Weight Watchers

By  Jonah Comstock 01:38 pm April 21, 2014
Weight Watchers is in talks to acquire virtual fitness coaching startup Wello, according to a report from TechCrunch. Wello, a Rock Health company, launched in July 2012. The company connects people to professional trainers via two-way video messaging. Users can choose a trainer or discipline that's most interesting to them. In November 2012 they raised $1 million from Kleiner Perkins, Mohr...
By  Aditi Pai 07:31 am March 19, 2014
Weight Watchers announced a new weight loss program for people with type 2 diabetes, which it will provide through its employee wellness offering. The new program, called Weight Watchers for Diabetes, will incorporate the expertise of Certified Diabetes Educators (CDE) into the company's existing weight loss and weight management system. Weight Watchers will also offer digital tools to members of...
By  Jonah Comstock 10:39 am January 24, 2014
MobiHealthNews started rounding up calorie counter and nutrition tracking apps as early as 2009, and as recently as last August, when Weight Watchers told its investors that free apps were probably eating away at its profit margin. Most of the healthy eating apps MobiHealthNews has tracked have relied on manual entry, giving users a space to enter information about every meal, although exactly...
By  Aditi Pai 12:19 pm December 16, 2013
Weight Watchers has announced the launch of its new weight loss plan and companion app, Simple Start, which is available on iOS and Android platforms. Simple Start, which is only available to Weight Watchers subscribers, is a part of the company's winter ad campaign. The app offers users two weeks of sample meal and snack ideas. As the user flips through pictures of the meals, which are meant to...
By  Aditi Pai 11:13 am November 13, 2013
During the third quarter of 2013, Android accounted for 81 percent of all smartphone shipments worldwide compared to 12.9 percent of iOS smartphone shipments, according to a report from the International Data Corporation (IDC). This is a new milestone for Android, which has been surpassing iOS shipments for a few years now. Some apps, like Basis Band's connected app, went to the Google Play store...
By  Aditi Pai 09:00 am November 5, 2013
Fitness coaching program Sessions has launched and raised under $1 million from SV Angel, Collaborative Fund, Blackbird and Joshua Kushner. The company, a Rock Health alum, pairs users with coaches to improve fitness. First, users complete a diagnostic test and then after the coach is chosen, the user and coach meet to discuss a fitness plan. From there, the coach will monitor the user using...
By  Neil Versel 01:22 pm October 28, 2013
Infield Health's Healthy Steps app. People in a Weight Watchers program who received motivational and reminder text messages lost an average of 4.5 pounds more in a 12-week period than those who were left to their own volition, a newly published study found. Text messaging also showed promise for increasing exercise and promoting other healthy behaviors, according to researchers from Virginia...
By  Aditi Pai 11:33 am October 21, 2013
A guided weight loss program, such as Weight Watchers, may be more effective than the self-help approach, according to a study conducted by Baylor College of Medicine and sponsored by Weight Watchers. The self-help group was given a set of resources online to read about and then encouraged to lose weight based solely on that library of information. The study of 292 overweight and obese adults,...
By  Aditi Pai 11:25 am October 11, 2013
There are so many weight loss apps on the market that even Weight Watchers is feeling the pressure, and yet a recent study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found these apps do not employ long-established strategies to bring about behavior change. Only two apps had 13 out of 20 of the behavioral strategies commonly included in evidence-based behavioral weight-loss...
By  Jonah Comstock 05:00 am August 10, 2013
Weight Watchers online portal and app. This week in mobile health, we saw FDA clearances for Alere and Verizon, trials from Scripps and Qualcomm, and some interesting new products in the consumer health sphere from Beddit, Emotiv, and BioBeats. Some other articles from around the web have also highlighted mobile health trends. Here's some interesting pieces that caught our eyes this week. The...