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Medicine News Science Technology

Activity Trackers May Undermine Weight Loss Efforts, Says Study (sciencedaily.com) 210

schwit1 quotes a report from New York Times: Wearable activity monitors can count your steps and track your movements, but they don't, apparently, help you lose weight. In fact, you might lose more weight without them. The fascinating finding comes from a study published today in JAMA that found dieting adults who wore activity monitors for 18 months lost significantly fewer pounds over that time than those who did not. The results suggest that activity monitors may not change our behavior in the way we expected (warning: may be paywalled), and raise interesting questions about the tangled relationships between exercise, eating, our willpower and our waistlines. Specifically, the study found that participants who used wearable devices reported an average weight loss of 7.7 pounds, compared to the 13 pounds lost by those who didn't use the devices and only used health counseling. "While usage of wearable devices is currently a popular method to track physical activity -- steps taken per day or calories burned during a workout -- our findings show that adding them to behavioral counseling or weight loss that includes physical activity and reduced calorie intake does not improve weight loss or physical activity engagement. Therefore, within this context, these devices should not be relied upon as tools for weight management in place of effective behavioral counseling for physical activity and diet," said John Jakicic, the study's lead researcher and chair of Pitt's Department of Health and Physical Activity.
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Activity Trackers May Undermine Weight Loss Efforts, Says Study

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @10:39PM (#52928849)

    "According to this app, today I burnt 500 calories more than yesterday! I can now eat a whole pizza guilt free"
    Mystery solved.

    • My personal experience is, activities in the morning are more effective for weight loss. I used to walk ~4km in the evening for more than a year, but did not result in weight loss. But when switched to morning walk, I could see results in couple of months.

      Probably it has something to do with glucose/sugar levels, which is lowest in the morning. Probably, the apps do not consider some such facts.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by quantaman ( 517394 )

        My personal experience is, activities in the morning are more effective for weight loss. I used to walk ~4km in the evening for more than a year, but did not result in weight loss. But when switched to morning walk, I could see results in couple of months.

        Did you walk before or after supper? If it was after supper perhaps you just convinced yourself that you worked up an appetite and ate enough calories to compensate for the walk.

        With the morning walk if you walked before breakfast you probably didn't increase consumption to compensate, and if it was after you were probably satisfied enough to wait for lunch.

        In either case the determining factor was more likely a mental one then a biological one.

        Probably it has something to do with glucose/sugar levels

        Probably not [blogspot.ca]

      • My personal experience is, activities in the morning are more effective for weight loss. I used to walk ~4km in the evening for more than a year, but did not result in weight loss. But when switched to morning walk, I could see results in couple of months.

        Probably it has something to do with glucose/sugar levels, which is lowest in the morning. Probably, the apps do not consider some such facts.

        From a lifetime spent battling weight, I concur that morning exercise is best. I suspect that it primes the metabolism to run a little faster? Evening exercise never did much for me other than maintain muscle tone.

        The body does some strange things as well. Trying to lose weight in late summer or fall is horridly difficult. I don't know if the body is preparing for winter or what, triggered by the shortening days, but I had to be in fighting trim for Hockey season by August, or else let the season wear it

    • by EEPROMS ( 889169 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @12:24AM (#52929159)
      I used to go to the gym 3-4 times a week and do all the exercises etc and lost next to bugger all weight but I did get bigger muscles. The issue is to lose weight there are two simple rules, don't eat anything with a high GI (carbs) index and don't eat too much. If you avoid bread and cakes, beer (I drink spirits now), snacks etc all things high in carbs you will find the weight just falls off. Also reward yourself at least once a week with a sinful dinner setting and that way you don't get bored. Yes exercise should still be in the picture but is a wast of time if you don't get rid of the carbs,
      • Sounds like Atkins, which has worked quite well for me. But it appears that almost anyd diet helps people lose weight for a while, regardless of what foods it actually allows. Perhaps it's due to these diets forcing people to pay much more attention to what's in their food and how many calories it has. "Wow, this much fat and sugar in this microwave dinner? I'll grab something else".

        Speaking of drinks: my doctor told me I had better cut down on my alcohol intake, so I did. No other change in diet, b
        • Sounds like Atkins, which has worked quite well for me.

          That's a large leap. The grandparent was talking about cutting out high GI foods, Atkins promotes cutting out all carbohydrate. Ketosis is a pretty extreme state to get yourself in, and there's really no need to worry about low GI carbohydrates. And if exercise is part of your weight-loss regime, you do really need to have a reasonable carbohydrate intake.

