Activity Trackers May Undermine Weight Loss Efforts

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.

Those who had not worn activity monitors were, on average, about 13 pounds lighter now than two years ago.
Those who had worn the monitors, however, weighed only about 8 pounds less than at the start.

The people using the monitors may also have assumed that, in some roundabout way, the technology removed responsibility from them for monitoring their energy intake, Dr. Jakicic says. “People may have focused on the technology and forgotten to focus on their behaviors” and ate too much, he says.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/well/activity-trackers-may-undermine-weight-loss-efforts.html

Who would have guessed your fitbit is keeping you fat?