Modern fitness trackers have become a must have for anyone who wants to stay in shape and montiro their gains.
But, these tech ingrained trackers designed to help people keep in shape are useless when it comes to weight-loss benefit, says a new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
“The whole hypothesis was that (wearables) would be helpful, and they worked just the opposite,” says study author John Jakicic of the University of Pittsburgh. “But that makes (the study) even more intriguing,” added Jakicic.
The study suggests that instead of motivating users to do more exercise over the day, the survey which was conducted for two years revealed that the devices were actually less effective at encouraging people to lose weight than simply following a diet and exercise plan.
The study followed 470 overweight persons, aged between 18 and 35 who were put into a weight loss group for two years. One group was a standard weight-loss group, reported Times. The people were assigned a low-calorie diet, increased physical activity along with group counseling.
Whereas, the other group did all the things as mentioned above, but adopted wearable technology six months into the study.
The researchers found that, the volunteers who wore the fitness trackers lost, on average 3.6kg. In comparison, to the group that was not given these devices, who lost about 5.9kg, reported BBC.
"People have a tendency to use gadgets like these for a while and then lose interest with time as the novelty wears off… And we did see a drop off in the usage data as the study went on," said Jakicic while giving the reasoning behind the surprise findings.
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