Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Aug 10, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 13, 2018 - Oct 8, 2018
Date Accepted: Jan 21, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Weight Loss Following Use of a Smartphone Food Photo Feature: Retrospective Cohort Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Tracking of dietary intake is a key tool to enhance weight loss. Mobile apps may be useful for tracking food intake and can provide feedback about calories and nutritional value. Recent technological development has enabled image recognition to identify foods and to track food intake.
Objective:
We investigated the effectiveness of using photography as a feature of a smartphone weight loss app to track food intake in adults with overweight or obesity.
Methods:
We analyzed data from individuals (ages 18 - 65, BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2, ≥ 4 days of logged food intake, and ≥2 weigh-ins) who used a mobile-based weight loss app. In a retrospective study, we compared those who used the photo feature (n = 9,871) to those who did not (n = 113,916). Linear regression analyses were used to assess use of the photo feature in relation to percent weight loss.
Results:
Weight loss was greater in the group using the photo feature (Δ = 0.14%, 95% CI [0.06, 0.22], P < .001). The photo feature group used the weight loss app for a longer duration (+3.5 days, 95% CI [2.61, 4.37], P < .001) and logged their food intake on more days (+6.1 days, )95% CI [5.40, 6.77], P < .001) than the non-users. The weight loss effect was removed when controlling for either duration or logged days in the program.
Conclusions:
This study is the first to examine the effect of a food photo feature to track food intake on weight loss. Use of photo recognition was associated with greater weight loss, which was related to duration and logged days in the program. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.