Failed Your Resolutions Already? Time to Try a Habit-Breaking App

After Erin Hiscock’s mother and brother passed away—both of them morbidly obese—she resolved to tackle her own weight problem. “I was maybe 310 pounds at my heaviest and severely addicted to sugar,” she says. “Instead of a normal meal, I’d just eat carbs, sugar, nothing nutritious.”

Hiscock, a 35-year insurance agent in Virginia, didn’t turn to diet books, Weight Watchers, or even hypnotherapy, though. Instead, she bought a Pavlok. Like a Fitbit in a foul mood, the Pavlok wristband delivers a sharp, harmless shock on demand when the user presses a button on the device or in a smartphone app. “Any time I had sugar cravings, I would shock myself,” she says, “like when I was eating chocolate.”