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This is the way to write to lose weight.
Monitoring meals for at least 15 minutes a day has been the recipe for the success of a new study published in the March issue of Obesity.
Researchers from the University of Vermont followed 142 participants for six months. The subjects recorded their daily food consumption online, including what they ate and drank, the size of their portions, and how these foods were prepared. The research team tracked the time they spent noticing what they ate, as well as the frequency of their messages. Participants also met during an online group session led by a registered dietitian once a week.
And the biggest losers – who lost 10% of their weight in six months – spent an average of 23.2 minutes a day monitoring their own meals during the first month of the program, which stabilized at 14.6 minutes a day. end of the study. To put this weight loss into perspective, doctors such as Dr. Avigdor Arad of Mount Sinai Physiolab suggest losing 3% to 5% of your body weight when you start a sustainable weight loss program.
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The study's lead author, Jean Harvey, chairman of the University of Vermont's Nutrition and Food Science Department, suggested in his report that people spend less time in the study. their food diary at the end of the study, as they were in the habit of following their meals, and became more effective at monitoring meals. In addition, the progressive ability of the Web program that they used to track their meals began to automatically supplement the words and phrases they used to record their eating habits, which saved time.
This supports previous research that recommended keeping a food diary to know how many calories you consume. After all, portion sizes have soared in restaurants over the past 40 years, which has led adults to consume an average of 300 more calories per day now than in 1985. Plus, knowing that you will need record that you have caught a chocolate Muffins for breakfast rather than more nutritious oatmeal may prevent you from making the less healthy choice.
A 2008 Kaiser Center for Health Research study of 1,700 people found that those who kept diaries for six months lost twice as much weight as those who did not notice what they were sneaking. They lost about 13 pounds on average. And a 2011 systemic review on research surrounding self-monitoring of weight loss, which included diary diaries, weigh-ups, and fitness monitoring, also revealed "a significant association between self-monitoring." and weight loss. diverse populations, however, as the subjects of these studies tended to be white and female.
The new study provides data on the time it takes to write what they bite. And while the top performers write about 15 to 23 minutes a day, it's not necessarily the time you spend watching your meals, but how often you adjust to what's on your plate. Spending a few minutes at least three times a day, totaling 14.6 minutes, seemed to be the most beneficial.
"Those who watched themselves three times a day or more and remained faithful day after day were the best performers," said Harvey in his report. "It seems to be the act of self-monitoring that makes the difference – not the time spent or the details included. It's very effective and it's not as difficult as people think. "
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It's easier than ever thanks to the flourishing market for mobile health applications (mHealth), which is expected to reach $ 102.35 billion by 2023. This includes applications such as Lose it!, MyFitnessPal , See how you eat and Yazio, which offer features such as scanning. the barcode or UPC code of a food product or drink to automatically grab it into your diary, or to keep takeaway (like coffee, yoghurt and fruit for the little one) lunch most mornings) to add to your journal with a simple tapping, instead of typing the whole menu again and again. And three out of four people told Accenture's research that technology is important for managing their health. The use of mobile devices has tripled since 2014.
About four in ten Americans (or 93.3 million adults) are obese, which increases their risk for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, and early mortality , and cost the country $ 147 billion in medical costs in 2008, according to the CDC. .
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