case study
14 day voice log challenge
Would ParrotPal AI voice logging be accurate enough or me to make weight for a martial arts tournament?
Table of Contents
Introduction
Why you do what you do
BJ Fogg is the leading habits, behaviour and persuasion expert. He’s consulted apps like Instagram and has now helped millions of people across the world to improve their habits and understand their behaviour.
Fogg explains that we can see our behaviour and our chances of doing something by looking at your motivation, ability and prompt at the moment a behaviour happens. I will explain these clearly below.
Here’s an example we can all relate to:
You’re on the sofa binge-watching a series on a Sunday and Netflix pops up a message, “are you still watching?” (this is the prompt).
You’re tired, demotivated, but the remote is right by your hand, so you pick it up and confirm. Why? Your ability to pick up the remote was so easy you’d have done it even if motivation was near zero.
But let’s look at another scenario. Netflix prompts you to confirm if you’re still watching, but the remote is on the other side of the room, what happens? Most of us don’t bother getting up! Our ability to confirm Netflix is harder as we have to get up and walk.
And a final example of when motivation is high and how it helps us do an action:
The Game of Thrones finale is on (or Love Island, whatever your preference) but the remote has run out of battery., You got 5 minutes before it starts. Your ability to get the TV on the right channel is now very hard! However, your motivation is through the roof, you can’t WAIT for the episode.
What do you do? You check every draw in the house for batteries, you try manually changing it on the TV, you phone someone or ask whoever is there to help. You’ll do just about anything to get it working.
So the key here in BJ Fogg model is that when you look at Motivation & Ability, they must land over the “action line” on his graph.
So if motivation is low, your ability must be VERY easy to do, or we don’t act.
And likewise if motivation is high then our ability to do it could be quite hard, but we would find a way to do it.
Here’s a graphic to help explain it a little better:
You see the thick grey line curved line through the graph called the “Action Line”?
When you’re prompted to do something, your ability and motivation must meet above that line for you to do the action.
Here’s how you’d use it yourself to see if your behaviour would land above the “action line” and that you’d do it. An example we can all relate to.
Why is it that we go on our phone before bed if it’s left by our bedside? BJ Fogg model explains it.
- Your phone is right by your bed
- Your phone vibrates (prompt)
- How easy is it to pick it up? Very! (Ability easy)
- How motivated are we? Very! We want to see who’s messaged
- Result? On the graph, our prompt (star) lands way above the action line as motivation and ability are maxed out.
And this is how we think about tracking with ParrotPal. If you could make tracking very easy to do (like texting or voice logging) you don’t need much motivation to do it (because it’s so easy).
I’ve written a more in-depth post about this science and how it makes ParrotPal great here.
All we need to know from this is that we’re utilising behaviour science in our favour. However, there are some big questions we need to answer before you begin.
The "perfect" weight loss coach?
Technology has enabled us to move from pen & paper tracking to app/web based tracking to now voice/text command base tracking.
When we look at what the “perfect” weight loss coach would look like, we can see how powerful ParrotPal really is.
Imagine this:
You’ve paid for an online coach, say £150 per month. This is the average.
And the coach tells you:
“Hey, I’ve worked out your daily calorie, protein & steps target, and I’ll create as many custom meal plans that match these as possible for you.
Not only that but you don’t need to use MyFitnessPal or other apps you can just text or voice note me every day with what you’ve had, and I’ll track it for you.
You don’t need to be perfect, if you know the weight then tell me. But if you don’t? Just give me the information you have or use plain English like “handful” “small amount” “large bowl” etc. I’ll figure it out from verified sources and get the best estimate for you.
You can also message me at ANY time, I’ll reply with the information instantly and with how many calories & protein you got left for the day.
And the best bit? At the end of the week I will review your calories, protein, steps & weight and adjust your target if there needs to be changes. You don’t need to second guess a thing, I got you covered!
And the second-best part? You can even ask me questions on WhatsApp about anything, and I’ll reply every day.”
Incredible right?
You may even consider that £150 per month is worth that service.
ParrotPal is free to try for 7 days, then it’s just 9.99 per month.
The big question:
IF ParrotPal truly is the best tracker & coach on the market, we need to put it to the test.
One question we get asked a lot is…. How accurate is the text and voice logging using AI?
Here’s how it works below (video) so you can see the magic of it.
How accurate is voice logging AI with ParrotPal?
Accuracy of ParrotPal:
Our tests show food tracking 98% accurate for calories & 93% accurate for protein.
