Losing weight is something many of us struggle with. Doing it in a healthy way and without putting your health at risk with fad diets is no longer so difficult. Or at least until the creation of FoodT App, an application that will train your brain for better eating habits.
Scientists have developed an unhealthy food game within a brain training app that they say can help you eat less and lose weight. Everything is reflected in a new investigation of the Universities of Exeter and Helsinki, in which 1,234 people participated.
Improve unhealthy eating habits
The app, called The Food Trainer (also known as FoodT), trains you to touch pictures of healthy foods. You will also have to stop touching the screen when you see unhealthy snacks. This fact represents a long-term change in your decisions about food.
According to its developers, this creates an association between unhealthy food and an ‘inhibited response’, helping to avoid unhealthy options in real-world settings. They hope it will be helpful to anyone with unhealthy eating habits, perhaps developed during lockdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic.
They found that playing The Food Trainer once a day for a month led to an average reduction of one point in unhealthy food consumption on an eight-point scale. However, people who played more frequently reported even bigger changes in their food intake. In all participants, there was an average weight loss of half a kilogram and a small increase in the intake of healthy foods .
The game asks users to choose three types of food or drink that they want to consume less of. Then, they just have to press the item on the screen when there is a green circle, and avoid it when there is a red circle. The app also periodically asks questions about how often certain foods are eaten, along with other information, including age and weight.
Only 4 minutes to change in the long term
For example, someone who eats an unhealthy meal two to four times a week reduced this to once a week after using the app regularly for a month. The app is free and only takes about four minutes a day, so it’s something that people can realistically do, and the results suggest it’s effective.
There is some evidence that the benefits were strongest for people who were more overweight. This may have happened because the app targets the mechanisms that lead people to be overweight, such as the strong urge to reach out and consume the tempting “junk” food.
Based on the results, it seems important that you do the training regularly and do not abandon it. You can download the application for Android and for iOS systems completely free of charge. Real user reviews are very positive, highlighting the long-term effect on food choice.
