The Apple Watch is a motivational fitness tracker, but experts say it won’t help you lose weight

While the Apple Watch is one of the most popular fitness trackers out there, Apple has always tiptoed around the device’s usefulness as a weight loss tool. A new report from the Washington Post examines recent research that says wearing a fitness tracker like the Apple Watch “doesn’t necessarily motivate people to change their behavior.”

Can you lose weight with the Apple Watch? Experts intervene

The report outlines various research findings on how fitness trackers affect motivation, physical activity and changes in things like weight and blood pressure. It references a study published in 2016 that focused on Fitbit. That study found that Fitbit users “maintained their physical activity slightly better than a control group without it,” but that at one year it was “insufficient to elicit changes in weight or blood pressure.”

John Jakicic, who studies obesity and weight management at the University of Kansas, said that Washington Post that products like the Apple Watch work on the assumption that “when you give people information, they do something to change their behavior.” In reality, this is not the case over long periods of time.

“In general, when we’ve given people devices, it doesn’t change their behavior,” he says. “And if it does, it changes it for a very short period of time — maybe around 2 to 3 months, maybe a little longer — before that thing on your wrist finds its way into a drawer or you just stop caring.” ”

Jakicic helped conduct one of the largest controlled studies of tracker technology, published by the University of Pittsburgh in 2016. It found that dieters who wore a generic activity monitor for 18 months lost less — yes, less — weight than those who didn’t. The people wearing the devices also tended to move less.

Another theory in the report states that “just measuring your body could transform the psychological experience of being active.”

A 2016 study by Duke University’s Jordan Etkin found that measurement can erode the “intrinsic motivation” of activities like walking, making it feel more like work and reducing ongoing engagement with the activity. “They can’t motivate you,” says Etkin.

We still don’t understand how they affect people in different ways. Some people with trackers get energized by competing with friends and family members to move the most. But for others, having their watch tell you they’ve had a lazy day can contribute to self-sabotage. A 2017 study of teens found that trackers negatively increased peer pressure and had a demoralizing effect.

The report also quotes Matt Buman of Arizona State University:

The gadgets alone “do not provide the additional support needed for long-term, sustainable behavior change — things like social support or goal setting, demonstration of behaviors by other people like you, and action planning.”

Gary Foster, Chief Scientific Officer at WeightWatchers, said about 40% of its members use fitness trackers for exercise data. However, the company has seen no link between this use and weight loss outcomes.

What it can say, Foster told me, is that wearing a tracker makes it easier to keep track of your workouts.

But a fitness machine still can’t automate what Foster believes is the most important data in weight loss: what you eat.

Bottom line, Foster says, “Tracking your activity is going to have little to no impact without that surround sound support of what to do with that information.”

In response to this story, Apple told the Washington Post that it “doesn’t do research on weight loss because that’s not the focus of the Apple Watch.” However, it cited a 2018 study that found that people who were rewarded for meeting certain goals with their Apple Watch “had an average 34 percent increase in tracked activity days per month, and this remained after pass at the end of the program”.

9to5Mac’s take

This story from Washington Post does a good job of summarizing different perspectives and studies in this area, but it is clear that we need more research on these topics. The Apple Watch has been around since 2015, but that’s not very long by academic and medical research standards.

Fitness is also just one factor in a person’s overall health. The Apple Watch is primarily focused on fitness tracking, which means that’s not the only reason a person’s health can improve or deteriorate over time. Apple’s Health app aims to provide an overall view of your health and provide data on the many other factors that contribute to your health besides fitness.

Still, I have some issues with how the Apple Watch approaches fitness tracking. Especially the focus on calories should be changed in my opinion. Research has already proven that these types of calorie estimates are largely inaccurate and misleading.

The Apple Watch also lacks any built-in “day off” or “standby” features. In my personal experience, this omission is one of the biggest factors in ultimately abandoning fitness goals. If you’ve closed your rings for 7 days in a row, the Apple Watch should be smart enough to suggest a rest day for you. Instead, it bugs you to keep going without context.

But the biggest thing is the fact that Apple hasn’t made any changes to the ring-based system since 2015. The system doesn’t have to be scrapped entirely, but there are ways to rethink certain aspects of the system. After all, it’s been almost a decade since the Apple Watch was first introduced.

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Source: 9to5mac.com