We’ve been doing several pilot trials of our food trainer app in people with binge eating recently so we can talk a bit about that if that’s useful? We’re in the process of making some short videos for people with binge eating issues about why people binge and how our intervention might help so it might be worth waiting until those are available (we’ll put them on our website) so that people who want to know more after watching the interview can access them. The website is
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/foodt/Restrain
Restrain is an app designed by scientists that may help people lose weight and eat more healthily. The app is part of a wider research project to test whether different types of ‘brain training’ exercises can help people improve their eating habits. Scientific research has shown that these exercises might promote healthier eating behaviour and weight loss. Our study will test if this is true, and if so, which exercises work best and who is likely to benefit the most.
Restrain can be found on the Google Playstore
hereFoodT
Do you want to eat less unhealthy food? Do you want to lose weight? Then why not try the FoodT app! Download this app and choose 3 types of food/drink you want to consume less of and then play away! By playing this game on your phone you will be a part of exciting new scientific research. Each time you play you’ll be contributing to research at The University of Exeter. This app is based on a similar online game, which was shown to reduce users’ food intake and weight after playing the game four times.
FoodT can be found on the Google Playstore
here or Apple App Store
hereI think an interview with a focus on binge eating would be great, especially if it’s an issue that many of your followers struggle with. We’re currently running a few trials looking into the effectiveness of brain training games to aid in weight control and eating patterns which might be of relevance to some of your followers, and given these studies are app-based/real-world, they also have the chance to participate and help us with our research!
Regarding an outline of the interview, maybe we could start with talking broadly about weight control and eating patterns. There’s many different ways for weight gain to occur (with overeating the wrong things being very common, though not the only problem out there). It may be good to emphasise this as a starting point as it can be stigmatising for individuals with weight problems who do eat the right things, but maybe experience other eating-related problems, e.g. portion sizing etc.!
From there we can discuss some of the issues surrounding binge eating. As you would have seen in the interview with Jonno, we talk a lot about underlying neuropsychological mechanisms of eating behaviours (namely, reward and self-control). We can go into detail about these and their role in overeating as well as the crossover of these mechanisms with other impulsive behaviours such as binge drinking and the influence of the environment on these processes.
The studies we’re currently running are looking at modifying these underlying mechanisms with brain training games. So we can talk about the evidence surrounding these tasks for changing weight and eating patterns as well as detail some of the current trials we’re running (FoodT and Restrain – see https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/15417459/lose-weight-playing-games-app-restrain-sign-up/) and what we hope to find with these.
Look forward to seeing the video!
