We’ve covered a few gadgets to help people on a diet, such as the nutritional scales from Metro Kitchen, but here’s another weapon in your armoury if you’re fighting the flab.

These scales monitor body fat, as well as total weight. Unlike conventional weighing scales, body fat monitors give you some feedback on how your diet is going, other than just your weight in pounds or kilos. My wife’s a dietician and she tells me that most people will benefit fairly immediately from a change in diet and moderate exercise, such as walking. The problem is that in the first few weeks, people won’t necessarily see any tangible difference using conventional weighing scales.

This is because when a person starts training, often as their body fat lowers, their muscle tone improves too, so the net balance or loss in weight will be very small to start with, even if the diet and training regime is going well.

These body fat monitoring scales work by passing a tiny electrical current through your body. Muscle and other tissues conduct electricity well, but body fat doesn’t.

If you enter your age, sex and height, the scales can estimate your weight due to the healthy conducting tissues, anything else is body fat. The scales only need to be pre-programmed once time because they can “recognise” a person from historical data.

People on a diet need all the motivation and encouragement they can get, especially in those first few weeks and months. Costing just $50, this is one gadget that can help!

The Body Fat Control Scale from Think Awesome.