Adding a fitness tracker to your weight-loss routine might not help you shed pounds faster, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are cautioning. In fact, they recently found that people who used wearable technology actually lost less<\/em> weight than those who logged their exercise manually.<\/p>\n Their study, published this week in JAMA<\/em>, concludes that such devices \u201cmay not offer an advantage over standard behavioral weight-loss approaches.\u201d But the researchers also point out that the way people use fitness trackers is very individualized. Their findings suggest that using them to slim down won\u2019t work for everyone<\/em>, they say\u2014not that it won\u2019t work for anyone<\/em>.<\/p>\n John Jakicic, PhD, a distinguished professor in the department of health and physical activity, designed this study to see what would happen when wearable activity trackers were given to people who were already involved in a weight-loss program. So he and his colleagues recruited 470 overweight men and women, ages 18 to 35, and gave them instructions about limiting their daily calories and getting more physical activity.<\/p>\n The participants met for weekly check-ins for half a year, during which they all lost weight. \u201cWe generally see really good effectiveness for the first six months on these types of programs, then things start to slip away,\u201d says Jakicic. \u201cWe thought if we added an activity tracker to what we know is an already pretty good intervention, that would make it better\u2014that it would boost the effectiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n But they actually found the opposite: When they divided the participants into two groups, and asked them to either wear an activity tracker or record their physical activity manually on a website for the next year and a half, the latter group came out on top. <\/p>\n People in the fitness tracker group lost, on average, 7.7 pounds since the start of the study two years prior, while those in the self-tracking group lost an average of 13 pounds. \u201cWe were pretty shocked,\u201d says Jakicic.<\/p>\n Another surprise? Those who wore fitness trackers didn\u2019t even get more physical activity than those who didn\u2019t. Both groups did see improvements\u2014in body composition, fitness level, diet, and the amount of exercise they got each week\u2014but there were no significant differences between the two.<\/p>\n But, Jakicic stresses, these results only focus on the overall picture. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that fitness trackers aren\u2019t beneficial to some people,\u201d he says. In fact, there were individuals in the study who lost lots of weight using a wearable tracker, just as there were people who didn\u2019t lose much in the self-tracking group.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of people out there who live and die by these things,\u201d he says. \u201cThey love it and it engages them and keeps them involved, and that\u2019s really important. We\u2019re not saying don\u2019t use it if it\u2019s working for you.\u201d<\/p>\n If, however, you\u2019ve been wearing a tracker and you\u2019re not<\/em> losing weight, this study may serve as a wake-up call of sorts. \u201cWe think it could be that people are paying so much attention to the tracker that they\u2019re losing sight of all the other things that need to happen,\u201d says Jakicic. \u201cMaybe your tracker is telling you you\u2019re doing well, so you take the liberty of eating another cookie or another cupcake.\u201d <\/p>\n Another possibility, he says, is that people who play an active role in recording their fitness data\u2014by keeping track and physically writing it down or typing it into a computer\u2014may hold themselves more accountable than those who use trackers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you use a program like the one we used in our study, you\u2019re taking responsibility,\u201d he says. \u201cYou say, \u2018I exercised for 30 minutes today,\u2019 and you\u2019re engaged in that process; you\u2019re not relying on a device or a machine to do it for you. So maybe you have to be engaged and hands-on at that level for it to really be effective.\u201d<\/p>\n Adv<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n The fitness trackers used in the study were BodyMedia Core Fit armbands, which connect to a website where users can view their progress. The self-tracking group used a computer program set up specifically for the study, but Jakicic says it\u2019s similar to commercially available apps and websites like MyFitnessPal.<\/p>\n The researchers are now analyzing their findings more closely, to look for patterns among those study participants who did<\/em> seem to benefit, from a weight-loss standpoint, from wearing fitness trackers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know yet what makes these people different from anyone else,\u201d say Jakicic. \u201cIf we can identify people with certain characteristics that will really be motivated by these devices\u2014and other people who won\u2019t\u2014then we can hopefully make some really helpful recommendations.\u201d <\/p>\n This article originally appeared on RealSimple.com.<\/em><\/p>\n\n Good old-fashioned food and exercise logs may work better for many people, suggests a new study. Adding a fitness tracker to your weight-loss routine might not help you shed pounds faster, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are cautioning. In fact, they recently found that people who used wearable technology actually lost less weight than those who logged their exercise …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[2191],"yoast_head":"\n\r\n \t