Losing weight and maintaining that weight loss is a matter of watching what you eat and doing more exercise than before. But often dieters struggle to stick to their weight loss program without a little support and that’s where a new smartphone app is stepping in.
The NHS in the UK has set up My Meal Mate, an app that allows dieters to monitor their exercise and food intake, and a trial shows that the app is helping them lose weight and keep that weight off.
My Meal Mate can be downloaded from the NHS Choices website for free. It sets a weight loss target for the user and sends a text message weekly to update the user on their progress.
A trial run by Leeds University’s School of Food Science & Nutrition involved 128 slimmers who were split into three groups to monitor their food intake and weight loss over a six-month period. Group one used the My Meal Mate app; group two used an online diary; and group three used a paper diary.
The slimmers who used the app lost an average of 10lbs while the dieters using the other forms of a diary lost 6.5lbs on average over the same period. The app was used on average every other day during the trial while those using the paper diary only wrote in it on average once a week.
Obesity is a growing health problem in the developed world – in the UK, it is estimated that the annual cost of treating obese and overweight people for the related health conditions is £1.5billion.
The Leeds trial demonstrates that the latest technology can be put to good use in helping people shed the pounds. Calorie counting can be done more effectively using the smartphone app while keeping a food diary that can be updated in a few keystrokes allows users to track their food intake quickly.
My Meal Mate can be downloaded for Android smartphones from NHS Choices.
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