Background

The Need / The Problem

The World Health Organization wrote “Being overweight or obese can have a serious impact on health. Carrying extra fat leads to serious health consequences such as cardiovascular disease (mainly heart disease and stroke), type 2 diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders like osteoarthritis, and some cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon). These conditions cause premature death and substantial disability.

What is not widely known is that the risk of health problems starts when someone is only very slightly overweight and that the likelihood of problems increases as someone becomes more and more overweight. Many of these conditions cause long-term suffering for individuals and families. In addition, the costs for the health care system can be extremely high.

The good news is that overweight and obesity are largely preventable. The key to success is to achieve an energy balance between calories consumed on one hand, and calories used on the other hand".

If a person can’t figure out how to lose weight, he/she will not be in good shape. A person doesn’t know exactly how many calories he/she would need to start burning fat rather just an estimate. We will make an object that will track your CO2 output and determine the number of calories you need to burn to avoid storing fat.

One of the major problems of people who are overweight that are trying to lose weight is the fact that they aren’t sure how many calories they need to burn in order to lose weight. Just working out is helpful, but if you ate 2,000 calories and only burned 1,000, it’s not so beneficial. Our project can help guide people to losing weight by sensing the CO2 that they exhale and telling them how many calories they need to burn in order to lose weight.

Design Goals

  1. Comfortable

  2. Cheap

  3. Durable

  4. Appealing

  5. Concealability

  6. Simplicity

  7. Portable


Market Research

Target Market Size

Our targeted customers are people in the United States who are overweight, and general people who want to lose weight.

Amount of people who want to lose weight:

A new survey revealed that 51% of Americans want to lose weight.

51% of the population is 169,637,425 people.

https://thebeet.com/survey-half-of-americans-want-to-feel-healthier-and-lose-weight-in-2021/



Amount of people who are overweight:

We found out that the United States adult obesity rate is 42.4%. (https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2020/).

Then we found out how many adults are in the United States. The answer is 255,200,373. (https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2010-2019/state/detail/SCPRC-EST2019-18+POP-RES.xlsx).

42.4% of 255,200,373 is 108,204,958 adults who are obese.


Total amount = 277,842,383 people

Competition:

1: Lumen: https://www.lumen.me/ : Lumen measures your metabolism and uses a CO2 sensor and flow meter to determine the CO2 concentration in a single breath. Our project is better because it tells you exactly how many calories you burned and you, therefore, know how much you could eat without gaining weight. The Lumen also costs 300$, but our project costs $80.

2: Breezing: https://www.cnet.com/news/trying-to-lose-weight-breathe-into-this-gadget/

It analyzes your rates of oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production. Meaning that it also measures your metabolism. Again, our project is better because it tells you exactly how many calories you burned and you, therefore, know how much you could eat without gaining weight. This project is $250, but our project is $80.