Researchers have developed a unique smartphone app that would help monitor you weigh loss effectively.
The smartphone application named as My Meal Mate app allows users observe their food intake and exercise and set a weight loss target. In addition to that, the application also sends a weekly update on progress through text message.
The smartphone app was used on average every other day in the trial, at the same time the average use of the website and paper diary was about once a week.
As a result, people using the application lost on average 4.6kg (101bs) in over 6 months, while people using paper-based and online diary lost only 1.3kg (3lbs) during the entire study.
The Department of Health has calculated the direct costs of obesity on the NHS to be 5.1 billion pounds a year and has estimated that approx 40,000 people die every year due to overweight or obesity.
"Smartphone technology could be harnessed to promote health; generally people don't know how many calories they are eating daily. My Meal Mate really helped people monitor their food intake and resulted in an important amount of weight loss," Professor Janet Cade, from the School of Food Science and Nutrition, who lead the project, said.
"The labelling on food packaging can help people to identify sensible food choices but it doesn't enable them to understand the cumulative effects of the foods they eat. Keeping a food diary allows us to see where we might be eating too much and the app has proved to be the most effective tracking method by far," Professor Cade added.
In comparison to other smartphone apps available presentl, which are aimed at helping people monitor food intake and lose weight, My Meal Mate is the first free app to contain a large UK-based food database.
This app allows users to monitor their eating habits quite easily to the products they consume.
Moreover, My Meal Mate is also the first such app to be hosted for download on the NHS Choices website
The findings have been published in the Journal of Internet Medical Research.
-With inputs from ANI
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