Holy crap, guys, look at Stephanie. It works!MIT researchers have created a mobile app to make it easier for you to keep accurate track of your meals and calories with your smartphone. I know, I know.....another diet app. Haven't seen that before....NEXT!But wait, hear them out first. The geeks at MIT are confident that THEIR weight loss app is about to blow all the others out of the water.Apparently this app is supposed to be radically different than any other diet or calorie counting app on the market.
The researchers claim that traditional calorie counting apps are "tedious" because people find it difficult to keep up with logging every food/ingredient manually. This leads people to get frustrated, give up, and not lose weight.To give users more control over their diet, the user verbally tells the app what foods he or she is planning to eat and the app scours the USDA database to find the nutritional value of the foods listed.Images of listed foods are shown and the user specifies the amount of each food they are eating.The researches believe that allowing users to describe the meal, rather than log it manually, is an easier process and therefore will allow people to be more consistent in logging their calories, stick to their diets, and lose weight.For example, a person could (literally) say "I had pork chops, spinach, sweet potatoes, and a glass of milk for dinner." The user could then adjust the portions of each food and beverage based on what they ate.
MIT developers will get super hot girlfriends who got that way by using the app to lose weight. Or, MIT nerds will take on OTHER super popular, impossible-to-compete-with brands and companies.Maybe they'll try and oust Google, or develop a smartphone to permanently tank Apple sales forever. These geeks are so freakin' smart that they could probably take over the world.What diet apps have you used in the past that worked well? Let us know in the comments below.Image credit: geekinsider.com, chatelaine.com, popsugar.com, tiotrash.com
Well, how does it work?
The researchers claim that traditional calorie counting apps are "tedious" because people find it difficult to keep up with logging every food/ingredient manually. This leads people to get frustrated, give up, and not lose weight.To give users more control over their diet, the user verbally tells the app what foods he or she is planning to eat and the app scours the USDA database to find the nutritional value of the foods listed.Images of listed foods are shown and the user specifies the amount of each food they are eating.The researches believe that allowing users to describe the meal, rather than log it manually, is an easier process and therefore will allow people to be more consistent in logging their calories, stick to their diets, and lose weight.For example, a person could (literally) say "I had pork chops, spinach, sweet potatoes, and a glass of milk for dinner." The user could then adjust the portions of each food and beverage based on what they ate.Why should I care?
This is incredibly intriguing because if these super geeks are right about their assumption, it could rock the diet and fitness world.Why? Because we're not always honest with our doctors, spouses, and other people who are close to us in our lives. In fact, according to an article in the New York Times, we're more honest with our smartphones than our doctors.Think about it. We'll almost always pick a faceless smartphone over a "judgey" individual for answers when we want to look up something that's private or a little embarrassing.Our smartphones have become a representation of exactly what's on our minds. If this app leads to more accurate self reporting for dieters, it would be HUGE. Huge like the MIT guy's girlfriends before they tried this app.What's Next: Age of the geek, baby
MIT developers will get super hot girlfriends who got that way by using the app to lose weight. Or, MIT nerds will take on OTHER super popular, impossible-to-compete-with brands and companies.Maybe they'll try and oust Google, or develop a smartphone to permanently tank Apple sales forever. These geeks are so freakin' smart that they could probably take over the world.What diet apps have you used in the past that worked well? Let us know in the comments below.Image credit: geekinsider.com, chatelaine.com, popsugar.com, tiotrash.com