Technology Can Help Boost Success at Weight Loss and Exercise

When I suggest to a client that the best way to insure success at reaching their weight goal is to keep a daily record of food intake, it’s a suggestion usually met with resistance.  Exercise logs don’t fare much better.  But if you are having problems staying motivated for more than a couple of weeks on a weight loss program, then monitoring with a personal digital assistant (PDA) might be the answer.  Research has demonstrated that when self-monitoring of daily diet and exercise was done using a PDA, after 6 months the group using the PDA technology had more weight loss, and had a higher number of self-monitoring entries than a comparison group using  a paper record.  Perhaps just as important, the PDA group that also received a feedback message ate fewer calories and less saturated fat than the other groups (paper record or PDA only).

 It should not be a surprise that frequent monitoring of goals and messages that encourage us to keep trying make it easier to reach health goals.

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