The Inspiration for Hint Water | Kara Goldin

Even after losing the baby weight, I had gained over 50 pounds. And I didn't know how I had gained over 50 pounds. I also, for the first time in my life, had acne. I had never had acne as a teenager. And I had this horrible, like, cystic acne all over my face. And I went to a dermatologist and she said, you know, you just— your hormones are going crazy. That's what happens when you have babies too close to one another. And I thought, like, I I'm not sitting there eating cupcakes every single day. I'm not chowing on McDonald's Quarter Pounders every day. Like, how am I gaining all of this weight? And I finally went to a doctor on the East Coast in New York who I really trusted. And I said, listen, I'm shopping at Whole Foods. I'm working out every day. I'm like doing everything that I'm supposed to do. And the doctor said, your hormones are out of whack. Your metabolism has stopped. And so here's a prescription. and you should take this medication in order to fix this problem. And I said, so what is the problem exactly? Like, I'm almost in. Like, I was so willing if I actually had some sort of diagnosis, I would have actually filled the prescription and actually taken it. And the doctor said, it doesn't really matter what it is, just take the medicine. And I had always been taught, You take antibiotics or some sort of medicine when you're sick. And nobody was saying that I was actually sick. In hindsight, I actually look back and I think I was probably pre-type 2 diabetes, which at that point was about 1.5% to 2% of the population had this disease that was cropping up. You weren't born with it. It wasn't genetic. People were getting it. They really weren't sure why. And actually, a roommate of mine from ASU was working for, and still is working for, the Center for Disease Control. And she was working on this segment of type 2 diabetes. And she said— I called her and I said— was just chitchatting about it and telling her a little bit about what this doctor had said to me. And she was telling me more about type 2 diabetes and that type 2 diabetes was something that has really stumped them. And that they found that people who were getting type 2 diabetes, some were gaining weight, some were losing weight. Acne was definitely something that was a part of it. You know, fat around the center was also part of it. There were all these like kind of things, but they didn't really know what was triggering it, and they couldn't actually isolate the genetics behind it. But it wasn't something that people had when they were young that they were dealing with, but it was, you know, basically turning into this kind of thing. So I listened very carefully and, and went back to San Francisco and was somewhat depressed about what I had heard because I thought I could be on medication for the rest of my life and I don't really even know what that will be for. And while I was sort of having this conversation with myself, I opened up the refrigerator and saw lots of Diet Coke in there and I thought, prior to taking any of this medication, I'm really going to throw everything out and really start over again and start to think about everything that I'm eating and drinking. And Diet Coke was my very best friend. And so I used to drink at— I used to go to Circle K in Arizona and have the fountain sodas, or 7-Eleven and have my Super Big Gulps. I typically wasn't a can person. It was more of the fountain sodas. And I would sit there and drink it all day. And I wouldn't always finish it, but I would always be drinking Diet Coke throughout the day. And I finally just said, I'm not going to do that anymore. And I didn't go down to 1 or 2. I just said, no más. I'm done. I'm not going to have it anymore. And I'm going to just see what happens. And my husband kind of laughed at me and said, that's not going to be so easy for you. You've been doing this for a long time. You've been having Diet Coke. I was a competitive gymnast in Arizona. And I just lived on Diet Coke. And I thought, Well, I'm going to try. And I'm just going to do it and see what happens. And let me tell you, the first like 10 days was a nightmare. Giving up Diet Coke after having years and years of what I now term as an addiction, it was very, very, very challenging. And I not only got horrible headaches and felt awful, but my stomach was just a mess. And I finally said after 2 weeks of living this way, actually 2 and a half weeks of living this way, I noticed that my pants were fitting a lot looser and my acne started to clear up and lots of things started to happen. And I thought, wow, that's really crazy. Like I'm still eating, but I'm eating lots of like real fruits. I'm eating— still eating meat. I'm still really paying attention. I'm not eating packaged foods, but I'm really— the key thing is giving up my diet soda. And so I hopped on the scale and saw that I was 24 pounds lighter in 2 and a half weeks. Wow. And I thought— and I went back to one of my friends and I said, you know, this is so crazy because the one big thing that I did was give up diet soda. And her response was like, that's crazy. Like, are you sure you weren't drinking regular Coke? And I'm like, no, no, no. I was drinking diet. I never drank the full sugar stuff. I mean, I would have a cupcake, like I said, now and then, but I wasn't eating them every single day. It was really diet soda was the thing that my body was just like churning every day, and it made me crave other stuff throughout the day too. But that was the thing that I really— was really, really key. So I finally started really living this way, and things got better by week 3. And then after 6 months, I had lost all 55 pounds in 6 months. And really, really focusing on what am I doing right. I went back to the doctor in New York and tried to tell him sort of about how I had— sorry guys— how I had given up diet soda and I had never filled the prescriptions. And his response was, then you don't really need me. And I thought, well, that's kind of crazy. Like, I'm here to be really excited and celebrate with you guys that this is what I've done to get healthier. And basically, he almost kicked me out of the office for not doing what he told me to do. And I think at that point, I really started to look at our medical industry and focus in on that doctors then, and it's It's slightly better today, but I still think it's very much tied to kind of what they do and frankly what consumers want them to do, which is, if he would have actually come up with some sort of diagnosis for me, I would have definitely taken the medication. But because he didn't have a diagnosis, I was saying no at that point. And so it really made me look at the world that I had been living in with words like diet, There was another product called Vitaminwater that was really underway at that point. Lots of words that I basically had thought were actually there to make me healthier were not actually doing that for me. And so one year into living this way, I went to my local Whole Foods in San Francisco and I said to the guy who was stocking the shelves, Hey, do you have any product that has just water with some slices of fruit in it? And his response was, oh, there's this great product called Vitaminwater. You should definitely check it out. And so I turned the label around and showed him all of the different ingredients in Vitaminwater. And this guy is working at Whole Foods and really surprised by what I'm telling him. And then he commented that he had actually gained like 10 pounds since he started drinking so much Vitaminwater. And I was like, yeah, that's what happened to me with diet soda. And basically, I was just constantly drinking it thinking that I was doing the right thing. And he's like, wow, that's really fascinating. And then about a week later, I came back to Whole Foods and he told me that He told all his friends about my story and he got everybody to really pay attention to ingredients and really pay attention to the labels. And again, this was like 13 years ago, way ahead of my time on sort of like really looking at exactly what was in my drinks but also my food. No one was talking about this back then. And so the guy says to me in Whole Foods, he was like, this is really, really smart what you're talking about and you should go and develop this drink. And I'm like, maybe. Like I'm interviewing at lots of different companies. I interviewed at Google and said like I'm not sure that anybody needs a search engine, it doesn't seem that interesting. That was definitely wrong advice from me. But basically, it was him and me really thinking about going back to my passion of really wanting to change an industry that I I saw that this was just a massive opportunity that I thought I could get really, really excited about. And so I went home and said to my husband, I figured out exactly what I'm going to do now. I had taken 2 years off and not totally off, I was being a mom to 2, 3 young kids at this point. And I said I'm going to start this company and the initial name was Wawa. I don't know how many of you are from the East Coast, Coast, but I— crazy new mom. I basically— he was like, wait, why would you call it Wawa? And I said, because mothers of new kids say, here, have some Wawa. And he was like, only you do that. No one else really does that. You really shouldn't name a company. And also, there's this big C-store in Pennsylvania called Wawa. And if you actually get this thing underway, they're going to crush you like a bug. So just if you don't listen to me about anything else, Then definitely listen to me about this.