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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: 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!