The Chompi Blog

Notes on Feeding Good Habits

Gamification, AI food scanning, and why a hungry little creature beats a spreadsheet.

August 12, 2026

Weight Loss Without the Scale Obsession: Why the Number Isn't the Habit

Daily weight swings by pounds for reasons that have nothing to do with fat loss. Here's why checking the scale every morning can quietly wreck a habit that was otherwise working.

August 5, 2026

Why Most Weight Loss Apps Get You to Quit (and What Actually Works Instead)

Weight loss apps are built around restriction, and restriction is exactly what makes people quit. Here's the actual pattern, and what tends to work instead.

July 29, 2026

How to Build a Food Logging Streak That Doesn't Burn You Out

Streaks are one of the most effective habit tools that exist, and one of the easiest to design into a source of anxiety. Here's the actual failure point, and how to build one that survives a bad week.

July 22, 2026

Tamagotchi for Grown Ups: Why Virtual Pets Make Habits Stick

Self-directed goals are easy to break because you're the only one holding yourself to them. Here's why an external, slightly needy creature works better, and where the original version of this idea went wrong.

July 15, 2026

How AI Food Scanning Actually Works (and Where It Gets It Wrong)

AI calorie estimation from a photo is genuinely useful, but it's an estimate, not a lab result. Here's how it actually works, where it fails, and how to get better numbers out of it.

July 8, 2026

Why Gamification Works for Healthy Eating Habits

Streaks, XP, and levels are not decoration bolted onto a tracker. Here's the actual mechanism behind why gamified nutrition apps keep people logging meals, and where the same tricks turn harmful.

July 1, 2026

Why We Built Chompi as a MyFitnessPal Alternative Without the Guilt

MyFitnessPal turned nutrition into a spreadsheet. Here's why Chompi feeds a virtual pet instead of a database, and why that actually works better.