
Wearable Fitness Devices Don’t Seem to Make You More Fit - DiabloD3
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/upshot/wearable-fitness-devices-dont-seem-to-make-you-more-fit.html
======
cbanek
Like how having a clock doesn't necessarily make you better at time
management, having a fitbit doesn't make you healthy. But it does allow you to
measure things, and if you have the willpower to improve them, you'll improve
them. But the device won't do it for you, at best it enables you. At worst, it
gives you a false sense of accomplishment that should be checked once you get
on the scale.

(Disclaimer: I love my fitbit, and it's helped me lose weight, but I find the
step counter to be second to the heart rate monitor)

~~~
mattmanser
_It’s hard for many to accept, so I’m going to state the results again: Those
people who used the wearable tech for 18 months lost significantly less weight
than those who didn’t._

 _In the IDEA trial, those who employed the technology were no more physically
active than those who didn’t. They also weren’t more fit._

Let's say that again.

 _They also weren’t more fit._

You're ignoring empirical evidence. If what you say is true, they'd be more
fit.

I've got one too, but if you accept this article as true it looks like it
turns out at best it's no more than a pretty bangle, at worst makes you think
you're doing more than you are.

~~~
Cpoll
The abstract doesn't give enough information, so I'm connecting the dots. This
may be addressed in the text...

It sounds like all the participants were put on a program, and then some were
additionally were given a smartwatch (which negatively impacted their
results).

But I can't see how you can conclude from there that the smartwatch won't help
for individuals that are NOT on a program.

A potential explanation is that the watch has a moderating effect: it gives
you an excuse to stop exercising once you hit your daily target, the more
calorie tracking you do, the less you err on the side of caution, etc. Under
that hypothesis, a smartwatch is still better than no program + no smartwatch.

~~~
brlewis
You are largely correct, except the wearable tech was not a smart watch. It
was a 2010-era fitness tracker one straps onto the arm. Definitely nowhere in
the "pretty bangle" category. I think wearers would be less active because
they wouldn't want to be seen in public with it.

A more detailed answer here: [http://www.mobihealthnews.com/content/despite-
reports-your-f...](http://www.mobihealthnews.com/content/despite-reports-your-
fitbit-likely-wont-hinder-your-weight-loss-efforts)

------
emdowling
The biggest issue facing the wearable market is that, despite having all the
data, I still don't know what to do with it. We need to correlate cause and
effect. It differs dramatically between individuals, so what's true for me is
probably not true for you. We have a battle between privacy and usefulness, in
that we'd ideally feed data from millions of people into a machine learning
algorithm to start helping people actually use and benefit from the data.
However, most people don't want to share their intimate health data to the
cloud.

Another huge issue is that we haven't nailed the input problem: wearables can
measure our energy expenditure, but not our energy intake. Until we can
measure that as accurately as heart rate (and not just calories, but the
nutrient breakdown too) then we only have one side of the equation.

We still have a long way to go before wearables are truly indispensable, and
that's before we start considering the emerging research on gut bacteria and
the role it plays.

~~~
jib
Newtonian level of insight into fitness is super easy. (With Newtonian I mean
enough true to get the work done, even if there is a higher level of truth
underneath, i.e Einsteinian physics, quantum physics)

Weight delta = calories in - calories out

Health preservation requires adequate levels of protein (muscles) and fat
(hormones)

Muscle growth requires caloric surplus, adequate protein availability and
muscle breaks

Muscle breaking requires progressive overloading of muscles (i.e. do
more/harder of the thing you want to get better at over time)

Micronutrients is a thing, so eat a balanced diet or take supplements.

With those five things, 99% of people can do anything they need around
fitness.

Wearable fitness does very little for those five things.

Gathering data to further the development of Einsteinian level of insights is
interesting - fitness certainly lags behind there, but I dont think any big
breakthroughs in fitness will come from that, in the same way that Einsteinian
physics didnt change how we build bridges or pipes.

The less sexy but much more interesting point is on changing behaviours around
those five things. How do you design technology to change habits?

