Some apps even allow users to take a picture of their meal and upload it the app does the rest of the calorie-counting work.ĭigital tools may also ramp up engagement by tapping into one’s competitive side, as some apps allow for networking or provide visual cues indicating how close one is to reaching a goal - for example, how close one is to completing a colorful circle representing step count. Diet-monitoring websites and apps already “know” information about the foods users log - such as the grams of carbs versus fat in a waffle. Digital tools make calorie counting and nutrient tracking easier, she said. Investigating the grams of nutrients and calories for every meal is burdensome for most people. People can leverage this monitoring feedback to make changes to their daily behaviors. Tracking allows us to be aware of what we’re eating, how much we’re moving and how our body weight fluctuates on the scale each day. Three-quarters of the time, those who used digital tools more frequently to monitor themselves lost more weight than those who self-monitored less frequently with digital tools, Patel and her colleagues found. In each study, participants tracked their behaviors, such as calorie and nutrient consumption, the number of daily bites they took and their physical activity, with digital tools. Patel and her team compared nearly 40 different studies on weight-loss monitoring that were conducted between 20. In the end, it all comes back to goal-setting and consistency, said Patel, and digital tools can help facilitate both.Ī paper detailing the analysis was published online Feb. The analysis also revealed that individuals who tracked their diet or physical activity digitally were more engaged, meaning they were more consistently active in using their digital tools, than those who tracked their behavior through more traditional means, such as handwritten records of exercise routines or calorie intake. But exactly what is being used, how it’s being used and the impact it has on the user has never been systematically studied on a large scale.” “We’re also starting to see that more weight loss programs are trending toward digital tools, too. “We’ve seen this rise of digital health tools in the last decade, and they provide a great way for people to access interventions to better their health,” said Michele Patel, PhD, postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Exercise hard in spurts.Ī new study led by a Stanford Medicine researcher makes at least one thing clear: No matter which weight loss tactic you choose, you’re typically more successful if you track your progress with digital health tools.Īccording to the study, the closer people track their weight-loss efforts with things like smart watches, digital scales and diet-monitoring websites, the more weight they tend to lose.
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