Wearable fitness devices don't seem to make you fit

I once received a lot of blowback for an Upshot article in which I showed that exercise is not the key to weight loss. Diet is. Many readers cannot wrap their head around the notion that adding physical activity, and therefore burning more calories, doesn’t necessarily translate into results on the scale.

Well, here we go again because some of those folks also believe that fitness devices must be helpful in losing weight. Unfortunately, evidence doesn’t support this belief either.

For some time, people have been trying to prove that devices succeed in promoting weight loss. Last year, the results of a study, the IDEA trial, were published. The trial took place at the University of Pittsburgh between 2010 and 2012, and it involved more than 470 adults between the ages of 18 and 35. All of them were put on a low-calorie diet, had group counseling sessions and were advised to increase their physical activity. Six months into the intervention, all were given telephone counseling sessions, text-message prompts and study materials online.

At that time, though, half were also given wearable tech devices that monitored their activity and connected to a website to help provide feedback. All participants were followed for 18 more months.

At the end of the two years, which is pretty long for a weight loss study, those without access to the wearable technology lost an average of 13 pounds. Those with the wearable tech lost an average of 7.7 pounds.

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.

You may rightfully point out that 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.

Many new technologies, and dietary supplements and new diets, are sold to the public with little actual research behind them. Wearable technology to encourage fitness is no different. Somehow, in the past few years, it has become collectively understood that we need to take 10,000 steps a day. But there’s no magic behind that number. There’s no reason to believe that hitting this arbitrary goal is somehow life-changing.

Exercise is worthwhile for its own sake. Of course, many people can enjoy using wearable tech without tying it to weight loss goals.

The ones that exist (like the IDEA trial) argue that the devices don’t make people exercise more.

They don’t seem to hurt, though. Other than costing money, there’s no harm in seeing if it might improve your activity over time. But if your goal is weight loss, then you might think twice about using such a device. The evidence suggests that you may do better without one.