I have a nod pod? I didn't even remember telling you that. And and it'll say you know, do this thing that I just learned with my therapist days ago and it feels like it really knows me and it knows the day to day and so the activities for me, I feel like I'm sending mehek screenshots every single day and I'm like, yes, Golden. Amazing. Wow. Like, I'm genuinely so impressed with, the level of accuracy and match to what I truly need. Because I feel like I'm a hard puzzle to crack. It feels like just gives me a lot of options, so I love that about it. and then also it is so specialized in, in eating disorder vernacular and even the quasi recovery that like middle space where we don't know how to admit that, we still have hard days, after ten years, after fifteen years and, and might fall back into, maladaptive patterns. Recovery through Kahani has been, so much more authentic for me.

00:10:21 Georgie: That's awesome. That is really, really wonderful. So anybody who's listening to this that is not familiar with Kahani is going, what does this app do? Like what is this thing? So, Elena, you've been using it for a while, so you open it and you said the first thing you do is check in.

00:10:37 Elena: Yeah.

00:10:37 Georgie: What does that look like?

00:10:38 Elena: Yeah. And I'll just kind of I'll pull it up for me to kind of Oh, right now wants me to continue my reflection from yesterday.

00:10:47 Georgie: Yeah. It's like you're not off the hook. I think when I opened it, it sort of gives you a multiple choice answers, not like four, but eight or ten. Like, what sort of topics are on your mind? Is it work, school, personal projects, relationships, etc. and so you can pick one or more of those topics that's on your mind right now. And then I think the second question it asks is how is that affecting you? Or what is your emotional state about these? Because, you know, I could say my school is on my mind and I'm feeling really pumped. Or I could say my school is on my mind and I'm feeling really overwhelmed. And so obviously that's going to steer what it directs me to do after that. Now, Hani and I don't have a long standing relationship where it knows me and knows what, Exercises or practices or suggestions to make to me. So I'm sort of curious, as someone who does know better, does it give you the same thing over and over? Because so many of us have repeating situations like work is stressful. I can imagine all of my clients like clicking the same sequence every day. do you find that it's giving you fresh ideas?

00:11:53 Elena: Yeah, it's it's definitely giving me fresh ideas. It's also speaking to me like a friend would be like last week you brought this to the table. Maybe, like, we're seeing this as a pattern. but it's not regurgitating the same counsel, I guess.

00:12:14 Mehek: yeah, I would love to jump in, actually, because, So Georgie, what you're mentioning is the version on the App Store and Play Store right now that anyone can can download. It's, open to anyone. But it is a lot more generic in the sense that there are lots of onboarding questions. There are lots of options, as you saw. we've actually moved away from that version for a number of reasons. And one of them was cognitive load. Sometimes you just have no idea what's going on in your mind, why you're feeling a certain emotion, and the effort it would take to even get to a starting spot, to then be able to be provided some reprieve or an opportunity to process those emotions was a big bottleneck. And so we actually saw people download this version and just not want to continue with it, because it was way too much. So and this was actually a big learning that Elena helped shape was when we got our new version that's about to be actually, it's in private beta right now, so anyone is open to using it. They just have to email me or text, okay. Um, and we'll give you private access. But the way that this version works and the way that it gets to know you and really understands the personalization is the very first thing we do is a ninety minute onboarding session. And maybe Elena can share how she felt about this as well. but this ninety minute onboarding session is a really beautiful journey into a person's lived experience where they came from, what they bring to the table, what coping mechanisms still exist, what deeper core unmet needs? There are, little quirks about them, like your nod pod or little, you know, toys or pets, relationships in your life that matter a lot to you, places that matter a lot to you. we get at this whole understanding, and then we start to talk a little bit about what your North Star is. What does holistic recovery mean to you? What does your eating disorder voice sound like? Usually we start to learn interesting trends around maybe your eating disorder voice sounds really different from your voice. Maybe it sounds like someone in your past. And so we start to pull these pieces together. And then what Brandon, my co-founder and I do in the back is after this ninety minute onboarding, we have a persona. We have a really beautiful archetype of who this individual is. And then we start to build out what their issue matrix, what we call is of what are some things that maybe could be top priority for them to work on, and which therapeutic modalities might be easier to help them gauge between difficulty and preference progress in those areas. So all of that's done on the back end. So when a user opens the app for the first time, all they're all they have to do is rank their mood from 'today sucks' to 'today's great' with a couple of options in between. and Elena showing it there.

