Technology can help you lose weight

Well, if you didn’t think you had seen it all, now you really know that you haven’t! The latest craze in dieting is to use the camera phone to help you lose weight.

A small study was conducted that had people take a picture of everything they ate with their phone’s camera for one week. The results indicated that they either ate less or more healthfully. Written food diaries have people list what they ate after eating it, whereas digital food diaries have the person take a photo of it before they eat and then look at it from an observer’s perspective. They actually see how it looks on the plate, the quantity, the types of food and the colors. Somehow it helps them eat less.

Taking the technology a little further, there is a new dieting service called MyFoodPhone, which uses camera phones to document a subscriber’s intake, then e-mail the results to dietitians for analysis and advice. The service aims to avoid the hassle of jotting down what was eaten and then conveying those records to a dietitian. The service costs $99 per month, plus the cost of e-mailing the pictures of your meals to the service.

MyFoodPhone subscribers begin by answering a questionnaire at the Web site of the Quebec City-based firm, which includes both questions anybody should be able to answer (e.g., weight, height, exercise habits) and others that assume you’ve had a recent physical exam (e.g., cholesterol and glucose levels). The system then assigns the subscriber a dietitian who offers comments on the nutritional value of the food, as well as advice on improving overall diet. The dietitian’s comments are posted a day or two after uploading the photos. There is a competing service called Nutrax, which is still in test phase and is expected to offer some cheaper options than the MyFoodPhone.

The benefits of using the camera phone over a written food diary are that people:

• tend to greatly underestimate their portion sizes when writing things down;

• may intentionally or unintentionally forget to report the chocolate chip cookie in the middle of the day;

• have difficulty representing mixed dishes and the serving size of different ingredients in the dish.

A new book, titled “Get Fit with Technology: How to Lose Weight Using Your PC,” states that people who use their PCs in conjunction with weight-loss programs lose three times more weight than people who don’t. This book includes tips and techniques to help you lose weight and guides to the best tools, Web sites and fun gadgets to help track and manage your health electronically.

Nintendo’s new Wii Fit is bringing the gym – or a stripped-down version of it – to you and your living room. The program is about $90 – plus $250 for the basic console. Wii Fit offers fitness training of four types – aerobics, strength training, yoga and balance games. Most of the exercises are fun, and all of them increase your heart rate or muscle tone while helping develop “core” muscle groups that aid balance and posture. The key to the program is the Wii Fit balance board that you stand on, which uses four sensors to measure your body weight 60 times a second. The video game always offers you new rewards, like vocal encouragement (“great job”) and extra points in the Wii Bank that unlock new exercises.

Finally, a study completed at the University of North Carolina found that children who were asked to monitor their diet and exercise regimes using their mobile phones were more likely to stick to weight-management plans than those who kept written diaries or no record at all of their food consumption.

The study challenged a group of children to live healthier lifestyles by reducing the amount of time they spent watching television or using the computer, increasing their exercise levels, and cutting down on the number of sugary drinks they consumed each day. One group of youngsters was asked to send the research team two text messages a day to let them know whether they were meeting the set goals and targets, while another group kept a written diary of their achievements, and a third group kept no record at all. The children who sent text messages received messages in return from the research team, suggesting ways of improving their diet and getting more exercise, or congratulating them on their progress. This group did better sticking to the health plan and monitoring their individual progress.  

There is no solid proof as to whether any of the technologies can help people lose weight more than cutting calories and moving your body. But, for some people, adding technology to portion control and exercise has helped improve motivation, accountability and success.
 
• Rebecca Cohen is a board-certified holistic nurse and a certified wellness coach. She has a private practice, Partnering for Change Wellness Coaching, to help people gain success in making changes in their life and health. Her Web site is www.partneringforchange.com.