Why I'm building SugarSage.

That's not a joke, or a cute reach for a metaphor — my mother tells the story every year, and I believe her. I've loved sweets for as long as I can remember. Cookies, cupcakes — I was the kid, and later the adult, who ate dinner mostly so I could get to dessert.

For most of my adult life, that was never actually a problem. I'm naturally thin, never much of an overeater, and the math was simple: as long as I kept an eye on my calories, I could eat what I wanted and stay exactly where I wanted to be. That formula worked for two decades.

That was also the same two decades I spent building things — my own startups first, then working with hundreds of other founders, at Techstars and beyond. I believe something specific about that work: the more women who start companies, the more the rules inside existing corporate structures actually change, instead of women just finding ways to survive inside them.

Then I turned 40, and a different kind of wall showed up — not in my career, in my body. My answer was to do more of what had always worked: cut more calories, work out more. For a while, that held things together.

By 50, it wasn't only my body that felt different. We were heading into an empty nest, and elder care was starting to become a real, regular part of life — the kind of stage-of-life stress that's easy to dismiss, and that I now know does its own quiet work on how your body holds onto weight. On top of that, the old formula stopped working entirely. Despite genuinely trying harder than I ever had, I looked up one day and had gained ten pounds — and I want to be specific here, because it surprised me too: I was still getting my period every month. This wasn't menopause. Something else was going on, and more willpower clearly wasn't the answer.

A friend at work mentioned, almost in passing, that she'd dropped ten pounds fairly easily just by cutting back on added sugar and adding more protein. I started reading, and what I found actually stopped me: it wasn't sugar in general, or even calories in general — it was specifically added sugar, and what it does to insulin, to blood sugar spikes, to how efficiently your body stores fat, especially once your hormones start shifting. I'd spent years managing calories and had never once looked at added sugar on its own.

So I tried it myself. I started keeping my added sugar under 25 grams a day — the same number this app is built around — and I lost five pounds in the first week alone. That got my attention in a way two decades of calorie math never had.

I looked at what was out there to actually track that, and most of it fell into two camps: another restrictive diet app that wanted me to feel guilty about everything I ate, or a conversation about medication I wasn't ready to have. I wanted something specific — just added sugar, tracked plainly, day by day — without turning food itself into the enemy.

So I built it. Not a diet app — a noticing app. One number, tracked plainly, with a gold star for the days I stay under it and no guilt on the days I don't. But it's not only about the number for me. I've spent my career believing women make their boldest moves — starting a company, changing course, walking into whatever's next — when they feel like themselves again, physically. If this helps you feel a little more like yourself, my hope is it also helps you think more clearly about your own next chapter, whatever that looks like. If you've spent your 40s or 50s doing everything "right" and still hitting a wall, this is for you. You're not imagining it, and you're not alone.