Two decades ago, Sylvio LeBlanc was a teenager struggling to maintain a healthy weight. He lost about 100 pounds in high school, from cutting calories and working out, but put most of the weight back on when he went to university.

He lost the 100 pounds again after he finished his Bachelor of Applied Science at the Université de Moncton but gained it all back while studying for his Master of Applied Science in Computer Engineering at the same school.

Tired of the constant weight fluctuation, the software engineer decided he needed a sustainable solution to losing weight and keeping it off. “I decided to look at it as an engineering problem,” he said. “Like, I’m a smart person, why can’t I figure this out?”

LeBlanc counted his calorie consumption and how many calories he burned with each workout using basic heart rate monitoring and chest straps, but could only gather so much data with the technology available to him. “This was around 2009… the technology was really cumbersome,” he said.

In 2014, Apple announced the release of the Apple Watch and LeBlanc said that’s when everything changed for him. Suddenly, he had access to a new device with built-in heart rate sensors paired with a host of new technology. “It just felt like that was the best of all worlds where I could leverage my programming skills and engineering knowledge and leverage the power of the Apple Watch,” he said.

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