Taken literally, the idiom “tighten you belt” means it’s time to cut back on your strict bacon diet in lean economic times. A recession diet calls for sacrifice—and this belt puncher can help.

The concept, developed by Brooklyn-based SONIC Design, utilises a 3-disc adjustment mechanism to dial in the user’s net income and estimated cost of living. The resulting calculation determines where the next hole in the belt will be punched. In other words, it’s a physical representation of how much you need to save—in this case, the grocery bill is an ideal area to target. You could probably stand to lose a few kilos anyway. [Sonic Design via Core77 via Newlaunches]

Feel like trusting someone else to be kind about your porkiness? The Half Truth design has a display on the front where you can’t see it, leaving it up to someone else to read it and decide what to tell you. Not sure about the “harming a human” rule: this one may be a relationship-strainer.
Open Secrets doesn’t have a display at all, instead transmitting data on your current fatness to someone else’s mobile phone. You’d never even have to know the exact figure, which may be quite liberating.
And White Lies is the most devious. The further back on the scales you stand, the lighter you appear, so you can choose how much to let the scales lie to you.

Its nice to see a designer tackling a mundane object like bathroom scales, but I can advocate another weighing tactic to avoid upset: ban scales from your house altogether. Much simpler and cheaper all round. [Alice Wang via Dezeen]

Then, the tile will turn from diet helper to employee abuser: if you spend too much time in front of the water cooler or the coffee machine, it will say phrases like “You should be working now,” at which time you would probably grab a stapler and start hitting it.

These infernal Diet Floor tiles, created by Spanish ceramics company Tau Cerámica and the inventor Pep Torres, have weight sensors and a CPU that controls different parameters. They can even detect individual people and record their activity in front of the fridge, as well as personalising it to shout different messages according to the person on top. It’s like an episode of Futurama, but not funny at all. [TAU Ceramic - In Spanish]

At $50, it’s not as cheap as the (free?) camera phone diet assessment making the rounds in Japan, but the results are more immediate. Besides, hello, Hello Kitty sticker—it’s never too early for young girls to obsess over what they eat. – Matt Buchanan

Hello Kitty Body Fat Meter [Gizmodiva via Ubergizmo]

The idea itself—keeping track of what types of foods you’ve eaten by its chemical signature and telling you what foods you’re lacking—is pretty sound. Why not just integrate it into a regular-looking phone? – Jason Chen

Health Conscious Tracking Phone [Yanko Design via Sci Fi]