Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Sep 15, 2020
Date Accepted: Feb 22, 2021
Slip Buddy App for Weight Management: A Randomized Feasibility Trial of A Dietary Lapse Tracking App
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although calorie tracking is one of the strongest predictors of outcomes of behavioral weight loss interventions, low rates of adherence are common and they do not help users understand factors driving their overeating. We designed Slip Buddy App as a possibly less burdensome and more informative form of dietary self-monitoring that allows users to track dietary lapses and the contextual factors surrounding them.
Objective:
This study examined the feasibility and acceptability of using the Slip Buddy App during a 12-week online weight loss program.
Methods:
We conducted a randomized pilot trial to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of using Slip Buddy App compared to a popular commercial calorie tracking app during an online behavioral weight loss intervention. Adults who were overweight or obese were randomized into a 12-week online weight loss intervention that included either the Slip Buddy App or a commercial calorie tracking app. Feasibility outcomes included retention, app usage, slips reported, and contextual factors reported at slips. Acceptability outcomes included ratings of how helpful, tedious, and taxing, time consuming, and burdensome using the assigned app was. We described weight change from baseline to 12 weeks in both groups as an exploratory outcome. Slip Buddy participants provided feedback on how to improve the app during post-intervention focus groups.
Results:
Participants (N=64) were 75% female and on average 39.8 (SD: 11.0) years old with mean BMI of 34.2 (SD: 4.9) kg/m2. Retention was high in both conditions (97% in Slip Buddy condition, 94% in calorie tracking). On average, participants used Slip Buddy App on 53.8% (SD: 31.3%) of intervention days, and participants who recorded slips (93.8%) logged on average 17.9 (SD: 14.4) slips. The most common slips were classified as snacks (40.9%) and slips most often occurred at home (55.2%) and while working (28.4%). While less one-third of Slip Buddy participants felt that using the Slip Buddy App was tedious, taxing, or time-consuming and 77% felt tracking slips was easy, only 39% agreed that tracking their slips with the app was helpful. However, weight losses of ≥5% of baseline weight were achieved by 31% of Slip Buddy participants and 34% of Calorie Tracking participants.
Conclusions:
Self-monitoring dietary lapses and the contextual factors associated with them may be an alternative for people who do not prefer calorie tracking. Future research should examine patient characteristics associated with adherence to different forms of dietary self-monitoring. Clinical Trial: NCT02615171
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.