The science behind
Contemplate
Some of the most important moments in weight loss are when you forgive yourself for slipping up.
What will you tell yourself next time you slip up?
Weight loss programs are inefficient.
They don’t work for 78-95% of people. They don’t work because most of weight loss is acting on what you already know.
The problem is so big, we either accept it as inevitable, get desperate and look for a quick fix, or lean on old resource-intensive models, like therapy, to manage it.
Contemplate is a direct consequence of cutting-edge research designed to address this problem -- the fundamental gap between knowing and doing.
How Contemplate helps
your weight loss journey
Published in the journal Applied Psychology in 2020 and featured by the BBC in 2021, the design and philosophy of Contemplate was pioneered by experimental psychologist Dr. Jason Wessel, who designed Contemplate Weight Loss to make the benefits of his research more accessible.
Contemplate is built on the back of multiple studies using the 'gold standard' of research methodologies (random control trials) and mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative data).
Not only is Contemplate the only weight loss app designed by an experimental psychologist, Contemplate is the only weight loss app designed by a psychologist. Period.
Contemplate doesn't just borrow from psychology. It breaks down the complexities of human motivation into fundamental principles and assembles them into a process that heightens your awareness of your own behaviours, supporting lasting behavior change in the quickest time possible. Just 60 seconds per day.
Part of what makes Contemplate's approach so quick is the way it pulls motivation by asking meaningful questions that you already have the answers to.
That knowledge just gets buried under daily stressors.
Rather than pushing motivation through articles and extensive learning modules, we pull motivation from your own values and your experiences.
To stay at the cutting edge, we apply a mixed-method (quantitative and qualitative) approach to regular reviews of Contemplate to ensure the app continues to do what it says on the box. That is, influence positive weight-related behaviour change in 60 seconds a day. We review how users interact with contemplation questions, track weight loss progress, and conduct user interviews.
Following our last review (May 2021), approximately 25% of Contemplate questions have been either reworded or replaced. More questions have also been added to improve the thematic balance. That means questions now more evenly span the full range of factors associated with motivation to meet the complexity of life.
The research driving Contemplate is new, but it also has strong roots, drawing on a wide body of fundamental psychological and health principles with decades of empirical support. Contemplate takes the best approaches to changing behaviour, distils them to their essence, and reframes them for you to draw from daily.
We think you mostly know what to do.
We want to help you do it.