      • "I used to go to the gym 3-4 times a week and do all the exercises etc and lost next to bugger all weight but I did get bigger muscles."

        IOW you did lose fat, which normally is the goal for people on a diet.

        Losing weight is only helpful for jockeys and astronauts.

        • Losing weight is only helpful for jockeys and astronauts.

          not according to BMI.

      • by Xyrus ( 755017 )

        Carbs, protein, fat...bullshit.

        Fad diets, special exercise programs, etc. only causes weight loss in one area: your wallet. How much weight you lose is governed by physics. If you consume fewer calories than you burn, the weight comes off. Period. It doesn't matter if you got the calories from eating a candy bar or from eating a salad.

        Your body is not a perpetual motion machine. Calories are calories. Eat less, exercise more.

    • by plover ( 150551 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @12:37AM (#52929195) Homepage Journal

      As much as this explanation appears to make sense, like anything in a social study, the results are likely virtually meaningless at the individual level. How any one person reacts to a tracker will not be predictable.

      Success at improving someone's health will always be based entirely on the motivation of the person, not on which electronic toys they wear or which brand of granola they gnaw upon. Perhaps they'll find a correlation where buying Garmin branded devices is indicative of people who are more motivated than people who buy Apple branded devices, but that certainly doesn't mean buying a Garmin or an Apple will alter your chances of success.

      I participated in a clinical activity tracker study earlier this year. There were so many holes in the testing methodology that I'm not sure the results will be worth the PDF they'll be printed on. Yet they'll be publishing results soon enough, and no doubt will contribute to the collective misinformation already encompassing the 'get healthy' rackets.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • As much as this explanation appears to make sense, like anything in a social study, the results are likely virtually meaningless at the individual level. How any one person reacts to a tracker will not be predictable.

        That's an overstatement. What the results cannot do is state categorically that "you won't get fitter with a fitbit". But they're a starting point for an informed decision. When you're engaged in behaviour modification, you have to first be aware of your behaviour, and that includes being aware of tendencies that you may (or may not) have which are likely to affect your behaviour. Knowing something about the psychological effects of wearing a fitness tracker allows you to modify your use of it/attitude towa

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        As much as this explanation appears to make sense, like anything in a social study, the results are likely virtually meaningless at the individual level. How any one person reacts to a tracker will not be predictable.

        This is true. As someone who successfully used an activity logger as part of a self-designed program in which I lost about 100 pounds, I have some perspective on the matter. That doesn't have the same value as data from a controlled study of course, but which is nonetheless useful in curtailing premature generalizations one would make from such a study.

        My success puts me in a tiny minority of people, which has always been the problem all along: almost any rationally plausible program of weight loss works,

        • by plover ( 150551 )

          First, congratulations on dropping 100 pounds! That is a remarkable achievement for anyone.

          Next, I think our stories sound somewhat similar. I, too, look at data and outcomes, and as I know I'm lazy, I'm constantly turning to technology to make the mundane business of data logging as painless as possible. I have a wifi connected scale that also measures body fat, and logs every reading automatically. I weigh myself daily. And yes, I also recognized that lots of people get discouraged by the daily up an

          • by hey! ( 33014 )

            I continued to wear the personal tracker I've worn for the past three years, but in the interest of the study I deliberately ignored it. After the study ended, I looked and could see that my daily counts were averaging much lower than they were when I was actively trying to meet a daily step goal.

            Yes! All the data in the world does you no good if you don't look at it.

            I think underlying most people's failure is an irrational aversion to anything that smacks of failure. They turn a weight rebound -- which i

    • "According to this app, today I burnt 500 calories more than yesterday! I can now eat a whole pizza guilt free" Mystery solved.

      Since a single slice of pizza can be upwards of 500 calories, this "mystery" is more of a math deficiency than some broken reward system.

      Successful weight loss almost always comes down to simple math; burn more calories than you consume.

      Odd how we allegedly need a billion dollars worth of weight-loss "solutions" marketed to us to figure this out, which given the financial reward to outright lie on surveys like this to boost sales, I wouldn't be surprised if these results are reversed next week with a study

      • Successful weight loss almost always comes down to simple math; burn more calories than you consume.