00:14:59 Georgie: Yeah, I can see there's a slider. How are you feeling today?

00:15:02 Mehek: Yeah, a little storm cloud. So what we do here is depending on how your mood is, you get different numbers of options. So realistically, if you're having a bad day, you're probably not in a great cognitive load space to want a lot of options to pick from. So we sort of stack rank it like that. And then depending on how you're feeling, we'll give you options that are deeply personalized to you based on therapeutic modality, based on preferences and people that you've mentioned in your life and progress areas that we focus on. And then every Sunday you do a self-reflection. We look at your quantitative and qualitative progress through all of the chats you've had in Kahani, and we update your plan week over week. So that's how it works.

00:15:44 Georgie: Very cool. So it seems like you and your co-founder have a lot of work to do behind the scenes for each person that shows up here.

00:15:52 Mehek: And we're slowly automating all parts of it so that it becomes a lot more scalable so we can have the opportunity to have thousands, hopefully millions of people on this. But right now we're doing a lot of it manually so that we know we're getting it right. We're tweaking all these little pieces that we think, well, actually we need to do that a little bit better. We missed that component about this person. How do we make sure that it's in a structured way that, you know, as Elena mentioned, that's the outcome that she receives.

00:16:20 Georgie: Yeah. Yeah. So somebody who shows up, who's a very different individual from Elena could have a very different experience. Each week there's human eyes that are on your chats and seeing how you're doing with your interactions with the app?

00:16:34 Mehek: So what we do is from a privacy standpoint, we pseudo anonymize the data so that, there's a layer of privacy with the user and their chats, and it becomes a very private interaction. We have our own, prompts and safeguards in place on top so that if there are conversations around self-harm or, risk of SI things that become a little bit more of an intense escalation. We are not a replacement for medical treatment, and we're very clear about that upfront. So we allow ourselves flags so that we can create resource lists. And so as soon as that type of conversation comes up, the conversation moves into a crisis hotline resource management.

00:17:15 Georgie: I'm thinking that a lot of people, particularly if they're beginning to use this app at, say, like fourteen, fifteen years old, would have substantial changes just in their own relationship and life goals and maturity, as time goes by. So I'm assuming you can flex the app to reflect somebody's changing goals.

00:17:34 Mehek: Yeah. So that's a really good point is we struggled a little bit with this at the beginning where we thought, okay, people might have, you know, maybe folks who've been in recovery for twenty, thirty years and they're at that point now where they come to me and they're like, this is it. I need to do something very different. I need to try something very different. This is my goal for recovery. Maybe I want to start a family. Maybe I want to finish grad school. Maybe I want to start a new career, start a new relationship, and my eating disorder is holding me back from those things. We get this bigger picture holistic North Star. You're right. For folks in their fourteen fifteen, you know, adolescent years, they probably are just trying to get to the next stage of, let me just get to college or, let me just, get to a place where I feel like I can have a healthy relationship or maybe not be so upset with my parents. There are these goals that might feel a little bit more short term. So we calibrate that based on the individual. But that's the beauty of what Kahani does, is if you do have this bigger picture of what you're recovering for, we hold that sacred as a part of the North Star. But that's the purpose of the weekly iterations of the plan is most people we we've seen now in recovery, regardless of age, are really using the weekly scale of time as a metric for what's going on in life, what are the stressors? And so that gives a little bit more of a realistic and concrete adaptation to each individual.

00:18:53 Georgie: Yeah, I'm imagining myself at like fifteen years old. Like what I would have put in there as my North Star. I would have been like, be skinny and pretty would not have been a very in-depth or helpful goal setting because my ED still had like a very firm hold on me. And so my North Star would have been like, I'm going to have thin thighs no matter what.

00:19:12 Elena: I want to add that, I've tested Hani around, I want to lose five pounds and some of it's a test and some of it's low moments, like true reality, and it'll completely reframe it. it sounds like a more mature voice, but I do think that it could resonate with younger populations at the same time. Like I think of myself, it would have just softened things. It would have made me kinder to myself. I also talked with Mahek about the journal aspect. So on the home screen of the app, you'll see on the very left is an opportunity to journal, and it just says, my journal and you can, because for me, journaling and writing has always been an outlet to unravel that ball of yarn that is in my head. And so you can either enter a message and get insights from Hani or you can just enter a journal entry. And then you can see in your repository all your journal entries from the past. And I love that just because it's an opportunity, either to just have your thoughts collected or actually chat with Hani and get feedback live. So I think there's so many different opportunities to interact with the app on top of the activities that they give you. And then on the very right shows those goals that Mahek was talking about around the North Star. Your core emotional drivers support goals, behavior patterns and this could be different for everyone. At least this is what it shows for me. But having that North Star goal of like ease and freedom around food and body and my life being about so much more. While still honoring my process. But then also that weekly goal, because I think in terms of weeks, helps keep me stable and happy.

