Count Your Bites, Then Count Your (Weight Loss) Blessings

A small U.S. pilot study has determined that weight loss could be as simple a matter as counting – but not steps, or minutes of exercise, or calories. The 41 participants who completed the study counting bites as they ate lost about four pounds on average (a healthful pound per week). Participants also committed to taking 20 to 30 percent fewer bites over four weeks. They changed nothing else about their eating or exercising patterns. Those who didn’t finish the program blamed the difficulty of keeping count, so computer scientists developed an algorithm for that. The technology was licensed to a local Utah startup (SmartBites) that is working on an app for wearable devices such as Android Wear and WatchOS devices.