Out for the count in the flab flight

Since the advent of the mobile internet era, various fitness apps and calorie-calculating apps have gained popularity among dieters.

These apps are designed with easy-to-use interfaces, the developers having studied human nature to the extreme. They do everything possible to make you exercise every day and count calories every day, one of the main motivations being that in doing so the app will constantly feed you with data that makes you feel good about yourself. That in turn, for apps that require payment, will have developers feeling good about the fat profits their apps are making. However, anecdotal evidence－the number of overweight people about－suggests that these apps are having a limited impact on public health.

Yes, keeping fit by various means seems to be all the craze, but why does it seem that the ranks of the overweight are not thinning? The fitness fad is gaining ground, and everyone likes to exercise, why are there so many fat people anyway? Juhee Jhalani, a clinical psychologist in New York, says regarding exercise solely as a means of weight loss is not only wrongheaded, but could be dangerous as well.

Li Xiaomin, 35, a reporter in Beijing, is an example. After 45 minutes of pedaling, sweat drips from her body and she feels she is giving herself a really tough workout. "Looking at my bike again, it shows that I have consumed more than 600 calories. I can really indulge myself for a cheat meal, perhaps some chicken wings and a big bottle of cola if I can lose 3,000 calories this week," she says.

As long as dieters believe that by fixating on the number of calories they burn they can lose weight over any prolonged length of time, the more disappointed people there will be around stuck on the dieting treadmill, seeing little return for their efforts.