Watching a graphical avatar of yourself exercise can help you lose weight in a better manner, researchers from George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services found.
Losing weight requires a lot of determination and motivation as well as a proper diet and a good exercise routine. There's always a little extra push needed to get people going in the right direction and researchers from George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services suggest this extra push could come from watching graphical avatars of themselves exercising.
"This pilot study showed that you don't have to be a gamer to use virtual reality to learn some important skills for weight loss," said Melissa Napolitano, PhD, an associate professor of prevention and community health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) in a press statement. "This small study suggests that virtual reality could be a promising new tool for building healthier habits."
Along with helping women shed those extra pounds, researchers also found that using a virtual model for fitness can also help in making positive lifestyle changes. For the study, Napolitano and her team conducted a survey on 128 women and found that most of them had tried losing weight during the last year. Moreover, most of them had also never used a virtual reality game but in spite of this, 88 percent of the women surveyed were willing to use a program with an avatar promoting habits that can help them lose weight.
Participants stated that watching an avatar helped them visualize and implement healthy habits like taking a walk every day or picking healthier food items while shopping. Considering most participants were not tech savvy, researchers created a simple DVD that was not interactive but only had participants pick the avatar's skin color and shape so that it resembled the user. Eight overweight women then underwent a four-week pilot test to see if watching the videos could help them learn new skills that could lead to weight loss. After four weeks, the women had lost an average of 3.5 pounds.
"This is just the first step to show that women, even those who are not gamers, are interested in an avatar-based technology to help them with a weight-loss plan," said Napolitano. "We are excited by the potential of this technology as a scalable tool to help people learn the skills to be successful at weight loss over the long run."
The findings of the study have been published in the July 1 issue of the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology.
