Hoping to pop on a wearable fitness tracker and watch the pounds melt off? Dieters are better off using another strategy.
Maintaining a healthy body weight, self monitoring of food intake and physical activity, are the centerpiece of behavioral weight loss intervention programs. However, a new study out of the University of Pittsburgh showed that members of a group who wore fitness trackers lost less weight than a group that tracked their fitness manually, and we’re not surprised at all. In fact, overweight adults who did not wear fitness trackers during the two year weight loss study, failed to shed more pounds that those who did use them.
Why Widgets don’t work?
It’s a good question. We thought that it is due to several reasons. One is that when you start wearing this technology, when you do weight loss, you have to pay attention to what you eat, when you eat, how much you eat, how much activity you do… and all those things are very important! Thus by giving somebody these wearables, it may put such an emphasis on focussing to what they are doing that they lose track of what they are eating and how much they are eating and so on. So they lose track of the other things that are really important to manage their weight.
Wearable fitness trackers can count your steps and track you movements, but they don’t, apparently, contribute to lose weight. In fact, you might lose more weight without them.
Although wearable devices have the potential to promote health behavior change, this change may not be driven by these devices alone and this had been small scale and short term, and that wearable tracking devices alone won’t drive health behavior change, according to researchers.
Losing weight can be fun, maintaining that loss often becomes a tedious, never-ending obstacle. Sustaining fat loss demands determination, big-picture focus, and uncomfortably saying “no” to your carb-pushing aunt’s chunky cheesecake brownies.
A balanced and health-promoting lifestyle, which should include moderate physical activity, a balanced and healthful diet, adequate sleep, and effective stress management, can improve these conditions, lead to weight loss, and improve one’s overall quality of life.
In competitive, mature markets, there is a number of players, positioned as either product specialists or market specialists, including DietSensor, that have designed personalized platforms to promote an active lifestyle and well-being based on nutrition behavior changes, thus adding value to the existing data analysis such as wearables devices. DietSensor’s core goal is to stem the growth of diabetes and obesity by providing people with access to real-time, real world applications that can better manage their condition.
At DietSensor, we are convinced « what gets measured, gets managed! » Weight, diet and physical activity trackers often help you measure your progress but fail in telling you how to improve your habits or give you the support you need.