The Real World Test
I had to lose weight for a Jiu Jitsu tournament (martial arts) and I had 2 weeks to hit my target but also had 2 weeks of heavy socialising & eating out.
The goal here wasn’t to put life on hold and not go to these things. It’s miserable to miss your friend’s birthday and social events because “you’re on plan”.
So many people fall into this trap, and it’s not the philosophy here at ParrotPal.
With some consideration, awareness and moderation, you can enjoy life to the fullest and reach your health goals.
So, for this test, I made sure to eat/enjoy as I usually would.
I also didn’t want to resort to super low calories and meal plans during the 2 weeks. It’s easy to do that and fall into that trap, too.
I want to stick to my philosophy that I can eat the foods I love, try and eat nutrient sense as much as possible but enjoy life too.
So for 13 days leading up to the tournament I tracked with my voice only and recorded the videos of the voice logging as evidence. You can see each video below if you want evidence of the voice logging.
I weighed myself every day.
I had to be 82.3kg on Saturday, April 6th, or I would be disqualified and lose my entry money. This experiment started on March 25th.
So I had stakes AND my friends and family were travelling to the tournament to support me. I couldn’t let them down. So if I didn’t make weight it would have been a disaster, but I trusted the technology I built!
So let’s have a look at the data below on how it went, and you can find videos to the voice logs for each day too.
The Results
Starting Weight:
As you can see I’m 84.2kg on March 25th so 13 days away from needing to be 82.3kg. Weight graph for March below.
The below graph shows my calorie intake for March.
On March 23rd I consumed 4100 calories. And as you can see, I have a trend in March for high calorie days on weekends (the spikes). My calorie intake drops sharply back down to slightly below maintenance in the week days.
The final week – weight data below.
My weight for April below (we only care for the start we the competition was on the 6th of April).
On April 2nd I was still over 84kg as seen in the graph below!
However, you see the large drop and my low weigh-in was just in time for the competition.
To be clear: This is not FAT loss, it is simply weight loss from a reduction in water retention and food in the body. What is important is my average calorie intake for the weeks, and they would be slightly below my maintenance.
My calorie intake for April is below.
I have 2 days below 2000 cals, and then I go to around 2200 for the 2 days before my competition.
When you compare this graph to the one above (weight) you can see my weight was 81.4kg on the Saturday, so I had 0.9kg to spare!
The red dot below is Saturday 6th of April (competition day) where I celebrated with a nice burger and chips, so calories were near 4000 that day.
Competition Results
So what do these results mean?
Firstly, there is a strong correlation with my energy (calorie) intake that’s tracked and my weight. This is to be expected if energy intake is tracked accurately.
Secondly, I did a lot of eating out with no calorie intake on menus. So this shows that ParrotPal did incredible well to track social eating and the data being useful for me to use and follow.
Thirdly, perfection is not required and it’s the trends over time that matter. If your goal is fat loss then your weight will go up and down all the time. But if your energy intake is on average hitting your calorie target each week then you’ll see results.
(Note: ParrotPal has a weekly analysis feature to check your averages, and it will change your targets if required for progress.)
That means some days can be high, and others low. The issue we have is that we don’t know our high days right now as most of us don’t track or can’t do it with MFP as it takes too long.
But imagine seeing our true intake on weekends like I have here? It’s clear to me my intake on weekends can be rather high, but my weekdays bring my averages back down.
It would be easy for me to tighten up more by reducing my weekend calories and focusing there.
Awareness brings insights which changes behaviour. But you need data you can trust. And after this test, there is no doubt I trust this method of tracking the most, as it’s super easy for me. Not only is it accurate but I can do this consistently every single day. One voice log is all it takes!
If you want to see how easy it is, you can watch/listen to my voice logs split into each day. Some days I do the day in 1 voice log, some days I voice log as I go along.
It’s up to you how you do it, there’s no need for a rigid method.
P.S I placed 2nd at my tournament! I’m on the right in the below picture :)
The voice log videos - split per day
And here’s the proof of my voice logging for this case study!
How to do this yourself
ParrotPal uses a bunch fo features to make it the easiest and most effective calorie tracker & weight loss tool.
You can text, voice log, barcode scan & search a verified database of foods to add.
You can save meals, recipes, foods and days for easy quick-adding.
You can generate custom meal plans tailored to your goals and preferences.
And you get daily human support inside our WhatsApp channel.
The app is available on iOS only right now.
However, Android will launch June 1st 2024.
Download the app from here to get started. You can claim 7 days for free.