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Activity Trackers May Undermine Weight Loss Efforts

• tzs 10y ago
  So...after two years on a low calorie diet and exercising, one group using a tracker and one group not: > Those who had not worn activity monitors were, on average, about 13 pounds lighter now than two years ago. > Those who had worn the monitors, however, weighed only about 8 pounds less than at the start. 13 calories lost in two years is a calorie deficit of about 60 calories per day. 8 pounds in two years is a deficit of about 40 calories per day. I don't think that a diet with such a small calorie deficit should really count as "low calorie". That's ordering your Whopper without cheese. That's using "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" instead of real butter on your pancakes. That's getting light mayo instead of regular mayo on your sandwich. If the two groups ate about the same, so that the difference was entirely due to exercise, then the first group did about 20 calories extra worth of exercise a day. That's about 5 minutes of walking. That's brushing your teeth after every meal instead of just once a day. That's reading for a half hour. I think it is interesting that the group using the fitness tracker exercised slightly less, but the effect seems small enough that I doubt it has any practical implications for most people who are trying to lose weight or keep lost weight off.