Play And Lose Weight! - Research

A group of researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Cardiff, led by Natalia Lawrence, has developed a simple online game that helps to get rid of the addiction to frequent "snacks" and thereby - lose those extra pounds.

The essence of the game is as follows. Pictures of various objects appear on the screen, and the user must either ignore the picture - if it contains high-calorie foods (for example, cookies), or “like” - if something else is shown (for example, fruits or clothes). Laboratory studies have convinced the authors of the development that this simple procedure helps to raise a "stop signal" in relation to all kinds of snacks, and this contributes a lot to weight loss.

Scientists recently repeated their experiment. This time, the participants were divided into two groups: active (41 people) and control (42 people). Before the start of the game part, everyone was weighed (most of them were overweight and used to regularly snack on chips, chocolates, etc.) and asked to keep "food diaries" for a week. After that, the participants played the same game as in the first study. A total of 4 sessions of 10 minutes were held. However, the first group played with pictures of food, and the control group played with pictures that were not related to food. Then, for another week, all participants again kept diaries.

Comparing the results, the researchers were convinced that the game really has great potential. In the first group, many managed to reduce the number of calories per day (220 less than before the experiment) and lose an average of 0.7 kg in weight. Moreover, the effect persisted six months later.

The authors, however, admit that their development is not a panacea and so far they are only at the very beginning of the journey, but it is quite possible that this game will soon be included in many weight loss programs.

In Russia, research psychologist Boris Zubkov has been engaged in similar experiments for several years. A 200-person study is currently ending with another planned for late August this year.

On the site of "Our Psychology" there is a game created on almost the same principle, which increases the level of positive perception of the surrounding reality by training attention to quickly identify smiling faces.

By the way, the scientific rationale for this method is given in the BBC film "The Truth About Character" (2013) and in the book by Elaine Fox "Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain".