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Active8me: An all-in-one Asian fitness and nutrition app to achieve your health goals

Founded by two-time Olympian Jeremy Rolleston, 44, the newly launched active8me app is Asia’s first one-stop integrated mobile fitness and health platform. It is curated by an incredible team of experts and looks to provide a customised and total solution for the mind, body and spirit.

The newly launched active8me app is Asia’s first one-stop integrated mobile fitness and health platform.

How the idea came about

How did the idea for active8me initially come about?

Jeremy, who has previously represented Australia in both rugby and bobsleigh at the Olympics, has spent a large part of his life in elite sports and felt a strong desire to give back and share his expertise to motivate and equip people to achieve their goals in health and fitness.

The app was founded by two time Olympian Jeremy Rolleston.

Said Jeremy, “As a two-time Olympian, I have always been passionate about sports and fitness. When I looked at Asia during my travels here, it was obvious to me that there were two things happening: a growing interest in fitness and wellness and secondly there was a growing health crisis in Asia – the epidemic rise in obesity and diabetes fuelled by the cycle of bad eating habits, poor food choices, inactivity, urbanisation and stressful lifestyles. So I saw the opportunity to help solve this real problem, and help people get fit and healthy in Asia.”

This is because many fitness apps and wellness programmes tend to target the Western market, for example, by telling people to prepare Western style dishes and they do not take into account the differences in tastes and preferences between Asian and Western countries.

At the same time Jeremy pointed out that 60 per cent of the world’s diabetics live in Asia (one in nine Singaporeans for example) and there is growing obesity across the region (consider Malaysia for example). As well, many Singaporeans and Asians are “skinny-fat” – which is a phenomenon where a person looks lean and seems to be of healthy weight but they in fact, have a lot of internal body fat that can’t be seen. This predisposes a person to issues such as Type 2 Diabetes, heart attack and stroke, just like an obese person.

Jeremy represented Australia at the Winter Olympics for Bobsleigh.

Used his knowledge to develop active8me platform

So Jeremy then, together with a team of other Olympians, fitness experts and dieticians, developed the active8me platform. On active8me, with a few clicks on a user’s mobile phone, people can get customised daily workout plans and videos, nutritious Asian recipes and meal plans, as well as mindset and motivational messages to support them in terms of transforming their fitness and health.

On active8me, members can get customised daily workout plans and videos, nutritious Asian recipes and meal plans, as well as mindset and motivational messages.

Said Jeremy, “active8me is an integrated approach to wellness – across exercise, nutrition and mindset. Anyone who understands fitness and health understands that the biggest change comes from nutrition and mindset. This is what Active8Me is all about. And we have the likes of four dual Olympians and masters in dietetics providing their expertise into the app..”

Besides Jeremy, the other Olympians who have contributed are Ben St. Lawrence – a 5,000m and 10,000m runner; Duncan Harvey – an Australian bobsledder and professional Australian snowboarder Johanna Lyle.

Jeremy added, “I think one of the most important things about active8me is that you very rarely find apps that are fully integrated in terms of health and fitness. Secondly, I think that to be able to customise the app and adjust to where someone chooses to workout is really important, because it means that the person does not need a gym membership to do it, but they can use the gym if they already have access to one already. Thirdly, we have purposely designed the app so that we can join up the dots between preventive health care (like active8me’s app) and clinical health tech. This will only be more helpful for people in the future.”

Fish tikka, one of the healthy recipes on active8me.

Key Features of active8me

What are the key features of active8me? To put it into a nutshell these are as follows.

  • Customised and proactive fitness and health solutions for consumers, employers and insurers
  • Flexible range of programmes penned by experts for all adults, body types and fitness levels
  • Accessible anywhere and anytime, with videos downloadable for offline viewing
  • Nutrition – Active8me is not just some tracking or exercise app. It has healthy meal plans and recipes (both Asian and western).
  • Mindset lessons because your mind is where real and lasting breakthrough and behavioural change happens.
  • Intelligent connectivity with wearable technology and fitness devices to track progress and sync with daily activities
  • Your personal trainer, dietician and life coach all rolled into one

The programmes are catered to where you want to work out. So you can choose to work out at home, outdoors or the gym.

Added Jeremy, “On the workout side, I would say that what is significant is that we care for beginners, intermediate and advanced users. The programmes are catered to where you want to work out. So you can choose to work out at home, outdoors or the gym. That is significant in Asia because only two per cent of Asians are members of gyms. So me providing some great gym based programme is irrelevant when 98 per cent of the population do not have gym memberships. As well you get to choose what type of workout you prefer, so that will suit a frequent traveller, or even a homemaker who has to take care of kids at home.”

There are plenty of healthy recipes on the app.

He continued, “The other significant thing is that we have healthy Asian recipes that have been curated by dieticians in Asia and is led by the Shape Magazine nutrition expert, Jaclyn Reutens. Plus we also have healthy eating out tips. These tips are catered to both local hawker centres and restaurants.”

What is one such example of a typical healthy eating out tip available on Active8Me? Said Jeremy, “Rice combinations like black, brown, red or even purple rice are more nutritionally dense than white rice.”

The healthy eating out tips are quite widespread.

He added “Our tips cover everything from hydration to healthy eating out tips and the spectrum is quite widespread.”

