How to create your own AI performance coach: Optimizing your nutrition, recovery & injury management

I have always been super active into sports, really constantly pushing myself to the limits of what my body can do, and naturally, that means injuries, right? And for me, it became a little bit too much, and so as soon as ChatGPT launched, I started experimenting with aggregating this data so that I can get a more clear synthesis of what I can do to actually optimize the body.

One of the things that I have never seen anybody do yet, I've seen a lot of folks drop in their daily workouts or their food diaries, but I have not seen MRIs and imaging here. And what important context for somebody who's an athlete to say, "Not only is this how I'm performing on an output basis, [chuckles] but this is actually, like, the structural setup under the hood," so it's really interesting, that combination of data into these files.

I'm wanting to demand of my body to feel, like, twenty-five in a forty-year-old's body, and it's interesting to think, what if every person could have a coach that organizes all this action into clarity, right? And part of what we've been talking about is that not everyone is looking for this type of performance. Most people don't need six-packs or match prep, but they could use help with the basics, right? Eating less processed food, sleeping better, moving more, and I think an AI coach could meet people where they are and actually give them the necessary nudges and contextualization of information that they need to be a better version of themselves.

[upbeat music] Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive, here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today, we have Lucas Werthein, Head of Technology at Cactus, who has done work for basically everybody: Apple, Coca-Cola, MTV, and even Beyoncé herself. But today, we're not going to talk about product development. We're going to talk about how Lucas has built a wellness coach inside ChatGPT to optimize his nutrition, his workouts, and keep him feeling twenty-five, even though he's a little bit older than that. This is a really fun episode with some practical insights for people just trying to make their lives better with AI. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. AI has already changed how we work. Tools are helping teams write better code, analyze customer data, and even handle support tickets automatically. But there's a catch: these tools only work well when they have deep access to company systems. Your copilot needs to see your entire code base. Your chat bot needs to search across internal docs, and for enterprise buyers, that raises serious security concerns. That's why these apps face intense IT scrutiny from day one. To pass, they need secure authentication, access controls, audit logs, the whole suite of enterprise features. Building all that from scratch, it's a massive lift. That's where WorkOS comes in. WorkOS gives you drop-in APIs for enterprise features, so your app can become enterprise-ready and scale upmarket faster. Think of it like Stripe for enterprise features. OpenAI, Perplexity, and Cursor are already using WorkOS to move faster and meet enterprise demands. Join them and hundreds of other industry leaders at workos.com. Start building today. Lucas, welcome to How I AI. Thanks for being here.