00:21:04 Georgie: Can you give me an example of just like, what would a weekly goal be for you?

00:21:07 Elena: Yeah. I've chatted with Mahek about this. One of my weekly goals is to only eat when sitting if I can help it. a lot of my goals are somatic related. because in the past year and a half, entering grad school and, living alone for the first time, food became a regulator. And so, sitting and eating and taking a breath, was and is still is. It has been for a few weeks. a goal of mine.

00:21:35 Georgie: It seems like There are often actions or behaviors that you want to practice consistently that week.

00:21:40 Elena: Sometimes I do have like more abstract, goals, maybe like touching a fear food, having something on a Saturday or Sunday, pivoting quickly after a time of overeating or binging or emotional eating.

00:21:54 Georgie: Very cool.

00:21:55 Mehek: as you know, we have all genders, represented in our pilot. but in a lot of cases, we talk about how your menstrual cycle might impact what's coming up for you in that week. And if you also have a final or something going on at work or a presentation, there are build ups to that stressor. And so the way we think about this in the Sunday reflection is how do we bookend the triggers that you might be experiencing. If we know something is coming up, you will likely be thinking about it in the days leading up to it and maybe processing it in the days after. And so we try to almost kind of crescendo decrescendo, the activities difficulty, strength and type as we think about what's realistically occurring for you each week and how realistic is it to make progress in one area versus another? So it's quite adaptable based on your situational context.

00:22:46 Georgie: Because when you can anticipate the more difficult moments, they don't blindside you in the same way. and then so we all know that there's the non predictable things that show up. Uh, so let's say somebody is having more of like a may day moment. Is that something that people regularly open the app up and they're like help talk me off the ledge.

00:23:07 Elena: Yeah.

00:23:08 Mehek: Yeah absolutely. I think we've had um, so a couple of examples that come up are maybe late night binge episodes. And so we have some folks with kids, and the whole day is just go, go, go. And there's and these are hard working moms, moms who have every other person's needs at the forefront before their own. And we see these women who are just pushing so hard to make the make a house feel like a home, get the kids to where they need to get to take care of the relationships that they're in. And then ten p m comes around and they finally come up for air. And they're and maybe in their childhoods, they weren't really taught how to process negative emotions or overwhelm in a way that was, respectful to mind, body and self. And so they turned to habits that are no longer serving them. And so we've actually seen a lot of people say, well, I'm having the urge to binge right now, so let's go to the app. And that's kind of how we have a section actually, when you can talk to Hani that's personalized for each person. so we see those kinds of common threads come up. Then we can start to anticipate that, oh, this is sort of a time range when this person needs support. This is their afternoon slump or their transition period between work and kids or nighttime when everyone's gone to bed. And so we start to have people kind of come now at points where they can process the emotion, and we just sit with them in that emotion for a few minutes, and then there's no judgment on if the binge ends up occurring or not. It's really can we take a minute to just think about where it's coming from and process a place to just put all of those emotions, and then let's see how we're going to move forward in the moment after in the five minutes after and the ten minutes after and the hour after. And let's see if we can repeat that the next day and the day after. And if not, that's okay too. Let's let's think about what happened instead. And so it's a really interesting way for people to kind of create a structured introspection, if that makes sense. that's very much guided, non-judgemental, and allows for that sort of self-discovery.

00:25:08 Georgie: That's awesome. And it is so common that what we need is just to get it out, to have someone listen, but at the same time, not wanting to call somebody at ten o'clock at night and be like, listen to me vent while I don't even know what's wrong.

00:25:21 Mehek: This can be chronic in many cases. Maybe they've lived with it for a year, five years, ten years in some cases. In our pilot, we've had people living with this for fifty five years. and in that case, there's a lot of guilt and shame that sometimes comes up when you feel like I'm just going to be a burden to someone by talking about the same thing that maybe I've talked about time and time again. But in an app, it's like, let's do it again as many times as you need, over and over and over. And so there's that distance of I don't need to sleep, This app can just stay awake for as long as you need until you get what you need in that moment.

