Apps to help with diet tracking

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A new study led by a Stanford Medicine researcher makes at least one thing clear: No matter which weight loss tactic you choose, youre typically more successful if you track your progress with digital health tools.

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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. In the end, it all comes back to goal-setting and consistency, said Patel, and digital tools can help facilitate both.

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The finding makes sense, Patel said. Tracking allows us to be aware of what were eating, how much were moving and how our body weight fluctuates on the scale each day. People can leverage this monitoring feedback to make changes to their daily behaviors. Investigating the grams of nutrients and calories for every meal is burdensome for most people. Digital tools make calorie counting and nutrient tracking easier, she said. Diet-monitoring websites and apps already know information about the foods users log - such as the grams of carbs versus fat in a waffle. 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.

Patel and her team compared nearly 40 different studies on weight-loss monitoring that were conducted between 2009 and 2019. 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. 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.

According 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.