Assessing the Bite Counter as a Tool for Food Intake Monitoring: Phase II

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Self monitoring has been described as the andquot cornerstone of the behavioral treatment of obesityandquot Consistent self monitoring of energy intake is associated with improved dietary adherence and weight loss and maintenance The problem is that individuals are notoriously bad at self monitoring their intake and suffer from an underreporting bias The significance of the proposed work is that it will make a low cost intake monitoring device widely available for use in behavioral weight loss treatment and research Our innovative intake monitoring method uses sensors embedded into a watch like device to automatically track wrist motion to count bites and provide intake feedback during a meal allowing individuals to self monitor intake anywhere and anytime In Phase the method was shown to accurately count bites across a wide variety of foods utensils and subject demographics and to provide an unbiased intake measurement Additional studies show people will use the device long term and prefer our method over a manual method The proposed work will continue to improve the bite counting method by adapting to varying eating rates develop a self managed bite count based weight loss protocol and perform an independent test of the protocol PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE The significance of the proposed work is that it will make a low cost intake monitoring device widely available for use in weight loss treatment and research Dietary self monitoring is critical to weight loss However automatic dietary self monitoring tool are lacking Thus individuals trying to lose weight are left to manually record what they eat which results in transient dietary self monitoring and ultimately failed weight loss Our innovativ technology automates self monitoring providing objective feedback and promoting long term use