FoodT is an app that aims to help you curb your cravings for sweets,
chips, sodas and other high calorie, low nutrient foods. If it can
help curb cravings for these items then it could help people who are
struggling to diet longterm begin to lose weight in a sustainable
manner.
I used FoodT at least once a day for 30
days in order to test how effective I personally think it was.
I had serious doubts about FoodT when I
did my
initial reaction to it. And after using it for 30 days, I think my
initial reaction was spot on.
At best it distracted me when I was
having an unhealthy food craving – sugar is my weakness. But
because it was encouraged to use it before an actual meal, not a
snack, it was rather pointless. If you are the type of person that
eats on the fly and thus ends up grabbing what you're craving in
place of a real meal then you have bigger problems to work out than
controlling what you crave. A much simpler method than a training app
to deal with that is to plan and prep your meals beforehand. No risk
of ending up with a Snickers for lunch if you already have a
perfectly good bowl of beef, broccoli and rice waiting for you. Meal
prepping once a week probably took only slightly longer to do than
playing this game once a day for the same week.
I still don't understand why the random
objects are mixed into the rounds. Am I supposed to think coats are
bad and socks are sometimes good but sometimes bad? What are
staplers?! I'm having a crisis about clothes and items on my desk
now! Do I throw them away or keep them?! Kidding. No crisis, but I
still don't get the point of them being mixed in there. Seems to
serve no purpose in training your brain.
I started really craving Dots after
doing the test the first few days. Seeing them pop up across the
screen so many times made them look really, really yummy. A red
circle around them didn't make them look less sugary and delicious. I
think having the opposite of the intended effect is generally bad,
right?
After doing it a few days I zoned out
on what I was actually looking at. I had my finger over the picture
half the time to better push the screen faster – it encourages you
to go faster. So I couldn't even subconsciously register what was
inside the green or red circle I was pushing. I just saw the circle's
color around the edge of my finger and pushed or didn't push based on
that. Nothing to learn there beyond green means go and red means
stop.
And finally, I have no idea how they
are going to use the data they collected. At the end they collected
my weight and information again, as well as asking if I thought the
app helped. Well I lost weight so depending on how they calculate
that into the study, it may look like I benefited from the app (even
though I told it I did not feel it helped at all). I lost weight
because I have already been steadily losing weight and taking steps
to change my lifestyle to ensure it stays off. The app didn't have
anything to do with any of the changes made before, during or after
its use.
I'd be interested to see the final
results and a write-up for how the data was separated on collection
(if people who felt the app didn't help were included in weight loss
results or are put on a separate chart of some kind, etc.). But
ultimately, I can't imagine this had many positive effects for the
average user. Zoning out was too easy, the 'bad' food flashing before
my eyes made me want to eat it not carrots and mushrooms and the
non-food objects just make it confusingly weird.
