We tend to sleepwalk into new technology, and my new fitness tracking watch is no exception. I belatedly purchased the entry-level model for one purpose only: to pace myself at a Saturday morning parkrun. But oh, the extra features!
Heart rate monitor. It’s a pedometer. Sleep monitoring. Tracks the “continuous record” of your exercise. VO2 max tracker. “Intensity minutes” tracker. Calorie consumption counter. Access to training plans. Link to Strava. This allows my friends to comment on my workouts and me to comment on theirs. The most unfriendly is the fitness age indicator. I’m not subscribed to any of these, but the app on my watch shows them all for consideration. And now I’m hooked.
Being an empiricist, I started wondering what kind of impact all this quantification could have. Will fitness tracking actually improve my fitness? Will it backfire in some horrible way? Or both at once?
Early research on this issue was not entirely encouraging. A randomized controlled trial published in 2016 found that adding a fitness tracker to a weight loss program made the program less effective. Participants tended to lose weight with and without trackers, but participants who used trackers lost less weight than those who did not use trackers. For those who like counterintuitive discoveries, this one is fun. However, it is not entirely clear how to interpret the results of this study, or even how seriously to take them. (Incidentally, the study found no significant differences in diet or physical activity between the two groups. Were the effects real and strong, or was it a fluke?)
If you think your fitness tracker can backfire, it’s worth thinking about exactly how that might happen. One possibility is that people are so obsessed with achieving their goals that they cheat by violently shaking their watches or cell phones in hopes of gaining extra steps.
But it’s another thing to occasionally trick an algorithm into achieving a meaningless goal and find it a little ridiculous. It’s a completely different story when people are so busy trying to fool their fitness trackers that they actually end up working out less than they would have without the tracker at all.
Another risk is that trackers can demotivate people by turning a fun activity into a chore. There’s some evidence for that in another 2016 research paper titled “The Hidden Costs of Personal Quantification.” In one of the studies described in the paper, participants went for a walk wearing pedometers, some of which displayed the number of steps they took, while others covered them. Those with visible step counts walked more, but enjoyed it less. This is interesting and certainly suggests a mechanism that backfired. On the other hand, it was just one walk. As the weeks and months go by, imagine someone who used to love walking but now walks less because their smartwatch tells them how many steps they’ve completed?
The third risk, and this one that seems plausible to me, is that fitness trackers could lead people to overexert themselves or prefer certain narrow forms of exercise, which could lead to injuries. or lose motivation afterwards.
The last possibility is that perhaps a fitness tracker would work perfectly fine.
Thankfully, we don’t have to rely on these early studies. In subsequent years, much more data was obtained. In 2022, Lancet Digital Health published a systematic review that attempted to compile all reliable studies conducted to date, involving 164,000 people. The study came to the same conclusion you would expect, if not counterintuitive. In other words, fitness trackers can help people stay healthy.
Specifically, wearable activity trackers led people to walk more (1,800 steps per day, or an extra 40 minutes) and lose some weight (1kg) on average. There is also evidence, albeit weak evidence, that fitness trackers can help people burn more calories, improve blood sugar and cholesterol, improve well-being, reduce disability, and lower levels of pain, anxiety, and depression. There is also. Improves mental well-being and lowers resting heart rate.
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Some of these obvious benefits are small or uncertain, but broadly speaking, the situation is as expected. People who were given a fitness tracker in a randomized trial were more active than those who weren’t given a fitness tracker. This additional physical activity provided all the benefits we expected.
None of these studies were designed to answer the question, “If I want to be healthier, should I buy a fitness watch?” Instead, they answer the bizarre question: “Would you be healthier if you were given a fitness watch as part of an academic study?”
Consider these two questions in parallel: “If I want to start running, should I buy running shoes?” “If you were given running shoes as part of your academic research, would you run more?” In most cases, the answer to the first question is obvious, but the answer to the second question is irrelevant.
Perhaps that’s how I should look at fitness watches. This is like a gym membership or a stationary bike. It’s great if you use it, but it’s meaningless if you don’t use it. And for now, I’m using it. I feel like he’s actually using me.
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