Why weight-loss apps can be Misguiding you!

Tracking and monitoring weight loss have become easier than ever with a wide variety of weight loss apps found online. Exercise and diet can be monitored and using a specialized tracker or your smartphone just at the press of a button.

While there are over dozens of weight loss apps and digital exercise trackers, are they all reliable? Is the convenience of losing weight through these weight loss apps too good to be true?

What is the principle behind weight loss apps?

Almost all the weight loss apps work on a simple and basic principle. Weight loss is achieved by eating lesser food than your body requires. Consuming lesser calories and exerting yourself physically more causes the body to use excess fat for energy. The apps simply do two things – first, they allow you to input your daily consumption of calories and second, they track your physical activities throughout the day.

Flaws in the principle behind weight loss apps

A major disadvantage is that all weight loss apps consider all calories equally. For example, weight loss apps consider a calorie of pure sugar and a calorie of protein in the same manner. A calorie is the measure of usable energy from the consumed food. The amount of calories you can extract from the food you eat depends on how much your food is processed. As a general rule, food, when consumed raw, allows you to lose more weight, while the same food cooked promotes weight gain. This shows that foods with the same calorie amounts can produce different outcomes depending upon how high the food is processed.

Another parameter that almost all of the weight loss apps don’t consider is medications. Prescription medications like those that are used to treat diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), seizures and also migraine can also cause weight gain. People who consume such medications may not be able to lose weight, in spite of eating less and working out more.

Fitness apps also don’t change your approach to a healthy diet. Since the weight loss apps works on the basic calories intake and calories burned principle, they encourage the practice of bad eating. People after their regular exercises are hungry eventually. Most people satisfy their hunger with ready to eat cereal, biscuits or other items that are highly processed and low in nutrients. It is always important to accompany your exercise regime with healthy and nutritious food and not unhealthy processed food based on the calorie count.

So most weight loss apps can fairly misguide you and hence one needs to be prudent before completely relying on a weight loss app to lose their weight.