00:25:56 Georgie: Yeah, that's really great.

00:25:57 Elena: Exactly what I was going to touch on. I think one of the things that I learned early on when I was sixteen, Brene Brown shame breeds in silence and darkness. And for me, binge eating was such a source of shame and continually going to my mom and my sister and saying, I binged again, I binged again, I binged again was only making it worse. and I think what's so great about Kahani is it's not just this one sided me always running to it reactively with the activities. It feels like it's this constant loop of dialogue and comfort. I know how it's going to comfort me with the activities or how it's going to serve me, so it makes me come back and want to talk to it. the other thing I was going to say was the voice of Hani when it comes to, that grey space you said in your last podcast, success in a binge is stopping at any point in time, even 30s within the binge. That is the type of like freedom and permission that I particularly and I think a lot of people need like, you're not alone in this, and there is no perfect way to do it.

00:27:13 Georgie: Great. Does, Kahani have any sort of slant or reaction when it comes to weight loss? Because a lot of people, you know, who work with me or who listen to my podcast, they struggle with binge eating and emotional eating, but they also very much want to lose weight. And I find that sometimes that can be actually one of the stumbling blocks for them. So, you know, anybody who's listened to the show for a while knows my, approach to this is to talk about not trying to lose weight initially, like give yourself several months at least to just focus on getting the binge out of your life before you focus on dropping extra pounds. how does that fit in with the app? How does the app tackle that dilemma?

00:27:55 Mehek: Yeah, there are actually a number of folks who we've onboarded who will come to us and say, I tried Weight Watchers, I tried Noom, nothing stuck. I'm sick of binging. I know that this is not a healthy lifestyle for me. I know that it's impacting so many of my goals. And I want to lose twenty pounds and we'll say, okay, let's talk through where that's coming from. So we get a better sense of what does losing twenty pounds mean to you? Like, let's take the weight component out of it and let's just think about are there parts of your self-worth or identity that you're ascribing to weight loss? Are there parts of your sense of control, sense of accomplishment, sense of achievement? What are the core values and underlying emotional drivers that are actually manifesting as the weight loss? We are very upfront from the beginning that this is not a Weight Watchers 2.0 This is not something that is going to give you a meal plan with a calorie deficit or something like that. That's not the business that we're in. so what we end up doing, though, is taking that critical piece of information and thinking about what is the goal underneath that goal. And so by understanding that component, what we do is, similar actually to your approach, where we start thinking about in the first couple of weeks of Kahani usage for those individuals, a baseline format, right. So just understanding how are you feeling in the moments of a binge? How often are the binges occurring? when do they normally occur? What are the common triggers? They might think they know what the common triggers are, but when we start to document it and label it and just create a baseline tracking of one to two weeks, that starts to allow for greater insights. And then we start saying, well, okay, if we can start to swap behaviors like let's say we know a binge happens when you come back from work because you didn't plan ahead and prepare a lunch. So you were hungry all day. So you came home and then your blood sugar was really low and a binge occurred. Let's create an activity where you're going to bring an apple to work, and as well as some lentils and something that is, you know, a full fibre meal with some proteins and fats and carbs. Let's see how that feels. And so we'll swap one thing out and then track how you feel after the fact. And so we start to build the habits around, the other issues. Maybe it's just a glucose spike and drop. That's something that needs to be thought about. Maybe it's the fact that in your intimate relationship with your partner, they're not as supportive. And they, don't really know what the language is to talk to you about the emotions that are coming up. And so maybe that's the gap that we're filling here is how do we express ourselves in a different way that allows for that level of connection. So we almost start to see the lifestyle changes occur as a byproduct of the emotional and behavioral component that we really think about prioritizing as a baseline to start with first.

00:30:39 Georgie: Yeah I know. Part of my process when I'm, you know, first doing an assessment with somebody is to try and determine how much of their binge eating is coming from physiological drivers like this person's just under-eating, they're underfed versus the emotional and psychological drivers. And I would say like ballpark, like twenty percent physiological, eighty percent psychological. But within that, overall I can see so much variation. And some people are like, yeah, I'm overeating all the time. There's no physiological driver for me to binge. It's just habit and psychology and, and coping. And then some other people are very much under-eating because they're, very focused on losing weight. And so they're not successful with losing weight because their chronic energy deficit is still punctuated by binges periodically. I'm curious, I guess, how Kahaani gets at that, I guess. So some of it sounds like it's pattern recognition. If it's the same time.

