Weight Management

What Is Weight Management?

The system for maintaining a healthy body weight, human or animal, is weight management. While it monitors subjects in real time, it also relies on both established and new scientific data as guidelines for activity and nutrition.

Why Is It Important to Have a Good Weight Management System?

Proper weight maintenance improves physical and mental well-being as well as prevents future illness or injury.

What Internal Data Should I Have for a Good Weight Management System?

To build a proper weight maintenance system, begin with individual age, sex, activity level, and current and desired weight. Additional vital data includes medical conditions, allergies, and religious or other convictions that restrict diet.

What External Data Is Essential for a Good System?

External data necessary for weight maintenance are nutrition data and, if relevant, data on medications taken—especially their interactions with food or side effects. Some medications, for example, cause sleep disturbances which make weight management very difficult.

What External Data May Prove Useful for a Good System?

Organizational psychology data may also help a weight management system, especially if this system is part of a workplace health and wellness plan; such psychological data can help provide motivation for employees participating in these programs.

Budget or other financial data may also be included in a this type of system.

What Are the Main Challenges of this Use Case?

There are several challenges of this use case. Some environments, for example, lack enough food or simply enough nutritious food; social obligations pressure individuals to overeat or under-eat; underlying health issues may interfere with the ability to follow a diet or exercise program at all.

There are also enormous amounts of nutrition data that is seemingly inconsistent or contradictory. Additionally, social trends often outpace the science. For example, the benefits of fasting or eating multiple meals, eating a low-carb, high-fat diet vs a low-fat, high-carb diet, or whether eggs are healthy at all. Sport or exercise data, especially as it relates to age or sex, suffers from similar inconsistent data or incorrect information.

Interesting Case Studies and Blogs to Look Into

Nature Research: Weight management
NCBI: Maintenance of lost weight and long-term management of obesity

Tangible Examples of Impact

Used by many major corporations, from Samsung to Aetna, Noom’s health coaching—with weight management services—show results.

[They have] published research in internationally recognized journals such as Nature and British Medical Journal (BMJ) 1, which has shown that 64% of Noom users lost 5% or more of body weight, greatly reducing their risk of diabetes and other conditions.

In 2017, Noom’s program received full recognition by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)