        Which is a really good way to make yourself very ill. Hint: If the only thing that you're tracking is calories, then you're likely to have too much of some and too little of other things that you need.

        • Successful weight loss almost always comes down to simple math; burn more calories than you consume.

          Which is a really good way to make yourself very ill. Hint: If the only thing that you're tracking is calories, then you're likely to have too much of some and too little of other things that you need.

          I wholeheartedly agree with you. A goal of overall health which includes diet and exercise is the proper way to manage the human body. That said, respecting the simple math is a key component of that. Exercising for 2 hours every day becomes rather pointless if you "reward" yourself with an extra-large pizza for a midnight snack in utter defiance of simple math or proper diet.

          I was also addressing the gimmicks and methods that are marketed today that seem to defy the basic common-sense approach to weight

    • First of all, let's forget the wearable devices. Cause study participants sure did.

      Out of 24 months, they wore them on average 170 days. That's about the quarter of the time.
      And that's median value. They actually wore them 68-347 days.
      Oh... and it's only 80% of the "wearable device" group (i.e. technology-enhanced weight loss intervention group) members that were using said devices.
      Also, when they were using monitors, median values was 241.1 minutes per day (99.3-579.1).

      I.e. Monitors were mostly ignored.

      Of the 237 participants randomized to enhanced intervention, 191 participants received the wearable device that was a component of the intervention starting after month 6 and wore the device for 1 day or longer (median days worn, 170.0 [25th-75th percentile: 68.0-347]).
      On days that the device was worn, the median wear time was 241.1 min/d (25th-75th percentile: 99.3-579.1).

      Sec

  • by justcauseisjustthat ( 1150803 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @10:54PM (#52928899)
    I love science, but in the next year there will be research that states fitness trackers change lives and make major impact on weight loss. It seems that research around human health and psychology are more prone to extremes.
  • A better gadget for losing weight is... A scale

    • Re:Better gadget (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @04:18AM (#52929707) Journal
      Sometimes. Most people don't actually want to lose weight though, they want to lose fat. If you exercise a bit more, you'll likely lose some fat and put on some muscle. Muscle is denser than fat, so your weight may go up for a little while, and the scale will make you feel like it isn't working.
      • Use a scale for the weight, and a tape measure for your waist.
      • If you exercise a bit more, you'll likely lose some fat and put on some muscle.

        That's wishful thinking. Putting on significant amounts of muscle requires more than "exercising a bit more", and not usually the kinds of exercises people do for weight loss; it doesn't happen by accident. If you do that, you'll already know how to track your progress (calipers, tape measures, maximum lift, etc.) in addition to using a scale.

        • Putting on significant amounts of muscle requires more than "exercising a bit more", and not usually the kinds of exercises people do for weight loss; it doesn't happen by accident.

          I went from 325 pounds to 400 pounds when I lifted weights at the gym for a year. I lost fat and gained muscle, but not in the right way. After I stopped lifting weights, my weight settled down to 350 pounds and that's my weight for the last ten years. Although I've been on a low carb diet for the last five years, I reduced my calorie intake to 1,500 calories per day two months ago. This month I weighed 348 pounds.

          • I went from 325 pounds to 400 pounds when I lifted weights at the gym for a year. I lost fat and gained muscle, but not in the right way

            Unless you did hydrostatic or X-ray body composition testing, how would you know? You're saying that you put on more than 75 pounds of muscle, and that seems unlikely. You may be able to gain 10-20 pounds of muscle per year if you work really hard.

            Although I've been on a low carb diet for the last five years, I reduced my calorie intake to 1,500 calories per day two months

            • Unless you did hydrostatic or X-ray body composition testing, how would you know?

              The scale and mirror didn't lie. I gained weight, lost fat and added muscle mass. Trying to find 4XL shirts was a bitch. Now I'm a borderline XL/2XL.

              Even if you keep that up consistently, it's probably going to take you about three years to get down to 200 pounds.

              It's better to go slow and consistent.

              And it's probably best to stick with aerobic exercise, if not for any other reason that you won't be tempted to attribute lack of progress to gaining muscle.

              I'm trying to master the rowing machine at the gym.

    • Please, explain.

      Perhaps you were hoping for a Funny mod.

      Knowing your weight, or your physical activity level, means nothing about weight loss. Nothing.
      If anyone has any interest in weight loss or getting healthier, should learn more about the science behind our bodies. "Exercise more and lose weight" isn't the answer. Calories-in/Calories-out is a small portion of the story, at best. Low-fat is dangerous. Portion control is a red herring. Fad diets are stupid.

