There are several features missing in deltaWeight that might seem like total no-brainers to include. BMI (Body Mass Index) charts. Goal lines and dates. Maybe even warnings and alerts if you’re losing weight too fast or too slow.
I avoided these because I did not want deltaWeight to have an opinion either on what you were doing or how you were doing it. The daily weights and the resulting trend information are useful. But they need to be interpreted based on individual goals, self-knowledge, and possibly guidance from a physician, trainer, or nutritionist.
If I included a lot of interpretive tools (like BMI charts), the utility of deltaWeight would be limited by the utility of those tools. Instead of just reporting weight, the app would end up aligning itself with certain dietary or nutritional strategies, becoming less useful to others.
So deltaWeight is not “non-judgemental” because judging is bad, it is non-judgemental because I feel humans should be doing the judging.
There’s another reason deltaWeight is non-judgemental: it’s because I wanted a more rational approach to weight management.
Other weight logging tools — the Wii Fit is a notorious example — implement encouragement and nagging into their tool. Gain weight when you’re supposed to be losing, and the Wii Fit will insist you contemplate the reasons for your weight gain and give you a little lecture. Lose weight and you’ll get a little patronizing pat on the head. The Wii may have a friendly tone, but I can’t get over the fact that it is an unsensing hunk of plastic and silicon.
Some people might want that, and that’s fine. But I’ve always found the atmosphere around a lot of weight management tools infantalizing, and I suspect a lot of other people — especially those drawn to geeky features like calculated weight trend lines — have the same desire.
There are without a doubt more features that should and will be added to the tool. But only if they make the data more useful or interesting — not if they try to interpret meaning of the data. That’s your business.
Why deltaWeight is non-judgemental
deltaWeight is available on the iTunes app store.
I avoided these because I did not want deltaWeight to have an opinion either on what you were doing or how you were doing it. The daily weights and the resulting trend information are useful. But they need to be interpreted based on individual goals, self-knowledge, and possibly guidance from a physician, trainer, or nutritionist.
If I included a lot of interpretive tools (like BMI charts), the utility of deltaWeight would be limited by the utility of those tools. Instead of just reporting weight, the app would end up aligning itself with certain dietary or nutritional strategies, becoming less useful to others.
So deltaWeight is not “non-judgemental” because judging is bad, it is non-judgemental because I feel humans should be doing the judging.
There’s another reason deltaWeight is non-judgemental: it’s because I wanted a more rational approach to weight management.
Other weight logging tools — the Wii Fit is a notorious example — implement encouragement and nagging into their tool. Gain weight when you’re supposed to be losing, and the Wii Fit will insist you contemplate the reasons for your weight gain and give you a little lecture. Lose weight and you’ll get a little patronizing pat on the head. The Wii may have a friendly tone, but I can’t get over the fact that it is an unsensing hunk of plastic and silicon.
Some people might want that, and that’s fine. But I’ve always found the atmosphere around a lot of weight management tools infantalizing, and I suspect a lot of other people — especially those drawn to geeky features like calculated weight trend lines — have the same desire.
There are without a doubt more features that should and will be added to the tool. But only if they make the data more useful or interesting — not if they try to interpret meaning of the data. That’s your business.