SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Fitbits and Apple Watches and the like may have their uses, but they don't appear to be effective in weight loss.
I once received a lot of blowback for an Upshot article in which I showed (with evidence) that exercise is not the key to weight loss. Diet is. Many, 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 — Fitbit, Vivosmart, Apple Watch — must be helpful in losing weight. Unfortunately, evidence doesn't support this belief either.
[...] What was needed was a large, well-designed study that truly teased out the contribution of wearable tech to weight loss programs. Last year, the results of such a study, the IDEA trial, were published.
[...] 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.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Thursday February 23 2017, @09:28PM
A very large friend of mine who has bad diet/weight issues is a little too big into his fitbit. He'll do things like exercise like hell, but then turn around and use that as justification for a 1500 calorie lunch. He loses weight, but not like he could be, and he usually gains it all back when he stops exercising over winter because he hasn't taught himself portion control.
I think a large amount of the problem is that people are using the device as justification for activity, rather than the activity as justification for the device.
i.e.:
"Okay, I need to get 200 more steps today, and then I'm done. I can eat that whole cheesecake at that point, because the numbers say so." vs. "Okay, that was a fun day of hiking. I wonder how many miles I walked!"
That's how I use mine. But I've lost 16 lbs since November, and I haven't really been exercising other than a weekly 5-10 mile hike. Some days I don't even get close to the 10k steps or whatever the goal says for a day. Other times I blow it away. I'm maintaining a close handle on portion control though and not altering it based upon my activities. I'm not saying that's the universal trick, but it's working for me. I eat like a bird though.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday February 23 2017, @09:34PM
* It should also be mentioned that among the things I've been doing has been to cut my calories from alcohol from about 13,000/week to about 1920/week. But still, like I said, portion control.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @10:13PM
That's ... a lot of alcohol...
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday February 23 2017, @10:16PM
About a 12 pack a night of real beer, not Budwiser pisswater. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I can put it away back when I was trying to.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday February 23 2017, @10:32PM
It was thought in 1992 that consuming small amounts of alcohol can lead to weight gain, but consuming large amounts can lead to weight loss.*
The so-called Drinking Man's Diet, a treacherous scheme popular in the 1960's that suggested substituting alcohol for sugars and starches to shed unwanted pounds, was based on the puzzling observation that heavy drinkers and alcoholics often lose weight despite intakes of a thousand or more extra alcohol calories each day.
[...]
[...] for a moderate social drinker who has a cocktail before dinner or an occasional glass of wine or a beer [...] alcohol calories can indeed add up.
[...]
[...] weight gain was negligible in alcoholics who were given 2,000 calories of alcohol daily on top of the 2,500 calories from foods they consumed to maintain their weight. But when the same number of additional calories were fed as chocolate, a steady weight gain resulted.
-- http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/04/health/why-the-body-may-waste-the-calories-from-alcohol.html [nytimes.com]
* may have side effects
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:41PM
I haven't heard of that. Interesting though.
I only actually eat maybe 500-1000 calories a day in food. People keep telling me it's unhealthy, but I don't actually get hungry for much more than that. And that's not a small McDonald fries a day and then starving the rest of the day or anything like that. It's typically two meals of veggies and a small amount of some meat, sometimes with some bread or a little fruit. Very simple curries and stir fries were very common dishes. It got frustrating when I was using an app to count calories to figure out how the fuck to cram in a healthy amount in a day. And yes, I was minding portion sizes and all of that.
And then I typically just drank the other 2000 or so. I wasn't really losing weight back then though, but I wasn't gaining it either. Since the changes I've made (for health reasons (cause drinking 12 strong beers a day every day isn't really a sustainable life choice as you approach your mid 30s and maybe beyond) and because my girlfriend moved in with me and harps about my drinking even after I cut back) I don't drink except on the weekends, and then it's maybe a six pack Friday and a six pack Saturday, I still don't get hungry. It's like I don't miss the calories, which I guess tracks with the idea that they're just "wasted". I do miss getting hammered though. :(
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:20PM
I try to hit 800-900 per day. At 1200-1700 I maintain. At about 2200 I start to gain.
I used a tracker to find out those numbers. Now I dont use it at all anymore as I know what to avoid.
The fitness trackers can be nice as reminders to actually DO the thing. Making a game out of it. But you can go the other way and use them as an excuse to do bad habits. Like eating 5k at dinner but you are good because you had a 32oz diet coke for lunch.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:27PM
Are we talking about a Thanksgiving dinner? That's a lot of goddamn calories.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:50PM
If you include dessert, I'll bet the aforementioned large friend I have gets close to that without trying. He makes some rich fucking food and likes appetizers when he eats out. Back when I still used myFitnessPal, I'd poke in on his progress and see 2500 calories on dinner alone, and then 2 earlier meals with a snack thrown in. I don't think he watched serving sizes nearly as closely as I did either. He justified it with an hour or so of jogging (and I still don't know how he managed that with all that weight and a bad knee) but then he'd fall off the bandwagon on the exercise but keep eating his normal amount.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 24 2017, @12:21AM
A single 2,500 calorie meal per day might be sufficient for some people. I don't see ~5,000 calories triggering weight loss in anyone who isn't an Olympian. Maybe it could be part of a fasting + overeating weekly scheme.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 24 2017, @01:00AM
> A single 2,500 calorie meal per day might be sufficient for some people.
Most guidelines say about 2200 per day for a man, with some fuzzy footnotes about activity and morphological variations...
So I think your "some" should really be "the vast majority of", knowing that it's actually too much for most women.
I cringe every time I have dinner in one of those places where they list the desserts' calories (most of which come from fat: whipped cream and ice-cream on your brownie). 1000 to 1500 calories for a dessert, knowing how many people don't share them? I need to buy more medical stocks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @12:30AM
5k? Is not very hard to hit.
Most fast food dinners easy hit 1500 by themselves. The portions to get there are not even that much. Add in double portion some desert because you have been 'good today'. Then add in a pre-meal appetizer, salad with a good amount of ranch dressing, and a few condiments. 3-5k is not hard to do at all.
Portion control is the key. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-lose-weight-eating-only-mcdonalds-2015-10 [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 24 2017, @07:36PM
Think fun when exercising and you'll eat less later [sciencedaily.com]
...two studies where adults were led on a 2 km walk around a small lake and were either told it was going to be an exercise walk or a scenic walk. In the first study, 56 adults completed their walk and were then given lunch. Those who believed they had been on an exercise walk served and ate 35% more chocolate pudding for dessert than those who believed they had been on a scenic walk.
Supports you hypothesis...