At the same time, Jeremy also shared that active8me has mindset lessons for their users, in the form of videos. He said “Each week, our members get a two to four minute video that covers things like how to stay motivated, how to change habits, how to stop self-sabotaging behaviour. We believe it is the mindset where real change happens. We genuinely care about our members and we want people to change their lives for good. It does not matter if someone’s goals are more about looking good, such as to look good for say your wedding, or whether they are purely health driven. We want people to embrace healthy active living to look good, feel great and get healthy.”

The app also contains mindset lessons.

So then, when members log into the active8me app on a daily basis, they will see suggested recipes for the day as well as workouts? Said Jeremy, “You can see either your daily meal with the recipe attached and methods on how to cook it, or you can opt for the healthy eating out tip option. We prefer people to cook as that is where you get the best results, but we understand that the Asian culture consists of eating out a lot, with cheap hawker foods being easily available, so we cater to that too and help people make better informed healthy choices.”

Active8me hopes that people can make better food choices. This is a healthy balsamic chicken broccolini.

He added “And for the workouts, active8me will give you the type of workout that you are scheduled to do that day (taking into account your overall weekly plan – depending on the program that you chose). It can be cardio, toning, yoga&core or a rest day. Some programmes will have more rest days whereas others will have less. For example a marathon running programme is different to the Lean, Fit and Toned program for beginners. ”

Active8me guides you through your workouts.

Five types of fitness programmes on active8me

There are five different types of programmes on active8me at the moment. These cater to three aspects of health and fitness: weight loss, to stay lean & toned, and for running distances from the 10km to the marathon.

Said Jeremy, “For example for our running programmes, those members training for a 42km will have six days of training per week, while the 10km runners will train for four days a week. The rest days are dictated by us, because we know what an overall weekly structure needs to look like in terms of recovery and what the next session should be. For example we’ll take into account if you had weights one day then you need to be careful with a maximum sprinting session the next day, or if you have done a really long run, then the next day might need to be a rest day. That is where our expertise comes in.”

active8me also gives explanations about how to do workouts with members.

Suited to busy lifestyles

But at the same time Jeremy stressed that with the flexibility offered by active8me in terms of being able to do workouts anywhere and everywhere, there should not be a reason to skip workouts. He said, “The fact that our programme is on a mobile, means that you can actually do it anytime and anywhere. So if you are really busy one day then you could do the session late at night, or if you are travelling then it can be done in the hotel room or on the hotel gym treadmill or outside. The whole point of our app is that it facilitates a busy lifestyle, but say for whatever reason, if life gets away from you and you cannot do it that day, then we do not recommend you to make it up the next day; instead just consider that workout as missed and get on with the programme as recommended.”

You can see your progress.

He added, “What we can give you is the best plan from dieticians and fitness experts, but if you do not follow the plan to the tee, then we cannot guarantee the results that you will end up getting. As experts we can only tell you what you must do to get results and we try to make it very flexible for a busy lifestyle, but the work and commitment is still up to you to do – if you are serious about achieving your goals and seeing transformation.”

Indeed the active8me app is suited to all mobile savvy men and women across Asia who want to get fit – regardless of whether they are high flying business corporates or homemakers with kids to look after. Said Jeremy, “We suit your needs if you just want to get results and you do not know where to start, because we have experts showing you step by step. We also suit busy executives but then we are also suitable for people who just want results. Some people want to see results but they simply have no idea where to begin.”

The app is also encouraging.

Membership fees and costs

Active8me gives users the first three weeks free, as a trial. During this period there are a set number of tasks to complete, in order to get users familiarised with the programme features, giving them an effective kick-start to set the stage for them to make lasting changes to their habits and lifestyles.

After that the paid programme of their choice kicks in depending on their subscription plan. Membership plans and prices are as follows.

Want to know how to make this breakfast bruchetta? Memberships start from $28.98 per month.

  • Monthly membership – $28.98 recurring payment each month
  • Three months membership – $73.98 recurring payment every three months
  • Yearly membership – $268.98 payment every year

Said Jeremy, “If you put it into perspective, we are charging less than a dollar a day. And you are getting a daily programme by the likes of dieticians and Olympians. As a comparison, if you want to join a gym you might need to pay a personal trainer $100 per session for, six days a week for 12 weeks. That is $7,200 altogether. And if you want a dietician to give you a proper meal plan for 12 weeks, the weekly cost might be $250. That’s $3000. So $10,000 in total and we’re giving you that for $74.”

He added “So what I am trying to say, is that we are a cost effective way to get the expertise of qualified experts and professionals, and at the same time all on one place on your mobile, without having to dig out the information yourself.”

Plans for the future

Baked Miso Fish Parcel from active8me recipes.

The 12 week programme is generally recommended by active8me, as results can be best seen within that duration. The platform seamlessly provides support for users’ transformation journeys to make long-term lifestyle changes in how they eat, move and think. There will however be more programmes added in the future, to cater to pregnant women and active seniors.

Added Jeremy, “We will also be introducing a competition element in the future where users can interact with other users and get awarded points when they do their healthy tasks, workouts, meals and watch our videos. The points will be accumulated to a leaderboard.”

All photos are courtesy of active8me.

For more information on active8me, go to www.active8me.com

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