Five Ways to Lose Weight with Gadgets and Apps

Weight loss is simple in theory: You burn more calories than you take in. Advances in fitness technology help dieters more accurately track their calorie deficit and share their progress using social media or private networks of like-minded users; both approaches help you to keep up your discipline and melt away the unwanted inches on your waist and thighs. In addition, helper gadgets like music players and even video-game systems provide a mental kick to keep up motivation. The right mix of fitness technology just might help you cross the finish line for your weight-loss goal.

1. Calorie and Exercise Trackers

   • Because the arithmetic of weight loss is so straightforward, part of the challenge for dieters is to accurately record their intake (food) and output (exercise) to arrive at an accurate daily calorie budget. Smartphones and tablets for all operating systems feature dozens of apps that will help you manage your daily calorie balance.
     For example, MyFitnessPal, a free app for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad and Windows Phone, features an easy-to-use interface for tracking the names and portion sizes of everything you eat or drink and the duration and intensity of your workouts. The app connects to a large database of food so you can select a particular meal and the system will supply the nutritional information. The app even includes a bar code reader -- just scan the label and the app will identify it.
     Some apps include additional features. Livescape, available for Windows Phone, integrates with Microsoft HealthVault; sync Livescape with HealthVault to integrate your diet and exercise routine with your medical records and prescription history to better inform your physician about your lifestyle habits.
     Apps like RunKeeper for Android and iOS emphasize exercise tracking; the app logs various forms of exercise and even includes GPS tracking and timers to log intensity-of-workout measures you can use to refine your exercise program.

   Scales and Monitors

   • Traditional spring-loaded bathroom scales remain functional workhorses of the bathroom, but some scales with Wi-Fi connections will log your weight over time and display your body-mass index.
     The Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale, for example, records your weight-related data and uploads it to your account on Fitbit.com. The information is also accessible on Fitbit's iPhone/iPad app. The scale's data integrates with other information tracked by Fitbit products.
     People with a history of heart disease, or obese people trying to lose weight, may find value in recording blood pressure. A steady graph of blood pressure, recorded daily or weekly, helps inform your conversations with your physician and alert you to changes in your cardiopulmonary fitness. Electronic monitors, available at most pharmacies, feature self-inflating arm cuffs and sensors that display pressure and pulse.

   Video-Game Systems

   • Nintendo's Wii Fit and Microsoft's Kinect PlayFit take a normally sedentary pastime like video-game playing and turns it into a fitness opportunity. Both systems ship with various hardware sensors that record time and exertion.
     Although these platforms work with solo or small-group efforts, users can push their fitness activity within the larger Wii or Xbox 360 environments to earn achievements or post their progress on social media sites.
     Video-game fitness harnesses two separate phenomena to help bolster fitness discipline: Gamification, or the practice of providing incremental achievements for meeting goals, and social proofing, or the sharing of one's results with friends or the general public. These psychological approaches to fitness rely on competitiveness and status-seeking to provide motivation that may otherwise be lacking.

   Music and DVDs

   • DVDs that encourage viewers to follow along to exercises -- whether yoga or P90X or even "Sweatin' to the Oldies" -- help people undertake more complicated fitness programs that might otherwise be out of their reach.
     In addition, even simple exercises like jogging or cycling benefit from music, usually delivered through a smartphone or personal MP3 player. A 2011 study in the journal "Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback" noted that "music in an exercise context has a motivational effect, distracts from unpleasant feelings and suppresses boredom" and that "feedback on training pace by means of music tempo seem[s] to positively influence the consistency in cycling pace."
     In other words: Pump up the jam to pump up the calorie burn.

   Performance Biometric Systems

   • Since 2008 several companies have introduced various gadgets that directly integrate into workout routines. The Fitbit Ultra Wireless Tracker, the Adidas miCoach product line and the Nike+ product line feature trackers, watches and assorted gadgets that passively monitor activity and report back various statistics including duration, intensity, distance or calorie burn.
     The Fitbit Ultra tracks steps and sleep and automatically uploads data using Wi-Fi. Adidas miCoach includes heart monitors and shoe-mounted speed trackers; both products upload wirelessly. The Adidas Running miCoach Pacer, an all-in-one running system, even provides audible feedback about pace and intensity to keep up motivation.
     The Nike+ system includes the FuelBand for monitoring daily activity and the SportBand and SportsWatch GPS for monitoring runs. Select Nike shoes contain embedded sensors that integrate with the Nike+ system; the entire Nike+ platform may be accessed using an iPhone app. The Nike+ system features "NikeFuel," or points that can be shared with other users to help gamify and socialize fitness goals.
     Although these performance biometric systems are the cutting edge of athletic monitoring, they can get expensive, running into the hundreds of dollars.