      Fat accumulation is mainly driven in our bo

      • Fat accumulation is mainly driven in our bodies by hormones, most notably insulin. Learn how that works and what affects it. That's it.

        Lucky, then, that you can influence hormone levels through what you eat, how much you eat, and how much you exercise.

        Knowing your weight, or your physical activity level, means nothing about weight loss. Nothing.

        Knowing your weight means determining whether the dietary changes you made in order to lose weight are working. That's important because different bodies react diffe

        • by gosand ( 234100 )

          Fat accumulation is mainly driven in our bodies by hormones, most notably insulin. Learn how that works and what affects it. That's it.

          Lucky, then, that you can influence hormone levels through what you eat, how much you eat, and how much you exercise.

          You can lose weight and keep it off by changing your diet alone. The others influence it, but to much lesser degrees. If you change WHAT you eat the amount (in quantity or calories) is largely irrelevant. Exercise is good for you, but you don't have to kill yourself trying to "burn off calories"

          Knowing your weight, or your physical activity level, means nothing about weight loss. Nothing.

          Knowing your weight means determining whether the dietary changes you made in order to lose weight are working. That's important because different bodies react differently to diets and exercise.

          Again, hung up on the old "diet and exercise" shtick. Diet, YES - but not "dieting". You don't need a scale to know or help you lose weight.

          Calories-in/Calories-out is a small portion of the story,

          No, they are actually the entire story: every food calorie that has been absorbed by your body either needs to be burned or stored (primarily as fat).

          *sigh* It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss out on all the heavenly glory.

          Look at human history - allllll the way back. Do you think any of these fads helps us survive as humans? Do you have ANY idea how many generations of people have lived? How did they do it without scales and digital trackers?

          Most of those generations lived in an environment of food scarcity and they frequently starved. And obesity isn't usually going to kill you before your reproductive period is over, which is why evolution has erred on the side of gaining weight. (They also lived without antibiotics, but that doesn't mean that antibiotics are useless.)

          You really haven't looked at the numbers, have you? Let's roughly estimate.... over 2.5 million years of human evolution, if the average lifespan was 50 years that means that within 100 years there would be 3 full generations. (year 0 - 50 is one, year 25 - 75 is two, year 50 - 100 is three). 2.5MM / 100 = 25,000 * 3 generations = 75,000 generations. [and they overlap, since at year 100, the next generation would have started already] And would be just one "family", which would have obviously grown and spread over time, so if I thought about it longer and harder I am thinking the number would be bigger. So you're saying "most of these generations lived in an environment of food scarcity and they frequently starved". What is this based on? On the fact there were no McDonalds? From what we can tell, we as a people only started agriculture 10,000 years ago. That is a tiny, miniscule part of 2.5 million years! How did we as humans not only survive, but THRIVE and evolve during this time? It wasn't because we could get fat. It was because we weren't relying on grains, starches, processed fats (like vegetable/bean oils) and sugars for fuel. Our bodies haven't adapted to these things well enough yet, which is why we have so much sickness today. (heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, ....) The bad science, pseudo-science, and pure lies behind our dietary guidelines are making us sicker and sicker.

    • The scale at my gym maxed out at 350 pounds. For years the scale also thunked when I got on. When I reduced my calorie intake to 1,500 calories per day, the scale stopped thunking but didn't budge below 350 pounds. This month it showed that I weighed 348 pounds.
  • It seems self-evident that the most effective weight loss will be from people who have found the will to do so within themselves, but the point of a tracker is to *give* some additional incentive to someone who would otherwise not have done the work at all, or may have stopped substantially sooner, lacking an unambiguous, objective, and quantitative measurement of how much work they have actually done.

    For truly fair comparison, one should evaluate how much weight people with a weight-loss tracker lose compared to the average person who may not even exercise at all.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The problem is that they focus you on the wrong thing. Exercise is good for general health, but not fit weight loss. Reduced calorie intake is the only way to really lose significant amounts of weight.

      • The problem is that they focus you on the wrong thing. Exercise is good for general health, but not fit weight loss. Reduced calorie intake is the only way to really lose significant amounts of weight.

        Well, OK trivially the only way to lose weight is to start consuming fewer calories than you burn.

        However, the mechanism for that is not so easy. For quite a lot of people, having some exercise regime is a helpful past of losing weight. If merely eating less were easy, no one would be fat.

