"People don't walk around with pens and paper anymore. But everyone has a smartphone."Says Dr. David Edelson who's the creator of the popular iPhone/iPod touch "weight loss guiding" app called Thin-Cam which I saw while reading an interesting article in latimes today. This is certainly not the only application that claims to help you to lose weight ... but if you're new to this you might be thinking how the heck is it possible for a smart phone to do that?.
The idea is quite simple actually. Keeping a journal about your daily weight loss "entries" such as the food that you should eat, how many possible calories that you've consumed, the time you spent on exercises, etc (depends on the mindset of the individual actually) can be quite useful, which is an "ancient" method among weight loss enthusiastic.
So as Dr. David said, since most carry a smart phone rather than a piece of paper, it kinda make sense.
For instance let's take the Thin-Cam app with their service (there seems to be a separate "paid/premium" portion that is accessible via the app itself). Now while you eat your food, you can take a picture and upload it to the Thin-Cam web site. According to the developers this has two main advantages.
1. First, it helps you to get a better idea about your eating habits later (maybe true).
2. Secondly, later times, you can get advices directly from the Thin-Cam "experts" themselves by analyzing your pics, etc. (no worries, only you and the experts can see them).
Furthermore, they've added (as can be seen with the screenshot) food names and their standard calorie amounts. So whenever you're eating say 2 eggs, then the app calculates the calorie input easily. It can even send your "achievements" via online social services like Facebook so you can share it with your friends as well. You can also set your calorie goals per day and takes important notes if you like.
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| Thin-Cam in action... |
But as said before, some of these "benefits" will become benefits depending on the user.
For instance, have you seen athletes at big games like Olympics. I remember few times, an athlete while at a long jump event, he wanted some encouragements from the crowd. So he made the crowd doing claps for him. But at the same time another athlete for the same event, he wanted the whole ground to be as quite as possible.
I'm not sure who won or lost but the point is, they both wanted encouragement or praise from others (as everyone knows, this is one of the main stimulations behind our personal "achievements", ahh the power of praise :P) but the only difference was, they both used them in a different order.
Anyhow, all I'm trying to say is whether you should get some help from an app or not, it may heavily depend on your mindset.
In my personal experience, few years ago I also gained some weight. Not that much actually, but it was noticeable, I could feel it around my belly, my pants didn't fit at all... I could also feel it on my face as well (when I was smiling, I could feel the additional strain because of the gained "muscles"). And the reason for this weight gain was simple. I ate more and didn't do much of an exercise.
So I wanted to lose that weight, but I didn't see any doctor or go after an especial diet... I did some martial arts from time to time :). All I did was simple exercises for my whole body (belly, side kicks for legs, skipping rope - one of the best methods I've found so far, if you don't like running on roads, etc) + I did not make any big changes of my eating habits (slight decreasing only). I never kept any journal nor used a mobile phone (I don't think we had these "apps" those days).
And within a week or 2 at most, I lose over 90% of that over weight!.
But as mentioned, I didn't gain excessive weights, which could be the reason for behind that "unprofessional" success but most of the time I assume that when seeing some of the success stories... if you can stimulate your pride a little (which is actually one of the reasons behind my "success", I think).. it can be a massive helper!, at least in my opinion anyway.
Anyhow, even while on society, I see there are certain people who always want to keep things in order. You may thing I'm criticizing other, I'm not, I assure you. Anyway, as I was saying, these individuals they heavily depend on analyzing (using reports, written texts, etc) and planning, etc. That's just their version of doing things.
I myself don't use that method at all. But if you're one of those individuals... who likes to set goals first and achieve the results afterward and uses a mobile phone during the day heavily, then perhaps an app like this can come in handy. But for myself, I may not use them.
What's your opinion? does their ability depends depends on the person or they're always handy without depending on the person or they're waste of your money??.
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