I’ve been following Autom for years now, first interfacing with this happy little robot in China and then watching her grow into a young, intelligent diet robot. What does she do? She’s designed to help you lose weight by talking to you every day and getting to know your habits and peccadilloes.
Autom sits on your counter and asks what you’re eating. You tell her, through on-screen prompts, and she reminds you to weigh yourself and gives you moral support. Although you wouldn’t think a little plastic robot could help people shed the pounds, you’d be surprised by what a non-judgmental, plastic baby can do for your self-esteem. During testing, users began to dress their robots up in funny clothes and came to consider them friends.
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Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy are Dr. Adam Shafran and Lee Kantor, two guys in Atlanta who talk fitness online and over the air. We asked them to answer a few reader questions and invite you to send in your questions to tips @ crunchgear dot com with the subject line “FITNESS.” Include your geographical location. We’ll run these Q&A sessions regularly.
My roommate says I’m wasting money on sports drinks. He says I should drink milk instead. Is he right?
-TAD
Well, if you believe a very small study funded by the Dairy and Nutrition Council in 2006 then feel free to waste your money slamming down that high calorie chocolate milk. How about you do this instead – save your cash for important things like beer and pizza and drink water that is filtered (distilled or reverse osmosis) out of a reusable metal container to stay hydrated. → Read More
In the CrunchGear chat room this morning we were talking about exercise. Someone linked to Hundred Push Ups, and issued a challenge to see how many push ups we could each do. We postured and boasted and tried to convince one another that blogging had not gone to our bellies. Thankfully we were quickly distracted by a Hello Kitty weight loss gadget. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