00:31:39 Mehek: Pattern recognition, as well as insight and analysis that we can do in the subtext of conversation. So a lot we get a lot from the onboarding in what's unspoken. So a lot of times we'll ask certain pointed questions and then we'll sort of start to see how someone reacts to that question, and then we'll start to think, oh, well, maybe there's a different question that we can ask to get around. Where are these behaviors are coming from so much as childhood based? So much of what we do consciously and subconsciously is because of what we experienced as kids and what we learned to normalize or not normalize. And so it's really interesting to then draw the through line for each person, and then watch how that evolves in the conversational setting in Kahani. Because that type of cadence, the tone structure, the vocabulary that someone uses, maybe they say, I don't know a lot. They undermine themselves. They second guess a lot. Then we can start to think like, oh, maybe there's some level of avoidance here. Maybe there's some lack of self-trust that's coming out. Where where might that be coming from? And so we can draw these threads across the persona that we start to build about an individual. And that's what actually helps us figure out where are the top priorities and how are they shifting as time goes on. Um, maybe the top priority started with creating a deeper level of self, of maybe attacking the binge itself, and then it evolved into actually, there's a level of self-trust and maybe self-talk, positive affirmations that we need to shift our focus to in order to enable some of these foundational building blocks that can then allow you to live the life that you want to live. And so it's it's very adaptive. And that's why the week over week structure works really well for us.

00:33:21 Georgie: Do people ever get to change their North Star?

00:33:23 Mehek: Yes, actually we were thinking, oh, these probably don't change. if someone comes into the app and says, I want to be a mom one day. that's not going to change. That's something that they have held for their whole lives. But then you know what? That's actually not in the cards for me anymore. And, because of the way we created this persona structure for each individual, everything is so modifiable. And that's the point, is to get an understanding of, are we keeping up with an individual's life as it changes and as it's bombarded with all the stimulus of the environmental context that they're in and the emotional baggage that they might carry? And are we able to effectively ride that wave with them?

00:34:02 Georgie: Very cool. Anything to add, Elena?

00:34:04 Elena: Yeah, I'm not sure if it's helpful, but I demoed the the weight loss piece, and just said simply, I want to lose weight. and so just to add color and example to what Mahek was describing, it starts with an affirmation, the urge can feel so loud and urgent, especially when everything else feels messy. Usually when our brains start fixating on changing our bodies, it's actually trying to find a shortcut to feeling okay or in control of something. What's been feeling extra heavy or overwhelming for you lately that might be fueling this right now?

00:34:36 Georgie: Oh, that's a really.

00:34:36 Georgie: Beautiful way to to talk somebody through it.

00:34:40 Elena: Yeah. And I think, for me, when I was younger and even now, sometimes I will mix weight loss with relationship with food and body and some of those maladaptive behaviors that can come back. And, Hani does a really good job of separating the two. Like you said, when you work with your clients, you're first trying to, address those behaviors before looking at anything else. I did respond with, I actually have weight to lose, the doctor told me, but I can't stop binging and restricting. And it says having a doctor drop a comment like that is like pouring gasoline on an already stressed out brain. It makes total sense why the binge restrict cycle feels so intense right now. Your body is basically stuck on a seesaw trying to handle the pressure of those rules. when you think about what the doctor said, does it feel like a helpful health goal or more like you're doing something wrong? Kind of shame. And I think here, Hani knows that I'm a little bit further in my journey to where I can take all of this and actually reflect on it. Mahek and I have talked about folks with eating disorder already thinking so much that the cognitive load is so heavy that the language and the way that they would talk to someone who is maybe fourteen would be very different.

00:35:51 Georgie: Yeah. It's true. I think a lot of people who have struggled with their eating are thinkers or thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking and like not so much feeling, not so much embodiment. One more thing that I wanted to, to just point out, that I noticed is that the app very much seems to be guiding people toward healthy mental state more than it's steering people to eat more vegetables or, you know, it's not a food centric conversation. Is that right? And I'm assuming that's by design.