It is possible to change habits with technology. The obvious example is how
mobile phones changed habits, for instance in how we make appointments,
navigate and a multitude of other ways. Cracking how wearable fitness can
change those is a much more valuable challenge in my view. Can we design
wearable fitness that lets you exercise wherever you are?

Tap your fitness device and you're sent to the nearest gym, with a change of
clothes and towels etc ready in a locker for you, and the device reading off
your exercise plan? Tap it to get your personalized meal prepared for you at
your nearest participating restaurant, or a shopping bag sent home to you.

That's where I see the future being for fitness technology - we know the right
things to do, they are just awkward to do, so lower the barrier to doing the
right things.

~~~
RugnirViking
Issue with this is of course that calories out is not something we understand
very well at all. some people burn more, some less. Sometimes it spikes for no
reason while sitting in a chair. Sometimes it spikes when people are stressed.
Sometimes it doesn't. These are only some of the pitfalls

~~~
TeMPOraL
You can treat all those spikes as random noise. They don't cancel out the
overall trend.

------
dkinventor
The author, perhaps inadvertently, describes a confounding issue in the study
that validates his claims. Namely, the issue stems from the author's
description of how fitness trackers are useful in the initial stages of a
diet/exercise plan in order to help establish a routine. However, the study
that the author cites gave the fitness trackers to participants 6 months into
the study, when hopefully some plan has been established. This would seem to
negate one of the key benefits of fitness trackers espoused by the author. Is
it explained why the fitness trackers are given later on as opposed to at the
beginning?

~~~
lolc
Assuming that trackers have this habit-building effect: While we then would
expect the effect to have have been larger if they'd handed out the trackers
at the beginning of the study, some participants should have benefited from
this effect even mid-study.

One hypothesis here is that the trackers provided a frame of reference that
anchored participants to some goal like 10'000 steps daily while the
participants who had less direct feedback were free to expand their goals as
their fitness improved. Some things seem much more arduous to me when I track
progress while doing them.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
I bought my FitBit Surge for the GPS and heartrate monitor. That data means I
can pace myself accurately when I'm running, allowing me to run further and
more consistently (and at a faster overall average pace than stopping /
starting all the time). It also means I can keep track of my heartrate (and
recovery) during other intense workouts like CrossFit and Insanity.

My father has a FitBit too and likes to gloat about smashing my step count
pretty much every single day. He's retired and out and about all day, while I
sit at a desk.

Guess who's obese and gets out of breath walking up the stairs? Step count as
a measure of overall daily "exercise" is worse than useless.

~~~
Ntrails
> Step count as a measure of overall daily "exercise" is worse than useless.

On the one hand, yes I've been saying this since the step counters first came
out with high levels of disdain.

On the other hand relative step count (ie "I now go on more walks so I beat my
own original levels of activity") is not entirely useless and probably has
some non-zero value?

But, like, rewarding someone more for slowly strolling for 2000 steps vs
running 1500 (which probably covers a similar distance and is waaaaaay better
for cardio vascular fitness) seems like a terrible plan

~~~
dragonwriter
> On the other hand relative step count (ie "I now go on more walks so I beat
> my own original levels of activity") is not entirely useless and probably
> has some non-zero value?

Relative step count is good _if_ your only exercise is walking (or walking-
like.)

OTOH, I've observed that my step count tends to go down as actual heavy
exercise (weightlifting, etc.) goes up, so even relative step count isn't a
good measure of overall activity.

> But, like, rewarding someone more for slowly strolling for 2000 steps vs
> running 1500 (which probably covers a similar distance and is waaaaaay
> better for cardio vascular fitness)

Its probably better for leg strength, but fitness walking (not casual
walking), I suspect, is better for cardiovascular fitness, step-for-step, than
running, since you get into a reasonably good exercising heart range for a
longer time.

But, again, step counting alone doesn't distinguish fitness walking from
casual walking any more than walking from running.

------
keiferski
Paraphrasing Nietzsche here:

 _" There are horrible [products] which, instead of solving a problem, tangle
it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to
hit it at all."_

Being thin and reasonably healthy isn't difficult...the rest of the developed
world does it without much thought. Only in America do we think the solution
to an overengineered food and fitness system is _more engineering._

~~~
dukeluke
To be pair, our corporations have had free reign to run massive propaganda
campaigns to teach them the wrong ways to stay healthy. They even manipulated
the USDA food guidelines to get people to buy more corn and bread.

