Study: Tech + Tracking Helps You Stick with Your Weight-Loss Plan

By , SparkPeople Blogger

Something in common with many of the Success Stories on SparkPeople is that those members used our free Nutrition and Fitness Trackers to help them reach their weight loss goal. Being able to track your nutrition intake and how much fitness activity you do really does help to figure out the right balance for not only weight loss, but for maintaining your weight as well. A new study confirms and suggests what many of us already know, which is that people who use electronic diaries that offer feedback are more likely to adhere to their weight loss program.

The study followed participants using a paper diary, an electronic device that provided no feedback and an electronic device that had a program that offered feedback. As you might guess, the group of participants that used the electronic device that had a program that offered feedback was more successful and was more likely to stick with their weight loss program over time. It was also found that over time in the later phase of the program, if the feedback frequency declined, so did the participants’ adherence to their weight loss program. Even more interesting is that the participants who only used the paper diary were less likely to continue with their program, especially over time.

So what does that tell us? Well, the SparkPeople members who are already using our Nutrition and Fitness Trackers on the website or on their mobile device are well on their way to reaching their goals and becoming a success story. Also, for those of you that track your food in our Nutrition Tracker, you can also find that you can get daily feedback about how you are doing with meeting your nutrition goals (and how to make some changes if you miss a particular nutrition goal). As mentioned in the study, that was a big key to the participants staying with their program and meeting their weight loss goals.
 


What do you think about this study? Do you think having a program like SparkPeople’s Nutrition and Fitness Tracker’s, along with the feedback it offers, helps you stick with your weight loss plan?

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