On a typical day I see at least 5 patients who are morbidly obese. The discussions are typical. 90% of these are ladies. The typical complaint is the weight does not budge! When asked what you do to reduce weight, most stare back blankly. It is surprising that most obese patients think that it is God’s duty to keep their weight in check!Some say “I do all household work” and “that’s a lot of exercise” or the other typical answer is that “I stopped eating rice long ago but the weight did not reduce!” They give me funny looks when I ask who told you not eating rice will reduce weight?I was looking for a solution which could give these people a realistic view of their lifestyle and their diet. I accidentally found a free mobile app called “healthyfyme”.I started experimenting on my patients and Voila this trick worked. This is a simple app which allows you to calculate the calories you consume per day. It is an Indian app so you just log in one katori of “upma” and it will tell you all the calories consumed plus how much carbohydrate, fats, proteins and fibers this dish had. At the end of the day it tells you how many calories were consumed and whether you exceeded the right amount of protein, carbohydrates,fats and fiber per day. When you register it asks you to enter your height and weight and immediately calculate the amount of calories you need to consume perday. Google has an app called Google fit which easily syncs with this app. So if you keep your phone on your body and work throughout the day Google fit willalso calculate all the calories you burnt and sync that with healthyfyme!So at the end of the day you know exactly where you stand. For weight loss one needs toburn more calories than the calories consumed per day.I realized that most of us eat a very specific breakfast lunch and dinner and once we know thatthat extra cup of “chai” can give 70 to 110 calories our “chai pe charcha” or “cutting”chai habit disappears!A happypatient came back and told me “ Doc, I realized today that to burn the caloriesI get from my cup of tea and need to walk fast for around 2 kms!” Unfortunatelywhen we go to burn calories the process is too slow but when we eat that small piece of chocolate the calories just jump!

Disclaimer:I have no financial interest in either Google fit or healthyfyme.l