------
faitswulff
"More fit" in this article seems to exclusively mean "weigh less." I would
argue that that is a very superficial definition of fitness.

~~~
djs070
> "...the primary reason to wear the devices isn’t to lose weight — it’s to be
> more active. But even in this respect, it didn’t work nearly as well as we
> might hope. In the IDEA trial, those who employed the technology were no
> more physically active than those who didn’t. They also weren’t more fit."

------
kelvin0
I wear Crossfit socks inside my Karate Kimono, and this won't turn me into a
Strength/Fighting machine? Want my money back!

Seriously though, some of these article titles lately ...

------
gojomo
While it's not worth it for me to pay $30 for the full paper of the main trial
('IDEA') cited, from the abstract I wonder about the conclusions drawn.

* What if the specific content of the full bundle of interventions – including a certain kind counseling & low-calorie diet – actually serves to make the tracker seem relatively less-important? (It might be the case that someone given _just_ a tracker would focus on it, while those with the other interventions – all participants – would be more likely to view it as superfluous.)

* What if those losing less weight are nonetheless more satisfied with their progress, perhaps because they've gained in other ways? (What if they've lost less weight because they've gained muscle weight? There's no hint whether this was measured.)

* It's not clear how the "…those who employed the technology were no more physically active than those who didn’t… {t]hey also weren’t more fit" conclusion was drawn. Self reports? (How do you know someone's true activity _without_ a dedicated tracker?)

* What specific tracker & software was used? Results could be very sensitive to UX issues – something minimal & academic might be hard-to-use and easy-to-ignore compared to (say) popular commercial smartphone apps. They only mention a 'website', not an 'app', in their abstract. (I would not often visit a website to check my activity or check my diet, but I view my wrist-worn Fitbit device, and its app interface, a dozen or more times a day.)

I suspect that to get a clearer reading of what just-a-tracker might do, I'd
prefer a minimal focused study, along the lines of:

* every participant is asked their weight-loss goal, then sent a questionnaire once each week to self-report progress

* some participants are also given a commercial tracker, and their weekly questionnaire also asks if they're using it

* at the end, total progress is evaluated (and automated activity-tracker usage stats collected)

That could disentangle the other-interventions and maybe-not-state-of-the-art
academic interface from the results.

------
dragonsky
Funny, I was sure carrying around alll that extra weight on my wrist was sure
to make me fitter.

------
JoeAltmaier
Perhaps the devices led folks to set achievable goals. A good idea, unless its
"10% more exercise this week". It could make you less ambitious. Without the
device, you might drive yourself to more activity because you don't really
know if you're doing more or less than last week. So you go over to make sure.

------
collyw
Just another case of "all the gear, no idea".

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's like dashboard cargo-culting. People love putting shit ton of graphs and
looking at curves going up and down, but that's the wrong focus. Graphs are
meant to help you answer questions. If you don't know the questions, they
become only works of computational art.

------
desireco42
Speak for yourself :) It helped me a lot. Like the someone said, it is like a
watch, allows you to track. Next step is manage.

------
SNBasti
Oh. What a surprise.

------
horsecaptin
Let's face it, if wearable fitness devices told you the complete truth, you'll
stop wearing them.

~~~
gojomo
I don't understand. What truth could they report that would cause them to be
taken off?

~~~
the-dude
" You are fat and unhealthy. If you don't change your ways, you will die soon.
"

~~~
GrinningFool
The real problem is that the honest message, "if you don't change your ways,
you will have more aches, pains and health issues and are statistically likely
to die a few years sooner" wouldn't be nearly as impactful.