    • It seems self-evident that the most effective weight loss will be from people who have found the will to do so within themselves, but the point of a tracker is to *give* some additional incentive to someone who would otherwise not have done the work at all, or may have stopped substantially sooner, lacking an unambiguous, objective, and quantitative measurement of how much work they have actually done.

      For truly fair comparison, one should evaluate how much weight people with a weight-loss tracker lose compared to the average person who may not even exercise at all.

      That's a pretty fucking stupid sentence to write. How is that a fair comparison? People trying to lose weight vs not? Let's take a measure of people trying to stay alive vs people trying to kill themselves. That's about as useful of a measurement. Dead people lose weight much faster than live people. Go to bed. Sober up. Stop posting for a while maybe?

      • by mark-t ( 151149 )

        First of all, bear in mind I was not suggesting comparing the people that use trackers to people that do *not* lose any weight, I was suggesting comparing them to the *average* amount of weight lost by an obese person that did not use a tracker... some of these people may very lose a lot of weight (and according to this study, apparently more weight than people that use weight loss trackers), but many more of them will not.

        Secondly, you miss my point, which is that people who are using weight loss tracke

      • Even that would be nonsense since muscles weigh more than fat tissue and people that properly exercise are likely to gain muscles and thus weight. For that reason, weight loss is not a meaningful indication of anything except for people that have the physique of a big sea mammal and thus are mostly fat anyway. Proper research should include diet and body fat percentage. Also, in general exercising more without losing much weight is already a big win for the health of most people. Stupid research like this o

    • by Sique ( 173459 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @01:41AM (#52929377) Homepage
      But that's not what that study was about. According to the NY Times text, 500 people were selected and put on a weight loss regime for six month, and each of them lost weight. Then they got split in two groups where one group keeps track of the weight loss regime via a website and another one via the tracker. And the tracker people lost significantly less weight during the next year.
    • It seems self-evident that the most effective weight loss will be from people who have found the will to do so within themselves, but the point of a tracker is to *give* some additional incentive to someone who would otherwise not have done the work at all, or may have stopped substantially sooner, lacking an unambiguous, objective, and quantitative measurement of how much work they have actually done.

      For truly fair comparison, one should evaluate how much weight people with a weight-loss tracker lose compared to the average person who may not even exercise at all.

      To point a finer point on this issue, I think the deficiency in the study has to do with the groups involved.

      They may have found two groups who have a common goal (weight loss), but I'm willing to bet that the group who went out of their way to consult with a health counselor have FAR more motivation to achieve the goal of overall health rather than the group who buys step-counting gimmicks and starves themselves to death, resulting in temporarily hitting a specific number on the scale.

      Overall health goals

      • To point a finer point on this issue, I think the deficiency in the study has to do with the groups involved.

        They may have found two groups who have a common goal (weight loss), but I'm willing to bet that the group who went out of their way to consult with a health counselor have FAR more motivation to achieve the goal of overall health

        I think that everyone in the study was consulting with a counsellor, and that's how they got onto the study. I may be wrong, but that's what the study seems to be describing....

  • Makes sense to me! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Octorian ( 14086 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @11:49PM (#52929055) Homepage

    Activity trackers are not a useful tool for increasing your amount of regular physical activity. That's not really what they're designed for.
    They are, however, a useful tool for quantitatively bragging about your physical activity on Twitter and Facebook :-)

  • Trackers measure parameters like steps and calories and bring them out of context. If you ate 500 kcal worth of chocolate right before the workout, then burning 500 kcal will do little in terms of fat reduction. You don't work out to burn the fat while you exercise, you work out to change your metabolism so that you burn fat while you don't exercise. Trackers won't reward you for doing muscle training (no steps involved!) although building muscle is awesome for losing weight (give your body enough mitochond

  • I think I'll ponder it for a while over a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @01:51AM (#52929407)

    - The two groups both received counseling only for the first six months. After that, one group continued to receive monthly counseling, while the other just used a "fitness device". The way the summary (and the linked story) are written seemingly implies both groups were receiving counseling the entire time, which is false.

    - The device used in this study sounds like something the researchers cobbled together. The researchers also "made a web site" where participants could review the data from the device. This does not really seem comparable to even fairly cheap modern fitness trackers, where feedback and data are easily obtained anytime the user wants. These guys really should have used brand name off the shelf commercial trackers if they really wanted to validate their conclusions.