00:36:23 Mehek: Yes it is. The value that we see here is navigating life change and the manifestations of that involving positive or negative coping mechanisms, and how we can essentially create a toolkit for you and help empower you to, at some point, be able to pick the best tools for you to handle whatever life throws at you. And we'll do that in a way that's approachable. we start small, we build over time. We go back ten steps if we need to. We go forward five. We we move really well. I think with an individual. And it's interesting because this is, you know, of course, an n of one data point, but we actually had our first person in the pilot self-report what she qualified as full recovery. And she said I in her definition, she no longer has a voice super loud in her brain. And that's really, really exciting. Um, of course that's not the goal for us, though. We're not here to say we're going to cure an eating disorder like that's we're not treatment. But the idea is, can we give this individual a toolkit that maybe in her case, she actually wasn't able to find a care team? ideally one does have a care team, and this augments that process, but maybe gives her that that type of, kindness and affirmation in the moment that she's now able to reflect back onto herself fully. Interestingly, she didn't stop using the app. She started using it for different things. She started having new goals around her career. her family had some health issues come up. And so she started navigating different life changes. And so we started to see little inklings of how it's evolved. And the whole idea was to not focus on, well, are you getting all your fiber and how much protein are you eating? that wasn't something that we wanted it to be the main focus. We're not a replacement for dietitians. Dietitians do an amazing job, and that's why they do their job so well. We want to be that buddy that can evolve with you, but in a way that feels evidence based, backed in something that's that does work and can be adapted into micro instances throughout your day to day. When a normal human would not have the bandwidth to be on twenty four seven, right?

00:38:32 Georgie: Yeah. So when is the next version going to be available? Since you said the one that's on the app version now is terrible.

00:38:39 Georgie: Yes. The one on the App Store sucks.

00:38:42 Mehek: I'm so sorry to anyone who has downloaded it. that was our very first iteration. our public iteration, where we were just trying to get something out there. and we, have done so much work now We've had people who've spent hours with us every week brainstorming what to do to make this the most effective tool for individuals. at this point, the private beta that we have is now open to, any individual. So if you go on our website, which we can link in the show notes, but if you look up www.getKahani you can sign up for the earliest version of this new beta. And right now we're in a phase where Brandon and I will personally onboard you and do every single thing we can to make sure that this journey is as effective as it is. And it's all free at this point. Like, we're we're we're doing this right now because we're new, we're early. We know this sounds wacky. It's different. Not no one's really doing what we're doing in this space right now. and that's exciting. And with that comes, little hiccups and bumps. Guaranteed.

00:39:42 Georgie: Guaranteed.

00:39:42 Mehek: Okay, this isn't this. This doesn't sound good. Can you change something like this? And so it's been really good to create opportunities of improvement in that cycle. So anyone who wants to try it now we're we're ready for you. So welcoming you with open arms. Um, just sign up on the website and we'll reach out immediately.

00:39:58 Georgie: Cool.

00:39:59 Georgie: Okay. I will definitely put the website in the show notes. I think it is crucial for me also that you're, you're doing this for free because one of my main reasons for starting the show is there are so many barriers to treatment. I don't want cost to be one. we all have to eat. I think we all deserve information that's, you know, solid. And right now everyone and their neighbor is selling bad nutrition advice.

00:40:20 Georgie: Yeah.

00:40:22 Georgie: Can we have people that are just providing like solid science backed support? and I think what you're doing is going to help a lot of people and nobody ever had too much support. So it seems like if somebody doesn't have access to a treatment team, they can use this on their own to get a lot of benefits. Yeah. And if somebody does and it can just augment their work and support them practicing because there's a lot of hours where you're not talking with your, coach or your dietician or your therapist. So anything else that people should know about the app?

00:40:50 Mehek: There are a lot of new things coming. we're we're iterating very, very quickly. the last thing I'll say on the app itself is it has been, you know, the the privilege of all privileges to work on something like this. I almost lost my best friend to anorexia, and it has been a lifelong journey seeing what gaps in the care system exist today. And we are so uniquely privileged to live in a time where, yes, with all the pros and cons of AI. for the first time in our the history of our society have access to personalized, on demand adaptive support. At the moment, you need it for your specific needs, and that is something that really lights me up. And so we know that there will be some bumps and hiccups in the road. But at this point, if we can do anything to improve the experience and help people actually move towards living the life that they want to live, we're doing something right. And that's the most valuable use of time. So we really do need more people on the app now so that we can start to get a greater sample size. Now that we have a good understanding that the foundational product is much better than what you see on the App Store. So, always a work in progress, and I think your help will really help us in creating an experience that hopefully millions of people can benefit from.

00:42:12 Georgie: I'm glad to do it. Thank you guys so much for lending your time to be on the show, and I'm hoping that we can get some more people to show up and benefit from your support and help improve your your model. So thank you guys.

00:42:25 Mehek: Thank you Georgie.