    All in all, this study seems to have some significant problems.

  • It's not currently popular to hold ourselves accountable for our actions and accomplishments, or lack thereof.

    We need a device for this or an app for that as a constant reminder of our outwardly conscientious self-righteousness.

    " Ohhh look at me participating in the Portland free bike program with my thousand dollar iphone riding as slow as I can, Oh the irony... "

    Before the apple phanboi's attack here's the proof:
    http://www.zdnet.com/article/h... [zdnet.com]

    • That might work for depressed people. I have no rewards mechanism, or at least it seems that way, and so I'm entirely motivated by pain, loss, and sheer boredom. I've never identified a sense of accomplishment and find sex largely a nerve-racking experience with a pay-off that, while enjoyable, isn't encouraging (it's impossible to motivate me via flirtation, but I'll definitely go for a free blowjob with no investment on my part if I'm not otherwise diverted--I'm not losing my 300-day Duolingo streak jus

  • If you are told "walk five miles a day" you will walk an additional five miles. If you are told "walk 10,000 paces a day" you will walk as much as you need to top up the steps from wandering around, random movements, etc. up to 10,000
    • Yes. This is something I've noticed with friends who wear them. I hear how many steps they walked, but I don't know anyone that took a baseline of how many steps they walk normally. If you are already walking 8000 steps a day, then walking 10,000 isn't that big a deal (I'm making up numbers). They really need to build in a deficit to show 'you are below your daily average' vs just a raw total that may make you feel more productive than you really were.
  • - is that the sort of people who buy trackers are the sort of people who think they can 'buy' their way to weight loss. Running is free, 'eating less' actually makes savings.
  • by ledow ( 319597 )

    Because of many reasons, but one of them is that you stop when the thing says you've hit your target exercise amount etc.

    Totally useless.

    The other day colleagues were talking about the same thing. I mentioned that my phone is set to "get me fit" on Samsung Health apps.

    For context, I do NO exercise whatsoever. I'm a lazy bum who's as skinny as hell, in that respect.

    The "target" it set me - I've "achieved" it every single day since I got the phone. Without even trying. Literally just walking around the of

  • "participants who used wearable devices reported an average weight loss of 7.7 pounds, compared to the 13 pounds lost by those who didn't use the devices and only used health counseling"

    Undermines?

    Both A (fitbit) and B (counseling) are better than doing nothing (as well as many other alternatives), but A is somewhat less effective than B on average.

    Now if people with a fitbit had gained 7.7 pounds...

  • This is good news for all of us who feared the health insurers would try to incentive us to wear tracking devices in exchange for lower premiums.
  • by orev ( 71566 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @08:47AM (#52930637)
    It's incredible that in 2016 people still think (and even do scientific research!) on the idea that exercise helps you lose weight. EXERCISE DOES NOT HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT in any significant amount. Weight loss is at least 85% what and how much you eat. Exercise can help somewhat, but it has very little bearing. Exercise is extremely important for overall health, but weight loss is not one of the benefits.
  • Eat better. Sleep more.
    Pick up heavy things and put them down again.
    Do cardio with enough intensity that your clothes are wet.
    Drink only water.

    Keep doing this for the rest of your life.

  • I initially lost weight when I was forced to go on a low-carb diet with my father when he lived with me for two months after he got out of the hospital in 2011. After he moved back home, I stuck to the diet but I didn't lose any more weight. I was 350 pounds for the last five years. That didn't change until I started counted calories and reduced my calorie intake to 1,500 per day two months ago. I'm now under 350 pounds. I recently got a stopwatch to keep track of my time on the rowing machine at the gym.
  • by xiando ( 770382 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @10:56AM (#52931585) Homepage Journal
    If you want to look better then there's one proven solution which works and has proven itself throughout the centuries since ancient Greece: Lifting weights. Can some "tracker" on your arm measure how much you lift? No, obviously not. These idiotic devices also supposedly track your calorie intake. If you lift and reduce your intake then you won't gain muscle and look like a skeleton. In summery, these devices are useless and those who buy them are wasting money they should be spending on gym memberships and protein rich food. Fatties should get off their asses and lift, not waste money on idiotic technology.
  • It's an oft repeat meme that if you exercise more, you'll lose weight.
    "Oft repeated", however, does not mean "correct".

Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said that in the last analysis the entire field of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.

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